Harvey Haddix reached legendary status 50 years ago

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By David Jablonski
Staff Writer Updated 11:10 AM Sunday, May 24, 2009

"A slender southpaw joined baseball's immortals today - wondering what a guy has to do to win."

Dave O'Hara, Associated Press, May 27, 1959.

SPRINGFIELD - Fred Haddix couldn't walk. He couldn't talk. He couldn't remember anything, even his own children.

When he awoke from the coma, the 30-year-old weighed about as much as your average 12-year-old, a mere 96 pounds.

For two months, he had lay in a hospital bed, his arms and legs taped down, his body strapped down and his eyes taped shut.

Haddix was near death in the spring of 1959. Encephalitis killed 16 people in Ohio that summer - but not Fred.

"The whole time, I thought I was buried alive," he said this March, 50 years later.

The virus had robbed him of his memory, and it took many months to fully return. But from the moment he awoke, Fred had the ability to make new memories, and the first thing he was told him when he awoke was the story of his older brother, Harvey, and the greatest game ever pitched.

"May 26, 1959. In Milwaukee. On the mound.

Harvey Haddix, of the Pirates, was mowing them down.

Twenty-seven up. Twenty-seven gone.

Nine innings in the book and not a man had gotten on."

- Lyrics to Steve Wynn's 2008 song, "Harvey Haddix," on The Baseball Project CD.

Bob Friend, the starter, and Elroy Face, baseball's original closer, complemented each other well 50 years ago. They're still a winning team today.

Sitting next to each other in the Nelson Briles Room at PNC Park in Pittsburgh on April 7, they reminisced about their old friend and teammate, Harvey Haddix.

Measuring 5-foot-9, 170 pounds, Haddix didn't have the size of some pitchers. But he had plenty of other winning attributes.

"Confidence," said Face, listing one thing that made Haddix so successful.

"This guy here was 5-8," said Friend, pointing to Face. "What am I pushing it? 5-7?"

"5-7, 155 pounds," Face said.

"These guys had big arms and big hearts," Friend said. "That's what Harvey had."

"He had good stuff, too," Face said. "Pinpoint control."

"He knew how to pitch," Friend said.

On the night of May 26, 1959, Friend and Face witnessed what many consider the greatest game ever pitched. That night against the Braves at County Stadium in Milwaukee, Haddix retired the first 36 batters he faced. Then in the 13th inning, a throwing error, a sacrifice, an intentional walk and finally a complicated home run-turned-double, hit by Joe Adcock, made Haddix and the Pirates 1-0 losers.

No pitcher before that night had ever taken a perfect game beyond nine innings, and no one has since. Harvey's widow Marcia Haddix, a 1953 Springfield High School graduate who still lives in town, doesn't believe Harvey ever realized how great he was that night. But even the next day's headlines recognized the significance of the feat.

"Haddix gains most magnificent mound performance in history of the game, but loses one-hitter to Braves," one newspaper's headline read.

In all of baseball history, 223 pitchers have hurled no-hitters. Nine have lost a perfect game on the 27th batter. Only 17 have thrown perfect games.

That number doesn't include Haddix, whose feat resides in some record books under the category, "Unique Events."

To Haddix that night, though, it was just another loss. Every defeat left him feeling letdown, he said. He never took pleasure in a well-pitched defeat.

"All I know is we lost 1-0 in 13 innings," Haddix told reporters. "What's so historic about that? Didn't anyone else ever lose a 13-inning shutout?"

"Records were made to be broken. Well, maybe not all of them."

- Tim Bucey, Springfield News-Sun, May 26, 1984.

Marcia Haddix saved everything. She was the collector, not Harvey. She scaled down the collection years ago when she moved into a smaller house, but even now the display in her home rivals anything in Cooperstown.

Marcia has a baseball from every game Harvey ever won with the box score written neatly in her handwriting between the seams. Not included with that display is a ball from the game he didn't win.

The night of the game, Marcia was at home in Springfield at her mother's house. She wasn't listening to the game because she didn't think she'd be able to get it on the radio. But over in South Vienna, Harvey's mom, Nellie, had "one of those big, old radios that sits on the floor, an ancient thing," Marcia said.

Nellie picked up parts of the game. When the ninth inning ended, she called Marcia.

"Do you know your husband has just pitched a perfect game?" Nellie asked her.

On a rainy night at County Stadium, before a crowd of 19,194, against a Milwaukee team hitting .290, Haddix thrived. It didn't matter that he had a bad cold and needed to suck on cold tablets all night or that his mound opponent, Lew Burdette, was matching him, at least in keeping the game scoreless. Haddix was on top of his game and exhibited pinpoint control, his catcher Smoky Burgess told the News-Sun in 1984.

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