League News

The Reds Curse?

Forgive the Providence Reds if they throw salt over their shoulders, step carefully over cracks in the sidewalk, or make absolutely certain to walk around ladders rather than under them. Black cats? Not welcome anywhere near Roger Williams Park or any of the visiting clubhouses they’ve occupied in the first half of the post-merger Federal Baseball League season. You see, the Reds have a curse. The worst kind of curse, the one that every baseball player lives in fear of: the injury curse.

The Reds had to feel like they’d come out of the merger draft in tiptop shape. Their first round selection, Andy Wright, was a well-known phenom who’d hit the FBL in 1942 as a 21-year old and immediately became a perennial All-Star, Glove Wizard and eventually, when he moved to Indianapolis, a league champion. Coming off his best season at age 28, where he hit a career-high .351 and hit 14 homers, Wright looked like he would continue to take the FBL by storm, this time in a Providence uniform. In the third round, they nabbed speedster outfielder Bobby Coffman, 28 years old and also coming off a career-best season. There was pitching phenom Junior Holmes, selected in the 4th round and expected to anchor the bullpen for years to come. At all of 21 years old, he’d gone 5-1 with 11 saves and a nearly invisible ERA of 0.54 in 49.2 innings at AAA Syracuse in the Buffalo organization.

Six months later, not a one of them is expected to play again this season, and Holmes will likely never pitch again.

Holmes was the first casualty, the victim of a torn ligament in his pitching elbow, suffered in spring training. For all his promise, Holmes never threw a pitch in the Federal Baseball League, and probably never will. Barring miracle surgery, Holmes’s career is over.

Just two and a half weeks later, all of eight games into the season, Andy Wright made a diving, sprawling catch of a deep line drive into the right-center gap. He saved two runs from scoring in the process, but tumbled awkwardly into the outfield wall in the process. He would come off the field on a stretcher, immobilized for fear of permanent damage to his neck. The diagnosis came down later: a fractured skull that would have him out at least an entire year.

The Grays still managed to fight on without their offensive leader and an inspirational youngster, and have hung around the .500 mark all season long. That task might become even tougher now, as Bobby Coffman came up gingerly after making his own diving catch in the right-center gap. The result was not as severe as Wright’s terrifying injury, but still not pleasant for the Reds: back troubles that are expected to have Coffman out for at least 7 months.

In light of all these demoralizing bad breaks, you will of course understand if the Reds decide to put a full-time cadre of bodyguards around 23-year old pitcher Bob Pittman. On June 20th, two days before Coffman’s season-ending injury, the right-hander became the 15th pitcher in FBL history to throw a no-hitter. The way things have gone for this squad in 1950, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if the earth simply opened up and swallowed him whole, and the Reds can use all the good news they can possibly get at this point.

Baseball players have always been a superstitious lot, wearing their uniforms in exactly the same way, hopping over the baselines, going through pregame warmups in ritual fashion and countless other quirks and obsessions. As the Reds have proven, there may just be an excellent reason for all of them.