- 3 hours ago
When Alex and I were piecing together the script for "The History of the Seattle Mariners" way back in 2019, our short Lenny Randle segment went through a couple of revisions. Although he only spent a small fraction of his career in Seattle, Lenny established himself as a Mariners legend, and we had to rein ourselves in from writing an extensive tangent covering his entire story.
It took us long enough, but six-plus years later, Lenny finally gets his own Secret Base video. Time and again, he found himself standing center stage during baseball's oddest, most chaotic scenes. Sometimes he just happened to be there and passively observed the ruckus. Other times, he conjured it himself. Since "The History of Charging the Mound" is, above all else, a story about baseball chaos, it was inevitable that he'd find himself here.
It took us long enough, but six-plus years later, Lenny finally gets his own Secret Base video. Time and again, he found himself standing center stage during baseball's oddest, most chaotic scenes. Sometimes he just happened to be there and passively observed the ruckus. Other times, he conjured it himself. Since "The History of Charging the Mound" is, above all else, a story about baseball chaos, it was inevitable that he'd find himself here.
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00:00It's the evening of September 30th 1971 at RFK Stadium in Washington DC. In a book I am
00:06pretending to have read, Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci once wrote what was translated
00:10into English as the following. The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum
00:15a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. Tonight, the old is represented by the Washington
00:20Senators and their manager, Ted Williams. In his playing career, Williams was one of the three
00:25greatest hitters who've ever lived. I think it's really only debate between him, Babe Ruth,
00:29and Barry Bonds. The game he's managing now is the final game in the 80-year history of
00:34the Washington Senators, who in the offseason are set to move to Texas and become the Rangers.
00:38Williams will tough it out through one more losing season there before leaving baseball
00:42entirely. The new is represented by one of Ted's favorite players, Lenny Randall, a rookie whose
00:47career with the Rangers will continue on for several more years before it meets a sudden,
00:51violent end. Randall, who is one of the few players to charge a mound multiple times, will
00:57help to usher in this new baseball institution. Williams never once ran out there to fight
01:01a pitcher. It probably never occurred to him because in his time, virtually nobody ever
01:05did. Then again, Williams, who was so famously reserved that he wouldn't even tip his cap
01:09to the crowd, probably never skipped around the locker room wearing hot pants as Lenny likes
01:12to do. They're about as different as two guys could possibly be, but Ted loves Lenny,
01:17and Lenny loves Ted. Tonight, they watch from the dugout together as the morbid symptoms roll in.
01:37A popular variant of this quote describes the morbid symptoms as, quote, monsters. If they are,
01:42they're the friendliest monsters you've ever seen. Maybe 50 to 100 young Senators fans who,
01:47during the top of the eighth inning of what's shaping up to be a Senators win, suddenly pour
01:50onto the field to shake hands with the players. They just want a chance to say goodbye. It's been
01:55a strange 80 years for fans of the Senators, who are actually three separate franchises if you want
02:00to get technical about it. Here in red, you see the decidedly lousy winning percentages of a
02:04short-lived team named the Washington Senators, who joined the National League in 1891 and folded
02:09in 1899. Two years later, a new franchise also named the Senators joined the American League. You can
02:14see them in white here. They won a World Series title in the 20s, but after decades of losing,
02:19they packed up, moved to Minnesota, and became the Twins in 1961. They were immediately replaced by a
02:24third team called the Senators, who in 1968 were bought by a guy named Bob Short, who quickly began
02:30losing money, which is why he's about to move them to Texas. These fans sure do hate Short. Earlier
02:35this evening, some of them hung a sign that read, Short Stinks. The cops took it down, so they hastily
02:40drew up another sign that said, Short Still Stinks. But the players, they love. In particular,
02:45star slugger Frank Howard, one of baseball history's seminal glasses guys. Between puffs on a post-game
02:50cigar, Howard seems to indicate that the fans had earned a little bit of field invasion after all
02:54they'd been through. He describes the night's proceedings as utopia. Of course, it didn't hurt that in the
02:59sixth, Howard was able to swat one last home run in D.C., then tearfully tip his cap to the
03:04Senators' crowd. Another thing that didn't hurt, Yankees pitcher Mike Kekic very obviously served up an
03:09intentional meatball for him. On the last day of the regular season, with both teams way out of
03:14playoff contention, Yankees manager Ralph Houck said, what the hell, let's give these poor folks
03:18one last thing to cheer about. That home run ended up sparking a rally for the Senators, who came all
03:23the way back from 5-1 to tie it up. And that is how things stand right here in the
03:27eighth, as all these
03:28kids mill about in the infield. The PA announcer relays a threat issued by the umpires, either head back to
03:34your seats, or we are calling a forfeit. So the field soon clears out. In the bottom of the eighth,
03:38the Senators tack on two more to lead 7-5, and in the ninth, Senators pitcher Joe Grazenda forces
03:43two quick ground outs. The Washington Senators are now just one out away from winning their
03:48final baseball game ever via a thrilling comeback. And it's at this point when some kid jumps out of
03:54his seat, runs onto the field, rips up first base, and runs away with it. This time, thousands of fans
04:00follow his lead, making off with everything they can get their hands on. The umpires, realizing the
04:05futility of their situation, declare a forfeit, and hand the win to the Yankees. I can't recall
04:11anything like this ever happening in Major League Baseball. The Yankees attempted to gift wrap this
04:16game and hand it to Senators fans as a goodbye present. And with the win one out away, and virtually
04:23in the bag, Senators fans said, no thank you. But on very rare occasions, sometimes for as little as an
04:31instant or as long as an entire evening, something within baseball is knocked just a bit off-center
04:37into something baseball-adjacent. The videotape tracks just a little bit off the head. The left
04:42speaker plays a microsecond ahead of the right, and suddenly, the thing people are playing, the
04:47thing they're watching, is not exactly baseball. Certain things become more important than winning.
04:53Sometimes you've decided that you just really need to shake a man's hand. Or steal his bases. Or beat his
05:01ass.
05:06Mount charging, technically speaking, is not a baseball axe. It isn't scored. If you scan a
05:11game's play-by-play, it might tell you that the charging party was thrown out, but it won't tell you
05:15why. You could still argue that this is a baseball act of a sort, if it actually presented any strategic
05:20advantage at all, but it does not. I'll roll out my statistical evidence in the next episode, but for
05:25now, just know that amount charging is a prime example of those baseball-adjacent phenomena I was
05:30describing. And I think that's why it so perfectly suits the innumerable talents of Lenny Randall.
05:36In volume 25 of the National Pastime, James Foer offered an interesting roundup of every forfeit
05:42in Major League Baseball history. The cause of the forfeit has always been either a problem with the
05:46field, the sun going down, fans throwing stuff on the field, or fans throwing themselves on the field.
05:52This game was the 10th ever to result in a forfeit, and the first in nearly 20 years.
05:57Lenny played no active role in it. He was nothing more than a passive observer.
06:00But not only will he observe baseball history's next forfeit, he will directly incite it.
06:05On May 29, 1974, in Arlington, Texas, Lenny Randall charges the mound to fight Cleveland pitcher, Milt Wilcox.
06:17For the first time since this series began, I have made the decision to add another mound charging to
06:23the sample, which will bring the total to 265 between 1950 and 2025. At first I felt that it did
06:30not satisfy the criteria I had set, but after closer inspection, I have determined that it does. Once
06:36I'm done making my case, I suppose you can decide for yourself. In order to best appreciate this moment,
06:41there are four things you need to understand about Lenny Randall. The first is that Lenny,
06:47who will soon launch his second career as a stand-up comedian, is happy to talk shit.
06:51In the previous offseason, Major League Baseball introduced a new rule that would allow umpires
06:55to throw a pitcher out of the game if they even as much as suspected that he was throwing an
06:59illegal
06:59spitball. On May 28, the Rangers batted against Cleveland pitcher Gaylord Perry, the most high-profile
07:04spitballer in the game and the reason for the rule. Perry dominated the Rangers with a complete game shutout.
07:10After the game, Lenny, who seemed to suspect Perry was still using the illegal pitch,
07:14sounded off to the media, saying he was nothing without it. The next day, the 35-year-old Perry
07:19sidled up to his 24-year-old Cleveland teammate, reliever Milt Wilcox, and said,
07:23You know, if I were pitching tonight, I'd brush back Randall every time he came to the plate.
07:29Wilcox got the message, but he's not that kind of pitcher. He doesn't really even know how to knock
07:34a guy down. When he gets his chance against Lenny in the bottom of the eighth, he does his best,
07:38but is so far out of his depth that he actually throws the ball behind him.
07:42All of a sudden, Wilcox looks like a guy who wants to take a guy's head off, not just brush
07:47him back.
07:47And of course, Lenny is well aware that he's made himself a target by way of his comments last night.
07:52He's also aware that, being a member of the 1974 Texas Rangers, he pretty much has a perpetual green
07:58light to run up and fight any pitcher whenever he wants for whatever reason he wants, because.
08:02And this is the second thing to know about Lenny Randall. His manager is no longer the
08:07noble statesman Ted Williams, but the most chaotic individual ever seen in modern baseball, Billy Martin.
08:20You know, I love my tangents, but Martin's life story is so expansive and so completely nuts wall to
08:26wall that he would deserve a full three hours all to himself. So I'm going to confine myself
08:31strictly to his contributions to the institution of mound charging. Billy Martin, who played between
08:361950 and 1961 and managed between 1969 and 1988, only actually charged the mound once, but he has his
08:44fingerprints all over this board. I've lost count of how many times I've read a newspaper story about a
08:48mound charging that mentioned Martin swinging his fists somewhere in the periphery. In 1960 alone,
08:53he on separate occasions sent someone to the hospital and was sent to one himself. In May of that year,
08:58he made it onto the main card of Mox Sanchez when he took on pitcher Gene Conley, who stood nearly
09:03a
09:03foot taller. Conley decked him in the jaw hard enough to require an x-ray. Martin offered a rematch with
09:08the condition that he would be allowed to stand on a stool to fight him. Then in August, Martin hit
09:12pitcher
09:13Jim Brewer with a hard right and broke his face. I think this is the only one-on-one fight
09:18in this sample
09:19that was considered to be a matter not for the umpires or the league commissioner, but the American legal
09:23system. Martin had to borrow money from a bank just to pay the settlement, but he was undeterred.
09:27He went on to get tangled up in lots more fist fights on and off the field and made the
09:31papers
09:31and probably some others that did not. It's safe to say then that if Lenny Randall wants to charge
09:36the mound, he will get an enthusiastic cosine from his boss, but what's the idea here? That he's just
09:42gonna drop his bat and run at the pitcher like everybody else? No, of course not. Because, and this is
09:47the
09:48third thing to know about Lenny Randall, Lenny Randall isn't like the rest of these jokers.
09:52He is a sophisticate, a true creative genius and visionary, and I absolutely mean that. Among my
09:58favorite little details about the dude is that whenever a kid asks for his autograph, he says,
10:02sure, I'll trade it for yours, and has the kid sign his glove. He even invents new ways to be
10:07a nice guy.
10:08On the field, he's best known in our time for his heroics on May 27, 1981, while playing for the
10:14Mariners. If you're a long time viewer, you might remember this. In the sixth inning,
10:18the Royals' Amos Otis hits a little roller down the third base line. Pitcher Larry Anderson does
10:22what infielders are supposed to do in this situation. If the ball rolls foul of its own
10:26accord before reaching the base, it's rolled a foul ball, thereby robbing Otis of a likely base hit.
10:30So he hovers over it and waits and hopes it does. No one in the building has ever seen anyone
10:36do what
10:37Lenny Randall is about to do. If he touches the ball, it's a hit. So he gets down on his
10:42hands and knees
10:43and without touching it, blows it foul. Later, he'll say that he's trying to beg the ball into
10:48rolling out of play. Shockingly, the umps don't buy it, and they rule it a hit, which I find to
10:53be
10:53absolutely ludicrous. This is an extraordinary display of on-the-spot creativity and confidence.
10:58Almost no third baseman would even think of it, and even fewer would possess the self-assuredness
11:02to look dumb trying it. So of course Lenny is not going to charge the mound like everybody else does.
11:07He'll claim that what he's about to do here was not planned, but he's not fooling us, right?
11:11On the next pitch, Lenny taps an exquisitely placed bunt down the first baseline. He's knocked
11:16it just hard enough to ensure that when Wilcox charges in to field it, he'll put his defenseless
11:21body right into Randall's trajectory, like a wide receiver on an inside slant jumping to
11:25catch a sailed throw and exposing himself to a ruinous hit from the free safety.
11:29That football analogy conveniently establishes the fourth thing that you must know about Lenny Randall.
11:33He can really lay somebody out. Lenny played college football at Arizona State,
11:37and although he was a 5'11", 170 pound guy who mostly returned kicks and punts, none of that really
11:42matters. I never played high school football, but I would play pickup games with guys who did,
11:47and there were a couple times in particular when I got hit so hard I felt like I'd been broken
11:51in half.
11:52Football players possess a unique gift for hitting the snot out of somebody. His own teammate,
11:57Dave Nelson, found this out the hard way earlier this month. As Nelson scooted back from second base to
12:02track down a pop fly, Lenny raced in from center field at full sprint. Neither properly called for
12:07the ball, they collided, and Nelson was left sprawled out and unconscious for 10 minutes. Some writers who
12:12witnessed it initially feared he was dead. Nelson fully recovered, but if that's how hard Lenny can
12:17hit by accident, how hard can he hit on purpose? Now, my proprietary definition of mound charging is
12:23only a few months old. It would be both welcome and really funny if some of you have already become
12:28purists who disapprove of my loosening interpretation of the criteria I set. I contend that what we are
12:34about to watch here is a mound charging. Because while Wilcox is certainly far away from the mound
12:38here, I believe that a mound, spiritually speaking, is wherever the pitcher happens to be. And Randall
12:43does not merely incidentally collide with him on his way to first. He detours and turns inward onto the
12:50grass. He therefore charges him, and he positively blows him up. If you accept this as a mound charging,
12:57as I do, this is the first and only sneak attack mound charge ever. Usually this would be impossible.
13:03I mean, the pitcher's a guy on a hill in the middle of a field. He sees everything. But in
13:07laying down
13:07that bunt, Randall was setting bait. It's brilliant. Of course, he's going to be ruled out for this,
13:12since leaving the base path like that is illegal, but he obstinately spins out and finishes the drill
13:16anyway. He doesn't quite have enough speed left to get through first baseman John Ellis, who commences
13:21the group project phase of tonight's proceedings. And in case there's any doubt remaining whether
13:25Billy Martin approves of any of this, there he is, one of the very first Rangers out of the dugout.
13:30His target is also Milt Wilcox, who takes care of him pretty easily. Not that Billy cares. Man just
13:36loves to fight. On the other side of the diamond, Rangers fans threaten to escalate this thing into
13:40a full-blown riot by pouring beer on Cleveland players who retaliate by throwing a bat at him.
13:46Teammates have to yank catcher Dave Duncan off the dugout roof before he does something he'll go to jail for.
13:51It might surprise you to learn that nobody is thrown out of this game, not even Lenny.
13:56The Rangers hold on for a 3-0 victory to close out the three-game series. These two teams will
14:01play
14:01each other again in Cleveland next week. And now that Rangers fans have set a precedent for
14:06interfering with players during a game, it's feared by some that more trouble could be in the offing.
14:12Martin is asked whether he's worried about going to Cleveland.
14:24He's not wrong about that. Attendance has been flagging in Cleveland in recent years,
14:28and to juice it up this season, the team has been introducing a whole slate of promotions that
14:32scan as catastrophically snakebitten with the benefit of hindsight. The promotion for the home
14:36opener, which was to have the amazing flying zucchini shot out of a cannon, was postponed because it was
14:41too cold. The money scramble, in which they plan to scatter 2,000 bucks around the field in small
14:45bills and send a few lucky folks out there to run around and try to pick them up, was rained
14:49out.
14:50George Jones and Tammy Winnett were mere months away from breaking up their marriage again,
14:54this time for good. The high-wire artist Carl Wallenda was four years away from falling to his
14:58death while attempting a skywalk in Puerto Rico. And then there's Tencent Beer Night.
15:10This is the promotion du jour throughout baseball these days. In May of 1974 alone,
15:15a dozen minor league teams throughout the country held Tencent Beer Promotions. A couple of big league
15:19teams, Cleveland and Texas included, have done so as well, apparently without major incident.
15:24In the future, the Tencent offer will be limited to two drinks maximum before quickly being phased out
15:29altogether, and that is all thanks to what transpires tonight, during the Texas-Cleveland game in
15:35Cleveland, Ohio on the evening of June 4th, 1974. Imagine going to a ball game today and paying 67 cents
15:42for a beer. That's about what it was, accounting for inflation, and the price point was particularly
15:46enticing in 1970s Cleveland, a town that, economically speaking, was not having a great time.
15:52The particulars are pretty hazy. Some say the beer was served in 8-ounce cups, others 12. It was claimed
15:57that
15:57the beer was watered down to 3.2% ABV, but some believe they switched to serving the real deal
16:02pretty quickly. But none of that really matters if you're able to bring your own 32-ounce chug-a-lug
16:07thermos to the counter and they fill it all the way up for the same price, no questions asked.
16:11Now it appears that there is no surviving video footage of what follows, but what I do have for you
16:16is a picture of a guy's butt, if that's helpful. In case you're watching in a public space, I'll give
16:20you
16:20a 5-second safety count off before we show it. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, negative 1, negative 2,
16:28but.
16:29It belongs to a man who might well be making history as he goes streaking across a major league
16:33baseball diamond and manages to escape. I've never heard of anybody else doing that and successfully
16:39evading apprehension, although it's tough to guess what his plan is once he actually gets over the
16:43fence. This feat is met with raucous cheers from an already drunk crowd that's getting drunker by the
16:48minute. It's only the fourth inning. In the fifth inning, the Rangers' Mike Hargrove, who coincidentally
16:54will one day lead Cleveland to two American League pennants as a manager, is substituted in at first
16:59base. That's when somebody in the stands nearly hits him with a thrown gallon-sized glass bottle
17:03of Thunderbird, a brand of port wine that's almost as strong as liquor. If fans can walk in with stuff
17:08like this, I must again conclude that it probably doesn't matter how cheap the beer is. Hargrove is
17:13unsettled to see a fan actually run back out there to retrieve the glass bottle and scurry back
17:18to the stands, figuring they might just throw it back at them again. But what is that if not
17:22recycling? That's just saving the planet right there. Meanwhile, fans start lighting firecrackers
17:27and chucking them into the Rangers' bullpen, which compels them to retreat to their dugout,
17:31so fans now start dropping firecrackers into the Rangers' dugout. A few more fans run around on the
17:36field here and there. Still, Hall of Fame umpire and crew chief Nestor Shylac is determined to keep
17:41this game together and see it through. Shylac fought in the Battle of the Bulge, where he earned a
17:45purple heart and a silver star. This is nothing compared to things he's seen. Then, in the ninth
17:50inning, somebody throws something in his direction and he feels a little thump against the back of
17:55his foot. He turns around, looks down, and sees the handle of a hunting knife sticking out of the ground.
18:01Shylac says, you know what? That right there, that is kind of like war. So he immediately calls the game
18:09and awards a forfeit win to the visiting Rangers. The similarities between this forfeit and the last
18:14one are pretty interesting. In both games, the home team found themselves losing 5-1 before rallying
18:19to tie it back up. Those 1971 Senators had a win packed up and ready to ship with two outs
18:24in the
18:24ninth inning before a single kid ruined everything by running onto the field to steal something,
18:29thereby opening the floodgates. Tonight, the home team is tied, not leading, but things play out the
18:33same way. Just moments before the attempted knife murder of an umpire with two outs in the ninth
18:38inning, some kid runs out to right field and tries to steal the hat off Texas right fielder Jeff Burrows.
18:44A startled Burrows tries to go after him, but trips over his own feet and falls. But from way out
18:49in
18:49the visitor's dugout, Billy Martin sees this and believes the fan has attacked Burrows and put him
18:54on the ground. Immediately, Billy raises a militia, grabbing a bat and a helmet and ordering his players
19:00to do the same. He leads a charge all the way out to right field to come to Burrows defense.
19:05What awaits them is a display that's almost inhuman.
19:12Waves of fans are swarming the scene, there are hundreds now. Some appear to be aimlessly running
19:17around but others are more menacing. They're brandishing knives, they're whipping chains around,
19:21they've ripped pieces out of stadium seats to use as clubs. Many of them appear so blackout drunk that
19:26they don't even really understand where they are, much less what they're doing.
19:29They've encircled the Rangers and are now closing in from all sides. Neither police nor security are
19:35anywhere to be seen. Lanny Randall finds his way to teammate Jim Sundberg and says,
19:40let's stand back to back and fight. It's all we can do. They brace for battle. Sundberg turns his head
19:46and finds a towering figure gesturing toward him specifically, bellowing all the horrors he intends
19:51to visit upon him. For what? Hitting one for three with a double? For having been born? It cannot be
19:56known.
19:56But as this gigantic corn-fed orc of the Great Lakes lumbers toward him, threatening to grind his bones
20:02to make his bread, Sundberg finds himself pinned in from all directions with nowhere to run.
20:07And then, the would-be accoster is felled from behind by a man in a Cleveland jersey.
20:14None other than Dave Duncan, the Cleveland catcher who just last week had to be pulled off the dugout
20:19roof to avoid a street fight with Texas fans. Here he is now, taking down one of his own fans.
20:24He's not alone.
20:34In the hour of greatest need, the entire Cleveland bench has charged in like the goddamn
20:38writers of Rohan coming to the aid of their Texas brothers. Manager Ken Aspermonte, seeing his
20:43opponents in trouble, has ordered his men to grab their bats from the armory and provide reinforcements.
20:49Together, they're able to ward off the drunken mob for long enough to escort the Texas players
20:53off the field and inside their clubhouse. Billy Martin, who made sure to literally get his kicks
20:58in by repeatedly stomping that oaf in the face after he was downed, later says that if it weren't
21:02for the other team coming to their rescue, someone might have died.
21:18This was not Lenny Randall's fault. It was the fault of hundreds of idiots who didn't know how
21:22to drink and the Cleveland organization that kept on serving in booze far past the point of social
21:27responsibility. But it did all begin with a Lenny Randall bunt down the first baseline,
21:31and an absolute flattening of a pitcher unlike anything seen before or since.
21:41The next season, a long simmering power struggle between Billy Martin and Texas management boiled
21:45over when he ordered the press box to stop playing take me out to the ball game during the seventh
21:49inning stretch and play John Denver's thank god I'm a country boy instead. He was fired. Lenny and
21:54Billy's paths would cross again in 1981 when Billy managed Oakland. His starting pitcher Mike Norris
22:00threw inside on Lenny, now with Seattle. Lenny warned Norris not to do that again, catcher Jeff
22:04Newman tried to steer him away, and Lenny rocked him with a hard right before they went to the mat
22:08for some ground and pound. All in a day's work for Randall, who was a black belt in karate and...
22:14Wait. Lenny's a black belt too? I swear, like every third guy in this series is a karate black belt
22:19or
22:20green belt or whatever. Did Gerald Ford issue an executive order making every American a karate master?
22:26Whatever. Anyway, after the game, Lenny said the fight was representative of the way Billy taught
22:31him to play. When Lenny was ejected from the first game of the doubleheader but allowed to play in the
22:35second, Billy's pitcher wanted to knock Lenny down again. No, leave him alone, Billy said. He's a good
22:41kid. It's a testament to Lenny Randall's ability to connect with all kinds of different people that he
22:46was close to both manager Ted Williams and manager Billy Martin. That trend did not carry over to the
22:52Rangers' next manager, Frank Lucchese. During 1977's spring training, Lucchese was taking a long hard
22:58look at benching Randall and giving second base to rookie bump Wills. When Randall protested and
23:03threatened to leave the team, Lucchese called him a punk in the press. Randall confronted Lucchese
23:08about this. Lucchese called him a punk once again, this time to his face. Randall exploded,
23:14brutalizing Lucchese with a series of lefts and rights that sent him to the ground and later to
23:18the hospital with injuries so severe that he required plastic surgery and nearly lost an eye.
23:23Randall then retreated to the dugout and grabbed a bat to defend himself against potential retaliation
23:27from his teammates. When that didn't materialize, he just shrugged and went back to doing wind sprints.
23:32Randall was soon suspended, charged with assault, and traded. Nobody really understood what got into
23:37Lenny that day, least of all him. Fighting within the context of a ball game and outside it are two
23:43entirely different things, and this is just not what he was about. This was the same guy who,
23:48while a student leader at Arizona State, passionately advocated for non-violent protests
23:52in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination, stressing that it's what King would have wanted,
23:57who was known to de-escalate a lot of fights that tended to spring up in those big league locker
24:00rooms
24:01of the 1970s. Lenny was genuinely broken up over what he'd done. When he returned from his suspension,
24:06he resolved to be the best version of himself. It's July 13th, 1977.
24:17So far, Lenny has been present for two extraordinarily strange endings to a night of baseball.
24:23This evening, he'll see a third. It isn't plotted here because it's merely a suspension,
24:28not a forfeit. He's now with the Mets, the team willing to take him after his run-in with Lucchese.
24:32At Shea Stadium, with one out in the sixth, Randall steps up to the plate. He looks up at...
24:39And the lights have just gone off here at Shea Stadium.
24:43Everything goes dark. Lenny says to himself,
24:47This is my last at bat. God is coming to get me.
24:50As you might have guessed, the New York City blackout of 1977 is upon us. There are at least
24:56three differing accounts of what happens next. The Associated Press reports that the lights go out as
25:01Lenny is merely making his way to the plate. The other two accounts come from a 2017 Vice feature
25:06from Patrick Sauer. Within, Lenny claims that Cubs starter Ray Burris had already started his
25:11windup and the ball was coming out of his hand the instant the blackout hit. According to Lenny,
25:16he sticks his bat out there in the dark, makes contact, runs to first, tries his luck at second,
25:20and is tackled by the second baseman in shortstop. Which would be a very funny way for them to react
25:25if
25:26this were true, which I don't think it is. I find the account from Burris a little bit more believable.
25:31He says that Lenny, who was in the batter's box as the lights went out, decided to just swing at
25:35nothing and sprint around the bases. I believe this account because that right there, that's Lenny.
25:40We've seen this from him so many times. Whenever something happens for the first time ever,
25:45Lenny immediately reacts as though he's been ready for it since the day he was born. Burris looks down at
25:50the ball, which he is holding in his hand, then looks up at Lenny, who's trying to convince people
25:55he hit the ball, then playfully tries to nail him with it at second base. Emergency lighting flips on
26:00at Shea, but it's not quite enough to illuminate the field, so a couple of Mets players drive their
26:04cars out behind the center field fence and flip their brights on. The Shea Stadium organist and a
26:09Lenny-like feat of comedic genius starts playing Jingle Bells in the dead of summer. The lights are still
26:14not bright enough to play baseball, but they are bright enough for Lenny and some of his teammates to play
26:18a
26:19sort of phantom baseball. A game without a ball that belongs to some other dimension and can't
26:24be played in ours. Lenny Randall knew its rules. He was a capable ball player who turned in a few
26:30solid years, but whose career is pretty ordinary on paper. He was probably incredible at that baseball
26:36adjacent sport from another world, because whenever the game of baseball began to break down and collapse
26:40into something else, it seemed like Lenny was always there, and quite often he understood exactly
26:46what to do. When the rest of us would have heard cacophony, he heard music, and he danced.
27:18Take care.
27:31Take care.
27:59Transcription by CastingWords
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