Mike Palagyi

Mike Palagyi pitched in one game for the 1939 Washington Senators, with an earned run average of infinity.

Mike was born on the 4^th of July, 1917, in Conneaut, Ohio, which is in the far northeast corner of the state, bounded by Lake Erie on the north and Pennsylvania on the east. He was the seventh of ten children of Hungarian immigrants Joe and Anna; the oldest and youngest were girls, all the rest boys. In the 1920 census the family is living at 620 Darling Street in Conneaut, and Joe is a railroad laborer. In the 1930 census they are living on farmland on Center Road; Joe is an inspector for the railroad, oldest daughter Annie is out of the house, Joe Jr. (22) is a railroad laborer, George (20) and John (17) are farmers, and James (19) is in school, as are the younger children. (George was a local star semipro pitcher who in late 1932 was reported to have signed a minor league contract, but nothing came of it.)

Mike was a baseball star and threw the discus at Conneaut High School, and graduated in 1935; he also played American Legion ball in 1934 and 1935, pitching a no-hitter in 1934. In 1936 he signed a contract with the Cleveland Indians and was sent to the Monessen Indians of the Class D Pennsylvania State Association. He went 13-7 with a 3.94 ERA in 176 innings in 23 games, then finished the season by getting into two games with the Zanesville Greys of the Class C Middle Atlantic League.

In 1937 Zanesville became a Red Sox affiliate so the Springfield Indians became Cleveland’s team in the Middle Atlantic, and that’s where Mike was sent. He went 18-9 with a 4.55 ERA in a high-scoring league, both starting and relieving in 40 games for 200 innings, and more than doubled his strikeouts per 9 innings over the previous year. He also batted .303 with five doubles and three homers in 76 at-bats, for a .487 slugging percentage. At the end of the season it was announced that he and four teammates had all been sold by Springfield to the New Orleans Pelicans of the Class A-1 Southern Association, which seems odd because Springfield and New Orleans were both Cleveland affiliates and seemingly it was Cleveland that owned him.

Mike went to spring training with the Pelicans and was highly spoken of by their Manager Larry Gilbert, but on April 3 Gilbert announced that he was sending him to the Spartanburg Spartans of the Class B Sally League. Mike started the second game of the season and was in the rotation the entire year, though he also relieved several times. On May 26 he pitched Spartanburg’s first-ever night game, winning a six-hitter and hitting two doubles. The next day he came in at first base after the first baseman was ejected; he also did some pinch-hitting and played right field in a couple of games when the team was short on players.

On June 26 the Macon Telegraph ran a story about some of the Macon players naming the pitchers who gave them the most trouble, and shortstop Eddie Moore mentioned Mike. On July 4, his 21^st birthday, Mike pitched a four-hitter but lost 4-1 as his teammates made seven errors behind him. On August 30 he pitched a five-hitter against Augusta and won 5-2, the Augusta Chronicle reporting: “Palagyi used a medium-breaking curve ball to tantalize the Tigers into submission. Heady, Palagyi pitched to ‘spots’ all during the night and had the hard-hitting Bengals at his mercy.” He finished the season with a 12-15 record and 4.35 ERA, pitching 213 innings in 36 games, at least six of those in relief, completing 17 of his starts, while his strikeouts went way down again. He also played in nine games as a non-pitcher, and hit .245 with a .358 slugging percentage in 106 at-bats. Just before the season ended it was announced that Mike had been sold by the New Orleans Pelicans to the Wilkes-Barre Barons of the Class A Eastern League—also a Cleveland affiliate.

In 1939 Mike spent time in the Cleveland training camp before Wilkes-Barre began theirs in early April. On April 9 he pitched in an exhibition game for the Barons, then I find nothing about him until June 12, when he made his first appearance of the year for Spartanburg—apparently Wilkes-Barre sent him back. Neither the online stats nor the 1940 Spalding-Reach Guide show him making any regular-season appearances with the Barons, so I don’t know what he was doing during that gap.

By the end of July Mike had pitched 90 innings in 11 starts. On August 1 it was announced that he had been purchased by the Washington Senators; the AP story by Eddie Gilmore appeared in many newspapers and was concerned mainly with his funny last name. It was run under headlines such as “Clark Griffith Imports Another Tongue Twister” and ‘Clark Griffith Importing New Typographical Terror”:

A low moan rose in the composing rooms of the Capital’s newspapers today as Clark Griffith, president of the Washington Senators, announced he was bringing in another typographical terror. 

The Senators may not be leading the American League, they may not even be in the first division, but they do pace the field in names hard to spell and pronounce. 

Newest of the tongue twisters is Mike Palagyi—a six-foot, right-handed pitcher from the Spartanburg, S.C., club of the Sally league. 

Griffith’s first string catcher of the moment is Angelo Giuliani, which is quite a mouthful. To confuse the issue, the ball park score cards spell his name Guiliani. 

Palagyi and Giuliani! 

“That’s some battery,” mused Griffith, “I hope they are as tough as they sound.” 

Last year the Senators started using as a regular pitcher one Joseph Victor Lawrence Krakauskas, a Lithuanian from Hamilton, Ontario. 

This was tough enough for the typesetters and proof readers, but it was nothing compared to the situation when Griffith began importing baseball talent from Cuba and Venezuela. 

From Cuba he got Rene Monteagudo, Robert Ortiz and Roberto Estalella, who is never certain whether the two L’s should come before the second E or after it. 

From Venezuela, Griffith purchased one Alejandro Carrasquel. It was too much. The printers on one newspaper begged for relief and their sports department compromised by calling him just Alexandra. 

This made Carrasquel angry and offended a great many Venezuelans. 

On occasion this season, Griffith employed in the outfield John Welaj, who insists that his name be pronounced Will-Eye. 

“This ain’t the end, either,” said Griffith, “before the season’s out we’ll probably bring in a shortstop-second baseman combination named Leip and Quick.” 

The Senators of 1939 have included: 

Three Cubans. 

Two Italians. 

One Venezuelan. 

One Lithuanian. 

One Swede. 

Two Poles, one of whom, Peter Jablonowski, changed his last name to Appleton.

Mike pitched three more times for Spartanburg before reporting to Washington, ending his Sally League season with a 7-6 record and 4.07 ERA in 115 innings in 14 starts, ten of them complete, and also batted .354. On August 11 the Columbia Record reported “Spartanburg got only $2,500 from Washington for Mike Palagyi,” on the 13^th the Washington Evening Star said that Mike would be reporting on the 15^th, and on the 18^th the same paper said that he had reported that day, adding “Bucky Harris means to look him over thoroughly but he is making no pitching plans for him…Pitching in the Sally League is one thing and hurling in the American is quite another in Bucky’s book.”

Bucky made a good point. Mike made his major league debut that night, relieving starter Alex Carrasquel to start the 9^th inning with the Senators trailing the Red Sox, 3-1, at home. He walked Doc Cramer, hit Jimmie Foxx with a pitch, walked Ted Williams, and walked Joe Cronin, at which point Harris took him out of the game. Foxx and Williams came in to score off the next pitcher, and the Senators lost the game, 6-2. The Boston Herald’s game story said Mike “suffered the usual stage fright,” and the Evening Star described him as “scared to death.” Later in life Mike said that he had thrown two strikes out of 15 pitches. In an interview published in the Evening Star on the 20^th, Clark Griffith talked about manager Harris being angry with scout Joe Cambria, who had found Mike, and continued:

“Wal, I feel sorry for Bucky,” Griff defended. “Cambria told us that Palagyi worked like an old pitcher—calm, steady, and all that stuff. Bucky put him in the game against the Red Sox and the poor guy was scared to death. He’d have walked everybody in the ball park if Bucky had left him in the game. S’ funny thing. Cambria paid a lot of money for that Palagyi. A lot of money for a class B ballplayer, I mean.”

That was the end of Mike’s major league career, and apparently the end of his season as well, as there is no evidence of his playing anywhere for the rest of 1939—perhaps he was sitting in the Senator bullpen the whole time. A November 19 report in the Charlotte Observer said “Four players who finished the season with the Hornets will be traded, sold or released…And so will Mike Palagyi, sold to Washington by Spartanburg last season and then optioned to Charlotte.” But he does not appear in the 1939 Piedmont League stats, so I assume he was optioned to them after the season.

Mike went to 1940 spring training with Charlotte, but on March 22 was traded to the Springfield Nationals of the Eastern League. He started on April 30 but was taken out of the game in the fourth inning after allowing five runs, and after the game was optioned to the Greenville Spinners of the Sally League. He wound up with a 13-15 record and 4.23 ERA in 219 innings in 38 games, with several relief appearances among his starts, and batted .286 with eight doubles in 91 at-bats; he also led the league in fielding, with no errors in 52 chances.

Mike went to spring training with Greenville in 1941, but got drafted into the Army before the season began. As he later summarized it, he spent three years and nine months in the Signal Corps, five months in the Infantry, and seven months in Field Artillery. He was discharged on December 12, 1945, by which time he had gotten married, to Margaret Burr, who had graduated from Conneaut High three years after he did.

Mike went to spring training in 1946 with the Dallas Rebels of the Class AA Texas League, a Detroit Tigers affiliate, hoping to resume his career. On March 16 he filled out an American Baseball Bureau questionnaire, in which he gave his address as 318 Sandusky Street in Conneaut, his height and weight as 6-1, 190, and his nationality as Hungarian. He listed no college, said he was married with no children, gave his off-season occupation as farm laborer, and said that his favorite sport other than baseball was basketball, his hobbies were fishing, hiking, and bowling, and his ambition in baseball was “the majors.”

On May 2 it was reported that Mike had been optioned by Dallas to the Williamsport Grays of the Eastern League. He didn’t pitch in a game for them, though, and somehow he wound up with the Montgomery Rebels of the Class B Southeastern League. He made one appearance, pitching two innings, and retired; later he said that his arm “just didn’t have it.”

He and Margaret went back to Conneaut, where Mike worked for twenty years as a plumber, then as a maintenance man for Allied Resinous Products; Margaret was a nurse. They had one son, Michael Jr., in 1947; he was a television announcer, known professionally as Mike Edwards, who was killed in a small plane crash in 1971. Margaret passed away in 1998 at age 77, and Mike died at home on November 21, 2013, at the age of 96.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/P/Ppalam101.htm
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/palagmi01.shtml
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/profile.asp?ID=16305