Otto Rettig pitched four games for the 1922 Philadelphia
Athletics, including a victory over the St. Louis Browns that for years was
credited with costing the Browns the pennant.
Otto was born Adolph John Rettig, in New York City on
January 29, 1894, and I don’t know much else about his early years. His father,
Joseph, was dead by 1898, which is the first year that his mother, Elizabeth,
turns up in the Newark, New Jersey, city directory at 75 Jones Street. The
family seems to have been difficult to find for the US Census Bureau, but the
1905 New Jersey State Census found them at 42 Hawkins Street in Newark.
Elizabeth was listed as Elizabeth Horn, was 44 years old, widowed, born in
Germany, 25 years in the US, and working as a clerk in a store; son George Rettig
was 19 and in the Navy, and son Adolph Rettig was 11 and in school. George
turns up in the 1910 US Census as a 24-year-old fireman living with his wife
and one-year-old daughter.
By 1914 Adolph, now twenty, had spent a year at Seton Hall
University, was known as Otto, and was playing minor league baseball. The April
8 edition of the Springfield Republican
names him as one of three prospects who had arrived at Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, for the first day of practice for the Pittsfield Electrics of
the Class B Eastern Association. On May 28 he sprained his ankle, and on July
28 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, he, one teammate, an umpire, and eight members
of the Bridgeport team were fined two dollars plus court costs each for
“violation of the Sunday observance law in playing a game on Sunday, May 17.”
I’m not sure how the rest of the players got away with it; maybe they saw the
cops coming and ran for it…For the season Otto pitched in 35 games with a 10-12
record, striking out 85 and walking 59 in an unknown number of innings.
The 1915 New Jersey census showed Otto and his mother still
at 42 Hawkins. Elizabeth was now listed as Rettig rather than Horn, and was 54,
still widowed, and a housekeeper, while Otto, or Adolph, was a 21-year-old
single ballplayer.
For the 1915 season Otto re-signed with Pittsfield but the
league folded and he ended up with the Lewiston (Maine) Cupids of the Class B
New England League. He pitched in 30 games and had a 12-13 record; no other
stats are available.
In 1916 the New England League merged with the Eastern
League, and as the Lewiston team folded Otto’s rights were reassigned to the
Lynn Pipers. But he refused to report, saying he could make more money pitching
semi-pro ball on Sundays back in New Jersey. He joined the Doherty Silk Sox of
Paterson, who won the state semi-pro championship, and on October 1 he shut out
the New York Giants in an exhibition game. Apparently John McGraw offered him a
contract on the spot; some accounts said that Otto accepted it, and others that
he turned it down, but in any event he never pitched for them, and was not
eligible to be signed, since he was on the suspended list for not reporting to
Lynn and was also still owned by them.
Otto’s 1917 draft card shows him as a baseball player
employed by Henry Doherty of Clifton, NJ, living at 42 Hawkins, single, with
his mother as a dependent, and describes him as tall and slender (officially he
is listed as having been 5-11, 165) with gray eyes and dark brown hair. At some
point that year he married a Marcella Farley, but she doesn’t turn up again in
the story and by 1930 they were divorced.
In April 1917 Otto signed with the Springfield Green Sox of
the Eastern League, after Springfield bought his rights from Lynn. He
apparently had an agreement with Springfield owner William Carey that he could
return to New Jersey each Sunday and pitch for the Silk Sox. On Sunday, April
29, he pitched for them in an exhibition game against the Boston Braves, which
was part of the celebration of the newly incorporated city of Clifton NJ, but
the Braves won, 6-2. On May 20 he and the Silk Sox lost a rematch with the New
York Giants, 7-3. The Eastern League statistics published in the Springfield Republican on June 3 showed
Otto as the leading pitcher in the league, rated on the basis of hits per
inning. His figure was .64 on 23 hits in 36 innings, with five runs, four
walks, and 11 strikeouts. The June 12 Norwich
Morning Bulletin ranked him as tied for the top pitcher in the league, on
the basis of his two shutouts.
On June 19 the Bridgeport
Evening Farmer reported:
RETTIG JUMPS SPRINGFIELD.
Otto Rettig, the clever young pitcher who is as hard to handle as Red Waller in the days of Jim O’Rourke, has jumped the Springfield club. He has been fined $100 and suspended by Springfield but there is little chance that the money will ever be collected. The Green Sox have had all sorts of trouble with Rettig.
He was purchased from Lynn, to which club he refused to report last season. Rettig had a job pitching Sunday games for the Paterson Silk Sox and it was said he signed with Springfield with the understanding that he would twirl two games a week for O’Hara’s club if he were allowed to keep his Sunday dates. But Rettig refused to stay put. He was always missing trains, rushing back to New York and staying away from Springfield for days at a time. His latest escapade was to jump the Green Sox while they were taking a train in Boston.
Karma got back at Otto, as the Springfield Daily News reported on August 11:
OTTO RETTIG FRACTURES HIS PITCHING ARM
Former Springfield Pitcher is Out of Game for the Season
Otto Rettig, suspended pitcher of the Springfield Green Sox, will play no more baseball this year. Otto started out here like a whirlwind when the season opened, but he insisted on trickling down to New Jersey to play Sunday ball with the Dougherty [sic] Silk Sox at Paterson, and so he was told to stay in New Jersey and a fine and suspension were placed on him. Sunday afternoon [the 5th] he was pitching for the Madison team in the Tri-County league against Morristown, and he was at bat in the ninth. A swiftly-pitched ball caught him on his pitching arm and fractured it badly below the elbow. The Madison team is the Silk Sox, except that when they play in the Tri-County they represent the town of Madison. The game was played at Morristown. Rettig is very popular in that section, and the fans there are all expressing their sympathy for him.
In 1918 Otto continued to pitch for the Silk Sox, to the
frustration of the owner of the Springfield team (now known as the Ponies) and
the president of the Eastern League, who appealed to organized baseball’s
National Commission to do something, though the commission could do nothing
since it had no authority over semi-pro ball. In 1919 there were reports that
Otto had been reinstated by the National Commission and would be pitching for
Springfield, but I found no evidence that he ever did.
In the 1920 Newark City Directory Otto was listed as a clerk
rather than as a ballplayer, but he apparently was still pitching for the Silk
Sox as well as for the Montclair Athletic Club. The 1922 directory shows him,
and his mother, as “rem to Irvington,” which I imagine means “removed” and that
they moved out of the city.
Many versions of the story of Otto’s debut with the
Athletics were related over the years, and they didn’t always match up. But
apparently it was A’s backup catcher Frank Bruggy, from Elizabeth, New Jersey,
who brought Otto to Philadelphia owner/manager Connie Mack for a tryout on July
19. It’s a common thread to the stories that Otto refused to throw for Mack
unless it was in an actual game, and Connie agreed to let him start that day’s
game against the Browns and their ace pitcher, Urban Shocker. Otto and the
Athletics won the game, 6-3, scoring four runs in the bottom of the eighth to
break a 2-2 tie. Otto allowed nine hits, three of them doubles, walked five and
struck out one, but the Browns left 13 men on the bases. From the Philadelphia Inquirer’s story of the
game:
When the announcer shouted the name of the pitcher Mack intended to use against Shocker not a fan in the concrete walled enclosure understood him. It took considerable buzzing and repeating before the fans became aware of the fact that Adolph Rettig was serving them up for the Mackmen. It required further investigation to reveal the fact that this same Adolph Rettig was a recruit brought here by Frank Bruggy and had won a few games twirling for the Montclair, New Jersey club.
Many figured that Mack was simply leading the lad to slaughter, especially when pitching him against the leading Browns and Shocker. It was the toughest kind of an assignment to wish upon a raw rookie, yet the same rook showed he had the stuff and confidence, which goes toward making up a big league headliner. He pitched to this hard-hitting clan of Lee Fohl’s. There was no ducking this hitter nor that batter whenever a Brown slugger came up when men were on. Ably caught and coached by Cy Perkins, the Montclair, N.J., boxman held the Missourians in check in a masterly way and emerged a victor over one of the best American League twirlers in the game today.
The Browns hammered him for nine blows and five were franked down the first ninety feet of turf [he walked five], but this did not embarrass the small red-faced right-handed hopeful. He seemed to work better when men were on the paths than when the cushions were clear and that he was a master toiler when a Brown or two were on is glimpsed when the “Left on bases” agate line is reached in the box score, which reads, St. Louis, 13; Athletics, 5…
Rettig had a slow delivery, took his time, used a fairly good breaking curve and seemed to have ordinary control. He was placed in several ticklish position [sic] during the 2 hours and 3 minutes of going, but his greatest test of nerve was in the fourth. With the sacks loaded and two down up came Ken Williams. Now this same fellow is no batter for an experienced boxman to pitch to let alone a rookie. But Rettig did not show any visible signs of stage fright. In fact he set about to get rid of this left-handed menace at the bat and when Hauser gobbled up Ken’s smash and raced to first for the third out—the 4000 odd fans gave the lad an ovation as he walked to the bench…
(After their loss the Browns were still in first place by a
game and a half over the Yankees, but they wound up losing the pennant to them
by one game, and though all their losses counted the same in the standings this
one to Otto would be widely pointed to as the one that lost the pennant.)
Otto was the talk of the baseball world, and within a couple
of days it became known that he had not actually signed a contract before
making his debut. The Yankees, White Sox, and Tigers were all said to be after
him, but on July 24 he signed with Philadelphia. He made his second start on
the 26th, a week after the first, this time on the road, at
Cleveland. He actually pitched better in this game, allowing just four hits and
two walks in seven innings, but lost, 2-0. Stuart M. Bell’s game story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer included an odd,
tongue-in-cheek description of Otto’s pitching:
Rettig’s great offensiveness lies in his wink ball. It is a very mystifying offering thrown with a lazy side arm delivery. It comes up to the plate, winks at the batter and then slinks away into the catcher’s mitt. It looks as if you could hit it twice if you wanted to, but you’re lucky if you touch it.
This wink ball is Rettig’s own invention. He takes an eye winker and places it on top of the ball and holds it there until the winker gets a firm hold of a seam with both hands. Then he throws the ball toward the plate and causes it to revolve so that the winker loses its balance just before it reaches the plate and tumbles off.
Thus, the ball suddenly relieved from the weight of the eye winker, takes a sudden dip and the batter either misses it or his under it.
Rettig uses very little effort in throwing the wink ball and he could work every day if he could grow eye winkers that fast…
Otto’s third start was at Detroit on July 31. This time he
was removed from the game with two out in the third inning, behind 6-0; he
allowed six hits and three walks and the Athletics lost, 11-1. On August 5 came
a rematch with the Browns, in St. Louis. Otto walked the first two batters and
was taken out by Connie Mack; the next batter, George Sisler, lined into a
triple play against the relief pitcher, so Otto didn’t allow any runs, but the
Browns still won, 4-1.
This ended Otto’s major league career, as Mack released him
on August 13. On August 17 a bitter-sounding overview from United News appeared
in various papers:
Busher Brings Bluff to Majors and is Called
Had Nerve of a Book Agent, But Carried Only a “Round House”
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 17.—No busher in baseball fiction ever went farther with nothing on the ball, had more fun or got away with a bigger bluff than a pitcher whose hoax career with the Athletics has just been revealed.
Adolph Otto Rettig, pitcher, has been released unconditionally by Connie Mack, manager of the Athletics and thereby hangs a tale.
Rettig flopped off a local train here on July 20 [actually the 19th] and asked Mack for a job as a pitcher. Within an hour after his arrival in town he was sent to the hill against the St. Louis Browns, caught then in a one-day batting slump, held them to nine hits and defeated them. Members of the Browns would not admit that Rettig had anything, but a sand lot, roundhouse out curve, insisting that luck was all that won his game, and they were disbelieved. Mack thought he had “a find.”
Mack gave him a one year contract with the usual precautionary clauses for the “protection” of the club, and Rettig went along on the Western trip. In Cleveland he held the Indians to four hits, but was beaten, 2 to 0. Thereafter he blew up.
The Browns got to him in St. Louis and the Tigers in Detroit and Rettig was blasted off the mound, out of the park, out of his cutey white-and-blue uniform and out of the American League.
He said he came from Newark, N.J. He hasn’t been heard from since Mack let him go. Players on his own team now say that Rettig had nothing in the world but luck and the nerve of a book agent.
By the following off-season the story was already becoming a
legend. From J.C. Kofoed’s “Stove League Stories” column in the November 2
issue of the Sporting News:
The St. Louis Browns lost the American League pennant by a single game. And if Connie Mack had not dug up a sandlot pitcher named Otto Rettig in the middle of the season the Missourians might have won it. This Rettig person had gained a lot of prominence among the semi-pro clubs, and Frank Bruggy, who knows as much about those players as any man living suggested that Connie pick him up.
Mr. Mack did that little thing. Rettig reported at 2 o’clock, and at 3:30 was pitching against the Browns. What is more, he beat them—and Fohl’s men lost the pennant by one game: this one, you might say.
I talked with George Sisler that very night. Said George, “I’ll make a little bet that this fellow, Rettig, doesn’t win another ball game from us, and another that he loses half a dozen more before he wins again. What do you say?”
I didn’t take it, because George is a pretty good judge of pitching but it did seem to me that he was rather over-drawing the case. But, without question, he had Rettig figured out to the proverbial T.
Otto won that first game, pitched well but lost against Cleveland in his next start, and shortly after that—having dropped a couple more—Mr. Rettig was quietly dropped, too.
So you see Sisler was right. It was the accident of fate that the Browns should have been scheduled in Philadelphia the day that Otto Rettig reported. Had the Yankees been there instead, there would have been an excellent chance that St. Louis, instead of New York, would have been the American League representative on the Polo Grounds.
In the spring of 1923 it was reported that the Jersey City
Skeeters of the Class AA International League were interested in signing Otto
and contract negotiations were in progress, but apparently nothing came of it.
I also did not find any references to him pitching semi-pro ball in 1923 or
afterwards; perhaps after making it to the majors he decided he was done.
The 1925 Newark directory shows Otto living at 136 Oakland
Terrace and managing the Strand Theater. In 1926 he is living at the same place
but is shown as “mgr 120 Market;” the Strand Theater seems to have been at 404
S. Orange Avenue, so I don’t know what he was managing. His listing in the 1927
directory is simply “rem to East Orange,” and the 1928 Orange City Directory,
which only gives addresses, has him at 36 S. Munn Ave # 303, which would be his
address for quite some time.
In 1930 the US Census finally caught up with Otto, and he is
shown as living alone at 36 S. Munn, 35 and divorced, and managing a theater.
In February of 1932 a cartoon about his major-league debut appeared in many
newspapers, and in 1935 the Sporting News
ran a feature article:
He Bet He Could Beat Big League Team, Did It Just Once and Cost Foes a Flag
Adolph Rettig Was Unknown When He Went to the Box for A’s, but He Stopped Sisler, Williams and Tobin
Lee Fohl Has Said “Pitcher For a Day” Caused His Club to Finish a Game Behind Yanks; Now a Theater Owner
By CHARLEY TRAVIS
of the Newark Sunday Call.
NEWARK, N.J.—Of the 16 clubs in the major leagues, there is only one that never won a pennant. That unenviable distinction is held by the St. Louis Browns. They came within one game of tying the New York Yankees for the American League flag in 1922, and now as those old Browns of 13 years ago look back, they can charge a big share of the blame for their failure to Adolph Otto Rettig, a Newark man who now owns the Ormont Theater in East Orange, N.J.
Once upon a time Rettig was a pitcher. He whizzed them over for the Philadelphia Athletics. In the one major league victory to his credit he beat the Browns. Of course, there were 153 other games played by St. Louis that season, but if it had not been for the reversal they met at the hands of Rettig on a July afternoon in Philadelphia it might have been the Browns, instead of the Yankees, who engaged the Giants in the World’s Series that year. Now, what’s this all about? Listen, my readers, and you shall hear.
Rettig, a suspended player at the time, in that he had refused to join the Boston Red Sox when sold by the Springfield Eastern League club some years before, made a wager with Pat Donovan, former major league player and minor league manager, that if given the opportunity he would chalk up a victory against major league opposition. Donovan, so they say, lost no time accepting the bet.
One day, Rettig mustered enough nerve to contact Connie Mack, manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, for an appointment. Then, together with a pal, H. Russ Van Vleck of Montclair, he left by train for the City of Brotherly Love, where, upon arrival, he aimed for Mack’s office.
The day the Essex county boy made the appointment with Mack—it was July 19—the Athletics were scheduled to meet the St. Louis Browns. During the course of the conversation, Connie remarked that the A’s never were able to turn back the Browns with Urban Shocker pitching. He had tamed the Mackmen on four previous occasions.
Gets Chance When Shocker is Named.
Mack told Rettig that if Shocker was the Browns’ choice to hurl that day he would give the Newark man a chance to strut his stuff in the gunpit. Well, the Jerseyman was given his chance, for Shocker was to be the Browns’ pitcher.
When Rettig arrived at the clubhouse, he was outfitted in an oversize uniform and a pair of shoes. This did not bother him, for he was anxious for a chance to show Pat Donovan that he had enough stuff on the ball to trim a big league outfit.
While both clubs were practicing on the field, Mack summoned the Newarker and ordered him to warm up with Cy Perkins.
Game time was at hand and both club managers presented their official line-ups to the umpire. Before the opening of the game, Mack showed Rettig the line-up of the Browns, pointing out the weaknesses of the rival players. Rettig was to have memorized this batting order, together with the weaknesses of the players.
Before the game, the St. Louis players noticed the A’s were going to use a hurler named “Rettiz,” not knowing the Newarker’s name was misspelled on the batting order. So the visiting players began to kid Mack about the new player.
That did not last long, for soon the game was under way and Rettig had the Browns swinging themselves into spiral shapes at bat. Remember, the Browns had such crack players as George Sisler, Ken Williams, then the home run king; McManus, Gerber and Tobin. Before the players on the opposition had time to say “here it comes, there it goes” the ball would be resting in the catcher’s mitt. Well, that just kept up all afternoon and when the ninth inning score was posted on the scoreboard, the final result showed Philadelphia 6, St. Louis 3.
The game being over, the players headed for their respective club quarters, singing the praises of Connie Mack’s new “find,” Otto Rettig. In the meantime, newspaper reporters, covering the game, flashed word around the country about the new baseball sensation.
Signing Rettig did not end Mack’s part in the transaction. A series of worries began. Word soon hit the baseball front that the boy who stopped the Browns was an ineligible player, thus causing the St. Louis club officials to protest the victory. However, nothing ever was done about the protest.
Following his victory over the Browns, Rettig did not fare so well against other league clubs. His second start was against Cleveland, the A’s losing to the Indians, 2 to 0. In that game the Jersey hurler yielded four hits. In his third game he pitched five innings against the Detroit Tigers before he was withdrawn from the fray. His fourth start was against the St. Louis Browns. He passed the first and second batters and then was taken out of the game.
As the 1922 season was coming to an end, this pitching star faded out of the baseball firmament. Yet, Lee Fohl, the Browns’ manager, in a statement to sports writers later, said that Rettig’s victory in mid-season cost the St. Louis club the pennant…
The Jerseyman brought his baseball career to a close in 1923, when he performed with the Meadowbrook Baseball Club on South Orange Avenue.
With his baseball playing days over, Rettig settled down to serious business, obtaining a position as assistant manager of Proctor’s Theater, East Orange, and today he is proprietor and manager of the Ormont Theater, also in East Orange.
We see a lot of new wrinkles to the story here: that he was
suspended for refusing to report when sold to the Red Sox (he was never sold to
the Red Sox, and he was suspended for abandoning Springfield in 1917); that
there was a bet with Pat Donovan (Donovan’s only connection to the story before
this was that he was a scout for the White Sox who wanted to sign Otto in the
excitement after that first start when it was discovered that he hadn’t signed
a contract); the absence of Frank Bruggy; the inclusion of the mysterious H.
Russ Van Vleck; Mack telling him that he could pitch if Shocker was named for
the Browns; and the players of both teams singing Otto’s praises after the game
(previously we had heard that the Browns were completely unimpressed).
Otto’s media attention was not based solely on his past,
though. From the New York Times of
May 19, 1938:
NEGROES PROTEST OLD FILM CLASSIC
Promoting of Race Hatred is Charged in Fight Over Showing of “Birth of Nation”
SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
EAST ORANGE, N.J., May 18—The manager of a local motion-picture theatre is scheduled to appear tomorrow before Police Recorder Albert L. Vreeland here to answer a charge that he violated a New Jersey statute by showing “The Birth of a Nation,” D.W. Griffith’s film classic of more than two decades ago.
The defendant, Adolph J. Rettig, manager of the Ormont Theatre on Main Street, was arrested last night and paroled in custody of his counsel, Edward R. McGlynn of Newark. Rettig is a former big league baseball player.
The complaint against the manager was signed by two local Negro physicians, Dr. Theodore R. Inge and Dr. Harry W. Mickey. The two alleged that Mr. Rettig violated Chapter 151 of the laws of 1935, which makes it a misdemeanor to show “any picture, photograph or representation which in any way incited, counsels, promotes, advocates or symbolizes hatred, violence or hostility against any group of persons by reason of race, color, religion or manner of worship.”
The complainants contend that the film, which portrays the Reconstruction period, including activities of the Ku Klux Klan and Negro Union soldiers, is an affront to their race. Dr. Inge said today the picture had been prohibited in California, Kansas, West Virginia and Ohio.
The film was shown at the Ormont from May 8 through May 11. On May 9 local Negro leaders submitted a protest, bearing 609 signatures, to the City Council, which delegated three of its members to confer with Mr. Rettig. The manager refused to stop the picture, but deleted those parts which he understood were considered particularly objectionable.
Local authorities said today that, as far as they know, this case was the first in which the 1935 statute had been invoked. The act provides for a penalty on conviction of a fine of not less than $200 and not more than $5,000 and imprisonment for not less than ninety days and not more than three years, or both fine and imprisonment.
The Times never
followed up on the story, so I don’t know what happened.
In the 1940 census Otto, now 45, was still living alone at
36 S. Munn. He paid $47 a month for rent, had worked 72 hours the previous
week, worked 52 weeks in the last year and made $5000. In the June 25, 1942, Sporting News, J.G. Taylor Spink’s
“Three and One” column was about Frank Bruggy, who by then was a special
investigator for the prosecutor in Union County, New Jersey. Otto got a mention
in the hilarious anecdote that ended the column:
Bruggy is also quite a golfer…One day he was playing in the Hal Sharkey Memorial Tournament, held in honor of the late sports editor of the Newark News. His foursome, a baseball quartette that also included Adolph Rettig, Frank Courtney and Swede Olson, probably was taking too much time out for wisecracks.
A very serious foursome of Scotch-English pros followed. Finally, one of the foreign golfers asked in typical Scotch dialect if the might go through. “Sure,” answered Bruggy, “if you have your passports.”
Also in 1942 Otto filled out another draft card. He gave his
address as 36 S. Munn Avenue, his phone number as OR5, his employer as Courter
Amusement Company at 508 Main Street, East Orange, and the “person who will
always know your address” as Dr. H.H. Buehler of 74 S. Munn. That same year, in
October, Otto remarried. This took place in Bloomfield, Connecticut, and the
bride was Hazel Hills, about 27 years old; apparently Hills was her name from a
previous marriage and she was born Hazel Dunning. I don’t know whether she
moved into the apartment on Munn Avenue, as I don’t have any addresses for Otto
beyond this point.
Otto got mentioned in the “Jerry Nusbaum’s Evenings Out”
column in the Newark Star-Ledger of
October 8, 1947:
It’s tremendously exciting to spend a few hours with Charles Perry Weimer of East Orange and listen to his thrilling experiences in the Latin-Americas…Even more inspiring to intensely study the hundreds of photographs, both black and technicolor, made on his recent tour of 150,000 miles through 20 countries, in a year and a half, when his camera caught views from sea level to 20,000 feet in the Andes, to over a mile deep in the mines…Otto Rettig, manager Ormont Theater, East Orange, has been able through his friendship with the “20th Century Marco Polo” to have him show some of the photos in the theater lobby beginning Oct. 12…Really, no one can afford to miss this artistic and cultural display…Weimer has also consented to exhibit relics, curios, mahogany bow and arrows…Some aimed at him while in the jungles. [all ellipses part of the original column…it’s just the way Jerry writes…]
And later in the same column:
You know we forgot to send the congrats to Otto and Hazel Rettig on their sixth wedding anniversary…Well, they didn’t leave the house, for they decided there could be no better evening than with five-year-old Penny, Johnny, who was born D-Day, and Jeffrey, six-months-old…Did you know Hazel’s dad, Stewart N. Dunning of Hartford, Conn., was the lawyer who organized the Fuller Brush Co. for Arthur Fuller?...At 70 he is still general counsel for the national organization…Furthermore, Dunning recently purchased 80 acres of land at Bloomfield, Conn., to build, at cost, homes for veterans…
Now, the Connecticut marriage records show us that it was
actually Otto and Hazel’s fifth anniversary, not sixth, but if daughter Penny
was five years old then it’s not surprising they claimed to have been married
six years.
Otto got two more mentions in Jerry Nusbaum’s column four
days later:
Of course Sandy Kapitoline, Girl Friday to Otto Rettig, manager Ormont Theater, East Orange, is back from her Washington, D. C., visit for the opening of the Charles Perry Weimer photographic and curio display of South America Cavalcade in the lobby today…But she’s also again ready to prove to Walt Bleecker and David Ward of Bloomfield their game of ping pong must increase considerably before they can hope to win even one game…Sandy was in Washington to chit-chat with her ex-Wave companion Kathy (Cover Girl) Blomgren who was on from Cedar Rapids, Iowa…
Even if Otto Rettig doesn’t catch another fish for the next two months he’ll keep dreaming of the 10-pound striped bass he landed off the Highland Bridge while with Dan Dougherty, whose efforts were nil…
Then, on April 22, 1949, Otto got his name in the Star-Ledger again, not in “Evenings Out”
but in Nelson Benedict’s “Fishing and Hunting” column:
The news from the flounder front is all good…[ellipses mine, not Nelson’s] And yesterday morning Otto Rettig of East Orange returned to Johnny’s Landing in the Highlands with 19 flatfish. Otto, who bagged his flounders in practically nothing flat, also reeled in a small striper which he returned to the water.
On September 16, 1950, Francis Stann’s “Win, Lose, or Draw”
column in the Washington Evening Star
dealt with certain pitchers having “jinxes” over certain teams, and Otto’s 1922
came up again:
His name was Otto Rettig, and he was a veteran semi-pro pitcher from East Orange, N.J., with delusions of grandeur. The year was 1922, which also will be remembered as the season the Browns were beaten by the Yankees for the pennant by one game.
Rettig knew the famed Wild Bill Donovan, one-time ace of the Tigers who later was killed in a train wreck, and he bet Donovan that if he ever got a chance to pitch in the majors he’d win. It was a wager that was financially modest but one which was destined to decide a pennant race and cost a big league manager his job.
In 1923, An Unforgettable Memory
The A’s were playing in Philadelphia and, as the story goes, Donovan took Rettig to Connie Mack, who had one of his real bad clubs that year. “Connie,” Bill said, “I wish you’d do me a favor. Sign this fellow. I won’t say he’s a great pitcher, but he won’t disgrace you.”
Mack was sufficiently desperate that he signed Rettig, despite the semipro’s refusal to even warm up. One of the reasons for Connie’s unusual acquiescence was that St. Louis was coming to town for a four-game series and Urban Shocker was scheduled to pitch for the Browns.
Shocker was to the A’s what Art Nehf was to the Pirates and Matty to the Reds. All he has to do was to throw down his glove. Donovan clinched the signing of Rettig when he said to Mack:
“You know you’re not going to beat Shocker. Why waste a pitcher?”
That was a good St. Louis team. George Sisler batted .420 that year and Manger Lee Fohl was confident of winning the city’s first pennant. That was the team that Otto Rettig, out of nowhere, beat 4-2.
Otto never won another game. In 1923 he became a memory—the semipro who cost the Browns a pennant and Fohl his job.
In this telling, the probably-imaginary bet with Pat Donovan
morphs into one with Bill Donovan, who also helps talk Connie Mack into using
Otto, the score of the game is wrong (it was 6-3, not 4-2), and the postscript
is added that it cost Lee Fohl his job—which seems unlikely, since Fohl got
fired two-thirds of the way through the 1923 season.
The legend was retold again in the Sporting News of March 5, 1952, by Art Morrow:
Bruggy Recalls One-Day Wonder Hurler
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.—For the first time in years, Frank Bruggy came calling on the Athletics here last week. The visit from the old catcher led to reminiscence.
Indirectly, Bruggy was responsible for the fact that the greatest of all Brownie teams failed to win the pennant in 1922. For it was Bruggy—now a detective working out of the Union (N.J.) County district attorney’s office—who introduced Otto Rettig to the A’s.
Rettig wanted to pitch in the majors, but every time Connie Mack asked him to demonstrate his wares, he explained: “Oh, no, not in the bull pen. I can’t be at my best except in a real game.”
So, having nothing to lose, Connie threw him in one day against the Browns.
“They were pitching Urban Shocker, and goodness knows how long it had been since we’d beaten him,” laughed Bing Miller. “But we did that day, 8 to 0. Great guns, line drives were flying all over the place, but always right into somebody’s glove.”
“They had the bases loaded with George Sisler at bat,” Jimmie Dykes volunteered. “I started to walk over to Rettig, but he waved me back. ‘Not a thing to worry about,’ he told me. ‘Nothing at all.’
“Sisler at bat with the bases loaded—and nothing to worry about! He tore into that ball as though he’d knock it into pieces, and it went on a clothesline to the wall. But Rettig was right; there was nothing to worry about. The ball was caught.”
Afterwards, Connie Mack stopped in at the Shibe Park tower offices.
“Well, Connie, what do you think?” John Shibe asked.
“John,” the Old Master smiled, “this day you have seen a miracle performed.”
He had, too. Rettig never won another game for the Athletics.
“I doubt if he ever got another batter out,” chuckled Miller. A month or so later Bruggy’s friend was back on the North Jersey sandlots.
But the Yankees beat the Browns for the pennant by a game. The Yanks’ late-season triumph over St. Louis generally is regarded as the deciding factor, but that single defeat by the one-day wonder would have counted just as much for the Browns in the final standings.
What happened to Rettig?
“Oh, he’s still up in North Jersey—in the movie business, and doing very well,” Bruggy replied. “A smart fellow, that Rettig.”
So now it sounds like Otto had been pestering Mack for a job
for a while (“every time Connie Mack asked him to demonstrate his wares”), the
score of the game has become 8-0, the bases-loaded ground out to first by Ken
Williams has become a bases-loaded line drive to the outfield wall by George
Sisler, a conversation between Mack and John Shibe has been added, and Bing
Miller doesn’t think Otto ever got another batter out.
On September 2, 1965, Otto, now 71 years old, popped up again
in Jerry Nusbaum’s Star-Ledger
column, now called “Personally Speaking”:
Otto Rettig, manager of the Ormont Theater, East Orange, where the “Pawnbroker” starring Newark’s Rod Steiger is now playing was asked why the flicker was breaking all house records. Otto replied, “I don’t know—but I think Rod must be doing something right.”
On December 10, 1975, the legend got one more retelling, in
the Star-Ledger, in Anthony
Marenghi’s “Pillar to Post” column:
Rettig’s ‘Big Day’ cost Browns a pennant
His formal name is Adolph John Rettig. To oldtimers who remember, he was just Otto, one of the myriad of talented players with some great semipro teams abounding in Jersey in the 1920s. One of them was the Doherty Silk Sox of Paterson, for whom he pitched.
His most memorable moment, as he related recently, came one morning in 1922, when he got a phone call from Frank Bruggy of Elizabeth, catcher in those days for the Philadelphia Athletics. The A’s were playing the league-leading St. Louis Browns that day and Connie Mack, the storied manager of the A’s, was desperately in need of a healthy pitcher to combat Urban Shocker, a standout pitcher whom the A’s had not beaten in four years.
By revelation, perhaps, Bruggy remembered Rettig from his Jersey background and called him. “I had two hours’ notice,” Rettig said. “I beat them.”
Simple words. A fateful moment for the Browns. They were to lose the American League pennant by a half-game to the Yankees on the last game of the season. Otto had jumped the Springfield Club and hence an ineligible player for the big leagues.
“I didn’t care about the technicalities,” Rettig said. “The Browns did not protest then and by the time late in the season when the defeat came into significance, it was probably too late for post mortems.”
For a few hours glory briefly limned Otto and vanished. He started four times for the A’s and completed two. The victory over the Browns was the only one. Otto laughs now as he recalls the words of a probably-disgusted sports writing rooter for the Browns, “Otto Rettig beat the Browns with a very slow ball and even a slower pitch.”
By January 1923, Rettig was a free agent and asked the Cincinnati Reds for a tryout. They looked about for scouting reports and got one from Bob Quinn, who was a Browns’ official. He called Otto’s victory a fluke. After that game, Quinn wrote, “Rettig looked pitiful.”
As a semipro pitcher, anyway, Rettig was better than that. Oldtimers will remember here that in successive eras Jersey swarmed with great semipro teams, such as the Silk Sox, the Newark Meadowbrooks, the touring Bacharach Giants and Cuban All-Stars, the Orange A.A., et al. They very probably could have beaten half the AAA teams then but declined offers for solid reasons: they were making more money and drawing more crowds where they were, and even the big leagues were paying paltry salaries then.
In these periods big leaguers with a day off merely took a different name and pitched semipro for a day to collect another dollar. They were easily recognized, as they knew they would be, by players and fans but nobody cared as long as they supplied major league quality to the semipros.
Among those who may have indulged in this practice were Eddie Collins, Frankie Frisch and, in a later era, Lou Gehrig. George Earnshaw, in contrast, was strictly a semipro with the Meadowbrooks until called by the Athletics to complete one of the great pitching staffs ever.
Legends survive about Otto. One is that he pitched for Seton Hall although not enrolled there.
“They are wrong about the Seton Hall bit,” Rettig said. “When I attended Seton Hall College I had nothing but straight A’s.” He did not mean the Philadelphia A’s.
Rettig was still with the Doherty Silk Sox around 1921, when they hosted the New York Giants who had an off day because blue laws of the period prohibited Sunday baseball in New York. Rettig beat the Giants, 2-1. “As I recall it,” Rettig remembered, “I struck out 13 of them.”
After his baseball days, Rettig operated a movie theatre in East Orange and for many years has lived in Stuart, Fla., a regular at the Monterey Yacht and Country Club.
There are other interesting items in Rettig’s career which are left unwritten because Otto finally has “contemplated publishing a book,” and is researching. For instance, he asked: “I beat the Giants on Sunday, the day after they had lost the second game of a doubleheader, breaking a 25-game winning streak, and I need the exact date.”
It sounds as though this version of the story was based
primarily on Otto’s memory, and it actually rings pretty true. The Browns didn’t
lose the pennant by a half-game, it was a full game, and it didn’t come down to
the last day of the season; also he only completed one of his four major-league
starts, not two—but those are minor points. This is also the first mention of
the aborted attempt to sign with the Reds in 1923, but there’s no reason to
think it’s not true.
Three weeks later, on December 31, Marenghi followed up
about Otto:
Mention in a recent column of Otto Rettig fanned the flickering embers of memories. Rettig, one of the old semipros, contacted this desk for the exact date when, pitching for the Doherty Silk Sox, he beat the N.Y. Giants in an exhibition. He was armed with a clipping which said the year was 1921 or 1922 and that Rettig won, 2-1. At this late date, Otto is contemplating—his word—authoring a book of his experiences, which explains his request.
Well, one reader took the column and Otto apart, although carefully saying he was not being sarcastic. He questioned whether Rettig, a semipro, could ever beat the great N.Y. Giants, referred to in the shifting locale of the current Giants as the John McGraw Giants of the Polo Grounds.
“I really think this is a fairy story,” the reader says…”I think he (Rettig) is dreaming.”
It was Otto’s recollection that the Giants had had a 25-game winning streak broken the day before he beat them—which was on a Sunday, when the Giants had a day off and played the Silk Sox in Paterson.
If Otto was really dreaming, he dreamed himself out of one run, because, from another source, he won, 2-0. But read on.
Another reader briefly wrote: “Enclosed is what is left of a clipping from Sporting Life of Philadelphia of the exhibition game pitched by Otto Rettig on Oct. 1, 1916, the day after the 26-game streak of the N.Y. Giants had ended.”
Otto had the wrong year—he was only asking, remember?—but he was right in naming a Sunday when the exhibition was played.
It seems incredible in these times that a major league club could have a Sunday off but, as Otto recalled, blue laws forbade Sunday sports.
The “old clipping” forwarded by the reader is a fragmented remnant of five lines. The yellowed clip from Sporting Life notes: “The N.Y. Giants traveled to Paterson, N.J., on Sunday, October 1, and was shut out by the Silk Sox in an exhibition game by a score of 2 to 0. The game was a pitching duel between Ritter of the Giants and Rettig.” Sporting Life apparently attached no importance to first names. It did not mention the year, of course, because it was unnecessary to coverage.
The Baseball Encyclopedia lists a Hank Ritter who pitched big league baseball exactly four years, in 1912 with the Philly Nationals and in 1914-16 with the Giants, which would seem to authenticate the year 1916 as correct. What are the odds on arousing current interest in a game played almost 60 years ago?...
As mentioned toward the beginning of this post, it was
indeed October 1, 1916, that Otto shut out the Giants, and it is also true that
the day before they had lost the second game of a doubleheader, ending a
26-game winning streak.
About a year and a half later, on June 16, 1977, Otto Rettig
passed away at the age of 83, at the Monterey Yacht and Country Club, where, we
have learned, he was a regular. He did not get his book published.
https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/R/Pretto101.htm
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rettiot01.shtml
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/profile.asp?ID=17056
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