Joe Sewell – a true contact hitter. Struck out twice in a game only twice in his Hall of Fame career.
Baseball Roundtable is drawn to on-field events that we are not likely to see again. You know, like a pitcher winning 30 or more games in a season, a reliever topping 200 innings in a season, a batter hitting .400 for a campaign, or a player stealing home eight times in a season or more than 50 times in a career.
On this date (May 26) in 1930, MLB saw an event that is sure to never happen again. There are several reasons for that assertion. One is that the primary players involved – Joe Sewell and Pat Caraway – both passed away quite some time ago. Another is how the game has changed, becoming a harder-throwing/freer-swinging affair. Finally, and most important, we are not likely to ever see a hitter like Joe Sewell again.
The event? On May 26, 1930, a 24-year-old rookie southpaw named Pat Caraway (White Sox) fanned Indians’ third baseman Joe Sewell in two consecutive plate appearances. What’s so unique about that? Well, the 5’6”, 155-pound infielder was known for his uncanny ability to put his bat on the ball. As Rod Serling would have said, “We offer, for your consideration” the following facts:
- Caraway’s consecutive whiffs of Sewell would be the only time in Hall of Famer Sewell’s entire 14-season MLB career (1,903 games and 8,333 plate appearances) that he struck out in consecutive at bats.
- In that 1930 season, Sewell only struck out one more time – just three whiffs in 353 at bats (414 plate appearances).
- Joe Sewell fanned twice in a game only twice in his career.
Caraway also seemed an unlikely candidate to fan Sewell in consecutive plate appearances. A rookie in 1930, Caraway would last just three MLB seasons – going 22-40 with a 5.35 career earned run average and 151 strikeouts in 478 innings. BBRT Note: The only other time Joe Sewell fanned twice in one game (May 13, 1923), he was facing another rookie lefthander – Wallace Walter “Cy” Warmoth – who (like Caraway) appeared in only three MLB campaigns, going 8-5. 4.26.
In 2017, 96 major leaguers fanned more times than Joe Sewell did in his entire career. (Keep in mind that only 300 MLB players reached 250 at bats last season.)
Notably, Sewell’s two-strikeout game against Warmoth did not come during the infielder’s “free-swinging” days. In his first five MLB seasons (1920-24), Sewell struck out 66 times in 2,794 plate appearances – once every 42.3 times he came to the plate. He tightened things up over his final nine campaigns (1925-33), fanning just 48 times in 5,539 plate appearances – once every 115.4 time he stepped up to the dish.
In 1920, Joe Sewell graduated from the University of Alabama – where he played varsity baseball and football, belonged to the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity and was elected Class President in his Senior year.
A few other Sewell tidbits that fall into BBRT’s “We’ll Never See That Again” category:
- In 1929, Sewell played an MLB (modern) record 115 consecutive games without striking out (May 19-September 19). During his 115-game streak, Sewell racked up 436 at bats and 143 hits (.328), with 27 doubles, two triples, seven HR and 56 RBI.
- In 1932, Sewell struck out just three times in 503 at bats – one strikeout for every 167.7 at bats, the MLB single-season record.
- Sewell struck out in consecutive games only three times in his career – two of those in his first two MLB seasons.
- For his career, Sewell fanned 114 times in 7,132 at bats – or once each 62.6 at bats. That puts Sewell second on the career list (among players who played after 1900) to Wee Willie Keeler, who fanned just once every 63.2 at bats in 19 MLB seasons (1892-1910). It’s a notable drop to third place – Lloyd Waner at 44.9 at bats per strikeout.
- Baseball, apparently, was in the Sewell DNA. Joe Sewell’s brothers, Luke and Tommy Sewell, also played in the major leagues.
Another “We’ll Never See That Again” or “They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To” Tale
Now this tale may seem apocryphal, but is has enough “legs” to have made it into Joe Sewell’s Society for American Baseball Research biography and his New York Times obituary. It has been reported that when Sewell first made it to the major leagues in 1920, Indians’ teammate first baseman George Burns – seeing that Sewell did not have what he thought was a decent bat for the big leagues – gave young Joe a forty-ounce bat to use. Joe is said to have cared for that bat – and used it for the rest of his career. It is now on display at the Alabama Baseball Hall of Fame at the University of Alabama’s Sewell-Thomas Stadium. (Sewell was a star player for Alabama from 1917-1920 and the school’s baseball coach from 1964-69.)
Joe Sewell was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977. He is also a member of the National College Baseball Hall of Fame and the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
Primary Resources: Society for American Baseball Research; Baseball-Refeence.com; TideSports.com
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Member: Society for American Baseball Research; The Baseball Reliquary; The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
