Great story about Pete Reiser!!

DURING the World Series, Harold Patrick Reiser died in Palm Springs, Calif. Pete Reiser, called Pistol Pete, was 62 years old and had suffered heart trouble off and on for 25 years. Pete may have been born to be the best baseball player that ever lived but there never was a park big enough to contain his effort. He was a man of immeasurable skills and unconquerable spirit who played the only way he knew how – hitting, running, sliding, crashing into outfield walls, until he had literally broken his magnificent body to bits.

He spent most of his 10 major league seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers and later on, when somebody would ask him about the seven times he crashed into fences, he would become a trifle defensive, replying quickly that on every occasion he was chasing a fly ball that could have meant the ball game.

Bill Heinz tabulates his injuries in his book, ”Once They Heard the Cheers”: He was carried off the field 11 times. Nine times he regained consciousness in the clubhouse or in a hospital. Once they gave him the last rites. He broke a bone in his right elbow throwing, and taught himself to throw left-handed. Seven of the nine times he ran into a fence, he dislocated a shoulder or broke a collarbone. Twice he was hit in the head by pitches. Once he was operated on for a blood clot on his brain.

It started in 1938 when he was a 19-year-old with Superior, Wis., in the Northern League. Going into second base in an exhibition game in Oslo, N.D., he felt something snap in his left knee. On advice of a country doctor, who popped the joint back into place, he refused to let anybody cut the knee and it healed itself.

He was one of 73 farmhands of the St. Louis Cardinals whom Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis declared free agents in the spring of 1938 and the Dodgers signed him for a $100 bonus.

On his first time at bat in his first big-league training camp, Pete hit a home run off Ken Raffensberger, a rookie with the Cardinals. In his first 12 times up that spring, he reached base 12 times, on three home runs, five singles and four walks. Before he had played a championship game in the majors, the Yankees offered $100,000 and five players for him. Larry MacPhail, who was running the Dodgers, rejected the offer – and sent Reiser to Elmira.

In 1941, his first full season at Ebbets Field, he was beaned twice, hit the wall once, and still hit .343 to become the first rookie to win the National League batting championship. He led the league in triples, runs scored, total bases and slugging average and tied Johnny Mize with 39 doubles.

Ike Pearson of the Phillies was the first to hit him with a pitch. Pete woke up at 11:30 that night in Peck Memorial Hospital. He walked the floor all night, still in uniform. This was the fifth day of the season. Next morning, when he showed the doctor he could walk without falling, the doctor released him on his promise not to play ball for a week. He went to Ebbets Field and Leo Durocher, the manager, persuaded him to redress and take a seat on the bench ”to make our guys feel better.” Durocher promised not to play him, but in the eighth the score was 7-7, the Dodgers had the bases filled and Ike Pearson was coming in to relieve.

”Pistol,” Durocher said, ”get that bat.” Pete hit the first pitch over the fence in center and Brooklyn won, 11-7. Pete barely made it around the bases. Five days later Pete chased a ball hit by the Cardinals’ Enos Slaughter to the wall in center. He caught the ball but cut his head and tail on the corner of the exit gate. His head was bleeding and blood was oozing through the seat of his pants. In the trainer’s room they put a metal clamp on the cut on his rear. ”Don’t slide,” they said, ”you can have it sewed up after the game.”

It was August before he caught another pitch on his skull. Chicago’s big Paul Erickson threw it. He spent another night in the hospital but walked out the next morning to join the team in St. Louis.

Opening a western trip in Chicago in 1942 and proceeding to Cincinnati, Pete had 19 hits in 21 times at bat. He was five for five in the first half of a Chicago doubleheader, and got a hit in the second game, the only time they didn’t walk him. His batting average was .391.

In a 12-inning game in St. Louis, Slaughter hit another to center, Pete chased and caught the ball, hit the wall and, for the only time in his life, dropped the ball. He took one step and collapsed. He awoke in St. John’s Hospital where Dr. Robert F. Hyland pleaded with him to call it quits for the season. Two days later, bandage off his head, Pete caught a train for Pittsburgh.

Durocher talked him into suiting up, again promising not to play him. In the 14th inning the Dodgers had two runners aboard with Ken Heintzelman pitching for the Pirates. Durocher was out of pinchbatters. Reiser walked to the rack and got a stick. ”You’ve got yourself a hitter,” he said.

He hit a line drive over second base that sent the winning runs in but all Pete could do was stretch his triple to a single. He collapsed on first base and awoke in a hospital. There Durocher told him: ”You’re better with one leg and one eye than anybody else I’ve got.”

Back from the service in 1946, Pete was knocked out making a diving catch, ripped the muscles in his left leg running out an infield hit, broke a leg sliding, broke his collarbone, dislocated a shoulder and led the league with 34 stolen bases. He set a major league record by stealing home seven times. He said it should have been eight, that George Magerkurth called him out at the plate once, then dropped his voice and said, ”I missed it.”

At an exhibition game in Springfield, Mo., a radio announcer was asking the Dodgers where they thought they would finish that year. ”First place,” said Pee Wee Reese. So did Hugh Casey and Dixie Walker.

”Here comes Pistol Pete Reiser,” the announcer said. ”Where do you think you’ll finish the season, Pete?” ”In Peck Memorial Hospital,” Pete said.

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 2, 1981, Section C, Page 10 of the National edition with the headline: Red Smith; Harold Patrick Reiser.