Ex-major league and Snohomish star Earl Averill Jr. dies

Earl Averill Jr., a Snohomish High School graduate and a seven-year major league veteran, died Wednesday in Tacoma. He was 83.

The Mariners scheduled a moment of silence in Averill’s honor just before the start of Thursday’s game against the Red Sox.

Averill Jr. tied a record doing something no Hall of Famer (not even his father) accomplished: reaching base in seventeen straight plate appearances with the 1962 Angels. The record he tied was set by---wait for it!---Piggy Ward, in 1893, a season Ward divided between the ancient Baltimore Orioles (of the National League) and the Cincinnati Reds. Here's how he did it:

---Pinch hit for Angels relief pitcher Art Fowler (yes, children, time was that the American League didn't have the designated hitter) and hit a two-run double off the Yankees' Rollie Sheldon. (3 June 1962)

---Substituting in-game for Leon (Daddy Wags) Wagner against the White Sox, a walk from Juan Pizarro and two singles off Eddie Fisher. (7 June 1962).

---Started against the Kansas City Athletics the following night, reached on a force play, a walk, a single, and a walk. (8 June 1962).

---Started against the A's the following day, too. Walked and doubled off John Wyatt, walked against Bill Kunkel, drew an intentional walk from Danny McDevit.

---Started game one of a doubleheader the day after that. Hit one out against Jerry Walker in his first time up, then singled off Bill Fischer, reached on an infield error, and walked twice before the game ended.

---He started game two of the twin bill and needed one more to break Ward's record. But he struck out against Norm Bass his first time up.

So Averill Jr. tied the reaching base streak on a two-run double, a walk, two singles, a force play, a walk, a single, a walk, another walk, a double, two more walks, a home run, a single, an error, and two more walks. (And you thought Eddie Yost was the Walking Man!)

Averill Sr. is known as a Hall of Fame outfielder who, sadly enough, used his induction speech to rip the Hall for not electing him sooner---which stunned people who remembered him for being modest, soft-spoken, and a man who so loved gardens and animals that he liked to visit zoos and botanicals instead of bars and movie houses when the Indians were on road trips. More in character was probably the fact that Averill Sr. paid thousands from his own pocket to bring to Cooperstown those who campaigned for his election.

Even so, Averill Sr. also made headlines in 1928, when the San Francisco Seals, the Pacific Coast League powerhouse, sold him to the Indians in the first place. The price was said to be fifty grand; Averill Sr. asked his manager how much of the money he was supposed to get. When told none, not one pfenig, even, Averill Sr. went home and said if he didn't get a piece of it he wasn't going to the Indians.

Believe it or not, Averill Sr. had an ally in that little holdout---Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis himself. It might shock people who remember what an ogre Landis could be and often was, but baseball's first commissioner actually said Averill Sr.'s demand sounded reasonable. He even said baseball should adopt a rule whereby any player was sold the player would get a cut of the sale price. Imagine if the owners then had taken Landis at his word; imagine how some of the stresses the game later underwent in the advent of the free agency era might have been reduced, significantly, if Landis's idea in support of Earl Averill, Sr. had been taken to become baseball law. (It might have enabled teams to strengthen---including the financially weaker teams---without over-inflating the salary structure, for one thing.)

In due course the Indians themselves solved the Averill problem by giving him $5,000 as a bonus to report as well as a solid salary for the time. But the Landis idea went nowhere, and baseball had to learn the hard way, as usual.

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