LITTLE ROCK — Some 10 or 12 years ago, I thought we’d heard the last of the disappearing baseball controversy. It seems, however, that during each decade, someone else surfaces, seeking the details. A phone call or postcard might do the trick.
First, you’ll need a little background on Roy Majtyka, a minor league infielder and manager in the St. Louis Cardinals organization in the early 1960s.
In 1966, the year the Arkansas Travelers joined the Cards organization, Majtyka was the regular second baseman on a Texas League pennant winner. A year or two later, he became a rookie league manager and started his climb through the St. Louis system. By 1974, he was managing the St. Petersburg club in the Class A Florida State League.
St. Pete was the visiting club at Key West that year when a batter hit a towering fly, above the stadium’s lights - and the ball was never found.
Majyka moved up to manage the Travelers in 1975. About midseason, while we were out to lunch one day, he said, “I bet you’ve never heard about the ball that flew out of Key West last year and never came back.” (Well, he had me there.)
The best he recalled, the game was rocking along in the third or fourth inning when a Key West hitter lifted a monumental fly ball above the area between first and second base. The infielders scrambled around, looking up. No one saw a baseball fall back.
“The guy who hit the ball,” Majtyka said, “obviously figured a fly ball would get him out. But a minute or two later, he was on first base, looking around, wondering what happened. The whole ball park was in confusion. Finally, the Key West manager told the base runner to take second base. When he did, the manager told him to go on to third, then home.
“When he reached home plate, the umpire waved ‘home run.’ I thought it was my cue then. I asked the umpire, ‘What was that?’ ‘Home run,’ he said. I told him a couple of things. ‘For a home run, you need a player and a baseball, but you don’t have a baseball. Incidentally, where is the ball?’ He just kept saying ‘home run.’
“By this time, the crowd - such as it was - was more curious about the lost baseball than any other aspect of the game.
“In those days, the big clubs, especially the Cardinals, wanted reports as soon as possible. Bob Kennedy was then our farm director. I was barely asleep when Kennedy called. He said, ‘Roy, what kind of stuff have you been drinking down there?’ ”
It has been 48 years since a baseball vanished in a Key West game (as far as we know). Majtyka laughed at most of the suggestions, then and now.
“Some fellow said a hurricane gale out of left field pushed the ball over the right field fence. Actually, that was a real still, humid night,” he said.
Key West theories whirled around for a day or two. The one I liked best was that a Pelican possibly was cruising above the baseball lights when he found this baseball wobbling around in front of him. I’m convinced Pelican instinct did the rest.
Sports, Pages 16 on 09/25/2012