Love and Hate - Inning Two

Continuing an inning-by-inning purge of my NY Mets demons


Top of the Second – Jack Fisher


“Fat Jack” Fisher joined the Mets through a special draft after the 1963 season. A right-handed starting pitcher, he was part of a pitching rotation that included Tracy Stallard, Al Jackson and Galen Cisco. Jack’s main claims to fame walking into the clubhouse door of the Polo Grounds were giving up Ted Williams’ final at-bat home run in 1960 and Roger Maris’s Babe Ruth-tying number sixty in 1961 while pitching for the Baltimore Orioles. It probably wasn’t so ironic that his Mets (and one-time Oriole) teammate Stallard just happened to serve Maris number sixty-one the following day. Ignorant of his resume (and spotty record), I began emulating the Jack Fisher delivery pitching to the chalk box on our schoolyard stickball court at PS 71, with a slimmer profile and similar results.

Bottom of the Second – Looking at the statistics now, I see that Jack Fisher wasn’t much of a major league pitcher, but he wore the Mets uniform and he showed up. Under the particular circumstances surrounding the team back then, there’s something to be said for “showing up.” The Mets’ new stadium wasn’t ready for the start of the 1964 season, so the move waited until mid-April. Through luck of the rotation draw, Fisher had the honor of the making the opening start at Shea. The story goes that the on-field hubbub surrounding the christening of the new park was such that he asked manager Stengel if he could conduct pregame warm-ups in the bullpen rather than on the traditional practice mound in foul territory beside the dugout. Stengel acquiesced and the upshot is you never see the starting pitcher do his pregame throwing on the lower sideline anymore. Yet another questionable bullet point for Fat Jack’s baseball resume.

On deck - Tommy Davis