Happy 40th Anniversary to the Craziest Argument in Baseball History

[Matthew Trueblood]

Monday is Memorial Day, but it also happens to be the 40th anniversary of one of the most bonkers moments in Chicago Cubs history. Let's talk about the Foul Ball Incident.

Image courtesy of YouTube

There's no adequate way for me to fully render, in words, what happened at Wrigley Field on May 27, 1984. We're going to discuss some key highlights, but for both the benefit of your understanding and the sheer entertainment, you should watch the video in full. Fair warning, though: this video is over half an hour long. In fact, half an hour is almost exactly the length of time that passed between pitches that day, in the bottom of the second inning.

I'm not aware of another case in which, absent an act of God, two teams had to wait that long between pitches being thrown in a big-league game, and if we're being honest, there was no need for it to be anywhere near that long between offerings in this case, either. It just got away from them--from the umpires, then from the Reds, then from the Cubs, and then from everyone. For reasons beyond my understanding, YouTube restricts the video based on the age of users, so you'll have to go watch it on the site, rather than right here on the page. It's a holiday, though. You have time. Go check it out.

If I can borrow from Bill Hader's timeless character on Saturday Night Live: this video has everything. I have watched (estimating here) 7,000 hours of baseball in my life, but I've never seen anything like it. Maybe that doesn't quite capture my meaning, though. I also haven't seen anything loosely similar to it. I haven't seen anything to which it would make any sense to compare this sequence of events. For those of you without 33-plus minutes to spare, here's the extremely short version:

1. With two runners on base Ron Cey hit a long fly ball down the left-field line. It was foul, and foul by a pretty wide margin, really.
2. However, rookie umpire Scott Rippley called the ball fair, sparking vehement arguments from several members of the Cincinnati Reds--most notably, pitcher Mario Soto. Cey had not even finished rounding the bases before Reds players, in their gray pullover jerseys with massive lettering across the back, were encircling Rippley and holding each other back from physically attacking him.
3. A conference between the umpires ensued. With the input and wisdom of home plate umpire Paul Runge and crew chief Bob Engel, Rippley was overruled, and the ball was correctly called foul.
4. The Cubs, indignant, more or less stormed the field. This is where this goes from standard-issue pre-replay baseball argument to something stranger and way more fun. There were, at any given time, between five and seven members of the Cubs organization arguing with the clustered four-umpire crew, and this lasted for well over 15 minutes.
5. That deep into the argument--ages and ages by any reasonable baseball argument standard--the Reds lost it, and Don Zimmer got fully involved, and things took a turn for the downright wacky. Soto charged the umpires as they conferred, and seeing that, Zimmer raced over to try to prevent an attack. Either confused about Zimmer's intentions or just grabbing the first thing he collided with after trying to corral his own pitcher, Reds catcher Brad Gulden took down Zimmer, and a full-fledged brawl quickly got underway. Richie Hebner started absolutely throwing bodies around, enraged by the semi-accidental tackle of one of his coaches who was just trying to play peacemaker.
6. Miraculously, though, that brawl broke the previously unbreakable tension, and the game resumed pretty quickly afterward. Hilariously, both the Cubs and the Reds played the game under protest, even though there was absolutely no reasonable grounds for either team to do so.

That reads crazy, but it was crazier than it reads. First of all, as TV viewers, we had a very different experience than we would have if anything remotely akin to this happened in 2024. The camera operator following the flight of Cey's fly ball on the initial play messed it up badly, keeping the foul pole as (more or less) the left edge of their shot until the very last second, so while it was hard to pick out the ball at all given the video quality of the time, the vibe of the shot was: home run. 

Secondly, and relatedly, Harry Caray immediately got every single thing about the play as wrong as possible, in the funniest possible way. He relied on Rippley's call as the play unfolded, clearly having lost the ball himself somewhere down the line. Trying to use the monitor in the booth to clarify things on second and third looks, he only got more confused (thanks to our friend the fair/foul framer). He believed, at first, that perhaps the ball had glanced off the foul pole, because of the very sudden leftward pan at the end of the tracking shot.

Even once Steve Stone sold him on the fact that the ball had been foul, though, he embarked on an intransigent, legalistic argument about whether the other umpires should be able to vacate and replace the call of their colleague, who was closest to the play. One of the things that makes 1984 so hallowed in Cubs lore is the fact that that summer brought the chemistry and the friendly but very real creative tension between Harry and Steve along so well. This is a wonderful instance to study, for those too young to remember the interplay between the two at their best.

Forget the broadcast for a moment, though. You've just never seen a baseball play argued this way. The Reds swarmed Rippley to argue the initial call; there were as many as five of them clustered around him in the moments before he called in his cohort to help. The Cubs, not to be outdone (and in fact, seemingly, determined to outdo), responded with a full-fledged diplomatic delegation when the call was overturned. 

For whatever reason, the umpires didn't disband their convocation after making the change in call--or at least first resolving to. They stayed in a knot by third base, which allowed the Cubs to send waves of friends of the court forward with all the best legal baseball ideas of the moment. This is a fun way to play "Remember Some Guys," in addition to being bizarre and hilarious. Here are the personnel who spent significant time milling around with the four umpires during this interminable negotiation:

• Manager Jim Frey (that's normal)
• Third-base coach Don Zimmer (sure, makes sense, he was on top of the play)
• Coach John Vukovich (well, fine)
• Coach Ruben Amaro (it's getting to be a lot now, right?)
• On-deck batter Larry Bowa (getting in his training for a contumacious managerial career)
• Richie Hebner (who had no role in the action and no reason to be in the thick of this; here's where it's getting wacky to me)
• Mel Hall, who had been on first base when the ball was hit

Notice, first, the lack of the name Ron Cey on that list. He went straight to the dugout and camped out there, waiting for the resolution. I guess if I had a half-dozen people pressing my case against just four arbiters, I might do the same thing.

ZImmer is the real star here, though. He was already a man of towering temper and boiling blood pressure, and he just lost it in this debate. As Vukovich went about a long series of calm, earnest, seemingly cerebral entreaties, Zimmer stomped around the circle shouting invectives toward the center--and occasionally, when a space opened up that would admit him, charging right through the center to get right in the face of the umpire opposite him. It didn't even seem to matter much which one, though he was certainly angriest with Rippley. He was so ardent, though, that he had to stop, put his hands on his knees, and regain his breath multiple times, before then taking another run at them.

It's actually pretty understandable, as you watch it, that this eventually boiled over into a brawl between the teams. It was, as much as anything, because the umpires were unable to control and close the case, and thus, both sides got so fidgety and annoyed that they wanted to beat up the umps. Unable to do so, they made a tacit agreement to just cut loose on one another instead.

Two final notes neatly capture the insanity of this moment. First, even after Stone rather concisely rejected Harry's proposal that the Cubs play the game under protest (because there were absolutely no grounds for protest there), both teams did manage to file one. Vukovich and Frey belonged in a courtroom drama for that. They clearly spent a lot of time just arguing to get that doomed protest on the books. The Reds, who ended up really without a grievance, seem to have glommed on just because it felt like a dangerous situation in which to decline to be party to the process.

Second, a couple of innings after the trouble, the fan who caught that very foul ball came up to the booth to meet Harry and Steve, and Harry put him on the microphone for a moment to retell his story. The young man asked Harry if he would sign the baseball he'd caught, and Harry agreed. With a chuchle, he informed the viewers that he had written on the ball: "Fair or fowl? with a 'W'." He thought that was pretty funny.

Here's the thing: the only strange element that could have intruded on that impossible series of events but didn't was a bird. The pun he made referred to absolutely nothing. It wasn't at all funny, but after that odyssey, everyone laughed, anyway. That day was baseball at its most ludicrous, and closing the story with an utter non sequitur felt delightfully fitting.

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[UMFan83]

Entertaining read! Can’t say that I’ve ever heard of this incident before. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I wonder if, pre-Fanatics hysteria, Reds fans bemoaned the penny pinching cheapness of not giving major leaguers 'real' letters when they sized them down from the visible from space versions they had in this game

[Matthew Trueblood]

50 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

It’s very Cubs that this is the second most famous takedown of Don Zimmer by an opposing player 

It makes for a very sad origin story for the Pedro kerfuffle. Seeing him charge a pitcher 20 years BEFORE Pedro, but AFTER we all first saw him charge Pedro, it makes the choice to do so even weirder!

[Billy62]

I will definitely show my age here. I was at this ballgame. Initially and what kicked off all the confusion was that they actually ruled that the ball had hit off of the foul pole. It didn't of course but lit the fuse for the events that followed. I had my radio with me at the park tuned in to WGN (as always) and one of the umpires was said to have stated that the ball struck the foul side of the foul pole. Of course that statement would have ben erroneous and unbelievable if it were not for the fact that right about here is where Ron Cey absolutely lost his mind. Second only to George Brett's explosion out of the dugout after the "pine tar" incident. I think the two main issues here were #1. The umpires blew the initial call and I think were trying to smooth out their own embarrassment as they reversed themselves. #2. Reversing themselves in the first place just opened up wounds of the past with players being told that the call had been made and could not be reversed in the past. But it was a good cardio exercise for everyone in the park. Pulse rates were definitely up. 🙂

[Matthew Trueblood]

2 hours ago, Billy62 said:

I will definitely show my age here. I was at this ballgame. Initially and what kicked off all the confusion was that they actually ruled that the ball had hit off of the foul pole. It didn't of course but lit the fuse for the events that followed. I had my radio with me at the park tuned in to WGN (as always) and one of the umpires was said to have stated that the ball struck the foul side of the foul pole. Of course that statement would have ben erroneous and unbelievable if it were not for the fact that right about here is where Ron Cey absolutely lost his mind. Second only to George Brett's explosion out of the dugout after the "pine tar" incident. I think the two main issues here were #1. The umpires blew the initial call and I think were trying to smooth out their own embarrassment as they reversed themselves. #2. Reversing themselves in the first place just opened up wounds of the past with players being told that the call had been made and could not be reversed in the past. But it was a good cardio exercise for everyone in the park. Pulse rates were definitely up. 🙂

I love the firsthand account. But you'll be fascinated to see, if you watch the video back: Cey actually was barely involved! A good half-dozen Cubs personnel were out there arguing for much of the long thing, but Cey hung out in the dugout, looking pretty placid. Bowa certainly lost it at some point. Zimmer did. Frey did. But Cey only yelled at Rippley after the fact, when he had to go back up there, lined out, and returned to the dugout. He paced down to the end and hurled some expletives toward third base, but he wouldn't even make a top-5 list of guys who really exploded during the process. Haha.

[Billy62]

Shows what an old mans memory is like. 🙂 I remembered it differently, but then again I was drinking pretty steadily back then. 🙂