Mets pitcher tames Tigers twenty times
Hint: It's not who you think.
Marion Mets Newsletter – Issue 11
What if I told you a Marion Mets pitcher struck out 20 batters in a single game on a hot, sweaty August night at Marion Stadium?
Could you name the pitcher?
I’ll give you two guesses.
Nolan Ryan, you say?
Nope, it wasn’t Nolan. That would’ve been my guess, too.
This particular performance came a little more than six years after the Ryan Express rolled into Marion and wildly unleashed his then-unpredictable fastball in the vicinity of opposing batters, and dugouts. He was already into his fifth year as a major leaguer, playing for the New York Metropolitans, by the time another strike-out king toed the rubber for the rookie league Mets.
The incredible performance we’re delving into today happened on a Monday night, August 16. 1971, when an 18-year-old, 5’-11” righthander from eastern Ohio, near la belle riviere, climbed up on the mound and dug in his cleats for what would become a moment to remember, at least for some who were in the Marion ballpark.
His name was Ed Burgy.
The New York Mets selected the talented pitcher a couple of months earlier, fresh out of Bellaire High School, in the seventh round of the Major League Baseball June Amateur Draft.
When Jack Norworth wrote “for it’s one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ballgame,” he likely was thinking of big-time ballers like Burgy, someone who could rip pitch after pitch past opposing batters to the delight of the home crowd at the ol’ ball game.
That’s what Burgy did when the Bristol (Va.) Tigers came to town. It wasn’t long after the 7:45 p.m. first pitch that the Mets’ ace, wearing jersey No. 33, recorded his first K of the night.
“He was locked in,” recalled Larry Berra, Burgy’s catcher for the game nearly 52 years ago.
Nothing distracted Burgy that night .
Not the heat.
Not kids bounding about the ballpark waiting for foul balls to chase.
Not the Norfolk & Western line rumbling along the tracks just a few yards beyond left-center field.
Burgy tallied two Ks in that first frame.
Then two more in the top of the second – he gave up his only walk in that inning – and another two in the top of the third. Burgy let up on the Tigers in fourth, punching out just one batter.
If you’ve lost count, that was seven strikeouts for the Mets’ pitcher in less than half a game.
“Ed was in control of the game from the start and seemed to grow stronger with each pitch,” Bob Garnett wrote in his weekly Smyth County News column a few days after the game. Garnett served as president of Marion Baseball and also Marion Stadium’s P.A. announcer, so he had an excellent view of Burgy’s dominant performance.
So did New York Mets Director of Player Development Whitey Herzog, who was in town for a couple of weeks working with the Marion team, as he often did. Whitey watched as Burgy “mowed them down,” Garnett wrote and “he liked what he saw.”
Garnett was right about Burgy getting stronger as the game progressed. He stuck out the side – that’s all three batters – in the fifth, sixth, eighth and ninth innings. Oh yeah, he had one K in the seventh.
Thirteen of his strikeouts came in the final five innings.
“We kept it [Burgy’s pitches] moving around,” Berra said, describing his pitch-calling strategy from behind the plate. “He seemed to put everything right where I called for it.”
Berra’s signs were simple, “nothing too elaborate, he said. “One [finger down] is a fastball, two is a curve.”
The pitcher-catcher combo had four quadrants they worked pitches into. “If we [Marion Mets catchers] wanted a pitch low and away, we hit the top of the shin guard on the right side or the left side for down and in,” Berra explained, providing us with a little inside baseball information. “If we wanted it high, I’d touch the chest protector up on the shoulder.”
Herzog, who later became a hall-of-fame manager with the St. Louis Cardinals, always told his Mets pitchers around the minor leagues – from rookie league Marion to Triple A Tidewater – to keep pitches out of the middle.
“Whitey was big on location, and he always told guys, ‘I don’t care how hard you throw, if you don’t put it in different spots,’ Berra recalled, ‘eventually somebody is going to getcha.’”
Burgy certainly found his spots around the plate that night. Marion won the game 5-1, and knocked the Jim Leyland-managed Bristol Tigers out of first place in the Appalachian League’s Southern Division. Burgy allowed only three hits, and If you had asked Garnett, some of those hits were cheapies.
“Two of the three hits should have been outs as [Ike] Small slipped on the wet grass in center field, and [there was] a fly ball which should have been caught between second base and right field,” the team president wrote. “This accounts for Bristol’s one run.”
Berra said he remembered the game well “ because that was one of the better games I got to catch.”
You know who doesn’t remember?
Burgy!
“I don’t remember a whole lot about it, bud, believe me,” he told me over the phone on a January, 2023 Sunday afternoon.
“I was pretty good at it, I guess. Just luck,” he said modestly. “That’s all.”
You might ask: How can a pitcher forget whiffing 20 batters in one game?
Perhaps this is how:
Burgy had been there before. Sort of.
He had never gotten to 20 strikeouts, but he was used to sitting down batters pretty quickly without them ever putting wood on the ball. During the ‘71 Mets season, Burgy struck out 11.3 batters per nine innings, 93 batters in 12 games. One Friday night in Marion, he struck out 11 Pulaski Phillies hitters in a win. He struck out 12 Bluefield Orioles less than a week before KO’d 20 Tigers.
Too, Burgy joined the Mets fresh out of high school, where he was a three-sport star and “an Ohio Valley legend,” said Bubba Kapral, a retired newspaper writer and editor who covered Burgy. They’re also neighbors.
Burgy once struck out 21 batters in a seven-inning high school game, Kapral told me via text, and when he was a bit younger, he took his team to within one win of the Little League World Series.
“Bellaire High did not have a baseball program [Burgy’s] freshman year,” Kapral continued. “They started it his sophomore year because of his greatness.”
When Burgy told me he was “just pretty good” at pitching, it made me smile. That was an understatement, to say the least. Dismissing it as “just luck” is another thing entirely. You don’t take command of a baseball game on luck. That comes from talent, skill and knowledge of the game.
Burgy’s minor league career ended a couple years after his 1971 season in Marion. In ‘72, he pitched 170 innings and struck out 112 for Pompano Beach in the Florida State League, and the following year he started three games for the Memphis Blues. In the spring of ‘73, The Commercial Appeal newspaper of Memphis reported on May 5 that Burgy “returned to his Bellaire, Ohio, home yesterday morning after announcing his retirement from baseball.”
Why?
“Decided to stop playing,” he wrote to me in a text message.
That Bellaire home is where Burgy’s been ever since. He worked in the coal mines for a while, then operated a furnace at a steel mill “just across the river,” he said when we talked, and retired after 20 years working for an asphalt company.
These days, he’s happy gardening, playing golf three days a week, and cutting grass for his mother-in-law.
So, what if I told you this about Ed Burgy?
With all of his greatness, all those accomplishments, it’s easy to see why an unforgettable game for a vast number of people on a Monday night in Marion could simply be just another night at the park for him, especially since so many other memorable performances still lived fresh in his memory.
That’s it for now.
What’s coming next, you ask? Good question. I’m working on a story about Larry Berra and the night his mother and father, Carmen and Yogi, came to Marion. I hope to have it ready for you to read soon, but I’m not sure it will be in the next newsletter.
I’m still tracking down people who knew James Raymond Plummer. If you knew him and have stories to share, you can reach me at chadoz97@gmail.com. Also, have you heard the story of the Marion Mets’ catcher who left baseball and became an elephant trainer? If you think being a catcher is physically tough, wait until you read what an Asian bull elephant did to Roman Schmitt’s leg. Yikes!
Before you go, this is my reminder that I’m always looking for stories about the Marion Mets. If you were a player, fan, ball boy, concession stand worker… anything… and have a story to share, I’d love to talk with you. You can reach me at chadoz97@gmail.com.
And don’t forget to Connect with Marion Mets Substack on Facebook