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Doug Clark: The Eddie Gaedel bobblehead is not just another baseball bauble, it’s a four-pitch keepsake
After all, look at the magic my pal has already performed on behalf of a largely forgotten 3-foot-7 performer who never set one foot here and who died way back in 1961.
Spokane, thanks to Keefe’s evangelistic zeal, is the epicenter of a now-international quest to give little Eddie Gaedel a larger place in baseball lore.
Trust me. A guy this good would get our potholes patched in a month.
Keefe-inspired Eddie Gaedel Society chapters are sprouting across the country like dandelions.
Two can be found in Illinois, in Elburn and Evergreen Park. There’s a Los Angeles chapter and chapters in St. Louis and Austin, Texas.
The Spokane lawyer even persuaded some of his Irish relatives to start an Eddie Gaedel outpost in Clondalkin, a hamlet north of Dublin.
Believers everywhere will gather Friday in remembrance of Aug. 19, 1951, the day 65-pound Gaedel took his one and only at-bat as a major leaguer.
Gaedel walked on four straight pitches.
Which was precisely what Bill Veeck, zany owner of the St. Louis Browns, had in mind when he padded his lineup with someone who offered a strike zone the size of a communion wafer.
“Don’t swing – or ELSE!” Gaedel was supposedly warned before he took his stance and faced Detroit Tigers pitcher Bob Cain.
This Barnum-like stunt “unleashed the forces of fun in baseball,” Keefe told me over lunch Monday at O’Doherty’s Irish Pub in downtown Spokane.
O’Doherty’s is Keefe’s favorite haunt. It’s also ground zero to the Eddie Gaedel Society, Chapter One.
The way Keefe tells it, the inspiration to become Gaedel’s biggest champion happened six years ago while he was talking baseball from the vantage of an O’Doherty’s barstool.
Somewhere in the conversation, Keefe offered one of his favorite trivia tidbits: that a Gaedel autograph will fetch more dough than something signed by even the great Babe Ruth.
“Who’s Eddie Gaedel?” muttered one of the baffled patrons.
At that moment, inspiration struck Keefe with the speed of a misplaced fastball soaring over center field. Like Paul on the road to Damascus, Keefe had found a calling.
Friday’s annual festivities begin at 6 p.m. in O’Doherty’s. They are open to anyone with a sense of merriment and a love of the game.
Beers will be quaffed, naturally.
A rendition of “Take Me Out” to the you-know-where will be sung.
Then, after a retelling of Eddie at the Bat, this year’s big surprise will be unveiled.
The world’s first Eddie Gaedel bobblehead.
The dolls, which are not so far away from life size, will be given away in St. Louis on Sept. 9 to those attending a game between the Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers.
“Michelangelo was good,” said Keefe after examining the Little Eddie bobblehead that came to his office in Wednesday’s mail. “But he wasn’t great.”
Gaedel’s connection with the Cards is a good deal more than mere municipality.
Cardinals owner Bill Dewitt Jr. was the very Browns batboy who loaned Gaedel the pint-size uniform he wore to the plate.
That uniform – with the number 1/8 on the back – will be on display at the game. Keefe has been invited by the Cardinals organization to stand next to it and answer any Gaedel-related questions that might arise.
Keefe plans to suit up in the reproduction Browns uniform that he wears whenever he’s out spreading the Gaedel gospel.
As he was last summer, for example, when the Pasadena-based Baseball Reliquary gave Keefe its 2015 Hilda Award for being America’s top baseball fan.
Last week, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay gave Keefe a manuscript proclaiming Aug. 19 as Eddie Gaedel Day.
This just keeps getting better and better.
“We may not be as big as the Masons yet,” Keefe joked with a self-satisfied grin, “but we’re getting there.”
At least I think Keefe was joking. After all this, who knows?
Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.