Incident That Changed the Course of Baseball

Lou Ruchser Sr. possibly changed the face of baseball by getting hit on the head. The day after that batting-practice liner nailed him in the temple during 1947 spring training in Cuba, the Brooklyn Dodgers installed protective screens -- which are in use to this day. “My big contribution to pro baseball,” he said.

The effect of that shot might have been even more profound than he realized at the time. Ultimately, the loss of Ruchser at first base made it easier to find a starting position for Jackie Robinson.

It’s a scenario that has occurred to him a lot over the years -- in the decades that never gave him another chance to make the big leagues; in the past weeks, when HBO has shown the film “Soul of the Game,” depicting Robinson’s struggle.

“I figured I had as good a shot (at first) as anybody. I never gave Robinson a thought,” Ruchser said. Except that Ruchser was fielding a grounder from coach Ray Blades when Marvin Rackley drilled a shot the first baseman never saw. “I think it made me a little shy after that,” he said.

Robinson, meanwhile, became the first African-American to play major-league ball in this century. “He was out of this world,” Ruchser said. “Those first couple of years, he took some bull. I wouldn’t have taken it. But he never said a word. We’d work out, take our showers, and he’d wait until everybody got out and he took his shower. And the stuff Ben Chapman of Philly used to yell from the dugout ... Well, (Robinson’s) skin must have been four inches thick.”

But Ruchser developed broad shoulders, too. “I’ve got no complaints. I’ve had a good life,” he said, recalling how he was lucky to be hospitalized with a case of jaundice in Italy during World War II when the rest of his squadron was killed in a runway pileup.

“If I’d have been on that bomber, I wouldn’t have been around, either. So you’ve got to take the good with the bad,” he said.

Ruchser, 72, left baseball for the New York Police Department in 1950 with a capful of memories -- such as putting ice cubes in his shoes and wet lettuce under his cap to stay cool on 107-degree days while he played for Fort Worth. Or spending training camp with future actor Chuck Connors. “I could never watch his show, ‘The Rifleman,’ because I couldn’t stop laughing. He was trying to be so serious,” said the former teammate who remembered Connors routinely driving his car on sidewalks.

The would-be Dodger ultimately drove a police motorcycle. And several autumns, he had a bittersweet assignment, which he got a kick out of: “I’d have to escort the Dodgers to Yankee Stadium.”