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Long-ago teams live on in the record books of major league baseball. One such team, the Philadelphia Athletics, still holds the record for most double plays turned in a season—217 in 1949. That it has endured for almost 60 years, despite an increase in the regular season from 154 to 161 games and in the number of teams playing from 16 to 30, is a testament to the magnitude of the feat.
Only 10 teams in history have turned 200 double plays in a season. The Philadelphia A’s performed the amazing feat of doing it in back-to-back-to-back seasons, executing 217 twin kills in 1949, 208 in 1950, and 204 in 1951. While no team has equaled the A’s 1949 total, the 1966 Pittsburgh Pirates did come close, completing 215 double plays in 1966.
How was the Athletics’ infield able to display such defensive prowess? A necessary ingredient—and a most unfortunate one in terms of the team’s overall fortunes—was a poor pitching staff. In 1949, A’s pitchers put opponents on base 36 percent of the time, third worst in the majors. Things grew worse in 1950 when the on-base percentage grew to .376—absolute last in the majors. A’s pitchers improved a little in 1951 by reducing opponents’ on-base percentage to .347, but that was no better than third worst in the American League.
With all those base runners, ground balls were more likely to become double play balls. Still, there have been plenty of bad-pitching teams in baseball that did not turn nearly as many double plays, so the answer must lie to a considerable degree in the individual talent and superior teamwork of the players who comprised the Athletics’ infield.
The A’s 1949 team featured Ferris Fain at first base, Pete Suder at second, Eddie Joost at shortstop, with Hank Majeski rounding out the infield at third. Joost, the only living member of that record-setting squad, recalled in a recent interview that Fain “was the best fielding first baseman in the American League. He had a great arm.” Likewise, Joost remembers, Suder was as good a second baseman as there was in the league, although he never got the recognition he deserved for fielding skills.” Majeski, according to Joost, was as good defensively as any third baseman in the league. “No one did it better,” Joost observes about his former infield mate.
Joost and Fain came to the Athletics in 1947, joining Suder and Majeski in the infield. “We clicked as a double play unit when we came together in 1947,” Joost states, “and it remained a great double play unit.” There was, however, some turnover in the makeup of the A’s infield during the three consecutive years that the team turned over 200 double plays.
In 1949, Nellie Fox (HOF ’97) played his first full season in the majors, substituting for Suder at second base in 77 games and helping to complete 68 of the 217 twin kills the team performed that year. Unfortunately for the A’s, Fox was traded after the season to the White Sox, and he earned his Hall of Fame credentials while playing in Chicago.
Majeski likewise was traded after the 1949 season in a second deal with the White Sox following the Athletics’ acquisition of third baseman Bob Dillinger from the St. Louis Browns. But, Dillinger proved a disappointment in 1950 and was gone from the A’s roster before season’s end. Majeski was reacquired from the White Sox in a trade early in the 1951 season.
Suder was injured for much of the 1950 season, and Billy Hitchcock filled in at second base for the Athletics. The personnel turmoil of 1950 was not repeated the next year, when the A’s infield of Fain, Suder, Joost, and Majeski remained intact for the entire season. The remarkable double play streak ended in 1952, when the Athletics turned the second fewest twin kills in the league that year.
Joost and Fain were the anchors of the A’s infield when it turned over 200 double plays in each of the years from 1949-51. In the record-setting year of 1949, Joost played shortstop in 144 games and helped complete 126 of the team’s 217 double plays. The durable Fain appeared in 150 games and participated in 192 of the double plays.
Joost regards the 1949 Philadelphia Athletics as a “pretty good ball club.” At one point during the season, as Joost remembers, Connie Mack came up to him and said, “This is the best infield I’ve ever had.” That’s high praise coming from a man who once managed the “$100,000 infield” of the Athletics “First Dynasty” period.
Joost remains grateful to Connie Mack for rescuing his career. Joost was out of organized baseball in 1946, but Mack brought him to the Athletics the next year and said he did so because, “I have confidence you will help the ball club.” Mack was right that Joost still had a lot of good baseball left in him. Joost played with the A’s through 1954 and finished his career with the Boston Red Sox the following year.
Despite baseball’s well-deserved reputation as a statistics-obsessed sport, there was no recognition of the Athletics’ double-play record following the 1949 season. “We had no idea we had set the record,” according to Joost, “and there was no mention of it even after the season had ended.” It was only years later, Joost says, that he was made aware of the feat he and his infield mates had achieved in 1949. “Perhaps it wasn’t considered a significant record at the time,” Joost speculates. The former shortstop notes wryly that even if setting the record had been publicized at the time, he doubts it would have mattered much to the notoriously tight-fisted A’s manager and owner Connie Mack (HOF ’37) when it came time to negotiate Joost’s salary for the next season.
Joost may be right in observing that the double play record was not regarded as a major milestone in the era when it happened. If so, then that is no longer the case. In the nearly 60 years that have passed since 1949, a multitude of baseball records have fallen as more modern players and teams climb higher plateaus of achievement that both awe and inspire. Yet, the Philadelphia Athletics’ record of 217 double plays turned in a regular season endures, as does the equally remarkable feat of executing over 200 double plays in each of three consecutive seasons (1949-51).
The Athletics relocated to Kansas City after the 1954 season, but long-ago teams live on in the record books of major league baseball. If the past can at all be considered a prelude to the future, then baseball’s pinnacle of double play proficiency that today belongs to the Philadelphia A’s is likely to remain in their possession for many years to come.
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