THE MIDGET WHO BATTED IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES.

THE MIDGET WHO BATTED IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES. Bill Veeck is best known for arranging for a midget to come to bat in a major league game. For those of you who aren’t baseball fans, you should know that the smaller the batter, the smaller his strike zone, and the harder it is to keep from walking him by throwing four balls out of the strike zone. (There are more important aspects of batting, of course.) One day in 1951, Eddie Gaedel came to bat for the Saint Louis Browns, who were owned by Veeck. Gaedel was 3 foot, 7 inches tall. Veeck had signed him to a major league contract and provided him with a Browns uniform. The number on the back was 1/8. Gaedel walked on four pitches—all high. It was a sensation from the beginning. I remember listening to a White Sox game in our yard that day, and Bob Elson interrupting his description of the game to tell about what had happened in Saint Louis. Eddie Gaedel has been in the news again because his great nephew, Kyle Gaedele, was chosen in the sixth round of the 2011 player draft by the San Diego Padres, which means that he is thought to have a good chance of becoming a major league player. Kyle Gaedele is 6 foot, 3 inches tall. Here is a Youtube video with pictures of Eddie Gaedel at bat. The Gaedele family still has Eddie’s bat, although the Hall of Fame would like to have it.