The Smallest Man to Ever Play Major League Baseball

On August 19, 1951, between games of a doubleheader at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, a seven-foot-tall papier-mache birthday cake was wheeled to home plate. A band played. Clowns performed. Satchel Paige, the 45-year-old Browns pitcher, sat in with the eight-piece ensemble and played the drums. It was a celebration of two 50th birthdays, the American League's and the Falstaff Brewing Company's, and it was exactly the kind of spectacle that Browns owner Bill Veeck specialized in.

Then a man popped out of the cake. He was 3 feet 7 inches tall and weighed 65 pounds. His name was Eddie Gaedel. He was wearing a St. Louis Browns uniform with the number 1/8 on the back. The uniform belonged to the nine-year-old batboy, William DeWitt Jr., who would grow up to become the managing partner of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Nobody in the crowd of 18,369, not even Gaedel's own teammates, knew what was about to happen next.

Veeck had found Gaedel through a talent booking agency. Gaedel was a professional performer who belonged to the American Guild of Variety Artists. During World War II, he had worked as a riveter, crawling inside the wings of airplanes where full-sized workers couldn't fit. He stood on his tiptoes to reach 3-foot-7.

Veeck signed Gaedel to a standard major league contract worth $15,400 for the season, which worked out to $100 for a single game. He filed the contract with the American League office late on a Friday afternoon, knowing that the league would rubber-stamp it without scrutiny and that nobody would look at it again until Monday. The game was on Sunday.

Veeck had one instruction for Gaedel, and he delivered it with a threat that may or may not have been a joke. "I told him I had a million-dollar insurance policy on his life," Veeck wrote in his autobiography, "and that I would be standing on the roof of the stadium with a rifle prepared to kill him if he even looked like he was going to swing."

In the bottom of the first inning of the second game, the Browns' public address announcer called out a pinch hitter for leadoff man Frank Saucier. Eddie Gaedel walked out of the dugout swinging three tiny bats.

Home plate umpire Ed Hurley called for Browns manager Zack Taylor. Veeck and Taylor had prepared for this. They produced a copy of Gaedel's contract and the team's active roster, which had room for his addition. Hurley studied the paperwork, found it in order, and waved Gaedel to the batter's box.

On the mound for the Detroit Tigers was left-hander Bob Cain. Behind the plate was catcher Bob Swift. Cain looked at Gaedel crouching in his stance and started laughing. Swift offered his pitcher a piece of strategic advice. "Keep it low," he said. Then, for reasons nobody has ever fully explained, Swift got down on his knees to offer Cain a target, making the scene even more absurd than it already was.

Gaedel's strike zone was approximately one and a half inches tall. Cain's first two pitches were legitimate attempts at strikes, and both missed high. The next two were half-speed tosses that also missed high, and Gaedel walked on four pitches.

He trotted to first base, stopping twice to bow to the standing ovation, before pinch-runner Jim Delsing replaced him. Delsing advanced to third but never scored, and the Tigers won 6-2. The final score was beside the point. Everyone already had what they came for.

American League president Will Harridge voided Gaedel's contract the next day, declaring the appearance "a mockery of the game." Veeck protested. He asked Harridge whether Phil Rizzuto, the Yankees' 5-foot-6 shortstop whose contract nobody had ever questioned, was "a short ballplayer or a tall midget."

As a result of Gaedel's appearance, Major League Baseball changed its rules to require the Commissioner's office to approve all contracts before a player could appear in a game.

Gaedel never played again. Veeck paid him his $100, and he told reporters he was disappointed that Veeck never got to use him in his dream scenario, a bases-loaded pinch-hitting appearance. He later appeared for an amateur team in Wisconsin, but the umpire didn't give him such a favorable strike zone.

Gaedel died on June 18, 1961, at the age of 36. He was found dead in his bed at his mother's home in Chicago. The coroner ruled the cause of death as a heart attack, though he had bruises on his body. Police never thoroughly investigated the case. Bob Cain, the pitcher who walked him, attended the funeral. He was the only person from baseball who did.

Gaedel's jersey, with its number 1/8, is displayed in the St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. His life-size cutout stands in the National Baseball Hall of Fame next to the uniform of Jon Rauch, who at 6-foot-11 is tied with Sean Hjelle for the tallest player in major league history. The shortest and the tallest, side by side.

Eddie Gaedel had one plate appearance, one walk, and a career on-base percentage of 1.000.