Double No-Hit: Johnny Vander Meer’s Historic Night Under the Lights by James W. Johnson (review)

An overflow crowd of 38,748 packed Ebbets Field on the evening of June 15, 1938, to witness a historic game. The contest between the Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds was the first major-league night game played in the New York metropolitan area. Before the evening was over, the excitement regarding the new bright lights at the ballpark was eclipsed by a momentous event on the playing field—Johnny Vander Meer’s second consecutive no-hit game, described by author James W. Johnson as “a feat so unique that it almost relegated that three-ring circus of a night to a footnote in baseball history”(17).

To place Vander Meer’s singular accomplishment in context, the book’s prologue provides a concise account of Vander Meer’s first no-hitter on June 11 at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field against manager Casey Stengel’s Boston Bees. To put Brooklyn’s inaugural night game in perspective, Johnson describes the Dodgers’ executive vice president Larry MacPhail’s entrepreneurial efforts to bring night baseball to the major leagues, first when he was at Cincinnati in 1935, and later in Brooklyn.

While night games are common today, the reader is reminded that in the 1930s there were strenuous objections from many club owners, city officials, sports writers, and Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. But the flamboyant MacPhail had successfully campaigned for a few experimental night games. The pregame festivities on this landmark evening were indeed something of a “three-ring circus” which included fireworks, bands, and Olympic champion Jesse Owens, winner of four gold medals at Berlin in 1936, who was hired by MacPhail to “put on a track exhibition” (15). The enormously popular Babe Ruth, three years into his retirement as a player, was present at the game and was quickly surrounded by admiring fans upon his arrival. Seizing the moment and the opportunity to attract large crowds, MacPhail announced Ruth would be the Dodgers’ new first base coach beginning with the following game.

Vander Meer had appeared in only nineteen games for the Reds in 1937 and was still officially considered a rookie, but was unfazed by all the hoopla which caused a delayed start. Once the game got underway, Vander Meer picked up exactly where he left off four days earlier, retiring the Dodger batters through the early innings without allowing any hits.

The heart of the book is an inning-by-inning account of Vander Meer’s second no-hitter, an accomplishment unmatched throughout the long history of the national pastime. The book is enriched by Johnson’s biographical sketches of the Dodger players as they came to bat. Background information on Vander Meer’s teammates is also provided, enabling all the participants in this epic encounter to come to life. These vignettes of both the famous and the forgotten players humanize the box score that shows Vander Meer and his teammates recording twenty-seven outs over nine innings without the opposition getting a hit.

The reader feels present at the memorable game and is reminded of the well-known figures of baseball lore who were involved. The Brooklyn lineup includes Kiki Cuyler, Leo Durocher, and Cookie Lavagetto—forever remembered for his role in breaking up Bill Bevens’s no-hitter with two outs in the ninth during the Yankee-Dodger World Series of 1947. Future Hall of Famer Ernie Lombardi was Vander Meer’s catcher for both no-hitters. Johnson discusses the influence of Reds manager Bill McKechnie on young Vander Meer’s development.

As the Dodgers continued to go hitless through the middle innings and the drama builds, the reader learns that the Dodger fans gradually began rooting for the Cincinnati lefty to go where no pitcher had ever gone before. Even though the reader knows the outcome, Johnson’s account of the tension present in the late innings is especially riveting.

A theme running through...