Thursday, March 22, 2012

Cubs 365, March 22

Every day in 2012, the Just One Bad Century blog will feature a story about this day in Cubs history. We're calling it Cubs 365.

On this day in 1932, a future Cub was born. His nickname was "Bull", but he wasn't the one that let a groundball through his legs in the 1984 NLCS. This "Bull" was a pitcher named Al Schroll.

The Cubs got the big Louisiana kid from the Red Sox for Bobby Thomson, but he didn't exactly turn out to be the pitcher they had hoped. His Cubs career lasted 2 2/3 innings, and in those innings he posted an ERA of 10.13.

Schroll got one more cup of coffee with Twins the following season (1961), and during that season he made history along with fellow Twins pitcher Jack Kralik. For more than forty years it was the last time that two pitchers on the same team had hit a homer in the same game. Schroll hit his off Al Fowler, who later became Billy Martin's pitching coach with the World Champion Yankees.

Bull Schroll passed away in Louisiana in 1999 at the age of 67.