Does friendship or baseball come first?
One day in a Southern League game a batter for Knoxville smashed a long, high fly to center field. Arnie Moser, the center fielder for Nashville, ran all the way to the scoreboard. The ball was over Moser’s head, and he leaped for it but missed. The ball hit the scoreboard and came down. Moser hit the scoreboard but did not come down. His belt had caught on a wooden peg, and he was hanging helplessly on the wall, unable to chase the ball and get it back to the infield.
Moser’s teammate left fielder Oris Hockett came racing over to back up the play.
“I’m stuck! Get me down!” yelled Moser.
Hockett looked up at his friend, looked for the ball and looked at the runner rounding second base. He had to make a choice quickly.
“Get me down!” yelled Moser again.
“Wait a minute!” hollered Hockett. He picked up the ball and threw it back to the infield to keep the runner form scoring. Only then did he go back to the fence and help get Arnie Moser off the scoreboard peg.
From The Giant Book of Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
Wait, they had the pegs low enough that a fielder jumping for a ball could have one go through his neck?
Baseball was clearly a much more interesting game in 1940.