Necciai still noted for his 27 Ks
In today’s world of 24-hour sports channels and social media handy on every cell phone, people around the globe can be instantly bombarded with video and stories about anything in baseball, whether it’s Shohei Ohtani’s latest home run or the Pittsburgh Pirates scoring three runs on a hit that traveled only 10 feet.
We are living in the information age and that makes 89-year-old Ron Necciai shake his head in amazement. He doesn’t want to think what it would have been like if today’s media was around when he put his name into baseball’s record book.
It was May 13, 1952, a cold and wet Tuesday night at Shaw Stadium in Virginia that Necciai, a Gallatin native, accomplished what no professional pitcher before or since has done. He struck out 27 batters in a nine-inning game.
The then 19-year-old Necciai was pitching on a rehab assignment for the Bristol Twins, a Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate in the Appalachian League, against the Welch Miners. Not every out was a strikeout. A passed ball allowed Necciai to strike out four batters in the ninth inning. He faced 31 batters in the game.
The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues has called Necciai’s 27-strikeout game “the greatest individual performance in the history of baseball.”
If that happened today, we can only imagine how the social media sites would be blowing up with information.
“Honestly, word got around pretty fast about that game,” Necciai said last week when he was a guest speaker at the Good Guys luncheon, a monthly event organized by author Jim O’Brien and held at Atria’s restaurant in McMurray.
“I filled every minor league ballpark I pitched in after that game. If we were playing on the road, they came to see me get my brains beat out by the home team. If we were playing at home, they came to see me strike out everybody.”
Many newspaper outlets telephoned that night, and the day after the game, sure that wire service reports were incorrect, that Necciai probably finished with 17 strikeouts instead of 27. No, the callers were told; 27 was correct.
Necciai, a Monongahela High School graduate, said he is amazed that people still remember his accomplishment.
“I get six to 10 cards or letters a week, about a card a day,” Necciai said. “I’ve received them from places like Germany, that don’t even have baseball.”
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One player who teams might be calling the Pirates about ahead of the trade deadline is utilityman Wilmer Difo.
A switch-hitter who can play multiple positions and has been on a World Series championship team, Washington, though he did not see much playing time in the postseason, should be an attractive low-cost pickup for any contender. Difo was batting .292 heading into the Pirates’ game Monday at Arizona.
If Pittsburgh trades Difo and gets anybody in return, it will be win for the Pirates. Earlier this year, Pittsburgh sent Difo to the minors and had to designate him for assignment, meaning that any club could have acquired him for nothing. All they had to do was make a waiver claim. Twenty-nine teams passed on Difo. Now, any team that is interested in him will have to give up a player.