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13 of the most extraordinary baseball games of all time

Over the past nearly 100 years, a baker's dozen worth of outrageous major league baseball games.

6. July 31, 1935: Nightclub singer Kitty Burke bats for the Reds, or does she?

CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/AP

  • By Ross Atkin Contributor

The Cincinnati Reds defeat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-3.

Craziness was in the air at Crosley Field in Cincinnati for this night game, played just two months after baseball’s first game played under the lights at the same ballpark. The game against the defending World Series champion Cardinals drew an overflow crowd that included nightclub entertainer Kitty Burke who taunted the Cardinals from near home plate, where some fans were forced to stand. One insulting remark about Ducky Medwick’s hitting ability led Burke to grab a bat and stride to the plate in a dress and high heels. St. Louis pitcher Paul Dean served up an underhanded delivery that she hit back to the mound. Dean threw to first to get her out. The at-bat wasn’t entered on the official scorecard, even though Cardinals manager Frankie Frisch wanted the out counted.

 Additional facts:

- Kitty Burke is sometimes called the only woman to ever bat in the majors, even though her appearance didn’t register in the official record.

- Four years earlier, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis had banned 17-year-old Jackie Mitchell from playing in the minors despite the potential she exhibited. Using a sinking curveball taught her by future Hall of Famer Dazzy Vance, she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig when the Yankees played an exhibition against the Chattanooga Lookouts, the Yankees’ AA farm club.

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Mark Sappenfield
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