Word: gaedel
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...them was enough to startle the staid world of baseball and set Veeck's fellow owners fuming. As owner of the St. Louis Browns, Veeck (as in wreck) hired 3-ft. 7-in. Eddie Gaedel and trained him to crouch low so his strike zone was approximately 1 ½ in. Wearing uniform No. 1/8, Gaedel emerged from a giant birthday cake between games of a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers on Aug. 19, 1951, and stepped up to lead off for the Browns in the second game. As expected, Gaedel walked on four pitches and retired from baseball. Next...
...have heard of Eddie Gaedel. At 3'7, he is the shortest person ever to play in a major-league game. In a stunt in 1951, Bill Veeck, owner of the St. Louis Browns, sent Gaedel to bat. He instructed Gaedel to stand at the plate and not swing and Gaedel promptly walked on four pitches...
...while Gaedel never again appeared in a game, he went down in the Guiness Book of World Records as the shortest person ever to play in the major leagues. His picture is surely somewhere in Cooperstown...
...helicopter filled with Martians landed at Chicago's Comiskey Park and captured both Fox and his equally diminutive double-play partner, Luis Aparicio. The stunt was dreamed up by White Sox owner Bill Veeck, who eight years earlier had shocked baseball by sending 3-ft. 7-in. Eddie Gaedel to the plate for the St. Louis Browns. In fact, Gaedel was one of the four Martians (all of them very little people) who tried to enlist Fox and Aparicio in their battle against giant Earthlings...
...break out in a smile of unexpected dimensions. One is a basketball player of 7 ft. 7 in. but just 208 lbs., the other a football player of 308 lbs. but just 6 ft. 2 in. Since their sideshow duties extend to the legitimate arena, neither is an Eddie Gaedel, the baseball midget of 1951 with "a strike zone barely visible to the naked eye." But both are Primo Carneras from boxing's '30s, outsize attractions obliged to double as spectacles...