Former Minor League catcher Dave Bresnahan didn't talk much about it on the phone, but the man known as the "Potato Caper" comes from baseball royalty.
His great uncle, Roger, was the first MLB catcher to wear shin guards. He also developed the first batting helmet after getting hit in the head by a pitch.
So, back in 1987, when Dave had to call his dad, nephew of Roger, and tell him he'd been kicked off Cleveland's Double-A team for trying to use a potato to pick off a baserunner, he was terrified.
"Great, awesome dad and very dialed in to my baseball career," Bresnahan told me. "And I was thinking, 'Goddammit, now I don't want him to hear that his son got released for throwing a potato.' I had this fear and concern, and I always wanted to make him proud. I had to make the phone call, and that was a nerve-wracking call."
"I thought, 'What if we snuck maybe a rosin bag (or for some reason, maybe because I'm Irish) a potato into the game?'" Bresnahan recalled. “It was just talk, but then it got picked up the next day and my teammates thought it was funny. They said, 'Well, why don't you do it?' I go, 'What are you talking about?'"
Bresnahan barely even played, so for him to finally get some action and then start throwing a potato around the field seemed like a risky move. One of his teammates reminded him there was a doubleheader the next week against the Phillies and he'd definitely be behind the plate for one of the games.
"I said, 'Alright, I'll do it,'" Bresnahan told me, laughing.
So, the plan was set: when a runner reached third base during the game against the Phillies, Bresnahan would grab the potato, throw wildly over the third baseman's head in an attempted pickoff and then tag the runner out with the actual ball as he came strolling into home plate. Most of the team would be in on the play -- the pitching coach (whom he told over a couple of beers a few days before and was ecstatic about it), the pitchers and most of the fielders.
"The day before, people were like, 'Hey, tomorrow's Potato Day,'" Bresnahan said. "It just seemed to give people a little life, you know, something to talk about. That's all it was."
The one person who had no idea about Potato Day? Bresnahan's manager, Orlando Gomez, who had been demoted from the Triple-A team to the Bills midseason. He was already unhappy about his relegation and would likely not take too kindly to the move.
"No, of course I couldn't ask him for permission," Bresnahan said.
Bresnahan also checked with a friend, Tim Tschida, who was a Major League umpire at the time (you may remember him as the crew chief for this ejection), to see what kind of blowback there might be from introducing a potato into the game. Tschida said if he were the crew chief, he would likely just send the runner back and have a do-over. He'd also possibly kick Bresnahan out of the game. The catcher could live with that. He just didn't want the runner to be allowed home because of his prank.
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