Garry Templeton’s Disappearing — and Reappearing — Record

UPDATE: We received word on April 17, 2020, that the stats at Retrosheet (and, at some point, Baseball-Reference) will be updated soon to reflect the research in this article.

About three years ago, I wrote about former St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Garry Templeton. In 1979, Templeton became the first player ever to have at least 100 hits from each side of the plate in one season. He had 111 hits as a left-handed hitter, and exactly 100 hits right-handed. Or so the legend went. According to more modern records, Templeton was only credited with either 94 or 96 hits from the right side, according to Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference, respectively. Both sites agree that Templeton had 94 hits off left-handed pitchers, but B-Ref credits him with two hits as a right-handed hitter versus a right-handed pitcher. (View the following screenshots to see Templeton’s hit totals according to both sites. I’m including screenshots because I expect these numbers to change based on what you’re about to read.)

Garry Templeton 1979 splits, via Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet.

As I wrote in April 2017, it appeared that whoever told Templeton he was close to reaching 100 hits right-handed had been mistaken about exactly how close he was, and he fell short. This was doubly frustrating because Templeton actually took time off after recording what he believed to be his 100th right-handed hit of the season, leaving 11 plate appearances on the table that he obviously would have taken had he known he was still short of the record.

One little thing has been nagging at me for the last three years, though: Wouldn’t Templeton have had to be pretty confident in his totals to stop right on 100 with a few games left in the season? And if he was that confident, isn’t there a chance that he was right?

So I set out to figure out exactly what Templeton’s total was. Step one was easy: Make a spreadsheet of all his hits, with the name and handedness of the pitcher. Basically, unless we can confirm otherwise, switch-hitters are presumed to have batted lefty against righties and righty against lefties — it’s the platoon advantage, and it’s the entire point of being a switch-hitter. In this way, I was able to confirm what Retrosheet and B-Ref agree on: Templeton had 94 hits off left-handed pitchers in 1979, with the most coming against Philadelphia Phillies teammates Randy Lerch (8) and Steve Carlton (7).

That meant that if Templeton really had 100 hits right-handed in 1979, six of them came in right-on-right situations. Our next clue came from a book on Cardinals history called “Cardinals Journal: Year by Year & Day by Day with the St. Louis Cardinals Since 1882” by John Snyder. On pages 578-79, in the entry for September 28, Snyder writes:

Garry Templeton becomes the only player in major league history to collect 100 hits from both sides of the plate with three hits from the right side during a doubleheader against the Mets at Busch Memorial Stadium. … Templeton collected his 94th hit from the right side on September 22. Upon learning that no one had ever gotten 100 hits from both sides in the same season, he began batting right-handed against right-handed pitching to get the record.

There’s a date for us! With that September 22 date in mind, I went back to my spreadsheet and my newspaper archives. After September 22, Templeton’s next two hits came against Lerch, so while they count towards his total of right-handed hits, they don’t do us any good in this context because he would have been batting righty against the lefty anyway. Templeton’s first hit(s) against a righty after that September 22 date came on September 25, when he had two hits against Phillies right-hander Dan Larson. If Templeton batted right-handed against the righty, perhaps there was some mention of it in contemporaneous accounts?

Proof that Templeton batted right-handed against Dan Larson.

Yes, yes there was. In the next morning’s edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, an article by an unnamed “Special Correspondent” said:

Tuesday night, Templeton stroked his ninth home run (a career high), his 19th triple, scored two runs and led the Cardinals to a 4-1 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies — a victory that assured them of at least a tie for third place in the National League’s Eastern Division.

And he did it righthanded against a righthanded pitcher, Dan Larson. Templeton, a switch hitter who has a league-leading 206 hits, is going head-to-head with righthanders because he wants 100 or more hits from each side of the plate. He currently has 111 from the left side and 95 from the right.

“I wouldn’t be doing it if I wasn’t going for 100 hits,” Templeton said. “The only way to do it is to hit righthanded against righthanded pitching. I don’t think we’ll see that many lefthanders for the rest of the year.”

We learn a few important things in those paragraphs. For starters, we have confirmation that Templeton was both aware of and actively seeking the record. And we now know that he had at least two right-on-right hits, getting him to the 96 listed at B-Ref. (I don’t know if the two hits against Dan Larson are the two B-Ref is crediting him with; there are only numbers there, not specifics.)

There are two other things we can glean from the paragraphs above, but I’ll save those for a minute. Let’s jump to his next two hits, which came on September 27 against Pittsburgh Pirates right-handers Don Robinson and Kent Tekulve. Presumably, since Templeton was on record as chasing 100, he would have been batting right-handed for these hits, too. But let’s check the newspaper and see what we can find, just in case.

Proof that Templeton batted righty against Don Robinson and Kent Tekulve.

Sure enough, we find this from Michael Farber of the Montreal Gazette:

Hitting right all week

Templeton certainly has a good attitude about Garry Templeton. Templeton, a switch-hitter, already has more than 100 hits left-handed and in order to become the first man to have 100 each way in a season, he has been hitting righty the past week against all pitchers.

Sacrificing team goals for personal goals?

Not yesterday.

Templeton was retired twice by left-hander Dave Roberts. But, again batting righthanded, he singled in a run against right-hander Don Robinson in the fourth, walked against right-hander Dock Ellis in the sixth and doubled another run home in the eighth against Tekulve, a diabolical right-handed side-armer.

The hits gave him 97 from the right side and raised his major league leading total to 206, one more than teammate Keith Hernandez, who also had two hits.

At this point, we now know that both Retrosheet and B-Ref are wrong. We now have 98 documented right-handed hits — the 94 that came off lefty pitchers, plus the four confirmed cases of right-on-right.

We also know that Templeton is committed to seeing this through. The problem is, there’s only one hit left against a right-handed pitcher, and we still need two more. In the September 28 doubleheader against the New York Mets, Templeton had one hit off right-hander Juan Berenguer and two off lefty Pete Falcone. The last hit off Falcone, a bunt single, was the one that gave him 100 from the right side of the plate, according to pretty much everyone. But in our spreadsheet, it only gives him 99, even once we’ve proven the hit off Berenguer was right-handed. There’s no specific mention of the Berenguer hit that I can find, but I find a lot of articles from that day that mention him batting exclusively right-handed, so that’s good enough for me. But more interesting is what else those articles say.

Evidence that Templeton hatched his all-righty plan on September 20.

Like this one, for example, from Tom Duffy in the Chicago Tribune:

St. Louis Cardinal shortstop Garry Templeton beat out a bunt single in the third inning of the second game of a double-header against the New York Mets for his 100th hit this season right-handed. Templeton thus became the first switch-hitter ever to get 100 hits from both sides of the plate in one season. After getting his 200th hit Sept. 20, the 23-year-old Templeton decided to hit exclusively right-handed to get the 11 hits he needed for history.

There it is! Did you catch it? Our September 22 date was wrong! According to Duffy, Templeton made the decision to hit righty on September 20, not September 22 as Snyder’s book said. That brings us back to the two other things we pick up from the Post-Dispatch article above. First, that article had lines like “is going head-to-head,” “I wouldn’t be doing it,” etc., that lead one to believe this wasn’t the first game Templeton had tried hitting right-on-right. On its own, that’s not convincing, but the other tidbit is when it said he currently had 95 hits right-handed, even though our spreadsheet only showed 94. And Snyder’s account says it was after Templeton’s 94th right-handed hit on September 22 that he made the decision to hit exclusively from the right side. Again, it’s all circumstantial, but it was certainly enough to make me look closer.

Evidence that Templeton batted only right-handed for nine games before getting his 100th hit.

The next clue came as I looked deeper at the events of September 28 — or, more specifically, the coverage of those events in September 29’s newspapers. I came across a blurb from the Associated Press, printed in many newspapers that day, that says this:

Templeton had started the night batting .346 right-handed and .290 left-handed. During St. Louis’ last nine games, the 23-year-old infielder batted exclusively right-handed in pursuit of his achievement.

Count back nine games, and you have Templeton beginning his righty-only approach with his team’s doubleheader on September 22 — their first games after the September 20 magic date we just discovered. Snyder’s book had us looking at games after September 22, but in actuality we needed to include those two games.

And what do you know? Templeton had exactly one hit against a right-hander in that September 22 doubleheader: a leadoff single to center in game one against Mets starter John Pacella. With our spreadsheet sitting at 99 right-handed hits, could that Pacella single be the elusive number 100 we’re looking for?

Rick Hummel’s article telling us about Templeton’s plan to bat exclusively right-handed.

To be honest, I can’t find a single contemporaneous newspaper account that says Templeton batted right-handed against Pacella that day. But what I can find, which I believe is just as good, came the day before. In the September 21 issue of the Post-Dispatch, Rick Hummel wrote:

After reaching one switch-hitting milestone Thursday night, Garry Templeton immediately set his sights on another as the Cardinals headed east for their last trip of the season.

As an addendum to Silvio Martinez‘s staff-high 15th victory, a 2-1 triumph over the Chicago Cubs, Templeton got his 200th hit of the season. His single in the sixth inning meant that Templeton has had 200 hits in two of the last three seasons and made him only the third switch-hitter in history to have gotten 200 hits at least twice. Pete Rose will do it for the 10th time this year and Frankie Frisch did it three times.

Now, Templeton wants to be the first switch hitter to compile at least 100 hits from each side of the plate. But since he has only 89 right-handed hits now and since the Cardinals have just 11 games to play, Templeton said he would modify his approach. With Manager Ken Boyer‘s permission, which he obtained after Thursday night’s game, Templeton will bat righthanded any time he wishes the rest of the season.

“This will satisfy everybody’s curiosity,” said Boyer. “If he can hit .400 righthanded.”

It long has been Templeton’s contention that he could have hit for a higher average had he batter exclusively righthanded, instead of being converted to a switch-hitter by the Cardinals’ organization in 1974. And, for much of the season, Templeton carried a .380 average right-handed before he dived to .344 in the midst of a 3-for-29 slump.

“I’m tired, but I’m going to make it,” said Templeton. “I’m not scared to bat righthanded. But I don’t want anybody to think I’m showing them up — because they’ll throw at me.”

Boyer told Templeton, “It’s fine with me. But they’ll probably put an asterisk after it.”

Not quite conclusive — Hummel’s article merely says Templeton had permission to bat right-handed whenever he wanted to, not that he absolutely would every time. But it seems like, if you have permission to bat righty, you would take your first opportunity to do so, and his first opportunity was the at-bat against Pacella.

Proof that Templeton planned to bat exclusively right-handed.

But we have one last bit of evidence to push us over the edge. An Associated Press article from the same day as Hummel’s had a slightly different take on Templeton’s plans:

Afterward, Templeton conferred with Cards Manager Ken Boyer and said he will bat only right-handed for the remainder of the year in a bid to become the first switch-hitter in major league history to total 100 hits from each side.

Updated to add one final piece of evidence, perhaps the most compelling of all. In the September 30 edition of the Post-Dispatch, Hummel writes this, under the headline “Temp Switches Switching”:

Perhaps the most significant aspect to Garry Templeton’s achievement Friday night of becoming the first switch-hitter to record 100 hits from each side of the plate was that in the last few days, Templeton hit .400 batting righthanded against righthanded pitchers. He was 6 for 15 against righthanders in that stretch and, said Manager Ken Boyer, Templeton showed him that he could bat from that side all the time if he wanted to.

“I’m not advocating it,” said Boyer, but he said, “I haven’t seen him flinch yet. I’d say if he could bat 6 for 15 from that side … he could do whatever he’s comfortable doing.”

Templeton, however, said he intended to remain a pure switch-hitter. He said he would bat righthanded against righthanded pitching probably only if a 100-100 situation came up again.”

Hummel on Templeton

So, after the record had been achieved, Hummel and Boyer both say Templeton went 6-for-15 in right-on-right situations. That lines up perfectly with our established timeline of September 22 being the start of the experiment. Templeton had 17 plate appearances against righties from September 22 through September 28, with six hits and two walks. We now have the plan to bat exclusively right-handed, evidence of him batting only right-handed, and a statement of fact that he had only batted right-handed. Case closed.

There you have it. Here’s a summary:

• With Templeton sitting on 89 right-handed hits, he conferred with his manager and got permission to bat exclusively right-handed the rest of the season and stated his intention to do so.
• He had 11 more hits that season, including six against right-handed pitchers.
• Four of the six are specifically mentioned to have come right-handed, and the other two have extremely strong circumstantial evidence.
• The numbers in every account from the time line up with this established timeline.
• In total, Templeton went 6-for-15 with two walks in his 17 plate appearances from the right side against righties. He had three singles, a double, a triple, and a homer, but he also struck out five times.

THUS: In 1979, Garry Templeton did, in fact, have 100 hits from the right side of the plate and 111 from the left side, becoming the first player ever to do that. Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference both currently have incorrect splits for Templeton from that season.

Below, you will find my spreadsheet of all 211 of Templeton’s hits.

(NOTE: In 1980, Willie Wilson became the second player to have 100 hits from each side of the plate, but B-Ref and Retrosheet both currently have Wilson listed as only having 99 hits from the right side. I’m digging, but thus far I haven’t been able to find any evidence that Wilson batted right-on-right at any point that season.)

Garry Templeton's 1979 Hits