History

Baseball Digest describes this publicity stunt: In a publicity stunt in 1908, Washington Senators catcher Gabby Street caught a ball dropped 555 feet from the Washington Monument. Seven years later, when pioneering aviator Ruth Law was dropping golf balls out of an airplane near the Brooklyn Robins training camp in Daytona Beach—as part of a promotion for a nearby golf course—talk turned to whether a baseball could be caught from a plane.

The Robin up to taking the challenge was 50-year-old manager Wilbert Robinson, a catcher himself for 17 major league seasons, but now retired for a dozen years and well past his playing weight. On this date in 1915, Law flew over the club’s camp with Robinson ready and waiting below. Law had forgotten to bring a ball, however, so instead she dropped a grapefruit that was part of her lunch.

Robinson circled under the spheroid, got a glove on it, but it exploded across his chest as he was knocked to the ground. “Help me, lads, I’m covered with my own blood!” Robinson exclaimed before realizing the fluid was grapefruit juice. By then, Robins players had gathered around Robinson and were enjoying a good laugh.

The manager long suspected that 24-year-old Robins outfielder Casey Stengel, who planned to be aboard the plane but apparently didn’t join Law in the air, was responsible for the grapefruit being substituted for the baseball—though Robinson admitted that a baseball might have killed him. Stengel later took credit for dropping the grapefruit from the plane, but in a 1957 interview, Law shared details of the event and cleared Stengel of having a role in the exploding grapefruit.

Baseball Digest / FB