Nine-Hit Wonder: A Long-Gone Gator, An MLB Record and His Daughter's Memories
Thursday, March 2, 2023 | Baseball, Scott Carter
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By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — She is 93 and lives with a caretaker on Treasure Island. Some days she feels 75 again. On other days, Betty Groven runs out of gas and retires like a broken-down car left on the side of the road.
Simple math in her mind.
"I was born in 1929, darling,'' Groven said. "It's easy to say, and it's easy to laugh, but the person on the other end [of the phone] is still saying, 'what?' I feel old."
Groven grew up in Bartow and Tampa, graduated from Tampa's Plant High School, and then attended Florida State, Miami and the University of Tampa. She became a teacher and swimming coach at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Dade County.
She retired to the Tampa-St. Petersburg area years ago and is a diehard Tampa Bay Rays fan. She has made her share of trips to Tropicana Field on those days she feels spunky, and if you get her talking about baseball, it doesn't take long for Groven to bring up the 2020 World Series and that decision to take out Blake Snell.
The players' names often escape her, but Betty believes in the home team.
"I just love our team'' she said. "I'm just sick over the pitcher that we had the year before last, and then he had to have surgery. I think our ballfield is just absolutely wonderful. I love it. I think they are just out of their minds changing it."
Ninety-three-year-old Betty Groven and her dog. (Photo: Courtesy of Groven's Facebook page).
Once her caretaker puts the phone on speaker so Betty can hear better, the conversation turns to her father. He has been dead since August 1959, acute leukemia the culprit. He was 54, and his death elicited a modest obituary from the Associated Press that newspapers printed from coast to coast.
"It was very difficult,'' said Groven, an only child. "We were close. I'm hesitating on some of this because my [maternal] grandmother and grandfather more or less raised me because my mother and my father were busy with his career. I was with mother and daddy all the time but not living with them."
Her father's name was John Henderson Burnett. His claim to fame was No. 1, Johnny Burnett, shortstop, Cleveland Indians. He owns a Major League Baseball record that has stood more than 90 years since that memorable day he stepped into the batter's box 11 times.
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An accomplished football and baseball player at Bartow High in the early 1920s, Burnett graduated in 1923 and enrolled at the University of Florida, where he joined the Gators' football and baseball teams.
Burnett was known for his speed and being a stand-up teammate. He played freshman football and then spent the next three seasons on the varsity as one of the Gators' top running backs. He teamed with kicker/quarterback Edgar C. Jones, who would later become UF's athletic director from 1930-36, to defeat Mississippi State during the 1925 season. Jones kicked two field goals, and Burnett added a touchdown run in the 12-0 victory.
But Burnett shined the most on the diamond. He could hit, run and move around the infield, spending most of his time at shortstop. He played for the Gators under head coaches Rex Farrior, James White and Lance Richbourg, the first UF baseball player to have extended success in the big leagues.
In the spring of 1927, his senior season, Burnett took a shot at the majors and arrived unannounced at Cleveland's spring training site in Lakeland for a tryout. His UF career was over. The Indians signed Burnett and did something rare: they put him on their major league roster. Burnett didn't play much, but he got to live the life of a major leaguer and learn the nuances of playing shortstop from future Indians Hall of Famer Joe Sewell.
Burnett split the next two seasons between Cleveland and the minors, but by the 1930 season, he was in Cleveland for good. Indians manager Roger Peckinpaugh, starting shortstop for the Yankees when Babe Ruth arrived in the Big Apple in 1920, started playing Burnett at shortstop and third base, where Burnett split time with Sewell.
Betty was still a young child as her father's career began to take off, but she recalls times at the ballpark with her parents as she got older.
"I was very young, but I remember some of it,'' she said. "I remember him even making me a little baseball suit. I don't remember where it was from, whether it was Cleveland or St. Louis. I remember going down and being in the dugout."
Burnett played in 111 games in 1931 and became the primary starting shortstop in 1932, setting the stage for his place in history in what is considered one of the most amazing games in the game's annals.
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The afternoon of July 10, 1932, figured to be a warm, sluggish Sunday for the Indians and Philadelphia Athletics at cozy League Park. No one knew how long.
The Indians arrived by train in the wee hours of the morning after capping a nine-game road trip by splitting a doubleheader at Washington the previous day. The Athletics, managed by Connie Mack and having won two of the last three World Series, arrived in Cleveland following a doubleheader split at home against the White Sox the day before.
Both teams had winning records and were still in contention in the American League behind the Ruth- and Lou Gehrig-led Yankees. The Athletics, chasing a fourth consecutive AL pennant, featured four future Hall of Famers: Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, Lefty Grove and Al Simmons.
Former Gators football and baseball player Johnny Burnett at Fenway Park during his career with the Cleveland Indians. (Photo: Leslie Jones via the Boston Public Library)
Once the umpire announced "play ball," that's what the Athletics and Indians did for 18 innings. The marathon held the announced crowd of 10,000 fans captive for 4 hours, 5 minutes, which by today's standards seems remarkable, but according to reports at the time, it was the longest game on the clock in either league in 11 years.
The Athletics won, 18-17, as Foxx went 6-for-9 with three home runs and eight RBI. The teams combined for 35 runs, 39 men left on base and 58 hits.
While Foxx's performance garnered headlines, so did that of Johnny Burnett. Burnett was almost impossible for Athletics pitchers Lew Krausse (one inning) and Eddie Rommel (17 innings!) to get out.
The left-handed hitting Burnett went 9-for-11 with seven singles, two doubles, four runs scored and two RBI. In a single afternoon, Burnett's batting average improved from .298 to .323. Burnett broke the major league record for hits in a single game, which for 40 years had belonged to Wilbert Robinson, who had seven hits in a game in 1892 for the hapless Baltimore Orioles of the National League.
In the next day's Boston Globe, columnist Melvin E. Webb Jr. wrote this about Burnett's historic day at the plate: "The boys will have to go like wildfire to beat that one, and our judgment is that the Burnett bingles will stand as an unapproachable all-time record in a single game of ball."
Webb's hot take remains valid nine decades later.
"That's one game I wish I had seen,'' famed Los Angeles Times sports columnist Jim Murray once wrote.
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Burnett remains one of only six players in major league history to have seven hits in a single game and the only one with eight or more. The last player to have at least seven is Brandon Crawford, who in 2016 had a seven-hit game for the Giants in a 14-inning win at Miami. Detroit's Rocky Colavito (seven hits in a 22-inning loss to the Yankees in 1962), Detroit's Cesar Gutierrez (seven hits in a 12-inning win over the Indians in 1970), and Pittsburgh's Rennie Stennett (seven hits in a 22-0 win over the Cubs in 1975) are the others.
The summer of '32 was special for Burnett. He finished the season with a .297 batting average, four home runs and a career-high 53 RBI while playing in a career-high 129 games. He became the first player to homer at Cleveland Stadium less than a month after his nine-hit game.
The Indians moved into their new home in late summer, and on Aug. 7, Burnett hit a two-run homer off Senators right-hander Tommy Thomas in a 7-4 win to make more history. He earned notice in "Ripley's Believe it or Not" for his outburst against the Athletics.
Betty would flip through the pages of her father's past glory in the years after he died until a storm destroyed them at her mom's New Port Richey home sometime in the 1970s.
"I had two or three scrapbooks just full of pictures,'' Betty said. "There was a flood from a hurricane. My mother had everything. They were all ruined. It was awful."
When former Washington star pitcher Walter Johnson took over as Cleveland's manager midway into the '33 season, the Indians traded Burnett to the St. Louis Browns after the summer of '34.
He spent a season with the Browns as a reserve on Roger Hornsby's club, and after that season, St. Louis traded Burnett to the Reds for aging first baseman Jim Bottomley, the National League MVP with the Cardinals in 1928. Burnett spent time as a minor league player and manager in the Reds organization before retiring and returning to his South Tampa home on Bay View Avenue.
Betty Groven said her father didn't talk much about his career after he stopped playing but stayed active in the community and sports. During his time with the Indians, Burnett would officiate high school football games in the offseason.
"The last I think of him is playing golf over in Bartow with his buddies,'' she said. "[The record] was amazing, and I was too young to know why."
Burnett later settled into the working world and worked for Tampa's Pimm Engineering Co. at his death. Betty's mother, Lucille Burnett, died in 1981. Lucille and Johnny are buried next to each other at Garden of Memories Cemetery in Tampa.
A week after Burnett's record-setting nine-hit game, Cleveland-based nationally syndicated columnist William Braucher attempted to provide readers insight into the relatively unknown Burnett.
"Outside of baseball, Burnett stays in the background,'' Braucher wrote. "He isn't noisy, except for socks and neckties. He'll play a game of cards, read a book, or go to the movies. He's a married man — and has been for almost five years."
Betty Groven has no memorabilia from her dad's historic day, washed away long ago by that awful flood.
But thanks to the Rays and her retirement years, Betty said she is more of a baseball fan now than ever. When reminded it's unlikely anyone will break her father's record, Betty's memory needs no pause.
"Isn't that the truth,'' she said. "His record is standing, and he's a little ole boy from Bartow."
