The Main Event
- August 17, 1957 – Richie Ashburn hit the same spectator, Alice Roth, with two foul balls in the same at-bat — the first broke her nose, and the second struck her again as she was being carried out on a stretcher.
On August 17, 1957, Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Richie Ashburn did something no other hitter in major league history is known to have done: he struck the same spectator with two foul balls in the same at-bat. The victim, a Phillies season-ticket holder named Alice Roth, ended up with a broken nose, a fractured knee, and — improbably — a lasting friendship with the man who hit her.
A foul-ball artist at work
Ashburn was famous even among his peers for his ability to stay alive at the plate by fouling off pitch after pitch, sometimes ten or more in a single at-bat, while he waited for something he could drive or worked a walk. It was a skill that made him one of the toughest outs in the National League and a two-time batting champion. On this particular Saturday afternoon at Connie Mack Stadium, with the Phillies hosting the New York Giants, that same skill turned into a freak accident.
Alice Roth was sitting near the third-base dugout, close to the press box, with her husband and her two young grandsons, Preston and Tom. The seats were good ones — Roth’s husband, Earl, was the sports editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin, and the family had regular access to prime seating near the field. Ashburn sliced a foul ball down the third-base line that struck Roth squarely in the face, breaking her nose. Play stopped as medical personnel rushed to attend to her, and she was placed on a stretcher to be carried out of the stands.
Hit again, on the very next pitch
What happened next is the detail that has kept the story alive for nearly seventy years. As Roth was being carried out on the stretcher, the game resumed, and Ashburn — still in the same at-bat — fouled off another pitch. It struck her again, this time in the leg, breaking a small bone near her knee. The same batter had hit the same fan twice in the span of a single plate appearance, an outcome so statistically implausible that it remains, as far as researchers have been able to determine, unmatched in major league history.
Roth was taken from the ballpark to a Philadelphia hospital and later transferred to Montgomery Hospital in Norristown, Pennsylvania, to recover. The Phillies went on to beat the Giants 3-1 that day behind Jack Sanford.
Did Ashburn know what he had done?
By most retellings, yes — Ashburn and the rest of the ballpark watched the second ball find Roth in real time, a moment described in some accounts as the crowd looking on in “wide-eyed astonishment” as the foul ball tracked toward the stretcher. There’s no record of a quote from Ashburn in the newspapers the next day, but what is well documented is what he did afterward, which speaks to how seriously he took it. This was not a case of a player shrugging off a freak play and moving on.
A friendship born from misfortune
The day after the incident, Ashburn visited Alice Roth in the hospital. He came back to see her several times during her recovery, brought her flowers, and signed a baseball for her. From that point on, he sent her a card every Christmas and every birthday for the rest of her life — a tradition that continued for roughly three decades, until her death in the 1980s. The Phillies organization embraced the family as well: Roth’s grandsons got a clubhouse visit, free tickets, and an autographed team baseball, and one of them is said to have asked his grandmother, half-joking, whether she thought she could go to an Eagles game and get hit in the face with a football too. Roth herself reportedly took to sitting in the left-field bleachers at later games, well clear of foul-ball territory down the third-base line. Decades later, her grandson Preston crossed paths with Ashburn again at a memorabilia signing; Ashburn recognized the family name, stood up, and greeted him warmly.
Separating the facts from the legend
Over the years the story has picked up an embellishment that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny: the claim that Ashburn was struck by yet another foul ball at the very moment flowers were being delivered to Roth’s hospital room. It’s a vivid image, and an understandable bit of folklore to graft onto an already strange story, but no contemporaneous account supports it. What actually happened — two foul balls in one at-bat, followed separately by a hospital visit and flowers — is remarkable enough on its own without embellishment. Interestingly, the story doesn’t appear in the Society for American Baseball Research’s scholarly biography of Ashburn, which suggests baseball historians have generally treated it as beloved ballpark folklore rather than a core piece of his playing record — even as it remains one of the most frequently repeated Phillies anecdotes of the era.
A rare kind of baseball accident
Fans being hurt by batted balls and thrown bats is an old and uncomfortable part of baseball history, but very few incidents rival the sheer improbability of the Ashburn-Roth story. Ted Williams once flung his bat into the stands in frustration after a called third strike in 1958, striking a woman in the forehead; he later sent her an expensive gift and she forgave him instantly. Minnesota’s Denard Span once fouled a ball into the stands that struck his own mother. The most serious ballpark tragedy of all came in 1970, when a 14-year-old fan at Dodger Stadium died days after being hit in the head by a foul line drive — a stark reminder of how dangerous an unprotected seat along the foul lines could be. Modern ballparks now extend protective netting much further down the lines than they did in Ashburn’s day, a change driven in part by a string of serious fan injuries in the 2010s.
None of those incidents, however, involved the same batter striking the same person twice in a single at-bat. Nearly seventy years later, that distinction still belongs to Richie Ashburn and Alice Roth alone.
Philadelphia Baseball Events for August 17
- August 17, 1894 – The Phillies beat Louisville 29-4, combining for a record 44 hits (36 by the Phillies); Sam Thompson hit for the cycle and added two more singles, and three other Phillies also had five hits apiece.
- August 17, 1912 – Purchased the contract of pitcher Erskine Mayer from Atlanta of the Southern Association.
- August 17, 1972 – Steve Carlton won his 15th consecutive decision, beating the Reds 9-4 and setting a team record.
- August 17, 1985 – Juan Samuel, Glenn Wilson, and Mike Schmidt hit back-to-back-to-back home runs in the 7th inning of a 10-4 win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field — only the second time in team history — as the Phillies hit six total homers in the game to tie a team record.
Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for August 17
- George Harper (born 1865) – A pitcher who threw his lone Phillies season in 1894, going 6-6 with a 5.32 ERA, before closing out his two-year big-league career with Brooklyn in 1896. (Note: baseball-reference.com lists his birth year as 1865, not 1866 as shown on the source digest page.)
- Bill Keister (born 1871) – A utility infielder/outfielder who spent his final major league season with the Phillies in 1903, hitting .320 with 128 hits in 100 games.
- Johnny Rawlings (born 1892) – A second baseman who played for the Phillies in 1920-1921 during a 12-year career that also included the Reds, Braves, Giants, Pirates, and Cardinals.
- Augie Walsh (born 1904) – A pitcher whose full two-year major league career (1927-1928) was spent with the Phillies, going 4-10.
- Johnny Watwood (born 1905) – An outfielder/first baseman who closed out his career with a brief Phillies stint in 1939 after the team purchased his contract, following stretches with the White Sox and Red Sox.
- Pat McLaughlin (born 1910) – A pitcher who appeared for the Philadelphia Athletics during a brief three-season career split with the Detroit Tigers, finishing up in 1945.
- Rudy York (born 1913) – A longtime Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox slugger (seven-time All-Star, 277 career home runs) who closed out his career with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1948, his final big-league season.
- Clem Hausmann (born 1919) – A pitcher who split his three-year major league career between the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Athletics before retiring in 1949.
- John Buzhardt (born 1936) – A right-handed starter who pitched for the Phillies in 1960-1961, including during the club’s historically bad 1961 season, before finding his best form later with the White Sox.
- Tony Barron (born 1966) – An outfielder who played 1997 with the Phillies, hitting .286 in 57 games and making a memorable diving catch against the Cardinals that July.
- Mike Cervenak (born 1976) – An infielder who made his only major league appearances for the Phillies in 2008; left off the World Series roster, he still sat in uniform in the dugout throughout the team’s championship run.
- Chad Qualls (born 1978) – A veteran reliever who served as set-up man to closer Jonathan Papelbon for the Phillies in 2012, one stop in a 14-year big-league career.
- Brett Myers (born 1980) – A right-hander who spent 2002-2009 with the Phillies as both starter and, briefly, closer, and was on the team’s 2008 World Series championship roster.
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