May was indeed a merry month for Denny Lemaster when he pitched against the Cardinals. A left-hander, Lemaster hurled four shutouts versus the Cardinals, and all occurred in May during the 1960s.
In 11 seasons in the majors with the Braves (1962-67), Astros (1968-71) and Expos (1972), Lemaster was on the cusp of becoming an ace until injuries set him back. His record was 90-105, including 15-13 versus the Cardinals.
Lemaster was 85 when he died on July 24, 2024. He experienced multiple family tragedies during his life: his sister drowned in a cesspool; his father died in a car crash; his wife also was killed in an auto accident.
Cesspool cave-in
Lemaster resided with his parents and younger sister in Camarillo, Calif., 50 miles north of Los Angeles. Denny’s father, Cyrus, milked cows for Adohr Farms and the family was housed in a residence court leased by the dairy for its workers.
On June 24, 1951, Denny’s sister, Lana, 8, and a playmate, Peggy Ziese, were skipping across the yard of the residence court when “the earth opened up beneath them,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Rotten timbers covering a cesspool had given way and Lana fell in, the Associated Press reported. “Lana fell from sight through a hole about three feet in diameter,” the Times reported.
According to the Los Angeles Daily News, her friend Peggy “lost her footing but scrambled to safety” and screamed for help.
Two neighbors, Fred Luddenburg and Charles Simmons, were the first on the scene. According to the Camarillo Star, Lana’s father, Cyrus, soon joined them. The men lowered a garden hose to Lana.
“She grasped it and was nearly free of water when rotted timber gave way and struck her, causing her to lose her grip,” the Daily News reported. “Lana disappeared under an avalanche of dirt,” according to the Associated Press.
Her brother Denny, 12, had run to a fire station three blocks away for help, but rescuers arrived too late. “The rescue squad laid planks across the opening and lowered a ladder into the pit,” the Times reported. “Russell Griffin climbed down the ladder and carried Lana’s body to the surface.” Attempts to resuscitate failed.
Twenty minutes after she first fell, Lana was dead, drowned in the cesspool.
“Because of the tragic death of little Lana Lemaster, many local residents are advocating the immediate installation of a central sewage system,” the Camarillo Star reported.
(The Lemasters never considered a lawsuit. “We were poor, uneducated people,” Denny told the Times in 2021. “If that happened today, we’d have owned Adohr Farms.”)
Fatal accident
Three years later, on Dec. 3, 1954, Denny’s father, Cyrus, 44, died after his pickup truck skidded on a rain-slick road in Camarillo and slammed into a power pole, deputy coroner Virgil Payton said to the Oxnard Press-Courier.
A passing motorist stopped and found Cyrus in the pickup truck, bleeding badly. An ambulance was called to the scene, but Cyrus “had to be transferred to another ambulance when the first broke down (on its way) to the hospital,” the Ventura County Star reported. Cyrus was dead on arrival.
Pitching in
Without a father to support he and his mother, Denny worked 40 hours a week at a gas station while attending Oxnard High School, the Oxnard Press-Courier reported. He earned extra income from a second job with a lumber company.
When he wasn’t working or attending classes, Lemaster played high school baseball. He was a first baseman as a freshman and sophomore, then turned to pitching his junior and senior years.
As a senior in 1958, Lemaster had a stretch of 53 consecutive scoreless innings. He struck out 251 in 123 innings. Johnny Moore, West Coast scout for the reigning World Series champion Milwaukee Braves, signed Lemaster for $60,000 in June 1958. Moore previously signed Eddie Mathews and Del Crandall for the Braves.
(One of Lemaster’s prep teammates, Ken McMullen, signed with the Dodgers in 1960 and went on to play 16 seasons in the majors as a third baseman.)
Reaching the top
In 1962, his fifth season in the minors, Lemaster was 10-4 for Louisville when he got called to the Braves in July. Their ace left-hander, Warren Spahn, helped him adapt to the big leagues, showing him an effective pickoff move to first and how to add off-speed pitches to his mix.
“At Louisville, I could rear back and just throw it by some hitters,” Lemaster told the Ventura County Star, “but you can’t get away with that in the big leagues.”
In 1963, his first full season in the majors, Lemaster was 11-14, but the Braves were shut out in seven of those defeats and he lost another by a 2-1 score.
The next year, Lemaster had his best record _ 17-11 for the 1964 Braves. On May 24, he shut out the Cardinals for the first time, a three-hitter at Milwaukee. Boxscore
When he got to spring training in 1965, Lemaster’s shoulder ached. “Figuring he could work the stiffness out, he continued to pitch,” Newspaper Enterprise Association reported. “The pain increased. By July, the pain in his shoulder was as bad as his pitching record.” He finished the season with a 7-13 mark.
“I had torn tendons and there was nothing to do but rest,” Lemaster told reporter Sandy Padwe. “I was taking ultrasound and cobalt treatments and they were shooting my shoulder with cortisone. Finally, the shoulder began to respond and I could throw normally again.”
Pitching instead of throwing
In May 1966, the Cardinals moved into Busch Memorial Stadium in downtown St. Louis and defeated the Braves twice in their first two games there. The first pitcher to beat the Cardinals in their new home was Lemaster. He did it with a four-hit shutout and also drove in a run against Bob Gibson.
“Tonight I had to be a pitcher,” Lemaster told the Atlanta Journal. “I had to make a guy pop the ball up on a 3-1 pitch. I got another one to pop up on a 3-2 pitch and I got one to ground out on a 3-1 pitch. There’s a fine point between a good game like that and a bad game sometimes. If you make a little mistake in those situations, 3-1, 3-2, you can be in real trouble.
“So that’s why I get more satisfaction out of a game like (this) one. I made the pitches I had to when I had to make them.” Boxscore
With an 11-8 season record, Lemaster was warming up for an August 1966 start at San Francisco “when I felt something snap in my arm below the elbow,” he told Newspaper Enterprise Association. He pitched four innings, couldn’t straighten his arm and was shut down for the season.
Right stuff
The Cardinals were on their way to becoming World Series champions in 1967, but Lemaster was not intimidated. On May 24 in Atlanta, he pitched a one-hitter against them and won, 2-0.
“Just as soon as I started warming up, my fastball was going boom, boom, boom, right over the plate and I knew that I had it,” Lemaster told the Associated Press.
Catcher Joe Torre said to the Atlanta Constitution, “His fastball was as good as I ever saw it.”
The Cardinals’ lone hit was Lou Brock’s one-out single in the third, a low liner to center. “It almost tore my head off,” Lemaster said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Bob Gibson pitched a three-hitter for the Cardinals. One of those hits was Felipe Alou’s two-run home run in the fifth. More upsetting to Gibson, though, was what preceded the home run. With two outs and none on, Gibson issued a walk to Woody Woodward, who entered the game with a .197 batting average and had a career mark of .100 (3-for-30) versus Gibson.
“I should have thrown the ball right down the middle to Woodward,” Gibson said to the Post-Dispatch. Boxscore
More tragedy
After the 1967 season, Lemaster and infielder Denis Menke were dealt to the Astros for infielder Sonny Jackson and first baseman Chuck Harrison.
Lemaster shut out the Cardinals for the final time on May 2, 1968, a three-hitter at Houston. Lemaster had a 2.81 ERA for the 1968 Astros but a 10-15 record. Boxscore
He was moved fulltime to the bullpen by Astros manager Harry Walker in 1971 and finished his pitching career as a reliever with the 1972 Expos.
Lemaster became a custom home builder in Georgia, where he resided with his wife, Earlene, and their four children.
In October 1978, Earlene, 40, was killed and a daughter, Kim, 14, was injured in a traffic accident in Decatur, Ga. Earlene was driving her daughter home from school when she apparently ran a stop sign, a DeKalb County police official told the Atlanta Constitution. A truck slammed into the Cadillac and Earlene and her daughter were pinned in the wreckage for at least 30 minutes before rescuers could free them. The 20-year-old driver of the truck was not seriously injured and was not charged, police said.
Lemaster remarried in 1983. He was a master woodcarver, whose specialty was duck decoys.