Coffee County Legends: Paschal was a pinch-hitting great

Editor’s note: This is the first part in a series on Coffee County sports legends.

Enterprise is most known as a “football town” for the many championships and star football players it has produced over the years but the City of Progress also produced what may be the greatest “pinch hitter” in Major League Baseball history.

Ben Paschal was born in Enterprise in 1895 and attended elementary school in Enterprise and reportedly began his baseball playing days on the fields behind what would eventually become City Elementary School.

While Paschal didn’t attend high school, he did become a talented baseball player and even played for the Enterprise Baseball Club and for the Dothan Phillies in the Class D Florida-Alabama-Georgia League in 1915. The team even practiced in Battens Crossroads. Paschal was a star for Dothan, hitting .290 with seven home runs was signed by the Cleveland Indians after the Florida-Alabama-Georgia League folded.

In Paschal’s first major league game he earned the sole hit for a lowly Indians team ruining Detroit Tigers pitcher Bernie Boland’s no-hitter. Following the season, Paschal played for the Charlotte Hornets of the North Carolina State League and hit a league-high 15 homers. The following season he played for Muskegon of the Class B Central League and Waterloo of the Class D Central Association.

The Central Association dissolved in August of 1917 and Paschal returned to Alabama and farming. Paschal initially turned down offers to play minor league baseball again as he began a family but eventually returned to play for Charlotte in the Class B South Atlantic League (Sally League).

He led Charlotte in home runs from 1920 to 1923 and became known as the “fence buster” for his power hitting. He got that name after an incident with a faulty fence. As he hit a line drive into a wooden fence in the outfield the ball made contact with a big knot on a board on the fence.

“When the knot went, the board literally flew apart,” Paschal said in an interview with the Mansfield News Journal. “It was a one in a million shot but they called me a ‘fence buster.’ I never took much time to explain (what happened).”

Paschal was signed by the Boston Red Sox at the end of the 1920 season but returned to Charlotte at the end of the season after hitting .357 in nine games. After helping lead the Hornets to the Sally League Championship, his contract was sold to the Atlanta Crackers of the Class A Southern Association in 1924. Paschal started out the 1924 season hot and scored 124 runs while batting .341 and stealing 24 bases leading to the New York Yankees buying out the rest of his contract.

Paschal played for the Yankees in the last four games of the 1924 season and played the rest of his MLB career there. It was with the Yankees that Paschal was known as one of the best pinch hitters in Major League history.

When an illness sidelined Babe Ruth for much of the first half of the 1925 season, Paschal stepped in and hit .373 with six home runs, 17 RBIs and 21 runs in 22 games. Even when Ruth returned to the lineup, Paschal continued to play and ended the season with a .360 batting average, 12 home runs, 56 RBIs, 49 runs and 14 stolen bases in 89 games. His 56 RBIs was an American League rookie record for a player with less than 250 at-bats.

Paschal continued playing for the Yankees and was a part of the legendary “Murderer’s Row” teams that won back-to-back World Series Championships. Paschal played alongside future Hall of Famers like Ruth, Earle Combs, Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri on those teams.

During the 1927 championship season, Paschal became the last player to ever pinch hit for Ruth after he struggled in a game against the Oakland Athletics.

After helping the Yankees two two MLB championships, Paschal played his final major league season in 1929 and was traded by the Yankees to the American Association’s (AA) St. Paul Saints.

In eight years in the majors, Paschal held a career .309 batting average with 243 total hits, 24 homers, 136 RBIs and 24 stolen bases. While Paschal was known for his batting prowess, he also held a .953 career fielding percentage with 367 putouts and just 22 errors on the defensive side.

Paschal continued to play well for the Saints – hitting .350 with 10 homers in 1930 and .325 in 1931- and even set the AA record for most hits in a game in 1932. Paschal left the Saints after the 1933 season and signed with the Knoxville Smokies. He was eventually released by the Smokies before signing with the New York-Penn League’s Scranton Miners.

After just a few games with the Miners, he retired from baseball but would then start coaching for Baldwin in the semipro Catawba League before retiring from baseball for good.

Paschal passed away at the age of 79 in Charlotte, NC on Nov. 10, 1974 and was buried next to his wife.