A Catcher’s Fatal Flight

Coming off a long road trip, Orioles manager Paul Richards scheduled an offday workout at Memorial Stadium on September 20th, 1956. In fact, he scheduled two workouts, one in the morning and one after lunch. He wanted his players in the right mindset for a strong season-ending push.

The day dawned sunny and warm, giving way to perfect conditions for the morning workout. But strong winds began to gust around midday, prompting Richards to cancel the afternoon practice.

Many of the players pondered what to do with the unexpected gift of a free afternoon and evening, a precious rarity during the season. But Tom Gastall, a young catcher, knew immediately what he’d do with the time — he’d go flying.

Gastall, 24, was nearing the end of his second season at the end of the Orioles’ bench. After starring in football and baseball at Boston University, he’d signed a “bonus baby” contract in 1955, his $40,000 bonus locking him into spending his first two pro seasons at the major-league level — a lousy rule that was soon rescinded. Gastall’s athleticism and potential stood out — he’d played quarterback in football — but he was still in a developmental mode, basically the Orioles’ fourth-string catcher.

Despite being a fringe player, Gastall was popular in the clubhouse. Willy Miranda, the team’s starting shortstop, and Gus Triandos, the catcher, were among his closest friends. Tall and slender with a long face and big grin, Gastall was impossible not to like. He’d adopted a stray puppy at spring training. He’d worked his way through college on an ROTC plan while his mother, a single parent, worked in a textile mill. He had a wife and young son back home in Falls River, Massachusetts.

On the sly, he’d bought a small plane and taken up flying. Aside from enjoying being in the air, he’d set a goal of piloting his plane to Venezuela to play winter ball, the next step in his development. Miranda, Triandos and a few other Orioles knew he’d logged about 20 hours in the air on a student’s license with the goal of becoming a full-fledged pilot. But Gastall had kept the hobby from many of his teammates and especially from Richards, fearing the manager would make him stop.

After Richards canceled the afternoon practice, Gastall asked Miranda if he wanted to go flying with him that afternoon. Miranda declined.

“The wind will blow that bucket of bolts all over the place,” Miranda said, referencing Gastall’s small plane, a used Ercoupe that had cost $2,000.

Triandos and Gastall had carpooled to practice that morning. On the ride home, when Gastall said he planned to go flying that afternoon, Triandos asked if that was wise given the swirling winds.

“It was not a good day for flying,” Triandos recalled years later when I interviewed him about Gastall.

Gastall wasn’t worried. “Flying a plane is safer than driving a car,” he told Triandos.

His plane was parked at Dundalk’s Harbor Field, a small airfield used mostly by private planes. Gastall took off at 4:50 p.m., and flew southeast in 25 mph winds, headed for the Eastern Shore. He landed at Easton, spoke briefly to the field manager, then taxied down the runaway and headed back for Harbor Field.

At 6:21 p.m., Harbor’s control tower operator heard a mayday call on his radio: “75-Hotel, I’m going into the water.” There was no doubt it was Gastall. His plane’s identification number was 75-H.

The tower operator never saw the plane. A Coast Guard search was up and running within an hour.

Informed of the accident by a reporter that evening, Richards said he had no idea Gastall had been flying and would have told him to stop had he known.

News of the crash stunned Gastall’s teammates. “I was shocked. He’d never said anything to me about flying,” second baseman Billy Gardner said years later.

The Coast Guard still hadn’t located Gastall or his plane when the Orioles played the Washington Senators the next night at Memorial Stadium. The Orioles’ clubhouse was quiet beforehand as the players glanced at Gastall’s uniform hanging in his locker. Before the first pitch, the public address announcer called for a silent prayer.

The Orioles won that night and went on to sweep a weekend series while divers continued to search for Gastall and the plane. Ominously, they found seat cushions that Gastall’s wife had re-covered in new material.

Finally, five days after the crash, Gastall’s body washed ashore on Riviera Beach. The plane was never found.

“It’s the saddest story there is, a good guy dying like that with his whole life ahead of him,” Gardner said.

Triandos and scout Frank McGowan, who’d signed Gastall, represented the Orioles at a funeral in Massachusetts a few days later.

“It was pretty terrible, as you might imagine. A guy so young like that,” Triandos said.

Sixty-nine years later, Gastall is still the only Oriole to die during the season. Steve Bechler, a pitcher, died during a spring training workout in 2003.

Writing about Gastall’s death for the Baltimore Sun in the early 2000s, I located his widow, Rosemary. She had remarried and spent 42 years with her husband.

“It has been so long now that it almost seems like a dream,” Rosemary told me. “It was a terrible time.”

I also contacted Gastall’s son, Tom, an elementary school principal near where he’d grown up. He’d inherited enough of his father’s athletic ability to make the Providence College basketball team as a walk-on in the 1970s.

“People always told me what a great athlete my father was, and what a nice guy he was. He is remembered here,” Tom said.

Remembered, indeed. In 2015, the Falls River Herald-News identified the 25 greatest athletes in the city’s history and Gastall was number one. He’d played quarterback in college so well that the NFL’s Detroit Lions drafted him. And there’s no telling how his career with the Orioles might have unfolded. He only batted .181 over 52 games in 1955 and 1956, but he didn’t lack for potential.

“He was very mobile and agile, a good receiver,” Triandos said.

“Down the road, he would have improved as a hitter. He could have been good,” Gardner said. “He was a great athlete and he had a good swing. Eventually, the more he played, the more he would have hit.”

Sadly, he never had the chance to try.

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