July 21, 1933: Dizzy Walks In On a Robbery

     On July 21, 1933, with his wife by his side Dizzy Dean walked into a robbery in progress at the drugstore inside the Forest Park Hotel in the Central West End. It was reported that Dean thought it was a joke at first until one of the assailants shoved a gun into his ribs, and told him to keep quiet while they did their business. The theft netted the the thieves $200 which would be more than $3,600 by today's standards. When the story hit the newspapers one of the robbers realized that Dean was the late arrival to his robbery, he called him on the phone, and apologized to the hurler saying that it wasn't personal and he would send him a bunch of nice new neckties to prove it. Sure enough a half dozen neckties were delivered to the hurler and he shared them with his teammates. When the incident was reported in the Sporting News they took a jab at Dizzy by saying "Dizzy Dean was held up the other night. Reports say this is the only time Dean kept his mouth shut and his pockets open."

     This story was a hard one to substantiate through my normal newspaper outlets. In fact I was only able to find two little articles like the one featured in the picture, other than that tidbit out of the Sporting News. Other details of the story were provided by Mark Tomasik from Retrosimba.com as well as an author by the name of John Heindry who wrote a book called "The Gashouse Gang." I extend my thanks to both of them. You can find Mark on twitter at @RetroSimba on twitter. He is one of my favorites on the tweet machine. You can also find me on there at @CardinalHistory. I repost the facts of the day on there every afternoon.