Frank Ernaga is taking it easy these days.
He’s 76 years old, enjoying retirement, having fun with his four grandchildren and still admiring the scenery of his hometown, Susanville, Calif., in the northeast part of the state.
“We’re 160 miles from the Oregon border,” he said the other day, “and 82 miles from Reno. People don’t know where Susanville is, but they know where Reno is.”
A lot of people may not know who Frank Ernaga is, but for one weekend 50 years ago, Cubs fans certainly did.
On May 24, 1957, Ernaga (pronounced er-NOG-uh) made his major-league debut at Wrigley Field, playing right field and batting sixth against the World Series-champion-to-be Milwaukee Braves and eventual Hall-of-Fame left-hander Warren Spahn.
“I can remember it well,” Ernaga said. “That was at least 85 pounds ago.”
It was Ladies Day, but there wasn’t much of a crowd on hand that Friday. As the Tribune’s Ed Prell put it, using words that seem rather odd these days: “The 6,487 payees were bulwarked by 2,054 gals.”
Ernaga, a right-handed hitter just up from Portland in the Pacific Coast League, grabbed their attention in the second inning. With the Braves up 1-0, he drove a Spahn pitch into the bleachers in left-center to tie the score. Then in the fourth, with the score still 1-1 and teammate Jim Bolger on first, Ernaga lined one to center. The ball took a bad hop and got past center fielder Billy Bruton and rolled to the wall for a triple. The Cubs went on to win 5-1.
“When I faced Spahn that day,” he remembered, “I was in a daze. I just kind of floated around the bases on that home run. The triple, I remember where I hit that one. But the homer, I didn’t even see it go into the seats.”
His reward for going 2-for-3 with a homer, a triple and two runs batted in was a seat on the bench the next day and in the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader with Milwaukee. But he was in the lineup for Game 2 against another left-hander, Juan Pizarro. And this time, before a crowd of 32,127, Ernaga hit a double and another homer in three official trips to help Dick Drott — who struck out 15 Braves that afternoon — to a 5-4 victory.
So in two starts, the 26-year-old rookie had gone 4-for-6 with a double, a triple and two homers.
“The Cubs called me up and told me I was going to play right field against left-handed pitching,” he said. “Well, I played right field against two left-handed pitchers, and then they sat me down.”
Sure enough, Ernaga was back on the bench the next night in St. Louis, but he did get into the game as a pinch-hitter with two out and a man on in the ninth … and he tripled. So now he was hitting .625.
Wrote Prell: “This was Ernaga’s fifth major-league hit, all for extra bases. … Unfortunately, Ernaga has had no experience playing left field, where it must be easier to win a more or less regular job than by contending against Walt Moryn, the Cubs’ regular custodian in right. But manager Bob Scheffing is going to have to do something with a player who hits nothing less than a double.”
One would assume that a right fielder could learn to play left (“At one time, I had the strongest arm in the Cub system,” Ernaga said, “so they always had me in right.”), but the Cubs — en route to a 62-92 season — had different ideas.
Fifteen days and 17 at-bats later, with his average at .320, Ernaga was sent to Ft. Worth in the Texas League, switching places with Bob Will, the latest Cubs center-field hopeful. (Bolger, Lee Walls, Bobby Del Greco and Will himself, the Opening Day center fielder, had been found wanting.)
“They told me, ‘We’re going to send you to Ft. Worth so you can work yourself into shape,’ ” Ernaga recalled. “Well, hell, I was already in shape.”
Discouraged, Ernaga didn’t exactly tear up the Texas League, hitting .238 with eight homers in 82 games. But the Cubs sent for him in mid-September, just in time for one last start against the Braves on Sept. 20 at Wrigley Field. He responded with a single and a double in three tries against Spahn, who won his 20th game that day.
Thus, in just six official at-bats against Spahn that season, Ernaga had hit for the cycle: single, double, triple and homer. A remarkable feat, to be sure, and yet there would be only one more big-league hit for him, in May 1958, before he was returned to Ft. Worth. That followed an ill-fated spring-training attempt by the Cubs to convert him into a catcher.
“I split a finger,” he said. “Dick Littlefield, the lefty, a knuckleballer. Remember him? I was catching him. My right hand caught it, but the glove was on my left hand.
“That was the end of that.”
There followed a 1959 stint at San Antonio (“I pitched batting practice to Billy Williams and Ron Santo”), a trade to the Washington Senators’ system and success at Double-A Charlotte (14 homers in half a season). And, finally, an offer to manage.
“Washington wanted me to manage their team at Elmira, N.Y.,” Ernaga said. “I said sure, but I’d want $15,000 to do it. They said, ‘Oh, we can’t pay that much.’ So I said, ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ I’d had enough. I was through with baseball.”
So he went back home to Susanville, where he became a building contractor and for many years was chief inspector of school construction for Lassen County.
His big-league debut remains a favorite memory. His overall career does not, for the obvious reason:
“I always thought that I should have gotten a better chance than I did,” he said.
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bvanderberg@tribune.com
