Elden Auker, 95; Helped Win 1935 World Series, Struck Out Babe Ruth

Elden Auker, the submarine-style pitcher who struck out Babe Ruth, faced Dizzy Dean and helped the Detroit Tigers win their first World Series championship, died Friday. He was 95.

Auker died of heart failure, according to the Vero Beach Press Journal. He had lived in Vero Beach since 1974.

An occasional visitor at old-timers’ events and a regular on the golf course until recent years, Auker used his unusual delivery to go 130-101 with an earned-run average of 4.53 for the Tigers, Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Browns from 1933 to 1942.

“He threw it from about as low as you could go without untying your shoes,” Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller said Friday. “Any lower and you’d scrape your knuckles on the pitching rubber.”

As a rookie, Auker struck out Ruth on four pitches with his unorthodox motion. Auker, one of only a handful of pitchers using a sidearm delivery in those days, recalled how one of the New York Yankees’ bench jockeys heckled him, shouting, “You got the Bam real upset.”

Ruth, who retired two years later, was not the only big hitter who got bamboozled by Auker’s right-handed, drop-down pitches. During the 38th game of his 56-game hitting streak in 1941, Joe DiMaggio grounded a hard double off Auker in his final at-bat to extend the string.

“I used to have pretty good success against him. He used to tell me that he had trouble picking up the ball the way I threw it underhanded,” Auker remembered the day after DiMaggio died.

“A few years later, he signed a picture to me,” he said. “He wrote, ‘To my friend Elden. A tough submarine to sink.’ ”

Auker told some of his baseball stories in his 2001 memoir “Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms,” written with New York Post baseball columnist Tom Keegan.

Born Sept. 21, 1910, in Norcatur, Kan., Auker developed his signature style after getting hurt as a quarterback at Kansas State, where he was named a second team All-American. At 6 feet 2 and nearly 200 pounds, Auker was a nine-letter athlete. He had a chance to play professional football for the Chicago Bears but chose baseball and enjoyed early success.

In 1934, Auker went 15-7 as the Tigers took the American League pennant. He pitched a complete game and beat St. Louis 10-4 in Game 4 of the World Series, but lost to Dean and the Cardinals 11-0 in Game 7.

The next year, Auker went 18-7 and led the league in his winning percentage as Detroit reached the 1935 World Series. Auker got a no-decision in Game 3, and the Tigers went on to win their first title in six games.

Auker left baseball in 1942, too old for the draft but willing to contribute to the war effort. He went to work for a firm that made antiaircraft guns and had a successful career at Bay State Abrasives in Massachusetts.

Survivors include his wife of 73 years, Mildred, and a son, Jim.