Charlie Maxwell, a two-time All-Star outfielder who tied a major league record in May 1959 he hit home runs in four successive official at-bats while playing for the Detroit Tigers. died on Friday in Paw Paw, Mich. He was 97. .
His death was announced by the Adams Funeral Home of Paw Paw.
Maxwell, a left-handed batter, was listed at just 5 feet 11 inches and 185 pounds, but he drew on his powerful arms and strong wrists to hit 148 home runs and drive in 532 runs while playing in the American League for 15 seasons with five different teams. He was also a brilliant left fielder, committing only 21 lifetime errors. But he never played on a pennant-winning club.
He was selected for the A.L. All-Star team in 1956, when he batted a career high .326, and was chosen again in 1957.
Maxwell’s four-homer afternoon came on May 3, 1959, when the Tigers faced the Yankees in a Sunday doubleheader in Detroit at Briggs Stadium (later renamed Tiger Stadium). He duplicated a feat that had been achieved most notably by the Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx and Hank Greenberg. To date, more than a dozen players have hit four straight homers.
Leading off in the seventh inning of the first game — his last at-bat in that game — Maxwell drove a Don Larsen fastball deep into the upper deck in right field.
In the second game, Maxwell came up in the first inning, facing Duke Maas, and homered into the lower deck in right field, scoring two runs.
After drawing a walk (an unofficial at-bat in the record books) he hit his third homer of the afternoon, this one into the center field bleachers off Johnny Kucks in the fourth inning with two men on base.
His fourth consecutive home run, off the rookie Zach Monroe in the seventh inning, came with the bases empty when Maxwell hit a changeup into the right-center stands.
“Each blow brought a bigger roar from the crowd,” the sportswriter Hal Middlesworth wrote in The Detroit Free Press.
Forty years later, Maxwell told The Kalamazoo Gazette in Michigan, “The home runs just seemed to come, but the big thing to me was that we won both games.”
He hit 31 home runs and drove in 95 runs in 1959.
“Charlie Maxwell always terrorized us,” Tony Kubek, the former Yankees standout and NBC broadcaster, once said. “He was a very smart, dead pull hitter who studied the pitchers and used Briggs Stadium and Yankee Stadium to his advantage.”
Charles Richard Maxwell was born in the southwestern Michigan town of Lawton on April 8, 1927, one of three children of Tom and Isa Maxwell. He played basketball and baseball in high school, then played in the semipro Kalamazoo City League.
He pitched for Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo before he was drafted into the Army in September 1945. Following two years in military service, he signed with the Red Sox. After playing in their minor league system, he made his debut with Boston in late September 1950. The first three homers of his career — and the only ones of his 1951 season — came as a pinch-hitter facing the future Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, and Satchel Paige.
But the Red Sox featured Ted Williams, one of baseball’s greatest hitters, in left field; Joe DiMaggio’s brother Dom in center field and Al Zarilla, an accomplished hitter, in right field. Maxwell seldom broke into Boston’s everyday lineup, then was sold to the Orioles in November 1954. But he played in only four games for Baltimore before he was put on waivers and claimed by the Tigers in May 1955.
While playing for Detroit, Maxwell gained the nickname Paw Paw, having lived with his wife, Goldie Ann, in the Michigan village of that name, which had once been settled by Native Americans.
He also became known as Sunday Charlie, having hit 12 of his 31 homers on Sundays in the 1959 season. He hit 40 of his 148 career home runs on Sundays. His customary outfield teammates were the future Hall of Famer Al Kaline in right field and Bill Tuttle in center field.
Maxwell was traded to the White Sox in June 1962. He batted .296 with nine homers for the Sox that season, including five on Sundays. Three were hit in a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium, and one was a grand slam against the Tigers.
He retired from baseball in May 1964 after Chicago released him, having played in 1,133 games with a career batting average of .264 and 532 runs driven in.
Remaining in Paw Paw, a village of 3,000 or so, Maxwell worked for an auto supply company. A monument bearing his image was erected in a city park, and the Paw Paw Brewing Company marketed “Mr. Sunday,” an ale paying tribute to him.
. Maxwell’s survivors include his sons Charles Jr., and Jeffrey; his daughters Cindy Goldberg and Kelle Dillon; and 14 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. His wife died in 2021.
In an interview with The Holland Sentinel in Michigan in 2013, Maxwell was asked if players of his era used performance-enhancing substances. “We didn’t have any money to buy anything,” he said. “We got only four dollars a day in meal money on the road.”
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