Next Wednesday, August 31st, the Williamsport Crosscutters will celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the “Great Potato Caper” and the “Potato Man” himself, Dave Bresnahan, is supposed to be in attendance.

Bowman Field has been the site of some great baseball action and feats over the past 97 seasons. There have been no-hitters spun, prodigious home runs clouted, championships won there, and Roger Maris even crashed through the left field fence one night. But, oddly, the most famous or perhaps infamous thing to happen at the venerable uptown ballpark happened on August 31, 1987, when Williamsport Bills’ Catcher, Dave Bresnahan, pulled the now famous “Great Potato Stunt” or “Great Potato Caper,” whatever you want to call it — and I was there that night to witness it.

It was the fifth inning in the first game of a doubleheader, and I was comfortably ensconced in my seat in the third base grandstands. In addition to coming up to see the next-to-last place Bills play, I came up curiously to see the Phillie Phanatic, who was supposed to be the main promotional attraction that night. One could never imagine that the Phanatic would be upstaged by a potato-throwing catcher. The story of what took place has been detailed amply elsewhere, but I will recount my own perspective of what I saw that night.

As I recall, there was a Reading Phillies’ runner on third base; that runner, Rick Lundblade, took a pretty good lead off of third, and at this point, Bresnahan struck. I saw what I thought was a baseball, almost hit the runner, and sailed into left field. This prompted Lundblade to do what any base runner would do and take off for home. He did so, and waiting for him at home plate was Bresnahan. I could not see exactly what was going on, but it appeared that Bresnahan had tagged Lundblade out with something that looked to be a baseball. There seemed to be a great deal of confusion among the fans, the umpires, and some of the coaches and players for both teams. Finally, things seemed to be sorted out, and the runner was called safe, and Bresnahan was immediately ejected from the game.

I did not know what had really happened. After talking to several fans around me, we all seemed to sort it out.

I was appalled by the stunt that Bresnahan had pulled. It seemed a half-baked (not necessarily a potato) notion to me if you please. I told one of the fans around me that I regarded it as a bush league stunt that showed disrespect for the game. I was mad at Bresnahan for pulling this bit of baseball sacrilege.

Bresnahan’s stunt must have inspired the Bills because at the time he pulled it, they were trailing Reading, and not long after that, the Bills’ Turner Gill hit either a bases-clearing double or triple, I can’t remember which, which keyed the Bills to a win in that game.

I’m not sure if I stuck around for the second game of the doubleheader or not, but when I got home, I went over to my friend Mike LeVan’s house and explained to him in a seeming apoplectic fashion the stunt I had witnessed at Bowman Field, mightily condemning it. Mike agreed with my view of the stunt.

The next day all hell broke loose in the media about Bresnahan’s stunt. It attracted notoriety from media outlets throughout the country and even across the globe. His story was featured in media as diverse as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and even the “David Letterman Show.” It was regarded by the media as a “funny stunt” and gave Williamsport and Bowman Field a prodigious amount of free publicity and recognition.

The Bills’ front office staff knew a good promotional opportunity when they saw one and announced a special promotion for the next night’s game. If you brought a potato to Bowman Field for the game and $1, you would get a general admission ticket for it. Being the frugal guy that I am, I took advantage of this opportunity. I have no recollection of anything special about that night’s game.

It took me a few days to free myself from my fit of sanctimony about the Bresnahan stunt and to regard it for the fun, humorous thing that it was. There is a certain wholesome joy about baseball that makes it, in my opinion, the greatest game ever invented. It has always had a spirit of fun to it, and its annals and lore are loaded with loony characters, teams, and incidents, and the “The Great Potato Stunt” fits nicely into that pantheon.

As a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, I have attended several of their national conventions, and inevitably the “Potato Trick” has come up, and when I inform fellow SABR historians that I was there for it, I am peppered with questions about it as if I had been at Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard Round the World,” or been at any of Sandy Koufax’s perfect games or seen Roger Maris hit his 61st homer in 1961. These people were always intensely curious about the Bresnahan incident. Most thought it was a joyful baseball stunt, but there were a couple of them who had my initial sour response to it.

The “Potato Trick” has in some ways taken on a life of its own. There is a website called “The Baseball Reliquary,” and it has pictures on it of the potato allegedly thrown by Bresnahan in his storied stunt. It is in a jar preserved in denatured alcohol. It is almost a miniature tuber version of Lenin’s Tomb.

The website fancifully claims that the potato was rescued from a garbage can at Bowman Field amidst hot dog wrappers and beer cups. The teenager who supposedly preserved this legendary tuber specimen is reportedly now a Reading area lawyer.

This fanciful story can be debunked in two ways. Most importantly by, Bresnahan himself, who told me at the 2012 Crosscutters Hot Stove League Banquet that the potato pictured was not his. “The potato that is pictured still has its skin on it. The one I used I peeled to make it look white so it would look like a baseball,” Bresnahan said.

The next point that debunks it is the story that this unnamed individual found it among hot dog wrappers and beer cups. Well, beer was not sold at Bowman Field until 1989, two years after “The Potato Caper.”

Perhaps the people at the “Baseball Reliquary” are doing their own version of the Potato Trick on the ether of the Internet.

I never imagined the night I saw “The Potato Trick” pulled that 25 years later, I would be helping to induct Bresnahan into the Bowman Field Hall of Fame. But, believe it or not, I really think he belongs in it. No one has brought the notice and awareness of Bowman Field across the globe more than Dave Bresnahan, and for that, I say to Dave, “That Induction and This Spud’s For You.”

I hope readers take the opportunity next week to relive and celebrate this bit of baseball hilarity that brought so much attention to Williamsport and Bowman Field and come up to the Crosscutters game and soak up the nostalgia of this memorable incident.