The legend of Andrew Miller’s Cape Cod League ‘fog game’
“How can we talk about something that never happened?"
On a foggy Friday night in July, 2004, Andrew Miller was nearly perfect. The lanky left-hander, pitching for the Chatham Athletics (now the Anglers) in the Cape Cod Baseball League, recorded all 12 of his outs via strikeout.
“Those guys didn’t have a chance,” recalled Cape Cod League commissioner Paul Galop, talking about Miller’s opposition.
Facing a Falmouth Commodores lineup that included Jacoby Ellsbury, Miller was so impressive that he even caused a rule controversy because hitters were swinging through sliders that hit them on their back foot.
“They swung at a pitch and missed it and it hit them,” remembered John Schiffner, Miller’s Chatham manager that summer. “That’s a dead ball. The umpires said ‘no, no, it’s a live ball.’ That’s how there were some runners on base.”
That said, no one could touch Miller that night.
“In all honesty, he dominated that game,” said Schiffner. “They had no shot.”
Yet in the official record books, the game never took place.
Andrew Miller pitching for the Chatham Anglers in the Cape Cod Baseball League.
“How can we talk about something that never happened?” joked Schiffner in a recent interview. The reason the game “never happened” was that it was postponed due to fog (games have to go at least five innings to officially count). One of the most impressive four-inning stat lines in Cape Cod League history was wiped away, leaving only a legend in its place.
Miller, now 31-years-old, has been an absolutely commanding force for the Cleveland Indians in the 2016 postseason. And like so many other players who have gone on to star in Major League Baseball, he spent “the best summers of my life” playing in the Cape Cod League.
After his freshman season at the University of North Carolina in 2004, Miller was part of a strong contingent of Tar Heel players who played on the Cape.
“[UNC] wanted to send him to Chatham along with several other guys,” Schiffner explained. Though he had heard of Miller previously, Schiffner said his excitement rose when he first got to see the 6’7″ left-hander in person.
“When he got here, we were going, ‘oh boy, yeah this is real special.’”
Even before the “fog game,” Miller was dominant. In 13 innings, he struck out 16 batters while maintaining a 1.38 earned run average. On the famous night in July when he struck out 12, Schiffner recalls that contrary to belief, Miller wasn’t as sharp as he could’ve been.
“It was typical Andrew. He just dominated everyone. Obviously he was terrific, but the funny story about that game was that he wasn’t spectacular the whole time. He walked several guys.”
Still, the Falmouth hitters found him virtually un-hittable. The real opposition that night turned out not to be Falmouth, but the fog.
Chatham, a Cape Cod town surrounded on three sides by water, periodically experiences thick fog. Predictably, this has had an effect on Anglers’ games over the years.
“I live in Harwich, and it can be absolutely gorgeous sunshine here, but I’ll drive the five miles to Veteran’s Field [in Chatham] and it’s shrouded in fog like it’s a whole different world,” said Schiffner.
“Sometimes in Chatham, if the wind isn’t blowing, the fog will sit there the entire night,” Galop explained, noting that the night of Miller’s 12-strikeout performance was an example of that. Galop also recalled that officials tried to wait it out, knowing the dominance that was playing out on the diamond.
“When you have stuff like that going on, it made you want to stall as long as you can on a delay to make sure if there’s any possibility of continuing the game because you have something special going on,” said Galop.
“To this day, I thought we could’ve [finished],” Schiffner contended. “We had a lead. We needed to get three outs and at that time no one was thinking about his strikeouts. We were just thinking let’s get the game in. No one wants to do make-up games in the Cape Cod League because you lose a day off.”
Falmouth, finding themselves off the hook from Miller’s masterful pitching display, had a different reaction to the postponement.
“They were thrilled,” Schiffner said.
Rescheduling the game provided a revealing moment, as Ellsbury (who would be a Red Sox first round pick a year later) made it clear that he did not want to face Miller again.
According to Schiffner:
Jacoby Ellsbury and Daniel Carte, two outstanding left-handed hitters for Falmouth, went nuts when they were going to put the game back on Andrew’s next scheduled start. They said, “Coach, no way do we want to face him again!” I heard them yelling at Jeff [Trundy], ‘he’s pitching again in five days! No!’”
Miller returned to the Cape League the next season on a Chatham team that included Todd Frazier and Evan Longoria.
“The 2005 team was my best,” Schiffner said. “I think we had eight first rounders on that team.”
Examining the 2016 World Series, the Cubs and Indians have a combined 13 former Cape Cod League players. And for coaches like Schiffner, seeing Miller grow from his time in Chatham to pitching on baseball’s biggest stage is the best reward.
“It makes what we’ve done down there special.”
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