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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 18, 2024 21:29:28 GMT -5
Former Yankees Outfielder Art LópezThis article was written by Thomas Van Hyning, Edited by Clipper Arturo (Art) López had 49 at-bats with 7 hits for the 1965 New York Yankees. He was the 1st player born in Puerto Rico to be originally signed by the Yankees and play for them. The outfielder was also the 1st boricua to play for a Japanese professional baseball team. During a professional career that spanned 1961 to 1973, López was part of title-winning teams from 5 countries/territories; the U.S. (in the minors), Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Japan. His international experience, also included a winter-ball tournament win in Venezuela.
López was signed by the Yankees at age 24, in 1961, after 4 years in the U.S. Navy and 2 years of amateur baseball in New York City’s Central Park. He wasn’t big (5-feet-9 and 170 pounds) but he had speed and a quick bat. However, a weak throwing arm (the result of injuries) short-circuited his Stateside playing career. It was not an impediment in Japan, though, where he played 6 solid seasons.
López also had a strong work ethic, which propelled him not only to high-level pro ball, but also to a successful business career in insurance and banking, as well as being an educator and lifelong proponent of learning.
Arturo López Rodríguez was born in Mayagüez, on May 8, 1937. He was the oldest child of Cristóbal López González and Aurea Rodríguez de López. Both parents’ surnames are used in Hispanic culture. López’s father was from Las Marías, north of Mayagüez; his mother was from Cabo Rojo, south of Mayagüez. Luis Fernando (Tato) was the family’s 2nd child. Two sisters, Zoraida and Zaida, followed. The youngest was named José René.
López’s parents moved to the mainland after World War II and worked in New York City’s Garment District. “Dad first moved to New York City in 1947,” recalled López. “He was an independent contractor with sewing expertise. The owner gave dad better opportunities as a mechanic. Mom (a sewing machine operator), Zaida, and my kid brother moved to New York in 1948.” Sad to relate, José René died on November 10, 1949. He was hit by a milk truck, while trying to pick up a dropped toy. Brother Luis Fernando had previously passed away in Mayagüez. Meanwhile, Arturo and Zoraida remained in Mayagüez for the 1948-1949 school year. Their grandmother took care of them, with financial help from 2 uncles.
As a youth, López swam in the Caribbean Sea, climbed coconut and mango trees, and hitched rides on car fenders. He became proficient in volleyball under the tutelage of Luis Enrique “Tite” Figueroa, at the Community Center on Saturday mornings. Puerto Rico was a baseball hotbed, however and young Art played 3rd base in sandlot games. He also closely followed Puerto Rico’s Winter League (PRWL) and his beloved Mayagüez Indios. He transcribed PRWL games in a notebook.
From October 1946 through January 1949, López had attended Mayagüez home games at Liga Paris behind the left-field fence, watching and hoping to fetch a HR ball. In 1946, his Dad introduced him to Juan “Tetelo” Vargas (known as El Gamo Dominicano, the Dominican Deer), with Caguas-Guayama. López was impressed with Santurce’s Willard Brown, who was “our Babe Ruth. Brown, also a star with the Kansas City Monarchs, was the 4th person of color to play in the big leagues, playing briefly with the 1947 St. Louis Browns. Even the great Willie Mays did not reach the same plateau or heights with [Puerto Rico’s] fans as Mr. Brown.” Bob Thurman, Brown’s Santurce teammate, played the outfield and pitched.
López admired Ponce 3rd baseman Howard Easterling and idolized Stateside Negro Leaguers who reinforced Mayagüez namely, this 1948-1949 quintet: Johnny Davis, Luke Easter, Wilmer Fields, Alonzo Perry and Player-Manager Artie Wilson. Per López: “These players were instrumental in my career as a major-league player. I once played hooky from school for at least 2 weeks to await the team’s 10 a.m. practices and sit in the stands [alone]; follow them upon completion to a local restaurant which they frequented to have breakfast (or lunch) while I stood outside gawking at them and dreaming that someday, I, too, would become a player for the Indios de Mayagüez.”
López was impressed by their versatility in playing different positions; he later understood the economics and relevance of this. However, his Mayagüez school notified his parents of repeated absences, which led to “a relationship with my dad’s belt and my behind.”
In July 1949, López would join his family living in the South Bronx. He lived there through June 1954, attending Clark Junior High, PS 37, near Willis Avenue. He went on to Morris High School, attended by future Army general and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. The South Bronx was a melting pot of Irish, German, Jewish, and Italian residents. López, a diehard New York Yankees fan by August 1949, enjoyed their 5 straight AL pennants and World Series titles. He secured free tickets to Yankees games via Sergeant Bill Simpson, 40th Precinct, 138th Street and Alexander Avenue. “I got Vic Raschi and Phil Rizzuto autographs,” recalled López, whose cousin, Carlos Galarza, later became a police officer at the same precinct.
At Morris High, López participated in track & field, including the 440-yard relay. He played 1 year of high school baseball. He tried to join the high school choir, but the musical director booted him back to the baseball team. López also took part in non-school softball leagues – as well as stickball games, which he loved. He witnessed Italian mothers yelling at their kids from the windows of high-rise apartments at 6 p.m. to come home and have dinner. López was annoyed and wanted to continue playing.
Unlike schoolmate Colin Powell, who went on to college, López would join the U.S. Navy at 17, in 1954, without getting his high school diploma. “I was restless, when our softball team shortstop turned around one Saturday morning during a game to ask me if I wanted to join the Navy with him next week,” noted López. “We joined as planned; I never saw him again ever.” López was on the USS Albany (CA123), part of the 6th Fleet. One of his captains was Admiral John McCain, father of future U.S. Senator John McCain. López earned his GED in the Navy and spent free time in the library. LaSalle Extension University offered distance learning courses, the foundation for his lifelong learning. He captained his ship’s volleyball team, including a match versus a collegiate team in Athens, Greece and played baseball on the deck. Two of his 4 Navy years were spent in Norfolk, Virginia. He did gunnery and electronics work.
On December 29, 1954, 17-year old López married Mary Farley. They had 5 children: Laura Lee (born in 1955), Donna Marie (1958), Arturo René (1959). Lisa (1963); and Christopher James (1970).13 The 1st 4 were born in New York City; Christopher’s birthplace was Tokyo, Japan.
López (along with Mary, Laura, and Donna) lived in the South Bronx in 1958. He became a debit agent for Unity Insurance Company after getting his New York state license. He did not have a driver’s license, but he made most of his collections by running or walking quickly between East Harlem high rises and dashing up steps to collect premiums after customers received their Social Security and welfare checks. López later helped persons employed by Unity Insurance get their license and better jobs.
From 1959 to 1961, he would play for Brooklyn amateur baseball teams called Friendly Tavern and Añasco. El Diario, a Spanish-language New York City newspaper, announced game times and locations. John Candelaria Sr., father of the team’s batboy, John Candelaria coached Friendly Tavern in 1959. Candelaria Sr. had López put on the All-Star list for games versus a visiting team from Puerto Rico. López was Co-MVP. Central Park League games were from May through August, but the 1959 All-Star Games took place in Brooklyn.
In 1961, the left-handed throwing and batting Lopez drew the attention of Art Dede, a veteran scout who had been working with the Yankees since 1958. In a 15-inning game at Yankee Stadium (part of a 1961 summer prospect tryout), Dede saw López fan 3 times versus lefties and hit 3 triples against right-handers.
“Over 100 kids went to that tryout,” recalled López. Dede returned for a 7 a.m. game the following Sunday at the 103rd Street field in Central Park. “I hit 2 grounders; struck out—threw the bat into the fence behind home plate—and hit a HR,” said López. “Dede said, ‘When you strike out, don’t throw the bat.’” Three days later, Dede brought a Yankees contract to López’s home. The next Sunday, López took the subway to Central Park to say good-bye to his team. He went 5 for 5.
López produced in 1961 for the Harlan Smokies (Appalachian League) and Auburn Yankees (New York-Penn League). Auburn skipper Loren Babe was “dedicated, direct and feisty.” For the 2 teams combined, he had posted a .345/.438/.629 slash line (1.067 OPS). Without telling Babe, López played through an ankle injury with Auburn—for “economic reasons, not logic.”
That preceded winter ball with the 1961-62 Arecibo Wolves, a PRWL expansion team. López, unproven in the eyes of Arecibo’s manager, Luis Olmo, faced San Juan’s Luis Arroyo, aka “Tite,” who was coming off his finest season in the majors with the world champion Yankees. With the bases loaded, López hit a double over Roberto Clemente in center field in Arecibo. López felt he “had a future in baseball” after this double, with key implications for his career.
Before that at-bat, as López recalled, “My manager (Olmo) made signs for a pinch-hitter, 18-year old rookie Sandy Alomar Sr. [Olmo, as a scout, had signed Alomar for the Milwaukee Braves in 1960]. I walked over to Olmo, [who was also serving as] the 3rd-base coach, and said, ‘What the hell are you doing? I’ve faced better pitchers in the minors.’ Olmo replied: ‘If that is true, go hit.’”
As a Navy veteran competing for playing time with others (including Alomar), López felt he had something to prove. After the game, López found out that Arroyo was pissed when the veteran heard the comment that a Class D rookie had faced better pitchers. A high-caliber lefty was supposed to retire a D-ball player and lefty hitter. “That’s how I became a regular in Arecibo. We (Arroyo and myself) became good friends.’”
To end the regular winter season, Arecibo bested San Juan in a tie-breaker game for 4th place at Sixto Escobar Stadium. López compared this to David versus Goliath, similar to when he with just 194 Class D minor-league at-bats doubled off Arroyo.
In 1962, Lopez would joined Class D Fort Lauderdale in the Florida State League. His 37 steals that season were 1 more than Cleo James of the St. Petersburg Saints. “I never ran the 100-meter dash,” claimed López, “but the Yankees wrote in one of their 1961 news handouts that I had been clocked very close to some established track record.” Bob Bauer, Fort Lauderdale’s skipper was a “Ralph Houk wannabe with a cigar in his mouth, whenever the brass was in town—a real gentleman who would not drink from a bottle.” López’s roommate was Mike Hegan. That club was the 1st champion of which he was a member.
López returned to Arecibo for 1962-63, with a .278 average. Arecibo finished 4th, losing to 1st-place Mayagüez in the semis. López loved Arecibo; his maternal grandfather owned the city’s 1st semipro baseball team.
Moving up to Class A Greensboro for 1963, López sparkled, hitting .338—but Don Bosch won the batting title despite a lower mark of .332. A severely sprained ankle cost López needed plate appearances. “I came back, got some hits and Frank Verdi benched me against lefty pitchers until I successfully convinced him otherwise. He approached me a week later aghast I lacked at-bats to qualify for the batting title…que será, será.” Greensboro (85-59) won the West Division and bested the Durham Bulls in the semifinals, but they lost the finals to the Wilson Tobs. “Roy White, our 2nd baseman, was a kid brother to me,” said López. “Greensboro had great fans; one owned a bar-restaurant—cooked great steaks. Verdi was a player’s manager; sorry he was never given the opportunity to manage at the major league level.”
The 1963-64 PRWL season was marked by an event that everybody who was old enough to remember can recall vividly; the assassination of John F. Kennedy. On November 22, 1963, López had left an Arecibo jewelry store, when teammate Jack Hamilton told him, “They just shot the President.”
Moving on from the JFK tragedy, López had posted a .337 average for Arecibo that season, 4th-best in the PRWL behind teammate Tony Oliva (.365), Ponce’s Walt Bond (.349) and San Juan’s Clemente (.345). That winter, a Puerto Rican star of the past—Francisco “Pancho” Coimbre by then a Ponce Coach and Pittsburgh Pirates Scout—complimented him. Coimbre said, “Tu me acuerdas de mí con más poder.” (You remind me of myself with more power.) López “felt like a million bucks.”
Before a late-season game, López was approached by Colonel Jennie of the Nicaraguan Armed Forces. The colonel had been tipped to López’s play by Wilfredo Calviño, skipper of a club in the Nicaraguan Winter League, Cinco Estrellas (known for its longstanding ties to the nation’s military). Calviño, in turn, knew and trusted Tony Castaño, Arecibo’s 1963-1964 manager. With 5th-place Arecibo out of the playoff hunt, López accepted Jennie’s offer. He flew first to Miami, Florida and then to Managua, on a private jet, with just Jennie, a flight attendant, the pilot and co-pilot. His 1st at-bat, as a pinch-hitter, came against Ferguson Jenkins, pitching for León.
Cinco Estrellas won the February 1964 Inter-American Series, in Managua, defeating San Juan twice. In the title match, an Orlando Cepeda 3-run HR off of Willie Hooker gave San Juan a 3-0 lead, but López scored the winning run in the 7th after he tripled and scored on a sacrifice fly by Leo Posada—distant kin to future Yankees catcher Jorge Posada. Cinco Estrellas played superbly, turning frequent double plays and avoiding miscues. López felt vindicated: “A cousin alerted me I was not selected to the PRWL 1963-1964 All-Star Team. That motivated me to play well.”
López would moved up again in 1964, this time bypassing AA level, going right to AAA Richmond (International League). Preston Gómez managed the 1964 Richmond Virginians, after managing the 1963-64 Santurce Cangrejeros in Puerto Rico. He had appreciated López, who called Gómez my “Padre Pio” (a reference to the Italian holy man, later a saint). In his own words, López was “stressed out realizing the possibility of playing for the Yankees, with a throwing arm acutely sore, painful and swollen, and definitely not of major-league caliber.” But Gómez gave him “tremendous confidence.”
On April 12,1964, Richmond had hosted and defeated the Yankees, 3-2, when Horace Clarke drove in Ike Futch with an 8th-inning hit. Hitting 3rd, López went 2-for-3 with 2 RBIs. The winning pitcher was Mel Stottlemyre, who was on López’s 1st minor-league teams in 1961.
Another highlight of that summer was playing against childhood hero Luke Easter, when Richmond faced Rochester. Easter—then age 48 and in his last professional season—hit an opposite-field HR.
López posted a .315 average in 151 games. He appreciated Richmond teammate Jack Reed, a “real gentleman” who provided insights on playing the outfield. López was observed by St. Louis Cardinals scouts, when Richmond played Jacksonville, the Cardinals AAA farm team. He hit well against Suns pitchers Mike Cuellar, Rubén Gómez and others. Cardinals Manager Johnny Keane was told by advance scouts in August 1964 that López was “a good hitter who they [Yankees] might bring up.” Yet the Yankees did not call up López. Instead, Mike Hegan was promoted and replaced the injured Tony Kubek on New York’s World Series roster.
Arecibo traded López to the Caguas Criollos before the 1964-1965 PRWL season. The Caguas skipper was Luis Olmo, López’s Arecibo manager, 1961-1963. José Cardenal and Alex Johnson patrolled the other outfield slots. López described Johnson as “a fiery and antisocial player the Mike Tyson of baseball.” Yet he also noted Johnson’s tender side, which emerged when López’s son Arturo René (then just 5) visited during practice. “Alex truly cared for my son,” recalled López.
Other friendships were made or maintained that winter. Preston Gómez managed Santurce. Fergie Jenkins was a Caguas teammate against whom López had played in Nicaragua. Arecibo’s Mike Cuellar and Pancho Herrera, Caguas 1st baseman, once had lunch at López’s Caguas home.
López and Caguas teammate Julio Navarro reinforced Águilas Cibaeñas (AC) in the postseason of the Dominican Winter League (LIDOM). López was apprehensive, but went anyway. AC would swept Licey in 3 semifinal games. López scored Game 1 winning run, ignoring the manager’s stop sign. AC fans came to the hotel and paid his fine. López went 4-for-8 in this series, with a double and a triple. Escogido was favored over AC in the finals, with Juan Marichal, Fergie Jenkins, Felipe Alou, Matty Alou, Jesús Alou and Bert Campaneris, but AC won 5 straight.
AC then went to Caracas, Venezuela to take part in a 4-team Inter-American Series featuring the top 2 Venezuelan and LIDOM clubs. AC won 4 of 6 in the round robin against Escogido, the Caracas Lions, and La Guaira Sharks. Pete Rose starred for Caracas, but López impressed Venezuela’s sportswriters with a triple, 2 singles and 3 runs scored in a Game 1 win over La Guaira. AC was named tourney champ over Escogido, based on a tiebreaker formula. López became series MVP.
López had a fine 1965 spring training camp in Fort Lauderdale, winning the James P. Dawson Award for best performance by a Yankees rookie. One day, he left 4 tickets for the AAU Swimming Club. Four persons waited for him after the game; 1 was Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic swimmer who went on to movie stardom as Tarzan. López told him, “Had I known you were here, I would not have showered; Tarzan was one of my heroes.”
After López made the team, Clete Boyer once summoned him to the dugout to view the lineup card—Mickey Mantle (who liked the rookie), Roger Maris, Elston Howard and Art López. Roger Repoz was optioned to Toledo; Duke Carmel and Ross Moschitto, also went north. Héctor López and Horace Clarke were Art’s road roommates.
López’s Yankees MLB player debut came as a pinch-runner for Mantle in the 9th inning of the season opener at Minnesota on April 12,1965. He would scored his 1st AL run, when Joe Pepitone’s pop fly was dropped. His 1st MLB hit came off the California Angels’ Dean Chance at Yankee Stadium on April 24th. Through May 31,1965, he had 4 hits in 31 at-bats. In the 2nd game of a Memorial Day twin bill that day versus Detroit, he would pinch-hit for Jim Bouton and grounded to 2nd. Bouton wore #56—the 2nd-highest uniform number on the team after López’s #57.
On June 2, an off-day, López received a call from Johnny Keane, who’d become Yankees Manager. Elston Howard was activated, with López optioned to AAA Toledo Mud Hens. “Keane called me before 7 a.m. to have breakfast,” noted López. Keane had a tough time managing the Yankees, whose record then stood at 19-26.
After 3 months with Toledo, López was called up to the Bronx. On September 3rd, he would played in rightfield versus Boston at Yankee Stadium, a 9-0 shutout by Al Downing. Two days later, López went 2-for-5 against Boston, with hits off of Jim Lonborg and Dick Radatz. On September 8th versus Washington, he was retired by Ron Kline in his last AL at-bat. López went 7 for 49 with New York, including 1-for-13 pinch-hitting.
López’s 1966 season was with Toledo, a Detroit farm team and Syracuse, a Yankees club. Frank Carswell, Syracuse skipper, gave him the impression of being a country squire. “Nothing would bother him,” said López. “He was a fine individual.” López didn’t play minor-league baseball in 1967, but the Yankees would retained his rights. In 6 minor-league seasons, he had posted a .287 average (706-for-2,461) with 49 HRs and 311 RBIs.
Caguas owner Dr. Emigdio Buonomo offered López the job of managing the Criollos in 1967-1968, but he declined. Nino Escalera accepted and led the Caguas to the title. López’s playing time was limited, due to a crowded outfield contingent including Cleon Jones, John Briggs,Ted Savage, Joe Christopher and Jerry Morales. He got just 50 at-bats and had 7 hits. As it developed, that was López’s last action in the PRWL. His lifetime average in his homeland was .284 with 186 hits in 655 at-bats. He had 25 doubles, 14 triples, 9 HRs and 79 RBIs; he scored 95 runs.
López was happier playing for Arecibo but he found ways to bond with Caguas teammates like youngsters Félix Millán, Jerry Morales, and Willie Montañez, to whom he threw batting practice on off-days, even though Morales was competing for playing time.
He got a phone call from Pedrín Zorrilla, a major baseball figure in Puerto Rico who by then was a Yankees bird dog. Zorrilla heard that the Yankees had received an offer for López’s services from a team in Japan. He sought permission from López to have the Yankees negotiate on the player’s behalf. López asked the Yankees to kindly release him, so he could negotiate his own contract.
Prior to a 1967-1968 Caguas-San Juan game at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, Joe Brown, Pittsburgh Pirates GM, made a surprise visit to the visitors’ clubhouse. Brown introduced himself and told López about a potential incentive to join the Bucs organization at the Triple-A level in 1968. According to Lٌópez, Brown said, “If you have a good year at Columbus, we split the Rule 5 Draft amount—half of $25,000 or $50,000—if you are selected by another team.” López replied, “I appreciate you and Roberto [Clemente], but I’m going to Japan.” Brown shook López’s hand and left, but López “was forever grateful to him and Roberto—who must have put in a good word for me—for their kindness.”
Tsuneo “Cappy” Harada, a Japanese-American, helped López connect with the 1968 Tokyo Orions. The club initially thought Art was Héctor López and asked him if he could play 3rd base. Art López informed Harada he could. “The culture in Japan would not permit them (the Orions) to admit to mistakes,” said López. “I helped them save face.” Nevertheless, the Orions put Lopez in right field, when he joined the club, realizing he was an outfielder. López enjoyed 2 weeks of 1968 spring training with the Orions, in Maui. Jim Gilliam and Duke Snider were instructors, thanks to the Orions owner’s friendship with Los Angeles Dodgers executives.
López made history in 1968 as the 1st Puerto Rican to play pro baseball in Japan. He was the 4th Caribbean player there overall. Playing right field for Tokyo, López hit 23 HRs. With him in the outfield was George Altman, the team’s other gaijin (non-Japanese or foreigner). Orions manager Wataru Nonin had López’s respect: “To think that he was a native of Hiroshima and yet showed no rancor nor malice towards George [Altman] and me.”
From then through 1971, López and Altman were Orions teammates and road roommates at Western-style hotels. Altman read late at night and slept late. López, an early riser, agreed that they could have adjoining hotel rooms. Teams in Japan adhered to a tight schedule. López nearly starved during the initial 1968 season road trip because he and Altman fiddled with chopsticks, while their teammates picked up “great food from a huge bowl containing all kinds of fish and meats.” The players ate a mile a minute and the team bus was waiting, and we [Altman and López] had eaten almost nothing. It did not take us long to learn how to use those sticks to perfection!"
López continued to produce in 1969-1971 for the Lotte Orions, the same franchise, but under new ownership. Mr. Nagata, Lotte’s owner, was a good friend of Horace Stoneham, the San Francisco Giants owner. San Francisco played 9 1970 spring training games in Japan, winning just 3—it was the 1st time that a big-league team lost more than they won in Japan. López hit a HR off of Marichal and went 0-for-4 against Gaylord Perry and his spitball.
The 1970 season was special. López was voted to 2 All-Star Games, he appreciated the fans for doing so. He led off the 1st with a HR; he excused himself from the second in view of the birth of his 5th child, Christopher. In addition, Lotte (80-47-3) won the Pacific League title by 10 1/2 games over the Nankai Hawks. Five Orions hit 20 or more HRs, including López with 21. However, the Yomiuri Giants (79-47-4), Central League winners, took the Nippon Series, 4 games to 1. Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima were Yomiuri icons. In 1971, Lotte spent part of spring training in Scottsdale, Arizona, working out with and playing against San Francisco. López noted that Altman and country singer Charley Pride, from Mississippi, had served in the U.S. Army together. “He [Pride] practiced with us,” said López. “He loved baseball and looked like a great singer.” Pride, as a young man, had played briefly (8 games in all), over t3 seasons in the minor leagues (1953, 1955, and 1960).
López’s key takeaway from Japan was that “Japanese respect your privacy; space is sacred.” After signing post-game autographs, fans let him walk to the train station, staying behind him. He appreciated Japan’s “group mentality over individual” philosophy. From a baseball standpoint, he liked the smaller stadium dimensions, as well as a fundamental difference; 2 cutoff throws, not 1 longer throw. This allowed him to play right field more effectively, with less strain on his left arm.
López did a kind deed for singer José Feliciano when the latter was in Tokyo for concerts. Feliciano’s suitcases were lost in transit, but López had his own tailor at the Hotel New Japan and arranged for suits to be made for the singer, a native of Lares, Puerto Rico.
The 1972 and 1973 Yakult Atoms of Japan’s Central League were López’s last 2 baseball teams. He enjoyed the Orions more, but Japan, overall, was “immensely glorious.” The teams furnished lovely housing for the López family. The 4 older children attended a private school, and there was no need (or time) for López to play winter ball. George Altman was a “great buddy and a great player.” In 2021, Altman reciprocated, saying, “It was great having ‘roomie’ for a teammate—a surprise teammate; they [the Orions] believed they had signed Héctor López instead of Art but it turned out fine.” Altman added that the strike zone in Japan was wider for foreign players than for natives, so he and López had to swing at bad pitches.
Overall in Japan, López had played in 750 games during 6 seasons, posting a .290 average with 116 HRs and 401 RBIs. While in Japan, Lopez learned some Japanese phrases and slang, but he did not master the language. López was 36 and still in good shape, but his 1972 and 1973 hitting numbers were down and he was ready for a career change. His attorney wrote a letter to George Steinbrenner, inquiring about employment possibilities with the Yankees, but he never heard back from Steinbrenner. However. López’s background in the insurance industry helped him make the proper career transition to the East Coast of the U.S.
López had post-baseball success in banking, insurance, and teaching. In 1974, he directed an Insurance Training School for New York and New Jersey, located in New Jersey.
López kept in touch with the baseball world. He was saddened by Luke Easter’s death on March 29,1979. He gave Roy White a good recommendation to play in Japan when contacted, and White went on to play 3 seasons for the Yomiuri Giants. In 1991, López attended former winter league opponent and teammate Ferguson Jenkins’s induction ceremony in Cooperstown and got a hug after yelling, “Fergie, Fergie” to his friend.
López earned an undergraduate degree in Finance from New Jersey City University in 1999. He went on to get 2 online Master’s degrees from Capella University in 2005 and 2007 in Curriculum and Instruction. The marriage of López and Mary ended in 1990. He would married Antonia Washington on August 8, 2003. He resides in Orlando, Florida, and stays in touch with his sister, Zoraida, in North Carolina and Chicago. López enjoys watching Turner Classic Movies and reading, with a focus on World War I history. López received yet another degree his MBA from NorthCentral University in December 2022. His approach to lifelong learning typifies this man’s mindset as an engaging scholar, successful businessman, and someone who made the most of his athletic ability.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 18, 2024 22:57:20 GMT -5
Yankees Pitcher Rollie SheldonThis article was written by Bill Nowlin, Edited by Clipper
1961 Topps Baseball CardRollie Sheldon’s introduction to big-league baseball came with the 1961 New York Yankees. With a record of 109-53, that team ranks as one of the winningest in the franchise’s history. Sheldon’s record in his rookie year was 11-5, topped among the starters by Whitey Ford (25-4) and Ralph Terry (16-3).
Though he was 24 at the time, he’d rocketed to the majors after just 1 year in professional baseball, jumping from Class D to the majors. At the time it was noted that the last pitcher to make that leap had been Sid Hudson in 1940.
Roland Frank Sheldon was a right-handed pitcher born in Putnam, Connecticut, on December 17, 1936. He grew to be 6-feet-4 and listed at 190 pounds. He reported himself as three-quarters Swedish and one-quarter “Yankee.” While he was a Yankee by ancestry and first signed with the Yankees, he grew up a Red Sox fan. “I hated the Yankees when I was a kid,” he said. “I liked the Red Sox. I was always a Ted Williams fan. As far as I was concerned, Dom DiMaggio was better than his brother Joe.
“My dad Frank was 1 of 14 children. He grew up on a farm and worked his tail off every day. It was a dairy farm basically but we raised a lot of vegetables, took in hay, and maintained a bunch of animals—cows, horses…I spent my summer’s up there on my grandfather’s farm and played ball with my cousins.” His mother Elsie was a homemaker.
Rollie had attended the Woodstock Elementary School and then Woodstock Academy, from which he graduated in 1954. There he lettered in basketball, soccer, and track as well as baseball, but he was only 5-feet-9 (weighing 135 pounds) and he never pitched in high school. After graduation, “Three of my classmates and myself enlisted in the USAF. I was only 17 1/2 years old.” He served in the Air Force from June 1956 to September 1958. Sheldon was stationed at Spangdahlem Air Force Base in Germany (just north of Trier) and played service baseball, at one point throwing a no-hitter. “We played some great teams in Europe. In fact, we used to beat all the Army clubs over there.”
After being mustered out, Shelby Metcalf, a friend who was a 1st lieutenant in the service, became the freshman baseball and basketball coach at Texas A&M. “He had no background in baseball so he invited me to come and play basketball and help him with the baseball.” He attended on the G.I. Bill. When he came home for Christmas, Sheldon realized he was homesick, so he returned to A&M, finished up his semester and transferred to UConn. He played both baseball and basketball at UConn, including one memorable NCAA tournament game at Madison Square Garden, where he was guarded by Basketball Hall of Famer Satch Sanders.
He was a sophomore at university when he signed with the Yankees on June 4,1960, for a “healthy bonus” estimated at $20,000. Scout Henry Hesse apparently believed he was 20, though he was in fact 3 years older. “I never lied about my age,” Sheldon said later. “I remember the Saturday morning when Henry Hesse…turned up at my house to see if I was interested in a baseball career. My parents and I were surprised, but I was ready, so we sat in our living room and discussed it. Hesse was in touch with Bill Skiff back in New York a couple of times. Eventually we agreed on a contract and a bonus and were about to sign the contract. Mr. Hesse then said since I was only 20 and a minor, my parents would have to sign
“If he thought I was 20,” Sheldon continued, “I wouldn’t say anything because I didn’t want to blow this opportunity to play pro ball. I interrupted by parents’ ‘coffee break’ and asked them to sign for me. They knew I had always wanted to play pro ball but were surprised I would sign with the Yanks when I was a Red Sox fan…I believe anyone would have done the same thing…keep quiet.” Sheldon said he had always put down his correct age on all of his college records. Sheldon was assigned to the 1960 Auburn, New York, Yankees in the Class-D New York-Penn League. Within the 1st 5 or so weeks on the job, Manager Bob Bauer called him “one of the best looking pitchers I have ever seen in Class D ball.” He enjoyed an excellent season, with a 15-1 record with a 2.88 ERA and 15 complete games. The 1 game he lost was in the 10th inning after a double steal and an error did him in. He had worked 150 innings, striking out 127 and walking only 56. Unsurprisingly, he was named the league’s Rookie of the Year for 1960.
Sheldon was offered the opportunity to join the major-league Yankees in September, but he had already registered for the fall semester at UConn. In 1961 he was asked to come to advance camp for top propects in St. Petersburg. Sheldon made the Yankees out of spring training. He impressed new manager Ralph Houk, and just about everyone else and won the James P. Dawson Award as the outstanding rookie in camp. This was the 1961 team of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris (and, as noted above, Whitey Ford and Ralph Terry). Maris hit 61 homers and Mantle hit 54.
Sheldon’s debut came on April 23rd in Baltimore with2 innings of run-less relief. His 1st start was on April 30th in the 2nd game of a doubleheader in Washington. He lost the game, but only due to a lack of run support. He threw 7 innings, giving up 2 runs. The Yankees scored but 1 run, in the 9th inning.
Sheldon’s 2nd decision was a loss as well, again working 7 innings, but losing 3-2. His 1st win finally came on May 31th, a 7-6 win in Boston. He won 3 games in June, and then made the rotation, promptly throwing back-to-back shutouts at Yankee Stadium on July 5th (a 4-hitter) and July 9th (a 5-hitter), against the Indians and then the Red Sox. The July 5th shutout had come the very day after he had relieved in a game against the Tigers and faced a bases-loaded situation with Rocky Colavito at the plate. He went into a full windup and saw a triple steal, with Chico Fernandez stealing home. Houk not only didn’t chastise him, but gave him the start the next day.
Sheldon pitched 3 more complete games for wins, and won his last 2 games as well, both in relief. By season’s end, he was 11-5 with a 3.60 ERA.
Sheldon credited Pitching Coach Johnny Sain for helping him a lot.
In the 1961 World Series, he warmed up once or twice, but saw no action; New York beat Cincinnati 4 games to 1.
Looking back, there is one slight regret he had — that he hadn’t had the chance to pitch to his childhood idol, Ted Williams. “I missed him by1 year [Williams retired after the 1960 season]. I keep telling people I don’t care if he hit a gigantic HR off me. I just wanted to face him 1 time.”
He asked the Yankees for “special treatment” in 1962 — to allow him to report early and take part in the early spring rookie school once more. “I’m still a rookie with a good deal to learn,” he said.
Sheldon started off the year continuing his studies at UConn and getting married to Wanda Lou McConnell in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, on January 20th. They had met when the Yankees were in Kansas City and he walked into a local hardware store, which also sold sporting goods. Wanda was working there and the 2 struck up a conversation. Her father, Rev. Merle McConnell, was a big baseball fan, and also officiated at their wedding.
At the time, his hope was to teach and coach baseball at the college level when his pitching career was done.
He won in his 1st appearance of 1962, in 1 inning of relief, but he was bombed for 5 earned runs (no decision) in his 1st start. He won some and lost some as the season progressed, not making the starting rotation until near the end of May. He started in 16 of his 34 appearances. Though he still struck nearly twice as many batters as he walked, his WHIP increased somewhat and his earned run average of 5.49 reflected a season in which he struggled with effectiveness in scoring situations all season long. In July, he learned he’d been tipping pitches, changed his pitching style and threw an 11-3 win against Kansas City for 1 of his 2 complete games of the season, but the benefit was apparently only temporary.
His won/loss record was 7-8. The Yankees won the American League pennant again and the World Series. Sheldon was on the roster, but once more saw no postseason duty. After the World Series, Sheldon’s explanation for his shortcomings in his sophomore year was “too much experimenting.” He said he’d tried “15 to 20 styles” and “listened to too many people.” The Yankees hadn’t expected him to perform at the same level as in 1961, and knew there were adjustments that needed to be made. Pitching Coach Johnny Sain said it was a case of trying to do too much. “He didn’t know what it was like to lose. All his life he didn’t know anything but winning, winning. When things went bad last year, he didn’t know how to adjust to it.”
He trained with the big-league team until early April 1963. Sheldon would spent the 1963 season in AA A, with the International League’s Richmond Virginians. “It was a shock” to be sent down, he said, “I was always a top man in sports — starting 5 (basketball at the University of Connecticut) starting. It was the 1st time, I was ever cut from a team in my life. And the thing mounted inside of me.” Pegged as Richmond’s number 1 starter before the season began, he turned in an unimpressive year with a 5-9 record and a 4.40 ERA in 32 games (20 starts), though he pitched better in the final 5 to 6 weeks.
The 1st 2 months of 1964 were spent with Richmond as well. He wasn’t pleased, of course, but realized it was probably good for him to be able to get in as much work as he could. In 9 starts, he recorded a 1.85 ERA with 44 strikeouts and only 11 walks. He would credited Richmond Catcher Jake Gibbs and the Yankees’ roving batting coach, Wally Moses. On June 12th, New York had sold lefty Bob Meyer to the Angels and brought up Sheldon. He gave up just 3 runs in 7 innings on the 14th and then beat the Red Sox, 6-3, with a complete game win on June 18th. He had appeared in 19 games, starting 12, and put up a 5-2 record with a 3.61 ERA . Three of the games were complete-game wins.
Over his 1st 3 seasons, he had 86 fielding chances and only committed 1 error. By career’s end, he’d been presented 170 chances and only misplayed 3 of them for a career fielding percentage of .982.
In 1964, he pitched briefly in the postseason. In Game 1 of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Sheldon was asked to relieve in the bottom of the 8th, the Cardinals holding a 6-5 edge. An error by the Yankees’ 3rd baseman allowed Mike Shannon to reach 1st base. A passed ball let him take 2nd. A walk followed. Barney Schultz lined back to Sheldon, who threw to 1st for a double play. With a runner on 2nd, Sheldon was instructed to walk Bob Skinner intentionally. With 2 men on, new reliever Pete Mikkelsen came in and Curt Flood singled, then Lou Brock doubled, and Sheldon was charged with both runs, though both were unearned. The Cardinals won the game, 9-5 and ultimately won the World Series. In Game 7, he had retired all 6 batters he faced, but 2 runners that he inherited scored.
Sheldon returned home and resumed his studies and practice teaching physical education at E. O. Smith High School at Storrs. He played some semipro basketball with the East Hartford Explorers and received his college degree in February. “It took me 7 years. The Yankees traveling secretary, Bruce Henry, proctored exams for me and then sent stuff back to UConn; I got about 9 hours that way.”
New manager Johnny Keane perhaps had more faith in Sheldon than had Yogi Berra, particularly after his work in the World Series, and made him part of the 1965 team. He worked well in 3 bullpen efforts in April, but when catcher Elston Howard was lost for an expected 2 months to right-elbow surgery for bone chips, the team had to make a move to get a new catcher. They would trade Sheldon and Catcher Johnny Blanchard to the Kansas City Athletics on May 3rd to obtain Catcher Doc Edwards.
Sheldon had a very full season with Kansas City, starting 29 games. He was 10-8 for the 10th-place Athletics, with a 3.95 ERA. “It was hard to leave the Yankees,” he said, “but it was a break for me getting to go with a club where I could start regularly. There’s just no substitute for pitching regularly. Your control, your rhythm, everything is better when you’re taking a regular turn.” He credited the A’s Pitching Coach Ed Lopat for working with him. Pitching for a last-place team is always discouraging, but Sheldon pitched even better for the Athletics in 1966, he just didn’t have the won/loss record, he would have for another team. His 1st 3 losses were all games in which his team was shut out. On May 1st, they got him 1 run and he threw a 3-hit shutout to beat the Yankees.
Through June 12th, he was 4-7 despite having a good 3.13 ERA. Two days before the June 15th trading deadline, the Athletics and Red Sox executed a 6-player trade, with Sheldon joined by Jose Tartabull and John Wyatt on his way to Boston, in exchange for Jim Gosger, Guido Grilli, and Ken Sanders. It was the Red Sox who finished nearly last in 1966, just a half-game ahead of the Yankees.
Boston was most interested in Sheldon. Sportswriter Larry Claflin wrote, “The key man as far as the Red Sox are concerned is Sheldon.” Sheldon never seemed to get his footing with the Red Sox. He had appeared in 23 games (10 of them starts) and worked 79 2/3 innings with an ERA of 4.97. His pitching record was 1-6.
“I grew up a big Red Sox fan,” Sheldon said 50 years later, “but when the Yankees gave me a chance to play, I disposed of the Red Sox and I love the Yankees. [The Yankees] will always be in my DNA and I guess I’m in their DNA.”
He wasn’t around to experience the 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox capturing the American League pennant. On December 15th, he was sent to the Cincinnati Reds (with pitcher Dick Stigman) as the players to be named later, who had helped Boston acquire Hank Fischer 4 months earlier, on August 15th.
As it happens, his MLB days were done. He labored 4 more years in the high minors but he never returned to the big leagues. “It was the tail end of my career and I was just trying to hang on. I had a little arm trouble here and there. I was just trying to extend my career as much as I could.” Sheldon would finished with a 38-36 record (4.09 ERA). He had never been much of a batter; in 239 plate appearances, he had 20 base hits for an .096 batting average. He had drove in 4 runs in 1961, but then only 1 each in 3 other years-1962, 1964 and 1965.
Sheldon’s last 4 years were all in Triple A, in either the International League (IL) or Pacific Coast League (PCL). In 1967, he would toiled for Buffalo Bisons, the Reds’ IL team. He had appeared in 29 games, starting 16. He had a .360 ERA and a 9-6 record. His 1968 season was shared between Cincinnati’s IL Indianapolis Indians club and then (his 1st game for them was July 28th) then the Seattle Angels, the PCL affiliate of the California Angels. His combined stats show 25 starts and 2 relief stints, with a 9-9 record with an ERA of 3.43.
In 1969 he was on the roster of 4 different teams, starting with the expansion Seattle Pilots with whom he trained in the spring. He was with AAA Vancouver in April, AAA Toledo in May and AAA Tucson by August. His combined record was 6-9 (3.56 ERA), with 17 starts in 25 games. In 197, his final season before retirement, he would start with AAA Tucson and transitioned to AAA Salt Lake City in the Padres’ system, where he also served as a Coach under Manager Don Zimmer. His combined pitching record showed a 3-10 mark with a 5.31 ERA.
After baseball, Sheldon settled in Lee’s Summit and entered the insurance business as an adjuster and a supervisor for Allstate. In 1976, he told a writer, “I’m also coaching and managing a girls’ softball team. I also belong to a Yankee alumni group and when they come to town we get together.” He and his wife had 2 daughters, Ronda and Lori. Rollie and Wanda were divorced in the early 1980s. They had been together some 18 years. About 4 years later, Sheldon married again and in 2018 continues to live in Lee’s Summit with Shirley Ann Sheldon. She brought 2 sons into the marriage. He kept active himself with golf, fishing, basketball, and overhand softball. His team won the K. C. City Overhand Tournament in the summer of 1982. Sheldon lived in Missouri, but worked mostly in Kansas. He did that for 23 years. On the 1st day of 2018, he said, “I’ve been retired now longer than I worked for Allstate. I’ve been pretty lucky. I retired at age 56. I got a nice buyout and my baseball pension and Social Security.”
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 19, 2024 14:38:05 GMT -5
Former Yankees Reliever (1963) and MLB Umpire Bill Kunkel
1963 Topps Baseball Card
Bill Kunkel was a major league pitcher and umpire, also the father of a major leaguer player. He is the last former major league player to have umpired a major league game.
Bill Kunkel was born on July 7,1936 in Hoboken, New Jersey. He had attended Demarest High School in Demarest, New Jersey. Kunkel would pitched pro baseball for 7 seasons, 1955 to 1965, 3 were in the Major Leagues (mostly in relief) and 7 in the minors, plus losing 2 years to active duty military service in 1957 and 1958. He would married Maxine Ann Nordby on July 7,1960.
Bill was originally signed as MLB Amateur Free Agent by the Boston Red Sox in 1955. Before 1956 MLB season, he was sent from the Boston Red Sox to the Brooklyn Dodgers in an unknown transaction. Then he was pitching in the Dodgers organization from 1956 to 1960, reaching the AAA level with the 1960 Montreal Royals (International League). On November 28,1960, Bill was drafted by the Kansas City Athletics from the Los Angeles Dodgers organization in the 1960 Rule 5 Player Draft. In 1961, he would join the Kansas City A's, pitching for them for 2 seasons. His most active MLB season was 1961, when he would appeared in 58 games for the A's. On August 3,1962, Bill was traded by the Kansas City A's along with OF Leo Posada to the Milwaukee Braves for Pitcher Orlando Peña.
On November 26, 1962, he was drafted by the New York Yankees from the Milwaukee Braves organization in the 1962 MLB Rule 5 Player Draft. For the 1963 Yankees, working as a Reliever, he would post a 3-2 record with a 2.72 ERA with no saves in 22 games, He didn't appear in the 1963 World Series against the Dodgers. Then he would leave the Yankees organization. Bill would pitch at the AAA level for several teams from 1964-1965. His son, Jeff Kunkel was an infielder for 8 years from 1984 to 1992 with the Texas Rangers and the Chicago White Sox. His grandson, Jeff Kunkel Jr. would reach the AAA playing level, then he would become a scout and minor league coach. After the 1965 minor league season had ended, Bill would retired at age 28.
Then he would turned his attention to umpiring. Kunkel was an umpire in the Florida State League in 1966 and in the Southern League in 1967-1968; then reaching the American League in September,1968. It was Kunkel, who discovered that Pitcher Rick Honeycutt doctoring the baseball with a tack wedged inside a Band-Aid on his right hand in a game in 1980. "I grabbed his hand and got stuck," Kunkel explained. Honeycutt received a 10-day suspension. Twice during his career, he took leaves from umpiring to undergo cancer surgery and twice he would return. He had umpired in 2 World Series in 1974 and 1980 and in the 1972 and 1977 MLB All-Star Games, serving as home plate umpire in the latter.
During 1984 spring training, Kunkel's son Jeff, a member of the Texas Rangers, brought the lineup card to the plate the only time father and son have appeared in the same major league game as umpire and player. Shortly after his son Jeff was called up by the Rangers in July of that season, Bill Kunkel decided to retire as an umpire. He worked his last MLB game on August 28th. He was the last of a breed, as no former Major League player has umpired a game since that day, even though the transition from player to umpire was very common until the 1950s. Bill Kunkel was also a college basketball referee for 20 years.
He would pass away shortly after his MLB Umpire retirement on May 4,1985 at age 47 at Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, NJ. He had fallen victim to the cancer. He had fought valiantly and was cremated. He was survived by his wife Maxine, his sons Jeff and Kevin and his daughter Lisa.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 19, 2024 16:36:00 GMT -5
Former Yankees INF/OF Hector Lopez
(1959-1966)This article was written by Jim Sargent, Edited by Clipper
 1960 Topps baseball Card
Hector Headley Lopez, the Panamanian-born 3rd baseman for the Kansas City Athletics, who saw his solid career shift to a better team, when the A’s traded him to the New York Yankees on May 26,1959. After more than 4 seasons in Kansas City as a regular infielder, mostly at 3rd base, Lopez continued to play well, hitting .283 in 112 games for the 3rd-place Yankees the rest of the 1959 season. A right-handed batter who hit to all fields and displayed good power, notably in the clutch, Lopez slugged a career-best 22 HRs in 1959, including 16 HRs, while playing for New York. But he also committed 31 errors, mostly at the hot corner. Despite his continued improvement, Hector picked up a misleading label with sportswriters: “good stick-weak glove.”
In 1960, Yankees Manager Casey Stengel would move light-hitting Clete Boyer to 3rd base and took advantage of Lopez’s versatility by using him as a utility player. At one time or another for Kansas City and New York, Lopez would handled all 4 infield and all 3 outfield positions. For the Yankees, he usually played left or right field. In 1960, for example, he would play in 131 games,106 in the outfield, 5 at 2nd base, 1 at 3rd base and 25 games as a pinch-hitter (in some games, he appeared in multiple capacities). Averaging .284 in 408 at-bats in 1960 (down from 541 at-bats in 1959), “Hector the Hit Collector,” as writer George Vecsey dubbed him, contributed 14 doubles, 6 triples and 9 HRs.
In his 12 big-league seasons for Kansas City and New York, Lope hadz averaged .269, collecting 1,251 hits, including 193 doubles, 37 triples and 136 HRs. When the Yankees won American League pennants from 1960 to 1964, Lopez had played in 5 straight fall classics, batting .286 in the post-season. Lopez had twice played for World Series Champions in 1961 and 1962.
When the Bronx Bombers defeated the Cincinnati Reds in 5 games in the 1961 World Series, Lopez, who had batted only .222 during the regular season, hit .333 in 4 games. He produced all 7 of his World Series RBIs in 1961, driving home 5 runs with a HR and a triple in the decisive 5th game, a 13-5 Yankee romp.
Considering that he grew up in Latin America at a time when black players could not make it to the major leagues, Lopez enjoyed a very successful professional career. Born on July 8, 1929, in Colon, Panama, he grew up loving beisbol. He liked watching his father, Manuel, pitch for local teams and he inherited his father’s passion for the game.
In a 1963 interview with New York sportswriter Hugh Bradley, Lopez recalled how kids in Colon would play pickup games using a broom handle for a bat and a ball made of a taped piece of rubber. “My eyes and reactions must have been good,” he said, “because bigger guys tabbed me as a HR hitter and invited me to play on their teams.”
Lopez continued, “Ever since I can remember I wanted to be a ballplayer. Things didn’t seem bright, though. Panama is crazy about baseball, but most of those few who had a chance in the majors were pitchers. I was a skinny little infielder.”
Lopez graduated in 1950 from Colon’s English-speaking school, Rainbow City High. During those years, he specialized in auto mechanics, played baseball and worked in a bowling alley on the local American military base. After high school, he played 2 years in Panama’s amateur provincial league. Leo Kellman, who had managed a team in the Panama Professional League, saw Lopez, a good-hitting shortstop and signed him for the winter season of 1950-1951.
Lenny Pecou, a part-time scout and career minor leaguer, who had played outfield in 1950 for St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, in the Class C Provincial League, saw Lopez playing winter ball and recommended him to St. Hyacinthe. The independent club would sign the 21-year-old Panamanian and he played the 1951 season for the 5th-place Saints, hitting .297. In 1952, Lopez would return to the Provincial League, down from 8 to 6 teams. He would hit .329, contributing 6 HRs, 75 RBIs and a league-leading 115 runs scored. He would helped St. Hyacinthe, who were now affiliated with the Philadelphia Athletics finish in 1st place and also capture the playoff championship in 7 games over 3rd-place St. Jean.
Lopez would ended up with the Athletics organization in 1953, because Scout Joe McDonald saw him play. Philadelphia had signed Hector and sent him to Williamsport of the Class A Eastern League. The A’s finished 6th, but he hit a solid .270 with 8 HRs and 51 RBIs.
“That was a pretty tough league,” Lopez remembered in 2003. “They had guys like Rocky Colavito and Herb Score and others, who made the majors. I was playing shortstop at that time, I came up to the A’s as a shortstop. When I got to Kansas City, they moved me to 3rd base and to 2nd base and to center field and all over.”
He was assigned to Ottawa of the AAA International League in 1954, Lopez continued to play well, by hitting .316 with 8 HRs and 53 RBIs. In 1955, he went to spring training camp with the Athletics, after the franchise had been shifted to Kansas City, but he was sent to AAA Columbus, also in the International League, to learn how to play 2nd base. After he had batted .321 in the 1st month of the season, the Athletics would call him up on May 12th.
Lopez recalled, “I played a lot of 2nd base for Kansas City in 1955, but they moved me around. Kansas City was trying to get good ballplayers at that time. Every time they were short somewhere, they tried to use me there. They just kept moving me around. It’s hard to learn a position if you have to keep moving.”
Lopez was a candidate for Rookie of the Year honors, but Cleveland’s southpaw Herb Score won the award with his 16-10 season. Still, Hector enjoyed a good year, averaging .290 with 15 doubles, 2 triples, 15 HRs and 68 RBIs.
Lopez’s play at 3rd helped stabilize KC’s infield. Vic Power, a flashy Puerto Rican who loved making one-handed sweeping catches of thrown balls, played 1st base. Good-hitting Jim Finigan played 2nd base and sometimes at 3rd. Not a strong fielder, Finigan altered his swing. The change didn’t work and he batted .255, after hitting .302 as a rookie in 1954. Veteran shortstop Joe DeMaestri, who had hit .249 in 1955, rounded out the infield.
In 1955, Lopez had played in 128 games, 93 at 3rd and 36 at 2nd (with 1 game at both), but he had committed 23 errors at 3rd (he made 29 total errors), a figure that topped AL 3rd basemen.
“I surprised myself in 1955,” Lopez later observed. “I had a lot of HRs too and I wasn’t a HR hitter. I was more of a fielder in those days than a hitter. We had good players, guys like Vic Power at 1st, Suitcase Simpson and Gus Zernial and Enos Slaughter in the outfield, Joe DeMaestri at short, Jim Finigan at 2nd and 3rd, Joe Astroth at catcher and Alex Kellner, a pitcher, Bob Shantz, another good pitcher, and Arnie Portocarrero, a pitcher.”
Lopez lived with Harry “Suitcase” Simpson, a 6-foot-1 outfielder from Atlanta, who picked up the nickname during his Negro League days in the late 1940s. Simpson wore size 13 shoes. One writer said his feet were big as a suitcase, like a character in the “Toonerville Folks” comics and the tag stuck. Even though there were places where minorities couldn’t go, restaurants where they couldn’t eat, or things they couldn’t do, Lopez recalled, “It wasn’t too bad at Kansas City. I got along with everyone, and they treated me well. Suitcase Simpson and me rented an apartment in a family home. We had the whole upstairs. They treated me all right in Kansas City. I can’t complain.”
Playing under Manager Lou Boudreau, a former shortstop, who later was elected to the Hall of Fame, Kansas City would finish 6th in 1955 with a 63-91 record. During Lopez’s tenure, the Athletics would remain a 2nd-division club, finishing last in 1956, 7th in 1957 and 7th in 1958.
In 1956, Lopez had enjoyed a good season at the plate, hitting .273 with 27 doubles, 3 triples, 18 HRs and 69 RBIs. He would play 121 of his 151 games at the hot corner, where he led AL 3rd basemen with 26 errors. Still, Boudreau continued to move the former shortstop around, using him in the outfield 20 times as well as at 2nd base (8 games) and shortstop (4 games).
Lopez handled the moves with grace. A good fielder, he had to keep adjusting to another position. When his numbers were compared to those of others who played the same position, Hector looked good. He had a knack, however, of booting a play at a place like Yankee Stadium, where the error drew more publicity. On the other hand, Gene Woodling, the fine Yankee outfielder, mishandled a 9th-inning fly ball against the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1950 World Series, but nobody wrote that he had “bad hands.”
Never outspoken, Lopez was a good player and a good teammate everywhere he played. Fans like to see clutch hitters, especially those who can hit HRs and hard-hitting Hector, with his brown eyes, black hair, and pleasant personality, became a fan favorite in Kansas City.
In May 1957, during a season in which he hit a career-best .294 with 19 doubles, 4 triples, and 11 HRs, when Lopez fell into a slump, Boudreau, who was later replaced by Harry Craft, benched the Panamanian for a few games. On June 15th, back in the lineup at home against the Yankees, Lopez would begin a 22-game hitting streak that lasted until the Red Sox shut him down on July 16th. Averaging .256 before the streak, Hector went 36-for-83, an impressive .434 mark.
“I had 4 good years with Kansas City,” Lopez recalled in 2003. “You get better when you can play every day. Either you get better, or you get worse. I kept getting better, and I got help from some good guys. Veterans like Suitcase Simpson, they knew the game. They helped me. When I was at St. Hyacinthe in 1951, I roomed with Connie Johnson, who later pitched in the majors. Connie taught me a lot about hitting good pitching. In 1952, I roomed with Joe Taylor, who also made it to the majors and Al Pinkston, who was a good minor leaguer. These guys would talk, and I would just listen and learn. Wherever I went, the veterans would talk, and I would listen.”
Reflecting on Kansas City being a 2nd-division team in the 1950s, Lopez commented, “The Athletics didn’t get too high in the standings. They traded most of their good ballplayers and most went to the Yankees. Kansas City was trying to build a ballclub, and they could get 3 or 4 players from the Yankees for 1 or 2 players. There wasn’t any draft at that time. Everybody wanted to play with the Yankees, so the Yankees signed a lot of ballplayers.”
Standing 5-feet-11 and weighing 180 pounds by 1958, Lopez enjoyed his 4th solid season with the Athletics, hitting .261 with 28 doubles, 4 triples, and 17 HRs, his 4th straight season of double-digit HRs. Of his 151 games, Hector had played 96 at 2nd base.
The right-handed batter enjoyed one of his best days as a big leaguer on June 26, 1958. Playing at KC’s Municipal Stadium against the Washington Senators, Lopez pounded 3 of his 17 HRs off of 3 different Washington right-handers, leading the A’s to an 8-6 victory. Batting against Hal Griggs in the 4th inning, Lopez hit a solo blast. Against Tex Clevenger in the 8th, Hector unloaded a 2-run shot. Finally, hitting against Vito Valentinetti in the 12th, he won the game with another 2-run HR.
Lopez would begin the 1959 season playing 2nd base. At the time of his trade, he was hitting .281. The Athletics had swapped Lopez and right-handed pitcher Ralph Terry to New York for right-handers Johnny Kucks and Tom Sturdivant and infielder Jerry Lumpe. Considering the later heroics of Lopez and Terry, the Yankees got the best of that deal.
Lopez got off to a good start. On June 9th, he lifted the Yankees to a 13-inning, 9-8 victory over the Athletics with a line single to right, driving in Yogi Berra with the game-winning run. In the 4 hour and 10-minute contest, Lopez went 3-for-5 with 1 walk, and he saved the game. In the 9th, he tripled and a few minutes later scored to tie the contest when outfielder Whitey Herzog had muffed Gil McDougald’s short fly to right for a 2-base error.
When the game ended, Lopez was hitting .307 for the year. In his 1st 12 games for the Yankees, he had gone 17-for-44, while collecting 13 of his 69 RBIs for New York. Actually, against the A’s in the 13th inning, he failed to bunt twice before lining what could have been a double to right field. The ball bounced into the stands, and when Lopez rounded 1st and saw the game was over, he trotted to the dugout. The game-winner, which came off a Tom Sturdivant knuckleball, contributed to his growing reputation as a good 2-strike hitter.
Lopez would finish the season averaging .283 and hit 26 doubles and 5 triples as well as career highs with 22 HRs and 93 RBIs. In 147 games, he had played 76 at 3rd base, 35 in the outfield, and 33 at 2nd base. He had committed 31 errors, but as Stengel said about the extra-inning win over Kansas City, Lopez’s clutch hitting and versatility outweighed any fielding mistakes.
Lopez maintained that he was a better fielder than sportswriters claimed. “Most of the managers I ever had kept shifting me around from one position to another,” he told Til Ferdenzi in 1963. “I was young then and I think it affected me.”
In 1960, the Panamanian contributed to the Yankees’ pennant-winning team, especially with his good bat. In a story dated May 11,1960, “The Lonely World of Hector Lopez,” Stan Isaacs of Newsday detailed how Hector left the 2-family home, where his mother also lived, in Brooklyn by 10 o’clock in the morning and made an hour-long subway ride to Yankee Stadium in order to be ready for batting practice at 11:30.
After an afternoon game, Lopez, a major leaguer who was virtually anonymous in private life, rode the subway home, usually arriving after 7:30. He spent most evenings with his mother and lived a quiet life away from the ballpark. In his spare-time, he was an excellent carpenter and mechanic. His lifestyle changed somewhat when he married Claudette Joyce Brown, his longtime sweetheart from Colon in Panama on November 30, 1960.
“One difference in playing in Kansas City and New York was that Kansas City wasn’t a big city, and everyone knows you,” Lopez said in 2003. “You walk around, and they all know you. In New York most people don’t know you. I lived in Brooklyn, and I’d catch a train every day. Finally, I got a car, and I’d drive to the Stadium.”
Before his wedding, Lopez had played in the 1960 World Series, which the Yankees lost when Bill Mazeroski, the Pittsburgh Pirates 2nd baseman, slugged a walk-off HR in the bottom of the 9 inning of Game 7. Playing in his 1st Series, Lopez got into 3 games. At Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field in Game 1, he had started in left field and singled in 5 trips. Lopez returned to the bench in Game 2 and didn’t emerge until Game 5, when he had a pinch-hit single. Lopez sat out Game 6, then he got another pinch-hit single in Game 7. Although, he proved that he could hit in October, averaging .429 with a 3-for-7 performance, he never got a real chance to contribute.
The Yankees came back in 1961 with another strong ballclub, and their pennant-winning season was highlighted by the home-run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. The Bronx Bombers, living up to their nickname, capped the season by defeating the Cincinnati Reds in 5 games in the World Series. Lopez, however, played less during the regular season. In 93 games and 243 at-bats, he would hit .222 with 3 HRs and 22 RBIs. Yogi Berra, who only caught 15 games in 1961, played mostly left field, while the switch-hitting Mantle covered center and Roger Maris, a left-handed slugger, anchored right field. Lopez, who batted right-handed, platooned with left-handed batter Berra.
In the 1961 World Series, Lopez went 0-for-2 in Game 1, then pinch-hit for Ralph Terry in the 7th inning of Game 2 and drew a walk. He was on the bench for Game 3, but in Game 4, he took over in the 4th inning for Mickey Mantle, who had left the game with a hip injury. Lopez helped the cause with a 2-run single in the 7th inning. New York won, 7-0 and went up 3 games to 1. Game 5 turned into no contest in a hurry. Joey Jay had started and lasted two-thirds of an inning, and the Reds used 7 more pitchers before the Yankees won by the score of 13-5. Lopez had tripled in a run in the 1st inning. In the 4th, he would hit a 3-run HR and he brought home a 5th run with a bunt in the 6th.
“I had a pretty good World Series in 1961,” Lopez reflected in 2003, “I only got up to bat 9 times, but I got 3 hits and 7 RBIs. I had to do something, because I had such a lousy season in 1961.” Asked why he didn’t play as much in 1961, Lopez replied, “With all those guys hitting HRs, they didn’t need me! Maris, and Mantle, and Johnny Blanchard, and Elston Howard and Bill Skowron, and Yogi, those guys were hitting HRs all over the place. Six guys hit 20 or more HRs. … But not only did those Yankee teams hit well, but they were good defensive ballclubs. People never gave us enough credit for being a good defensive club.”
In 1962, Lopez would bounce back with a solid season. Playing in 106 games, 84 of those in the outfield, he would hit .275 with 6 HRs and 48 RBIs. Before long, his solid performances won him a new nickname, according to sportswriter Hugh Bradley. In “The New Lopez: Good Hit-Good Field,” dated September 22, 1963, Bradley wrote that in 1962 the Yankees won 96 games and Lopez drove in the winning run 7 times and scored the winning run 10 times. So far in 1963, he had batted in the game-winner 6 times. Bradley observed that patience and practice made Lopez a better fielder at several positions. In 1962, he failed to catch only 2 balls in 182 chances in the outfield, and he had not missed a single play so far in 1963. He also threw out 8 runners in 1963, a stat that compared favorably to great performers like Detroit’s Al Kaline.
In the 1962 World Series, when New York outlasted the San Francisco Giants in 7 games, Lopez saw limited action, grounding out and flying out in 2 pinch-hitting appearances.
In 1963, the Yankees won their 4th straight pennant and Lopez averaged .249 with 14 HRs and 52 RBIs in 130 games. Hector, who loved to hit in Tiger Stadium, got off to a slow start, but he had a big series there in June. On Friday the 7th, he had homered off of lefty Hank Aguirre, but the Tigers prevailed, 8-4. On Saturday, Lopez hit another solo HR, this time off southpaw Don Mossi, but the Tigers won again, 8-4. On Sunday, he hit his 3rd straight solo HR, a blast off of Tom Sturdivant that helped the Yankees to a 6-2 win.
In Game 1 of the 1963 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lopez would pinch-hit for Whitey Ford with the bases loaded in the 5th inning. But LA ace southpaw Sandy Koufax would make Lopez his 11th strikeout victim and the Dodgers went on to win, 5-0. In Game 2 the Panamanian hit 2 doubles off of lefty Johnny Podres. But Podres prevailed, winning the game by the score of 4-1.
Lopez didn’t play in Game 3, a 1-0 complete-game victory hurled by Dodgers’ star right-hander Don Drysdale. LA would swept the Series by winning Game 4, 2-1 behind a route-going performance by Koufax. Lopez had played in place of the injured Roger Maris (who ran into an outfield railing in Game 2, hurting his knee and elbow) and went 0-for-4.
By then Hector and his family had moved from Brooklyn to Long Island. After he had married Claudette in 1960, the couple lived in the house on Hopkinson Avenue in Brooklyn that he had purchased for his mother and himself. “I was disappointed,” Claudette said in 1964.”All the houses were crowded next to each other. It wasn’t very clean or pretty. I didn’t like it in Brooklyn.” A couple of years later, they moved to a ranch house in West Hempstead, Long Island, on a quiet street where, Newsday’s Stan Isaacs wrote, “there are people with white skin and brown skin and where people in the supermarket come up to him and say, ‘Are you Hector Lopez?’ ”
Overall, Lopez had played in 5 World Series. The Yankees won 2 of the 5, Hector would averaged .286 in the post-season. But in 1964, when the Yankees, now managed by Yogi Berra fell to the St. Louis Cardinals in 7 games, Lopez had played in only 3 games, subbing once in RF and going 0-for-2 as a pinch-hitter.
The once-dominant Yankees won the 1964 pennant by 1 game over the Chicago White Sox. Lopez, who had hit .260 in 127 games, enjoyed his last season of double-digit HRs, hitting 10 HRs and producing 34 RBIs. The good hitter from Panama produced similar numbers in 1965, averaging .261 in 111 games with 7 HRs and 39 RBIs. But in 1966, his final MLB season, he would play in only 54 games, batted 117 times and hit only .214. He was released by the Yankees after the 1965 AL season had ended.
After being released, Lopez would play 2 seasons in the minor leagues. He would hit .295 with 13 HRs for AAA Hawaii Islanders (Pacific Coast League) in 1967. He would hit .258 with 13 HRs for the Buffalo Bisons (International League) in 1968. Afterward, he would receive a new opportunity. Hector would become the 1st black manager of a Triple-A club, piloting Buffalo Bisons to a 7th-place finish in 1969.
Hector Lopez would leave professional baseball and spent the next 20 years working as a Recreation Director for the town of Hempstead. (West Hempstead, where he and Claudette lived, is part of Hempstead.) Later, he would scout for the Giants and also the Yankees. Also, he would manager in New York’s minor-league system with the 1994-1995 Class A GCL Yankees. López would managed Panama team in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. Hector Lopez would pass away due to complications of lung cancer on September 29, 2022, he was 93 years old.
Hector Lopez was proud to say that baseball and the Yankees had been good to him. “The game stays with you like your first romance,” he said, smiling. Once in a while the Panamanian hero used to look at his old Yankee uniform and think, I used to play for the greatest team in the world. No one can ever take that away from me.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 20, 2024 1:15:58 GMT -5
Former Yankees Reliever Lindy McDaniel (1967-1973)
This article was written by David E. Skelton, Edited by Clipper
1958 Topps Basebal Card
A lifelong pursuit toward a ministerial career was put on hold for 21 years while the devoutly religious Lindy McDaniel labored in his temporary gig as a major-league hurler. During the interim employment, he alternately became both the “toast of the town … [and] the roast of the town with his ups and downs.” Possessor of one of the finest curves and later forkballs the game has ever known, McDaniel rode his pitching mastery to a longevity that shattered numerous records. Not bad for temp work.
Born on December 13, 1935, Lyndall Dale McDaniel earned the nickname Lindy at 4 years old in a nod to the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. Hollis, Oklahoma, a one-stoplight town in the southwest part of the state, was Lindy’s home throughout the early stages of his life. Hollis, whose population has never exceeded 3,200, remains large enough to have made a sizable splash in sports, serving as home to 2 successful college coaches, a professional football player, and 4 professional baseball players (2 of whom were Lindy’s younger siblings, Von and Kerry Don).
Among the childhood pleasures of rabbit hunting and taking in Western action movies, Lindy and his brothers developed a passion for baseball with gloves made “of sacks, crudely sewn in the shape of their hands.” This handicap was overcome by a certain inherited athleticism: His father, Newell (a cousin of famed University of Texas football Coach Darrell Royal), had been an accomplished athlete in tennis and track. Newell and his wife, Ada Mae (Burk) McDaniel, raised their 4 children in a deeply religious manner. Fearing the temptations that might befall her son, Ada Mae required a great deal of persuasion before concluding that baseball was a fit pursuit. She was forced to reach this conclusion early when the St. Louis Cardinals began scouting her son before he was 16. Lindy had established himself as a star hurler at Arnett High School, a reputation further enhanced by his exploits on the Altus American Legion team. Alongside teammates Eddie Fisher and Tony Risinger, both of whom would go on to play professionally, the team captured 2 consecutive state championships. Though the attraction between prospect and team was mutual. Lindy grew up idolizing the Cardinals’ Stan Musial and the earlier feats of Dizzy Dean – he accepted a 4-year basketball scholarship offered by the University of Oklahoma.
The Cardinals had kept tabs on the Hollis native, and when scout Fred Hawn signed him 3 months before his 20th birthday, it was reported that St. Louis had 5 years of data on McDaniel. By signing with the Cardinals, McDaniel became ineligible for college athletics and 3 days after his 4th appearance as a major leaguer, he would enrolled at Abilene Christian College in Texas. The $50,000 price tag qualified McDaniel as a “bonus baby” who, under the rules then in effect, had to be placed on the Cardinals’ roster. Dubbed “the 11th member of a 10-man staff,” McDaniel was inserted into mop-up duty a day after he reported to the club. The positive impression made in this and a subsequent outing earned McDaniel his 1st starting assignment, on September 19,1955, against the Chicago Cubs, when he yielded future Hall of Fame Ernie Banks’ then-record 5th grand slam HR of the season. Despite a hefty 4.74 ERA in 19 end-of-the-season innings, his potential was glimpsed by the league’s senior umpire of 40 years, Babe Pinelli, who offered that “[McDaniel] showed me one of the best curves I’ve ever seen.”
Entering the 1956 campaign, the Cardinals had not won a pennant in 10 years and, due to a near-league worst 3.97 ERA, they would not come close during McDaniel’s 1st full season. Nineteen pitchers took the mound for St. Louis, but only 2 managed less than a 3.50 mark: 39-year-old Murry Dickson and 20-year-old McDaniel. Excluding a handful of difficult outings, McDaniel finished with a 2.37 ERA in 34 appearances that prompted Manager Fred Hutchinson to remark, “I don’t know what we’d do without him.” Though he got the occasional starting assignment (including a complete-game victory over the Cubs on September 25th) most of his success was achieved from the bullpen, a harbinger of his future.
For the 2nd consecutive year, McDaniel reported to 1957 spring training as the Cardinals’ youngest player. A reshuffling of the pitching staff saw relievers McDaniel and Larry Jackson inserted permanently into the rotation and with the later addition of another $50,000 bonus baby – Lindy’s younger brother, Von – the Cardinals were thrust into immediate pennant contention. While Lindy set a course for a team-leading 15 victories and 10 complete games, Von turned his 1st starting assignment into a 2-hit shutout over the Brooklyn Dodgers that soon drew comparisons to another successful brother combination from the Gas House Gang era, Dizzy and Paul Dean (a comparison enhanced when Von was a 2-base hit shy of a perfect game against the Pittsburgh Pirates on July 28th.) Lindy had posted his 1st shutout on May 16th with a 4-hit gem against the Philadelphia Phillies. Though an August collapse doomed the Cardinals’ hopes for the National League crown, the McDaniel brothers appeared poised for long and fruitful careers in St. Louis. But that never came to fruition: Von made 2 brief appearances in 1958 and never donned a major-league uniform again. Meanwhile, Lindy would suffered the 1st of a series of Jekyll-and-Hyde seasons that became part of his signature in the majors.
The 1958 Cardinals never fully recovered from a 3-14 start to the season, McDaniel’s season followed suit. After 11 starts his record stood at 3-5 with a 5.49 ERA, the lone bright spot being a shutout over Philadelphia. Moved to the bullpen, he would fared little better. On August 14th, with the bonus-baby rules since relaxed, St. Louis would demote McDaniel to AAA Omaha, the only time in his long career that he served in the minor leagues. The MLB roster expansions in September would afforded McDaniel 1 final outing, but he closed the season with a 5-7 record with a 5.80 ERA.
As mysteriously as he slumped in 1958, McDaniel just as mysteriously rebounded for a fine 2-year run. A complete-game victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers in his 1st outing of 1959 reflected his determination to win back his spot in the rotation, but 6 subsequent starts proved less successful. Relegated again to the bullpen, McDaniel blossomed into the relief specialist that with the addition of a forkball to his repertoire represented the successful remainder of his career (he would started only 15 games over the next 15 years). From the time, he was shifted into the bullpen until the end of the 1960 season, McDaniel posted a record of 24-9 with a 2.40 ERA. He was established as one of the premier relievers in the game. In 1960 he was selected for the All-Star Team for the only time. After the season, he finished 5th in the voting for the NL Most Valuable Player and 3rd for the Cy Young Award. (He was the 1st reliever to ever receive a Cy Young Award vote.) He was the 1st recipient of The Sporting News’ National League Fireman Trophy. He would shared with teammate Pitcher Ernie Broglio, the J.G. Taylor Spink Award as the St. Louis Baseball Man of the Year as determined by the local chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (where during the ceremony the preacher-to-be was asked to deliver the invocation).
In this same 2-year span McDaniel entered the record books in a unique manner: On May 10,1959, he pitched in both games of a doubleheader against the Cubs, losing the 1st game and winning the 2nd. The Cubs’ Elmer Singleton won the opener and lost the nightcap. This rare combination had occurred only twice before and 4 times since in the major leagues through 2012.
The 1959-1960 ascendency of Jekyll yielded to Hyde in 1961-1962. A strong finish to the 1961 campaign helped mask a 6.05 ERA on July 20th. The next year, McDaniel would suffered a late collapse that saw his ERA rise from 2.14 on July 7th to 4.12 at season’s end (with a 3-10 won-lost record). Rumors emerged about McDaniel’s availability, in spite of his pitching difficulties, teams began courting.
The day after the 1961 World Series had ended, the Cardinals had traded McDaniel and fellow pitcher Larry Jackson to the Cubs, hoping to improve on the team’s paltry HR output with the acquisition of slugger George Altman. McDaniel and Jackson were deemed expendable with the emergence of young pitchers including such as Ray Washburn and Ray Sadecki. The Cubs were seeking to bolster a pitching corps whose runs yielded in 1962 were exceeded only by the hapless expansion New York Mets. Weeks later Lindy’s feeling on the parting was parodied by sportscaster Jack Buck in a fictitious telegram to Manager Johnny Keane: “Dear John, Gee whiz, darn it, golly and oh dear. P.S.: Heck.” a gentle, respectful jab at the player, whose closest brush with profanity was “doggone it!”
If the Cubs were hoping for a comeback season from McDaniel that is exactly what they got. Their pitching staff went from one of the worst in the league to one of the best, McDaniel was credited largely for the turnaround. “[McDaniel] brought a new atmosphere of confidence and know-how to our pitching staff,” said 22-game winner Dick Ellsworth as the team logged its 1st winning campaign in 17 years. His 13 victories and a 2.86 ERA helped McDaniel become the 1st to win 2 Fireman Trophies in the National League.
Perhaps it was the novelty of pitching for a different club that brought out the best in McDaniel, for although he logged 2 more fine campaigns with the Cubs, including a record 155 appearances by him and Cubs submariner Ted Abernathy in 1965. Next, McDaniel found himself hurling on the West Coast in 1966. (His legacy: Until 1977, when Bruce Sutter set a new standard for relief in Chicago, McDaniel’s name was often invoked when a pitcher on either the White Sox or Cubs emerged as the team’s primary closer.) Despite the efforts of McDaniel and Abernathy, the Cubs had reverted to their familiar bent with a 90-loss campaign in 1965. After the season the club looked to fill numerous needs, one of which was at catcher. The Cubs had long coveted San Francisco catching prospect Randy Hundley. Notwithstanding new Manager Leo Durocher’s comment in November that the Cubs could not “afford to part with him,”McDaniel became part of the price paid to acquire Hundley. Perhaps no 2 players were happier than 2 Giants, future Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Willie McCovey.
When Mays had first encountered Jim Bunning in the 1957 All-Star Game, he reached for McDaniel as an apt comparison of how tough he was to hit against by stating, that Lindy “made us hit the ball on the ground.” Six years later McCovey echoed his teammate, saying, “I’d prefer to face a number of [left-handers] rather than Lindy McDaniel.” Both took solace in the knowledge that this feared hurler was now in the same uniform. Still another player may have been even more ecstatic: Giants closer Frank Linzy. “McDaniel will make our bullpen stronger than a year ago when [rookie] Frank Linzy had to carry the big load,” said Manager Herman Franks.
As if on cue, McDaniel turned in one of his finest seasons in 1966. He and the Dodgers’ Phil Regan were the only National League relievers to reach double figures in victories. In a 4-week stretch beginning on August 6th, McDaniel was nearly untouchable: a scoreless streak of 20 innings over 10 appearances that contributed to a 1.95 ERA after the All-Star break. A sentimental honor for him was his 5 innings of 1-hit relief on May 8th, that earned McDaniel the final victory in a venue he knew very well, the 1st at Busch Stadium. Though the Giants held a stake in 1st place for more than 60% of the campaign, they were eliminated on the last day of the season. It was the closest McDaniel ever came to participating in postseason play, the one regret he had in his career.
Injuries had marred much of McDaniel’s 1967 campaign. He was a pitcher, who thrived on work, and his numbers suffered, when a sore shoulder sidelined him for 5 weeks. A strong close (2.18 ERA in his final 20 appearances) did not forestall rampant trade rumors, when in 1968 McDaniel had a 7.45 ERA on July 4th, the Giants placed him on waivers. McDaniel later acknowledged thinking of retirement during this difficult stretch, but those thoughts were shelved when the New York Yankees claimed him and the 2 teams worked out a deal aimed at reviving the careers of 2 30-something hurlers McDaniel was exchanged for Yankees right-hander Bill Monbouquette. As witnessed in previous patterns, his season promptly turned around.
McDaniel would make his 1st appearance in pinstripes 2 days, after the July 12th trade transaction and Yankees Manager Ralph Houk ensured continuous use thereafter, a positive development for the rubber-armed veteran whose success was anchored on such use; 4 wins and 10 saves later, McDaniel received considerable credit for the Yankees’ 1st winning campaign in 4 years. “We were losing games in the 8th and9th innings because no one in the bullpen could lock up these games,” Houk said. “If we had had [McDaniel] the 1st half, I am sure we [would’ve been] in the pennant race.”
A successful 5-year run ensued in New York. In his 2nd season, he again got votes for MVP. With 9 wins with 29 saves and a 2.01 ERA in 1970, he nearly captured a 3rd Fireman’s Award. In 1972 and 1973 (in a nod to The Odd Couple), he served as the Felix to fellow reliever Sparky Lyle’s Oscar, “the austere, quiet lay preacher [paired with] the bon vivant, the fun-loving Rover boy of loud laughter and practical jokes.” On September 23, 1973, McDaniel made his 907th MLB career appearance, passing Cy Young for 2nd place on the all-time list. But by the end of the 1973 campaign, the travel associated with a major-league career was taking its toll on the 37-year-old righty. The strain of separation for a married man of 16 years, compounded by separation from the churches that he served, only added to this toll.
As a young Cardinal McDaniel had studied in the offseason at Abilene Christian College in 1955-1956. Then he would transferred to Florida Christian College. His motive: He’d fallen in love. During spring training, he had met Oral Audrey Kuhn, who was a student at Florida Christian, which was in Temple Terrace, Florida, not far from the Cardinals’ training site in St. Petersburg. They were married on January 24,1957. For years thereafter, when the Florida Christian student body attended Grapefruit League games, McDaniel had his own personal cheering section. In 1964, when McDaniel was a Cub, the school’s new athletic field was named for McDaniel. They had 3 children, Dale, Kathi, and Jonathan, and as of 2013 had 13 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. Eventually McDaniel was ordained a minister of the Church of Christ. He preached for congregations in his hometown of Hollis, churches in Missouri during his years with the Cardinals, and in Baytown, Texas. McDaniel began publishing a religious newsletter, “Pitching for the Master,” which in 2013, he was still writing from his calling in Lavon, Texas, 30 miles northeast of Dallas.
To remedy the challenges of separation, when the Yankees would not acquiesce to a 2-year contract, McDaniel would requested a trade after the 1973 season in order to be closer to his religious and familial responsibilities. The Yankees would engineered a swap with Kansas Cit Royals on December 7th for pitcher Ken Wright and outfielder Lou Piniella. Unaccustomed to pitching regularly on artificial surfaces like that at the Royals’ ballpark, McDaniel had trouble inducing groundballs on the harder, faster surface and in his 2 seasons with Kansas City, he was lit up for a 4.98 ERA versus 2.87 on grass. These difficulties notwithstanding, the Pittsburgh Pirates, who also played on an artificial surface sought (unsuccessfully) to obtain McDaniel during the 1974 NL pennant race, when their pitching was struck by a series of injuries, a clear indication of the esteem for McDaniel at almost 39 years old.
In Arlington, Texas, on September 27,1975, Texas Rangers’ RF Jeff Burroughs would grounded out in the 8th inning on McDaniel’s last pitch in the major leagues. (He had previously announced he would retire.) When McDaniel had retired, he trailed only Hoyt Wilhelm in career appearances, relief victories, and relief appearances. Wilhelm was elected to the Hall of Fame, but McDaniel got only 4 votes for the Hall of Fame over a 2-year period.
In 1968, McDaniel had tied Vic Raschi’s American League record of 32 consecutive batters retired. (Kansas City teammate Steve Busby broke the record in 1974.) McDaniel made only 22 errors in his career, set the NL record (since broken) for most consecutive games by a pitcher without an error, 225. For his humanitarian efforts, he was given the Ken Hubbs Memorial Award in 1970 by the Chicago baseball writers. In 1978, the St. Louis baseball writers named him one of the 15 best players during the then-25-year ownership of Anheuser-Busch.
In mid-career McDaniel offered a modest assessment of his ability: “If I wasn’t a relief pitcher I probably wouldn’t be in the majors. I may not have realized it at the time, but when I went to the bullpen, it was a break for me.” He was characterized as a person with a serene disposition and a ready smile. He was never ejected from a game or suspended for a rules infraction. But he was also a fierce competitor on the mound. Perhaps no one captured this competitiveness better than Joe Garagiola (echoing a comment from Gil Hodges in 1957): “Lindy’s the only preacher I know with a great knockdown pitch.” That competitiveness resulted in a productive 21-year career: fine work for a part-timer. On November 14, 2020. Lindy would passed away at the age of 84.
Author’s Note
The author wishes to thank Lindy McDaniel for his time and assistance in ensuring the accuracy of this narrative. Further thanks are extended to Mike Emeigh and Len Levin.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 20, 2024 16:00:57 GMT -5
Yankees Pitcher Ben Shields
struggles with TBThis article was written by Bill Nowlin, Edited by Clipper
 Ben Shields threw left-handed but batted from the right side, rather than the more customary “bats left/throw right.” He was born in North Carolina, but he died in South Carolina. He had pitched for the New York Yankees and then for the Boston Red Sox. He almost lost his life to tuberculosis between his pitching stints with the Yankees and Red Sox. Over a span of 8 years in the majors, he posted a 4-0 record with a 8.29 ERA in 13 games.
“Big Ben” was born as Benjamin Cowan Shields on June 17,1903, in Huntersville, North Carolina, a town just north of Charlotte. His family lived and worked on a farm just a few miles out of town in a Mecklenburg County community called Long Creek. Father Cowan Lemley “Lem” Shields was a farmer. He and his wife, the former Julia Nancy Alexander, raised Ben as the 7th of their 9 children. Six of them were boys, not quite enough for a full baseball team. But at age 20, Ben Shields was pitching for the New York Yankees. He is listed at 6-foot-1 and 195 pounds, though he self-reported his height at an inch and a half taller.
Shields had attended Long Creek elementary school and Huntersville High through 11th grade, then completed 2 years at Oak Ridge Institute. Other Oak Ridge cadets who played in the major leagues include Wes Ferrell, Turkey Tyson, Ray Hayworth, Red Hayworth, and Billy Joe Davidson.
Shields had been playing semipro ball in 1923, when he was signed by Yankees MLB Scout Paul Krichell “for $1,000 on a day, he struck out a hot-shot 3rd baseman that Krichell had come to scout.”
The Yankees had not yet won a World Series, but hoped to do so in 1923. Shields was on board as a reserve. He threw batting practice to the team, but on his first full day on the job Babe Ruth had struck a ball that may have landed Shields in and out of hospitals for some years. As Shields later told it, “I joined the Yankees in Washington in 1923. I pitched batting practice the next day and Babe Ruth hit a shot back at me. It hit me in the right side of my chest, but I was 19 at the time and also rough and rugged so I shook it off.” (A couple years later, Ruth hit 3 HRs, each helping win games for Shields.) He can be seen in a team photograph that ran nationwide, after the team had clinched the pennant that year.
On October 8th, as the Yankees and New York Giants prepared to do battle with each other for the 3rd straight year in the 1923 World Series, Yankees Manager Miller Huggins had Shields ready. “Huggins worked all of his pitchers,” reported the Washington Post, of the practice session, “giving Herb Pennock, the southpaw, the longest stay on the hill. After him came another lefthander, a Carolina youth by the name of Shields.” It was a close, well-fought Series and Pennock had won 2 games, while saving another. Shields had a great seat to watch the action, but he wasn’t called on to take the mound. He did, however, leave New York with a portion of the half-share voted to be divvied up between him, a player named Lou Gehrig, who also saw no postseason action, the trainer, the traveling secretary and the groundskeeper.
In 1924, it looked as though Shields would battle it out against Ben Newberry for a shot as the 2nd lefthander on the pitching squad. Shields showed better than Newberry, and gained the edge. It was written that Huggins would take him north, if only to work more closely with him. “Shields has several faults which the manager wants to correct and he wants to do it before the Carolina southpaw gets back to the minors, where the habits might become so firmly fixed that they could never be changed.”
Shields was with the team when the 1924 season had opened. He didn’t stay long. He only worked in 2 games. The 1st was on April 17th in Boston, coming into a game the Red Sox were leading, 5-1 and pitching the 7th and 8th, leaving it with Boston up, 9-1. In 2 full innings, Shields got through the 7th without the Sox scoring, but in the 8th, he was hit for 4 earned runs on 3 hits and 2 bases on balls. He had struck out 3 batters in the 2 innings of work. Three days later in Washington, the Senators were up 8-1, 4 runs each scored off of Bob Shawkey and Sam Jones. Jones had taken over for Shawkey to work the 7th, but he couldn’t get anyone out. Shields took over for Jones and faced 3 batters. He couldn’t get anyone out, either, touched for 3 hits. All told, he’d faced 13 batters for the Yankees and 8 of the batters had reached base. Shields was charged with 6 runs and bore a 27.00 ERA, as he was headed back to the minor leagues for more seasoning.
On April 26,1924, Shields was released to Class A Pittsfield Hillies (Eastern League). Existing (but perhaps incomplete) records show him as 0-2 with a 5.19 ERA in 5 games for the team. He may have left the team for medical treatment, because we find a note that he was reinstated by MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Landis on February 20,1925.
If there was any medical treatment, it seems to have worked. Under a verbal agreement between the Richmond Colts and the Yankees, Shields had pitched for the Colts in 1925, leading the Virginia League in wins with 21 and in strikeouts with 187. Richmond had won the pennant. He was 21-14 with a 3.15 ERA and right after Richmond won the pennant, he was celebrated by marrying Miss Emily Stoddard of Richmond on September 12th. He would pitch in a postseason set against Spartanburg.
The Yankees had asked for him to come to New York, after the playoffs and Colts Owner H. P. Dawson agreed, even though another club had reportedly offered thousands of dollars for Shields. Dawson remained true to his word, however. He was perhaps a little anxious his 1st time out; in 1 inning, he had walked 3 batters, but also recorded 3 outs with no runs scored. Given a start on September 24th against the White Sox, he had pitched a complete game 6-5 win, going all 10 innings before his Bronx teammates pinned down the win for him thanks to a Grand Slam HR by Babe Ruth, after Shields had let Chicago take a 5-2 lead in the top of the 10th. Four days later, he would win another complete game, this time 7-6 victory against the Tigers. He was giving up a lot of runs, but getting just enough offensive support to come out on top. Without Ruth’s 1st-inning solo HR, Shields wouldn’t have won the game. Bee went to 3-0, throwing the final 4 innings of the October 3rd game against the visiting Philadelphia Athletics, though yielding 2 runs. Babe Ruth had hit a HR in the 5th inning of what became a 9-8 Yankees win. Shields would finish the season 3-0 with a 4.88 ERA in 4 games.
There were recurring medical problems. Near the end of 1925, Shields started to hemorrhage and had to be hospitalized. “X-rays showed that the line drive Ruth had hit off Shields’s chest had damaged his lung, which had become infected over the 2-year period.” Given a diagnosis of tuberculosis, he had voluntarily retired from the game.
New York had signed him again for 1926, even though he was expected to be out the full year at his home in Richmond. He had reported to camp, however. A big man (weighing 195-205 pounds), he looked “thin and not overstrong.” After about a week, it was clear that Shields wasn’t ready. He would departe for Salem, Virginia, “to rest for 6 months and take treatment for tubercular trouble.” He was treated at Ridge Crest Sanitarium, then at a city hospital.
Shields was lucky to survive. In notes, he provided in response to an inquiry from the Hall of Fame, he indicated that he was in hospital taking a rest cure for 4 years, from 1926 through 1929. The TB, he said, “developed through the chest injury.” He said that Col. Ruppert of the Yankees would pay his $1,800 players salary throughout the 1926-1928 seasons.
At some point during recuperation, Shields would move back to Richmond and began driving a taxi. Miller Huggins had thought he might have had another Herb Pennock in Shields, but the TB had prevented anyone from ever finding out. In December 1928, the Yankees would cut all ties, enabling Shields to be a free agent; if he were truly able to regain full strength. Reached by a reporter, he said he expected he’d need to sit out 1929 and 1930 as well, but thought he could be ready to play by 1931.
As it happens, Shields would come back in time to make the Red Sox in 1930. Boston Manager Heinie Wagner marveled, “If that fellow has been sick for the past 3 years, then it must have been just too bad when he was healthy.” Shields was, the Boston Herald added, “about as rugged-looking a mortal as one could find outside the wrestling game.”
Ben Shields had written directly to Boston Team Owner Bob Quinn to asking for a chance. Quinn would check first with New York’s Ed Barrow, who said that the Yankees held no claim. Quinn would invest in $150 to pay his expenses for Shields to come to camp in Pensacola. His 1st game for the Red Sox came on May 18th, against his old team, the Yankees. He was the 3rd pitcher at Fenway Park that day. When he came in, the Yankees already had an 8-0 lead. He would throw the final 5 innings, giving up 3 more runs. The Red Sox never would score any runs in the game. He had pitched 1 inning in the 1st game of the May 21st doubleheader in Washington, giving up 2 Nats runs; the next day, he would pitch 4 innings in the 2nd game of another doubleheader. Those were his only 3 appearances for the Boston Red Sox, leaving him with a 9.00 ERA in a Red Sox uniform. On June 10th, his player contract was sold outright to the AA St. Paul Saints (American Association.) Yet, another report a few weeks later said he was sent from Pittsfield (Eastern League) to AA Buffalo Bisons (International League) on July 3rd.
He appeared in just 1 game for Buffalo in 1930, noting that in retrospect he had “not enough time after hospital stay.” He was a free agent again by 1931, he would try out for the Philadelphia Phillies, who had signed him in mid-February. He did make the team, but his 1st outing was really rough. He had faced 6 New York Giants batters, got no one out and saw 5 earned runs score. In his 2nd outing, he would improve his ERA from infinity to 94.00, with 2 outs and 2 earned runs; but that was an improvement. His best outing was his 3rd one, 4 innings of 1-hit ball, with no runs scored. The Pirates had led the game, would when he came in, but the Phillies would score 4 runs on his watch, so Shields went home that night with a win. He would only appear in 4 games for the 1931 Phillies. In his last MLB game, he would give up 2 runs in 2/3 of an inning. His ERA in the 4 Phillies appearances was 15.19. As best we can determine, he did not play in organized ball again in 1931. Ben would pitch for the 1932 Class A Omaha Packers (Western League), where he had posted a 1-8 record with a 7.88 ERA in 12 games. He’d reportedly put on weight after the bout with TB, he was listed as 230 pounds in 1932. It appears to have been his last year in the game, though he’s seen in a preseason photograph of the 1933 Charlotte Hornets, here no records for him playing for the team that season.
After pro baseball, Ben would go into farming and real estate. He had reported marrying Margaret Parsons in 1942, his 2nd marriage. They had 2 children, Robert and Sandra. When he registered for the draft in World War II, he had reported working for Southern Bearing and Parts Co. of Charlotte. Later, he would build his own business, Shields’ Appliance and Services, serving the Charlotte area. After losing his wife in 1974, and surviving a serious operation that same year, he would move into a mobile home, next to his sister-in-law and her husband and spent his time fishing. Shields’s experience with tuberculosis did not prevent him from living a long life. Ben Shields would pass away at the age of 78 on January 24,1982 in Woodruff, S.C. Ben was then buried in Huntersville, N.C.
Sources
In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed Shields’s player file and player questionnaire from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, Bill Lee’s The Baseball Necrology, and the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 20, 2024 23:29:11 GMT -5
Former Yankees PH/1B, Baseball Executive Eddie Robinson
This article was written by C. Paul Rogers III, Edited by Clipper
1954 Topps Baseball CardFormer Texas Rangers General Manager Eddie Robinson may hold the record for the most times standing up for the National Anthem at a baseball game. His professional baseball career spanned 65 years, from 1939, when he broke in with the Valdosta Trojans in the Class D Georgia-Florida League, through 2004, when he retired from scouting for the Boston Red Sox. During the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, Robinson was a fixture behind home plate at Texas Rangers games, scouting for various MLB teams.
Robinson grew up in humble circumstances in Paris, Texas, during the Depression. He was an only child whose father left the family, and his parents divorced when Eddie was 12. During high school, to help make ends meet, Eddie would take a 10-cent taxi ride at 4:45 a.m. across town to his uncle’s Northeast Texas Motor Freight Line, where he would load trucks and deliver produce to local grocers until 8 a.m. He would then attend school all day and after school practice or play whatever sport was in season. He also loaded trucks at the freight line all day Saturday, all to earn 6 dollars a week.
Fortunately, Eddie could always hit a thrown object. In grammar school, he was the only kid who could hit a softball over the right-field fence on the playground. At age 14, he was playing for Charlie Osborne’s Cubs, a local team made up of 14 to 20-year-olds. He had purchased a Bill Doak fielder’s glove for 6 dollars, paying it off at 50 cents a week. When the Cubs moved him to 1st base, Robinson just played with his fielder’s glove since he couldn’t afford a 1st baseman’s glove, too.
After his sophomore year, Robinson was recruited to play for a local semipro team called the Coca-Cola Bottlers. Their main claim to fame was the fancy red satin uniforms furnished them by the local Coca-Cola bottling company. Robinson was 16 years old playing against men and former pros, but he found he could still hit. Clyde “Deerfoot” Milan from nearby Clarksville and other scouts were soon on Eddie’s trail. Eventually, Billy Disch, the legendary Baseball Coach at the University of Texas, would offer Eddie a 4-year scholarship. But times were tough, Eddie believed that if he signed a pro contract; he had a good chance of making the major leagues in 4 years. It turns out he was right; in 1942, Eddie was a late season call-up to the Cleveland Indians.
His road to the big leagues was not, however, without its pitfalls. He was signed in 1939 with the Knoxville Smokies of the Southern Association for a $300 bonus. Before he left Texas for spring training, he bought his mother a much-needed washing machine and went around town paying off his debts from local restaurants, where he had run tabs. After spring training camp, he was assigned to the Valdosta Trojans of the Class D Georgia-Florida League, the bottom rung of the minor leagues. Early in the year, Robinson was hitting under .200 and was afraid of being released. At one point his manager, Bill Morrell, told Eddie that they were bringing another 1st baseman in, but that they were going to give him another chance. When Eddie remarked that he knew that he could hit better, Morrell said, “It’s not your hitting that’s bothering me, it’s your fielding.”
The 18-year-old Robinson would manage to bat .249 in 1939, he improved his fielding by spending hours of practice catching throws in the dirt. It must have worked because later when Robinson was with the Chicago White Sox, Manager Paul Richards told him that he was the best Richards had ever seen at catching thrown balls. Still, at the end of the 1939 season, Manager Morrell told Robinson that he “may as well go back to Paris and open an ice cream parlor” because he didn’t think Eddie would ever be a big-league ballplayer. Robinson had shown enough to return to Valdosta for 1940, however, that he improved to .323, drove in 105 runs and hit an amazing 21 triples, playing in a ballpark with huge power alleys.
That performance earned him a 1941 spring training invitation with the Baltimore Orioles of the International League, the top rung of the minor leagues. He would ended up with an assignment to the Elmira Pioneers of the Class A Eastern League, still a huge jump from Class D. Robinson would hit a solid .295 for the year, he would teamed with Sal Maglie to lead the team to a 3rd-place finish. They then would swept the pennant-winning Wilkes-Barre Barons in the 1st round of the playoffs and won the league championship in 7 games against the Williamsport Grays.
Robinson did stick with the Orioles of the International League in 1942, the 21-year-old had an outstanding year, hitting .306 with 27 HRs and 104 RBIs. He would earned a late season call-up to the Indians and collected 8 at bats, mostly as a pinch hitter. He did nail his 1st MLB hit, a line drive to right field in Cleveland’s old League Park against Ray Scarborough of the Washington Senators. After the 1942 season, Robinson would enlist in the Navy. Then he would marry Elayne Elder after his basic training early in February 1943. The couple had 2 children: Robby Ann, who died before her 3rd birthday from a brain tumor and William E. Robinson III, before divorcing in 1951.
Robinson would lose 3 full seasons, while serving in the Navy during World War II. It was there that a botched leg operation, almost cost him his baseball career. He was able to come back, however, after a 2nd surgery, he would enjoy a banner year back with Baltimore in the International League in 1946, slugging 34 HRs and driving in 123 runs to lead the loop. For his efforts he was named International League MVP, narrowly beating out a couple of pretty fair ballplayers named Jackie Robinson and Bobby Brown; Brown later became the Rangers’ President and then the President of the American League.
Eddie Robinson made the MLB for good in 1947. He would batted .245 in 95 games before fouling an Allie Reynolds fastball off of his ankle in early August, breaking it and putting him in a cast for 6 weeks. In 1948, he was again the starting 1st baseman for the Indians, improving slightly to .254 in 134 games. Those Indians, after beating the Red Sox in a 1 game playoff for the American League pennant, defeated the “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain” Boston Braves in the World Series in 6 games. For the Series, Robinson was the 2nd leading hitter for the Indians, hitting .300 in 20 at-bats. That 1948 club remains the last Indians team to have won a World Series.
Robinson did not get along well with Indians Manager Lou Boudreau, who tended to favor veteran players, after the 1948 season, he was traded to the Washington Senators along with pitchers Joe Haynes and Eddie Kleiman for pitcher Early Wynn and fellow 1st baseman Mickey Vernon. Robinson fit in well with his new club and got off to a strong start. For his efforts, he was named the starting 1st baseman for the American League in the All-Star Game, played in 1949 in Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. In his 1st All-Star at-bat, he would lined a single to right field off of Braves Warren Spahn to drive in Joe DiMaggio, helping the American League to a 11-7 victory. He continued his solid play during the 2nd half of the season, he wound up hitting .294 with 18 HRs, 27 doubles and 78 runs batted in for a last place team that won only 50 games.
After a great spring training in 1950, Robinson had caught the flu and got off to a slow start in the regular season. On May 31st, he was traded again, this time to the Chicago White Sox in a 6-player deal. Once with the Pale Hose, he began to hit and finished the year hitting .295 and improving to 21 HRs and 86 RBIs for a 6h-place club. Eddie would end up playing in 155 games that season, but he did not steal a base, setting a MLB record for the most games played in a season without one. In 1951, for an improving White Sox team that finished 4th under new Manager Paul Richards, Robinson had his best year yet, batting .282 and finishing 3rd in the league in both HRs and RBIs with 29 and 117, respectively. He was also named to his 2nd AL All-Star team.
In 1952, Robinson put together another banner year as the White Sox rose to 3rd place. He would finished with a .296 batting average, 22 HRs and 104 RBIs, only 1 behind league leader Al Rosen. He was named the starting 1st baseman for the American League in the All-Star Game, going 1-for-2 in the 5-inning, rain-abbreviated game played in Philadelphia.
Following the season, Robinson was trying to negotiate his contract for 1953, when he had learned that White Sox General Manager Frank Lane had traded him in a 5-player deal to the Philadelphia Athletics for 1st baseman Ferris Fain, who had won the last 2 American League batting titles. The trade sent him from the up-and-coming White Sox to a team that finish 1953 in 7th place club, who had finish 41½ games out of 1st. Although Robinson’s batting average dipped to .247, he had another good power year with 22 HRs and 102 RBIs in 156 games. He was also named to the All-Star team again, flying out in a pinch-hitting appearance.
After the 1953 season, Robinson was traded again, this time to the 5-time defending world champion New York Yankees in a huge multi-player deal. The Yankees already had Joe Collins and promising rookie Bill “Moose” Skowron at 1st, so Eddie mostly was used as a pinch hitter, going 15-for-49 in that role for a .306 average. The Yankees had obtained him to replacing the retiring Slugger Johnny Mize, who was a PH and 1B for the team for 5 seasons. He had hit .261 overall in 142 official at bats but, although the Yankees had won 103 games, they still finished in 2nd place, 8 games behind the streaking Cleveland Indians, who had won 111 games. He was again relegated to part-time action for New York in 1955, but he had more RBIs (42) than hits (36) and slugged an amazing 16 HRs in only 173 at bats to set a HR-to-at-bat ratio record that still stands. The Yankees would win the AL pennant by 3 games over the Indians, but lost finally to the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series in 7 games. Robinson had appeared in 4 of the games, he had 2 hits, 2 walks and a hit-by-pitch in 6 plate appearances for an .833 on base percentage.
Immediately after the 1955 World Series, Robinson married the former Bette Farlow. The newlyweds then embarked on a round-the-world honeymoon which included the Yankees postseason exhibition tour of Japan. The couple would raised 3 sons, Marc, Drew and Paul and as of this writing have been married for 56 years. For a time while Robinson was between marriages, he would date pop singer Patti Page.
The Yankees were still overcrowded at 1st base in 1956, they would send Robinson to the Kansas City Athletics at the trading deadline in a 4-player deal. For the year, he batted only .204 in 226 at-bats. He would played out the string in 1957, appearing in a handful of games for the Baltimore Orioles (the former St. Louis Browns), the Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers, He would retire after being released by the Tigers.
Shortly after Robinson retired, the nerve problem in his leg stemming from the botched surgery during World War II recurred, which would have made it impossible for Robinson to continue to play.In all, Robinson had a stellar 13-year MLB playing career, making 4 All-Star teams and playing for 7 of the 8 American League franchises (he missed only the Boston Red Sox). His 29 HRs for the 1951 White Sox stood as the team home run record for nearly 30 years. He was the 7th player and 1st White Sox to hit a ball over the roof at old Comiskey Park; the 1st 6 were Hall of Famers: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Ted Williams, and Mickey Mantle. For a power hitter and run producer, Robinson had outstanding bat control, he never struck out more than 56 times in a season. Only in 2 seasons did he whiff more than walk, in those seasons, he was a part-time player. In 1950, for example, he fanned only 32 times in 647 plate appearances. Ted Williams declared that Robinson “was the most underrated and best clutch hitter I ever played against.”
After retiring from his playing career, Robinson would coach and scouted for the Orioles under his mentor Paul Richards beginning in 1958. When Richards was hired in 1961 to be the General Manager for the new Houston Colt .45s National League franchise, he brought Robinson along as his Assistant General Manager. Robinson was involved in the 1st expansion draft for the Colt .45s. He became Farm Director for 5 years before moving on to Kansas City in 1966 to become Assistant General Manager for the Athletics under former yankees teammate, GM Eddie Lopat and renegade Team Owner Charles O. Finley.
After 1 year in Kansas City, Paul Richards, who was by then General Manager of the Atlanta Braves, brought Robinson to Atlanta as the organization’s Farm Director. Four years later in 1972, the Braves would elevate Robinson to the GM position. It was Robinson, who would trade Hank Aaron, who was amenable to finishing his long career back in Milwaukee with the Brewers. Ted Turner would purchase the Braves in 1976, he would kept Robinson on as his GM, but when Brad Corbett, Owner of the Texas Rangers offered Robinson the opportunity to return to his native Texas as General Manager of the Rangers after the 1976 season, Robinson would accept the position.
Robinson’s 1st season with the Rangers, 1977, turned out to be one of the most tumultuous in the team’s history, beginning with Lenny Randle’s attack on Manager Frank Lucchesi in spring training. In June, the team was floundering. Corbett and Robinson fired Lucchesi and had hired Eddie Stanky, who quit after only 1 game. After Robinson would hired Billy Hunter to replace Stanky, the Rangers would finish 60-33, they held the division lead as late as August 18th, before finishing 2nd behind the Royals, who won 102 games that year.
Robinson’s tenure as General Manager continued into June 1982 when Eddie Chiles, who had purchased the team from Corbett in 1980, would fire him. Robinson’s years with the Rangers were anything but calm and serene and included 5 managerial changes.The team was in contention most years; Robinson and Corbett became known for wheeling and dealing to try to get the Rangers over the hump. For example, before the 1978 season they made deals to bring Fergie Jenkins, Al Oliver and Jon Matlack to the Rangers. For 1979, they had acquired Buddy Bell, fireman Jim Kerr and Mickey Rivers. In subsequent years, Robinson had traded Oliver to the Montreal Expos for Larry Parrish and had acquired Charlie Hough from the Dodgers for the waiver price. Hough still owns the Rangers’ record for most wins with 139.
Some of Robinson’s trades did not work out so well, most notably the deal that brought Mets CF Lee Mazzilli to Texas for 2 pitchers: Ron Darling and Walt Terrell. The Rangers were contenders and Robinson made the deal to plug a huge hole in left field, giving up 2 top pitching prospects in the hopes of winning immediately. The Mazzilli trade bombed from the beginning, with Mazzilli disgruntled about playing left field rather than centerfield and expressing his general distaste for “the sticks,” as he called Texas. He would be traded to the Yankees for shortstop Bucky Dent.
Of the near-misses, 1981 season was perhaps the closest, as the Rangers missed their 1st postseason by .017 percentage points. That season was marred by a 50-day player strike which began on June 12th. Because of the strike, the division leaders on June 12th were declared 1st-half winners and played the post-strike 2nd-half winners in a miniseries to determine the division champion. The Rangers wound up losing a June 11th game to the Brewers that left them with a 1st-half 33-22 record, just those .017 percentage points behind the Oakland A’s.
When the Rangers struggled early in 1982, Eddie Chiles decided to fire Robinson. Within hours of the announcement,Yankees Team Owner George Steinbrenner offered Robinson the Yankees’ General Manager position. Robinson would declined the job, because he did not want to uproot his family and leave Texas. Instead, he would become a Special Assistant to Steinbrenner for 3 years, consulting and scouting for the team, but he remaining based at Fort Worth, Texas.
After his years with the Yankees, Robinson would formed his own innovative 1-man scouting combine and worked 1st for the Houston Astros and Minnesota Twins and later at various times for the Philadelphia Phillies, San Francisco Giants, Cincinnati Reds, Montreal Expos, Boston Red Sox, Seattle Mariners, Atlanta Braves and the Yankees again. Along the way, his scouting and player evaluation helped 3 teams win pennants and the World Series, including the 1987 and 1991 Twins and the 1990 Reds.
When Robinson would retired in 2004 after 65 years in pro baseball, he had received paychecks from 16 MLB clubs, including several that he both played and worked for. Along the way he had come to know the likes of Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby, Hank Greenberg, Dizzy Dean, Brooks Robinson, and Hank Aaron. He played with or against Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Satchel Paige, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Robin Roberts, Warren Spahn, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Mickey Mantle to name a few, and played or worked for Bill Veeck, Clark Griffith, Casey Stengel, Paul Richards, Charlie Finley, Ted Turner and George Steinbrenner.
Robinson also has had a long involvement with the MLB Players’ Association, beginning in 1953 when he was elected the player representative for the Philadelphia Athletics. Even in retirement, Robinson remained active in MLB, persistently lobbying for and finally helping secure “orphaned” pre-1979 MLB players a pension. Although today every player who appears on a MLB roster for even 1 day is vested in the pension fund, before 1979 players had to have 4 years of major league service to qualify for any pension at all. Working for more than a decade through the MLB Players’ Alumni Association, Robinson finally, in 2011, got the Players’ Association and the commissioner to agree to at least partially fund those 800 or so former players.
Old Timers Day 2020 Photo at Yankee Stadium
Eddie Robinson had an impressive baseball career, especially for a kid raised in East Texas in the height of the Depression. With all his baseball travels, however, Robinson would ended his career where it began, right back in Texas. Into his 90s, he was playing golf several times a week and watching the Rangers play every day, either on television or at the ballpark. He would celebrated his 100th birthday on December 15, 2020, one of just a handful of ballplayers to reach that milestone, Eddie was still going strong into his 2nd century of life. He would pass away on October 4, 2021, at his ranch in Bastrop, Texas.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 21, 2024 16:11:17 GMT -5
Former Yankees Announcer Jim Woods 1953-1956, the Man who the Scooter would Replace in 1957This article was written by Curt Smith, Edited by the Clipper
From 1953 through 1956, Jim Woods was Mel Allen’s and Red Barber’s partner on New York Yankees Radio/TV. One day, eying Woods’ slight overbite and gray buzz cut, Enos Slaughter jibed, “I’ve seen better heads on a possum.” In 1958, Jim would move to Pittsburgh, where announcer Bob Prince’s wife called Woods’ spouse “Mrs. Possum.” In 1974-1978 with the Red Sox, Poss and Ned Martin bagged New England: Ned, wry and spry; Jim, booming like a barge. Who was better Woods with Prince, or Martin? Did any trio top Jim, Mel, and Red? “It’s no coincidence,” said Allen. The common tie was Poss.
A 1960s Avis ad blared, “We’re number two. We try harder.” In a 31-year career, Woods was number 2 to Allen, Barber, Russ Hodges, Jack Buck, Monte Moore, Prince, and Martin: “baseball’s peripatetic ‘second’ announcer’ who has worked for a quarter of the clubs in the majors,” wrote William Leggett. Being top gun seldom crossed Possum’s mind. Drinking and betting at the flats and harness track did. “Having fun, Jim wanted not to try harder,” Ned mused. He didn’t have to, as 1960 attests.
From 1958 to 1969, you could walk down a street in Oil City and Wheeling and Titusville and hear perhaps baseball’s all-time greatest booth. A fine play sparked Bob’s “How sweet it is!” Woods used a line he later took to Boston. “There are a reported 15,000 people at the game. If that’s true, then at least 12,000 of them are disguised as empty seats.”
Some thought Poss and Prince each a maniac. Both were maniacally riveting. Like Bogart and Bacall or Abbott and Costello, one still denotes the other.
The son of Army Colonel F.A. Prince, Bob was raised at 6 posts and 14 or 15 schools. Later, the Army brat had flunked out of 4r universities, got a B.A. at Oklahoma and had entered Harvard Law School. In 1940, Prince, 24, read about a judge who frequented a burlesque house. One night, papa saw Bob, with a stripper, in a newsreel on the jitterbug. “You’re wasting my money,” pere phoned from Alabama, yanking fils from school. “Here’s $2,000. Go make a living.” Prince had another aim.
Bob’s unwritten memoir read I Should Have Never Danced with the Stripper. He should have never been scarred by a polo mallet, kicked in a rodeo, or jailed for vagrancy, but was. A pattern emerged, worthy of diffident respect. “Anything short of murder,” he said, “I’ve been there” – like Woods, later naming Bob the Gunner after the husband of a woman Prince was talking to in a bar pulled a gun.
From Harvard, Prince had moved to his grandmother’s home in Zelienople, near Pittsburgh – “the only town where I could find a place to live.” Upset, Dad phoned again: “Throw that bum out of the house.” At 25, the vagabond finally settled on a career. “In the Army I’d played golf, polo, fenced. All I’d been trained to do was loaf. Broadcasting was the next easiest thing.”
By day Prince sold insurance. At night he began “[Walter] Winchellizing” on radio. Once Woods charged that boxer Billy Conn ducked opponents. The next week, Conn hit him in the gut. “I can’t fight you,” said Bob, the ex-college diver, “but I’ll swim you.” Conn later asked, “What would have happened if we’d fought in the pool?” Prince: “I’d have drowned you.” Instead, he profited from a man immersed in God.
In 1948, Bucs mikeman Jack Craddock had resigned to preach at revival meetings. The Gunner would replaced him as lead Voice Rosey Rowswell’s aide. “We were bad, and Rosey’d trip the light fantastic,” said Bob, asking why. Rowswell: “Sponsors deserve fans, and fans deserve a show. Balls and strikes alone give ’em neither.” In an inning, he might segu? from U.S. Steel stock to poetry to a favorite song – what Prince called a “Rosey Ramble,” learning well.
“Oh, by the way,” Bob would footnote, “Clemente grounded out, Stuart flied out, and that’s the inning.” He was partisan: “Come on, we need a run.” Unpredictable: Bob won a bet by waltzing from center field to home plate in stockings, pumps, neon jacket, bow tie, and Bermuda shorts. Controversial: “On purpose,” Prince admitted. “I’d do anything to build my reputation.”
Aging, Rosey often fell asleep as Bob re-created by ticker, Prince waking him in studio, if the Bucs took the lead. At Forbes Field, he pointed to a base or position “to give Rosey some idea of the ball.” From 1950 to 1957 the Pirates finished last or next to last. “Here’s to the Rosey Ramble,” Prince said after his mentor’s death in 1955. Bob’s riposte was “Gunner’s Gallop” – anything but the game.
Woods’s early life was as picaresque as Prince’s: born 1916; Kansas City Blues mascot at 4; team batboy at 8; high school, local radio score reader; freshman dropout, University of Missouri.
Dad: “Son, I hate you leaving school.”
Jim: “You won’t when I get to Yankee Stadium.”
In 1935 the ex-journalism major joined KGLO in Mason City, Iowa, The Music Man’s “River City.” By 1939, he had replaced Ronald Reagan, dealing Big 10 football for Hollywood: Poss, later crowing, “Nothing like topping a prez!” Reagan’s voice soothed, like a compress. Woods’s slapped you in the face. From 1942 to 1945, he rode the Navy War Bond circuit with actors Farley Granger, Dennis Day, and Victor Mature. By 1948, Poss had succeeded Ernie Harwell at Double-A Atlanta, when the Georgian left for Brooklyn.
In 1949, Woods’s Crackers became the 1st team to air an entire home year of television. Four years later, a voice phoned topping even Jim’s whiskied baritone. “Mel asks me to New York. I walk into his suite, and he’s on the phone talking to Joe DiMaggio about Marilyn Monroe.” Poss knew then he was in the bigs. In 1953, actor Joe E. Brown was to have succeeded DiMag on Yankees pre/post-game TV and air several innings. “Guess Brown should have stuck to film,” Allen said. Replacing him, Woods stuck to ball.
One day Possum was at Toots Shor’s restaurant bar, near Yankees and Dodgers Owners Dan Topping and Walter O’Malley, respectively, when Brooklyn’s boss began ripping his announcer. “I hate the son of a bitch,” he said of Barber. Also gassed, Topping reciprocated: “I can’t stand Mel.” Amazed, Woods heard “the heads of baseball’s biggest teams trashing sportscasting’s then-biggest names.” O’Malley raised his glass. “I’ll trade you the SOB.” Dan replied, “I’ll give you Allen.” Next day, “sans booze,” they would reneged on the deal.
The 1953 Yankees would draw 1,537,811 fans, down half a million since 1950. One cause was TV’s growth, another Allen’s sheen. Woods respected, but feared, Mel, especially his snapping fingers when something popped a cork. After Poss said Mickey Mantle “foul(ed) a ball on top,” fingers snapped. “What’d I do?” Jim said. Allen: “On top of what?” Woods: “The roof.” Mel: “Then say the roof and complete your sentence.” Jim never forgot the tutorial. “I learned to take nothing for granted and not to fear dead air, surprising for a guy famed for talking.”
Woods’s 1st-year team had won a 5th straight World Series. Stranger than fiction: The sole Yankee to play every pre-1956 Series against Brooklyn was born there. That August Yankees General Manager George Weiss told shortstop Phil Rizzuto, “We’ve got a chance to get Slaughter. What do you think?” Scooter took cyanide, saying, “Boy, getting him would be a help.” Enos would replaced Rizzuto on the MLB roster. Unemployed, Phil had charmed Yankees Major sponsor Ballantine Beer, which told Weiss to put him in the booth. Odd man out, Woods was summoned to the GM’s office. “Jim,” George groped, “I have to do something I’ve never done, fire someone without cause.”
Stunned, “It’s a funny business. Things happen." Woods would joined the Giants and NBC’s Major League Baseball. In 1957, he did NBC’s 1st weekly baseball: a Brooklyn-Milwaukee exhibition. When the Giants would move to San Francisco, “I hoped to go, but they wanted someone local” to help Hodges. Instead, Poss would join Pittsburgh, his 3rd team in as many years, “I needed a home, and here it was.” Straightway he and Gunner seared sameness the way a laser cuts dead cells. “Everybody told me, ‘Prince is out of control, you’ll never get along,’ but I decided to try him on for size.”
From the start baseball’s Ringling Brothers gilded 50,000-watt flagship KDKA with a pencil and scorecard. “That was it,” said Bob. “We’d do play-by-play – or tap dance if the game stunk.” On the last out Jim turned off his mike. “Enough of that! Booze!” The Bucs number 2's joie de vivre also applied to number.
By 1958, the Pirates led the major leagues in percentage of area radio/TV sets in use. It was easy to grasp why. Once what Woods called “the ugliest woman I ever saw” crashed the press box, barking “I want to see f___ing [Cubs Voice Jack] Brickhouse!”
A writer fingered Bob: “There, that’s Brickhouse.”
“Are you f___ing Brickhouse?” she bellowed. The network carried every word.
Convulsed, Woods watched her leave. “Gunner, if you think that one was ugly, look at the broad she’s sitting with!” Bucs’ G.M. Joe L. Brown phoned: “You can’t call women broads on the air.” Jim countered: “Broad is the only thing you could.”
Another game Prince spied “a broad” roaming an aisle. “Poss, check that one out in black!” he howled. You’re on the air, Woods cautioned. “Geez,” Bob replied, “when I think what I coulda’ said!”
One rainy Friday NBC’s Ken Coleman, in Pittsburgh for a Saturday game, heard Prince confess, “ ‘Poss, I wish they’d call the game so I could get home and watch that John Wayne Western.’ So different than what I knew.” Once Bob ribbed some Bucs about baseball being sedentary, making Gene Freese say, “Here’s $20 you can’t dive into this [hotel] pool.” Later Woods recalled Prince clearing 12 feet of concrete from his 3rd-floor room, asking “How’d your act check out now?” Gunner: “One way to find out,” diving from the ledge.
Poss’s play-by-play boasted similar sangfroid. “Clemente is on the move and runs it down, one-handed! A typical Roberto catch!” he bayed. “Mr. Mays is out on a tremendous play! Usually he makes a tremendous play.” Eddie Mathews, Woods noted, had said, “I hate your forkball pitcher” – Elroy Face. Don Hoak’s “battle cry was, ‘Boys, you’ve gotta keep driving’ “, the 1960 Bucs driving to their 1st world title since 1925. “The Pirates clinch [the pennant]!” Poss growled on September 25th as Chicago beat 2nd-place St. Louis. Prince and Allen telecast the World Series on NBC-TV, though baseball banned local radio and TV – thus, Woods. Undeterred, he and Gunner, later re-created Game 7.
“The biggest ballgame ever played in the history of this city” packed 36,683 “into this old ball orchard,” Poss began. The Yankees’ lineup listed “glue-gloved” Clete Boyer; the Bucs’, “the great Roberto,” shortstop “Richard Morrow Groat,” and “in a mild surprise, at 1st, Rocky Nelson,” who stunned with a 1st-inning HRr. Behind 4-0, Bill Skowron homered, Woods “never figuring out” why the pinstriped righty slugger was a left-footed kicker at Purdue. A 6-inning 4-spot gave the Bombers a 5-4 edge. “Yankee power has asserted itself, and you can feel the gloom.”
In the top of the 8th, New York would swelled its lead to 7-4. Leading off the bottom, Gino Cimoli singled. Bill Virdon then lanced a “high chopping ball down to [shortstop] Tony – hits him! The ball is down, and so is Kubek!”, the ball striking him in the larynx, said Woods. “Bob, your description of the Forbes Field infield [“alabaster plaster”] again comes into play!” As Kubek would traveled to the hospital, Groat “hit a line drive, left field, base hit,” Cimoli scoring: 7-5.
Each bullpen “had been the busiest place all day,” said Possum. On cue, Jim Coates, his team nickname Crazy, had replaced Bobby Shantz. Bob Skinner’s bunt advanced the runners: “The tying run now in scoring position.” Nelson popped to right. With 2 out, “It all rides now with Roberto Clemente,” who topped “a high bounding ball to the right of Skowron! Over, and got it. Nobody to throw to! Coates did not come to cover! … Maybe that’s why they call him Crazy!” – Yankees, 7-6. Ex-pinstripe Hal Smith then worked a 2-2 count: “Long drive – deep left field!” Poss said. “Back goes ! It’s gone, baby, and the Pirates lead, 9 to 7! I don’t believe it!” The radio seemed to quiver.
Bobby Richardson and Long reached to start the 9th: the ballgame “riotous,” said Prince, again voicing. Mantle singled: 9-8. Next, Berra smacked “a hot smash down to 1st, backhanded by Rocky Nelson. Steps on 1st. And Mantle slides back into 1st base, and the Yankees score the tying run! Holy Toledo! What a mishmash of a play!” At 3:36, Bill Mazeroski swung at Ralph Terry’s last-of-the-inning slider. “There goes a long drive hit deep to left field!” said Gunner. “Going back is Yogi Berra! Going back! You can kiss it good-bye!“ No smooch was ever lovelier.
“How did we do it, Possum? How did we do it?” Prince said finally, din all around. Woods didn’t know – only that “I’m looking at the wildest thing since I was on Hollywood Boulevard the night World War II ended.” How to top the topper? The Bucs spent the next decade trying.
“Controversial on purpose,” Prince had defined his style. In 1966, Pirates Danny Whelan held a wiener painted green. “There,” jibed Bob, “is a [TV] picture of a grown man pointing a green weenie at Lee May.” May popped up. Trucks soon put the Weenie on their aerial. In Calcutta an Indian fakir played a pipe. The Weenie rose from his wicker basket. At Forbes, Prince once day said on-air, “Let’s put the Green Weenie on [Don] Drysdale!” A roar commenced. Big D stood, sneering, Umpire Ed Vargo finally ordering him to throw. Big D: “How can I pitch with these nuts going crazy and that skinny bastard up in the booth?” Vargo: “I don’t know, but pitch.” The batter tripled. Leaving, Don shook his fist. The Pirates then flew to San Francisco via Dallas, where Bob inadvertently mentioned the word “bomb” to a flight attendant, who told the captain, who had called the FBI. Apprehended, Gunner was released after the Bucs plane had left, “finally getting to ’Frisco” after 30 hours without sleep, he said. Impressed, the Black Maxers, a small group of Pirates fixated by World War I flying gear, named Bob “official bombardier.”
Would Prince ever settle down? “I am, or at least my wife thinks it’s time I did.”
Sports Illustrated described him as “shaped so distinctly in his mold that every listener feels he knows him” – like Woods. In 1968, a KDKA Westinghouse Company lawyer told them to sign “contracts so I can take them back to the office.”
Bob: “Ready?”
Jim: “Whenever you are.”
Each tore the paper. “There,” Gunner said. “Take those back to your boss.”
In the late 1960s, buying radio rights from Atlantic-Richfield Co., Westinghouse increasingly accused Poss and Prince of putting show-biz above seminar. In 1969, it spurned Woods’s pay raise – “a pissing contest with the station,” said Prince. “They and Poss were about $1,200 apart.” For a decade, Jim had felt shortchanged. “So when an offer for more came from St. Louis, I jumped.” In one sense, he regretted it. In another, he left in the nick of time. Westinghouse began giving Gunner less promotion, less pre/post-game time, and more clients in the booth. “Some were bombed,” Prince said. “You could hear ’em in Cleveland.” He turned off a microphone, said, “Shut up,” was called a “m_____-f_____,” opened the mike, and said, “Westinghouse is making it impossible to do my job.” At the same time, Woods said that St. Louis was making it impossible to do his.
“Great baseball city, my ass,” Poss recalled. “The front office, [No. 1 Voice] Buck’s ego, how you were afraid to smile.” He would leave for Oakland, where the A’s won the 1972 and ’73 World Series. In November 1973, owner Charles O. Finley said that he liked homers more than Woods. “I was loyal,” said Poss, “but Finley loved the Midwest style where you scream at a foul. He said, ‘Jim, you’re a great announcer when something happens, but when nothing is going on you’re not.’”
Weiss, St. Louis, Finley: Woods pined for Pittsburgh. Instead, he signed with Boston in early 1974. That same morning, the phone rang. “I’ve thought this over,” said Finley, “and I’d like you to come back.”
“Charlie,” Jim said, “I’ve obligated myself to the Red Sox for the next 2 years.”
“S___,” Charlie snapped, “everybody knows those contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.”
“I’m tied up! I’m not coming back,” Woods said, arriving in Boston knowing that “Sox fans like it toned down. If I did a Prince I’d have been run out of town.” Before long he won the town, noting “a couple of fans waving a Yankees banner – their parents must have raised some pretty foolish children.” Ned Martin “reminded us that baseball is a game of wit and intelligence. Woods kept alive our sense of wonder,” wrote novelist Robert B. Parker. “Between them they were perfect.” He once was describing Pittsburgh.
Power can corrupt. Popularity can confuse. “Bob thought he had the sponsors and team behind him,” said a Woods successor, Nellie King. In October 1975 Westinghouse sacked Prince, the Astros and ABC’s 1976 Monday Night Baseball soon hiring him. That spring Bob told Woods, “I wouldn’t say this to anyone else, but I’m worried,” having never called a network series. Said Poss: “You can’t do on ABC what you’ve done in Pittsburgh.” Gunner bombed, retrieving baseball only in the ’80s. “It’s just cable TV, not as many homes. But you hang in there.” Woods already had.
At Fenway Park, Poss found his next-to-Prince most pitch-perfect pal. A Philadelphian, Martin entered Duke University, joined the Marines, stormed Iwo Jima, then returned to Duke, a not-so-young man in a hurry, to major in English, read Wolfe and Hemingway, and – what? He tried advertising, publishing, and broadcasting, joining the Red Sox in 1961. Ned read poetry like Allen Ginsberg’s, had politics like John Wayne’s, and treated the Sox workforce like royalty. One moment, he called Ted Williams “Big Guy.” The next evoked Shakespeare: “Good night, sweet prince.” His amalgam included a Woods-like disdain for radio jack, sham, and fools.
Ned and Poss completed each other’s sentences, communing on-air by “a hand gesture, shrug, raised eyebrow,” wrote the Boston Globe’s Bill Griffith. After a game “broadcasters, writers, and the coaching staff [gathered] during which Martin and Woods would be spellbinding with their baseball tales.” Woods called Ned “Nedley.” Martin ribbed Poss about his and Prince’s booth as bar – “Did Budweiser sponsor you, or did you sponsor Budweiser?” Like Prince’s, Martin’s synergy with Poss wowed.
In 1975. Woods passed a final-day baton: “Now Ned Martin will steer our ship with all colors flying safely into port.”
“What are our colors, Mr. [Fletcher] Christian?” Ned said, referencing Mutiny on the Bounty.
“Well, they ain’t [Finley’s] green and gold, I’ll tell you,” Poss said.
Martin: “Probably red, white, and blue.”
Sports Illustrated termed them “the best day-in, day-out announcers covering the American League” – not unlike 1958-69’s N.L. Poss/Prince. One moment Possum was gently manic: “[In] Baltimore … the Sox will play Brooksie-Baby and his merry mates.” Another hailed Carlton Fisk conquering a broken wrist. “It is gone his 1st HR of the year! And look at him jump and dance! He’s the happiest guy in Massachusetts!” Jim froze anguish, too. In 1978 Bucky Dent’s HR pivoted the Boston-New York A.L. playoff game. “It is gone!” Poss said. “Suddenly, the whole thing is turned around!”
Before long, so was Woods.
In Pittsburgh, Westinghouse had been clueless about what it had. Equally inept Sox flagship WMEX (later WITS) began a pregame-show, during-inning ad blitz, and home run inning to pay a record radio rights pact. “It demeaned the product,” Ned said, “hurt the game.” More cash demanded VIP schmoozing, which he and Poss loathed. In 1978, Mariner Communications bought the station, new head Joe Scallan pining to transform Red Sox Nation.
“I’m going to change listening habits,” he informed Woods, incredulous. “What you don’t know is that I could replace you and Ned with King Kong and Donald Duck and not lose one listener.”
“Well, Joe,” said Possum, “I don’t know about King Kong, but I do believe that Donald is under contract [to Walt Disney-owned theme parks] in Anaheim and Orlando.”
Like Westinghouse a decade earlier, WITS wanted company men, not a listener’s good company. “Hit parties, ooze oil,” Woods said. “I couldn’t, nor would Ned,” refusing to prostitute. In late 1978, the flagship fired each, creating “such an uproar,” wrote the Globe, “that the fellow who fired them [Scallan] was soon gone as well.”
Moving to USA Network’s 1979-82 Thursday Game of the Week, Woods then would retire, having keyed what Boston’s Shaun L. Kelly called “a radio duo, unmatched, before or since, by anybody” – save Pittsburgh. Wrote the Globe’s Bob Ryan: “You know what’s sad? … The people who ruled over them and signed their paychecks had no idea how, special Martin and Woods were” think Poss and Prince.
Too late, KDKA had rehired Gunner in 1985. “Other than my family, you’re giving me back the only thing I love.” Prince had cancer surgery, did a game and got lung dehydration and pneumonia. “It is a sad morning,” Tom McMillan wrote June 11th. “A piece of us is missing. Bob Prince is dead.” Martin did 1979-92 Red Sox TV, but he was axed again, he would retire to Virginia. He had a heart attack in 2002.
Woods’s last stop began on February 20,1988, at the age of 71, passing away from cancer. He was survived by his wife, Audrey. “Leave it to Jim,” said a friend. “He had to go to heaven to find a better friend than Ned or Prince.” Not trying harder, baseball’s ultimate number 2 became, in a Latin phrase, primus inter pares, 1st among equals. Forget dancing with a stripper. From 1958 to 1969, Prince had danced with an Astaire.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 21, 2024 18:57:34 GMT -5
Former Yankees Pitcher Duke Maas 1958-1961
This article was written by Andrew Sharp, Edited by Clipper
 1959 Topps Baseball Card Duke Maas has pitched in the American League during 7 seasons from 1955 to 1961, most notably with the New York Yankees. He had appeared in relief in the 1958 and 1960 World Series.
Maas had won the game that clinched the 1958 pennant for New York. In 1959, he would started 21 games, fashioning a 14-8 won-loss record for a Yankees team that finished a disappointing 4 games over .500 in 3rd place. He had played his entire career, cut short by arthritis in his arm, having shaved 2 years off his age.
Maas told The Sporting News in 1957 that he didn’t like his given name, Duane, so he adopted the nickname Duke as a child. The 1957 Baseball Register said his father gave him the nickname. His father was a 2nd-generation dairy farmer in Utica, Michigan, where Duane Frederick Maas was born on January 31, 1929, the younger of 2 sons of Frederick and Mabel (Weier) Maas. Duane’s brother, Lawrence, was born in 1926. Their paternal grandfather had emigrated from Germany. His mother also was of German descent.
“They say milking cows strengthens your wrists, and I did a lot of that as a kid,” Duke told Watson Spoelstra of the Detroit News, while he pitched for the Tigers. With chores to do on the family’s 60-acre farm, Maas didn’t play organized baseball until he made the Utica High School varsity as a senior. Utica, in Macomb County, is about 25 miles from Detroit.
“Pitchers on the baseball team got to leave an hour early,” Maas told an Associated Press reporter in 1955 about his motivation. “So, I tried out for the team and made it. That was in 1948, and I’ve been pitching ever since.”
After graduation, Mass would pitch for a Utica team in the semipro Macomb County Federation League, winning 12 and losing twice, His high-school coach, Barney Swinehart, wrote to the Detroit Tigers to see if they would take a look at Maas, a slim 5-foot-10 right-hander. In the fall of 1948, he and Swinehart went to Briggs Stadium for a tryout, but the Tigers’ longtime chief scout, A.J. “Wish” Egan, wasn’t available to see Maas when he arrived.
“Mr. Egan had been ill and wasn’t there the 1st day,” Maas told The Sporting News in March 1955. “So I went back the following day. He signed me that afternoon.” Tigers General Manager John McHale gave Maas $500 and a $150-a-month contract.
1955 Topps Baseball Card
The 20-year-old Maas was assigned to Roanoke Rapids in the Class-D Coastal Plain League at the beginning of the 1949 season. He went 3-5 with a 4.01 ERA before moving on to Dunn-Erwin in the Class-D Tobacco State League. Although he was 3-2, his ERA was 5.25. He yielded nearly a hit per inning. With both teams, his control was shaky – 10 walks every 9 innings overall.
The results, at least in the won-lost column, were better in 1950 for Jamestown, New York, in the Class-D Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York (PONY) League. Maas was 12-7, starting 19 of 30 games. He cut down on his walks and hits per inning, but his ERA was still 4.47.
With the Korean War raging, Maas was drafted into the Army. He was stationed 1st at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, before being sent to Germany to serve with the occupation force there for 14 months. He had no opportunity to pitch. He even had to play the outfield on an Army team at Fort Campbell. “I couldn’t make the club as a pitcher,” he said in 1955.
Released from the military, Maas was sent in 1953 to Durham, North Carolina, the Tigers’ affiliate in the Class-B Carolina League. His won-lost record for a losing team was 6-16, but his overall performance improved significantly. His ERA had dropped to 3.03 and he cut his walks per 9 innings to less than 4. The next season was a breakout for Maas: 18-7 combined at AA and AAA with a 2.37 ERA. He was the Eastern League’s top pitcher at AA Wilkes-Barre with 3 shutouts and a 1.10 ERA, when he was promoted to AAA Buffalo Bisons in the International League.
Maas’s 1954 season earned him a trip to spring training with Detroit in 1955. His impressive performance there won him a spot in the Tigers’ rotation to start the season. Veteran Tigers Manager Bucky Harris called Maas “the surprise package” among the young pitching prospects. At first, Maas seemed as if he would be.
With the Tigers being blown out by the White Sox, Maas made his MLB pitching debut on April 21, 1955, at Briggs Stadium. His team was down, 9-1, when he took the mound in the 8th inning to face Chico Carrasquel, who grounded out to short. Nellie Fox then grounded to 2nd and Minnie Minoso grounded to 3rd. The 9th wasn’t quite as smooth: Maas hit a batter and walked another, but he had escaped without a run scoring.
His 1st MLB start came at home on April 30th against Washington. It didn’t go well. Maas lasted just 2⅓ innings. He gave up just 2 hits, but walked 5. Mercifully, Maas yielded only 2 runs. The Tigers won, 11-7.
Five days later, Maas had started and won his 1st MLB game as the Tigers scored the winning run with 2 outs in bottom of the 9th on Al Kaline’s triple. Maas went the distance, allowing 6 hits and walking 2 batters.
“Everybody tells me the 1st victory is the toughest,” Maas told reporters. “I don’t see how they possibly could come any tougher.”
After being knocked out early at Washington in his next start, Maas pitched another complete game at home to beat the Red Sox, 9-3. The Tigers were up 9-0 in the 8th when Maas yielded a meaningless 3-run HRr. He followed that with a complete-game, 3-2 victory over Cleveland on May 21st. At that point, Maas was 3-1 with 3 complete games and a 3.27 ERA.
Although he shut out the Orioles twice on June 5th and June 18th, he was knocked out in 4 innings or less in 4 of his next 5 starts. His ERA was 4.81, when he was optioned to AAA Buffalo Bisons (International League) on July 18th. A rookie hurler named Jim Bunning would replace him in the rotation.
That fall, Maas would marry the former Nancy Gail Seeman, a 19-year-old local beauty pageant queen in Michigan, in a ceremony noted in The Sporting News. His “bride carried a satin catcher’s mitt and her “bridesmaid’s bouquets were arranged in shapes of baseball bats and balls.” The couple’s 1st child, Kevin, was born on Father’s Day in 1957. Another son and daughter twins Randy and Robin were born on September 8, 1960.
After his demotion to the minors, Maas admitted to experiencing arm trouble, but in the spring of 1956, he told The Sporting News, “My arm felt good again at the end of last season.” And he again was making an impression on his Manager. “He is a fighter, who is always in top condition to pitch,” Harris said.
The 1956 AL season was one to forget for Maas, however. His record was 0-7 with a 6.54 ERA, when he was shipped in mid-July to Charleston in the American Association, the Tigers’ top farm club. There, he straightened himself out, winning 6 of 9 decisions, including 2 shutouts, with a 2.39 ERA. He had sharpened his control, walking just 9 batters in 64 innings
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Maas began working more on a slider in the offseason, and it helped him make the Opening Day roster in 1957. That pitch “moves 6 to 12 inches just before it reaches the plate,” catcher Frank House said praise of Maas early in the season. When Frank Lary was hit by a line drive on April 26, 1957, Maas would relieve him and pitched 6 scoreless innings. Put back in the rotation, he won his 1st 5 starts, completing 4 of them. After beating Washington Senators on May 19th, he was 6-1 with a 1.74 ERA.
“I’ve finally mastered control of my pitches,” he told an Associated Press reporter. “It’s just a matter of using my head instead of my arm. I’ve always felt I could be a consistent winner in the big leagues. … It’s about time I made something out of myself.”
On June 14, 1957, Maas hit his lone MLB HR in beating the Boston Red Sox. He was never much at the plate with just 6 hits in 80 plate appearances that season; he had a .117 lifetime batting average.
His victory over Boston was his 7th, but wins were hard to come by after that. Maas didn’t win again until August 1st. He lost 7 of his last 9 decisions to finish 10-14 with a 3.28 ERA in 26 starts and 19 relief appearances over 219⅓ innings. He had saved 6 games. The game starts and innings pitched in 1957 would be Maas’s career highs. Despite his heavy workload, Maas went to the Caribbean during the offseason to pitch in Puerto Rican Winter League.
On November 20,1957, Maas was involved in a 13-player transaction, which remains the 3rd largest in history, between Detroit and Kansas City. Infielder Billy Martin, sent to Detroit, was the key player for the Tigers in deal. The Athletics also sent an aging Gus Zernial and 5 others to Detroit. Maas and Bill Tuttle were the keys among the 7 players acquired by the Athletics.
Kansas City A's player photo
The next season, Maas found himself on the New York-Kansas City shuttle. The Athletics, a team that seemed as if it were still a Yankees farm club, had shipped Maas and 41-year-old hurler Virgil Trucks to New York on June 15th in exchange for Pitcher Bob Grim and OF/1B Harry "Suitcase" Simpson. “The Yankees had dropped by their favorite store in Kansas City and picked up an item that may turn out to be the year’s biggest bargain,” columnist Red Smith wrote of the Maas deal. Indeed, Maas helped the Yankees secure the 1958 flag, going 7-3 in 13 starts and 9 relief appearances. He started and won the pennant-clincher, on September 14th.
Before the World Series began, Maas was presumed to be in line to start the 3rd game against the Milwaukee Braves, but when Bob Turley was knocked out in the 1st inning of Game 2, Maas was brought in. Rather than douse the fire, he added fuel. Maas got a fly-ball out before a walk and a single that allowed both runners Turley had left on base to score. Still, all Duke needed was to retire the opposing pitcher. Lew Burdette would have none of it. His 3-run HR turned the game into an early rout and sent Maas to the showers with an ERA of 81.00.
Down 3 games to 1, the Yankees came back to beat Milwaukee, but New York’s run of 14 pennants in 16 seasons hit a bump in 1959. Although New York fell to 3rd place, Maas was 2nd on the team in victories with 14. He would beat the Indians 5 times and the Red Sox 4. Nine of his 21 starts came as regular member of the rotation from May 27th to July 11th, but otherwise he was the classic spot starter/long man, pitching out of the bullpen 17 times. In all 4 of his saves, he pitched 2 innings or more.
His 1959 performance had earned Maas a solid chance to be a consistent starter, but he experienced arm trouble during spring training and into April 1960. He lasted 5 innings in his only start of the season, on June 1st. Between June 4th and July 21st, he never pitched more than 2 innings in a game. He appeared just 4 times in June, an indication his arm might have been bothering him.
Nevertheless, Maas received a vote of confidence – in public, at least – from Manager Casey Stengel. “Nobody likes the Duke but me,” Stengel said about stories that Maas was on the trading block. “He’s coming along.” Yet New York newspapers had reported earlier that the Yankees tried and failed to pass Maas through waivers, so he could be sent to Triple-A Richmond.
Maas would pitched 3⅓ innings to earn a save on August 6th. He had 3 more before the season ended, the last a 4-inning save on September 21st. The 70⅓ innings, he had threw in 35 games were his fewest since 1956, when he spent half the season in the minors. Still, he would finished the 1960 season with a 5-1 record.
In Game 1 of the 1960 World Series, Maas pitched 2 innings, yielding an RBI double to Bill Virdon in the 6th in the 6-4 Yankees loss to the Pirates. This turned out to be the last moment in the spotlight for him. The arthritic condition of his pitching arm grew worse before the start of the 1961 AL season. Neither the Yankees nor the expansion Los Angeles Angels must have been aware of this, however.
Maas was among the 7 players on the August 31,1960, Yankees’ roster exposed to the expansion team player draft in December to stock the Angels and the new Washington team. (The Yankees and the other seven teams had to make an additional 8 players available from the 40-man rosters.) The Angels made Maas the 3rd pick all 3 from New York Yankee players in the draft, but then they would traded him back to the Yankees on April 4,1961, for reserve Infielder Fritz Brickell.
“Maas was 1 of 2 or 3, I hated to make available to the other clubs,” Ralph Houk, the new Yankees’ manager, said of the deal to reacquire the pitcher. “If he doesn’t make it, we will have lost nothing but an infielder on whom we had not counted on,” said new Yankees General Manager Roy Hamey.
That spring, Maas had moved his family to California, where his wife and 3 children remained, even after he was traded back to New York, for about a year before returning to their home in Utica.
Although the Yankees apparently never raised the issue, it’s hard to believe the Angels did not recognize that Maas had a sore arm during spring training. He didn’t pitch in a game for New York until April 23rd. Maas retired just 1 of the 3 batters he faced – on a sacrifice bunt. He was charged with 2 runs. After yielding a run-scoring triple to Brooks Robinson, he walked off a big-league mound for what turned out to be the final time.
Maas would remain on the active roster until May 20th, when he was optioned to AAA Richmond in the International League. He reported there after several more days of treatment on his sore arm.
Soon, it was obvious that Maas no longer could pitch effectively. He had given up 36 hits 6 of them HRs in 27 innings over 9 games at AAA Richmond. His ERA was 7.67. His arm trouble did not improve. At 32, he would called it quits. That fall, his Yankee teammates had awarded him a $750 share of their 1961 World Series money.
In late October of 1961, the Yankees had released Maas to Amarillo of the Double-A Texas League, although he never played there. Returning to Utica, his Michigan hometown, he was hired by the traffic department at the Ford Motor Co. plant there, where he worked until shortly before his death.
According to his son Randy, Duke Maas had attended the Yankees’ Old Timers Game in New York in August 1967. Maas and his wife Nancy were divorced in 1968.
As his rheumatoid arthritic condition deteriorated, he was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Clinton Township, Michigan, in late November 1976, where he remained for 2 weeks until he died of congestive heart failure on December 7. Maas was only 47 years old. He is buried in Utica Cemetery.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 21, 2024 21:17:40 GMT -5
Former Yankees Reserve Outfielder Bob CervThis article was written by Warren Corbett, Edited by Clipper
Topps Baseball Card
Bob Cerv had survived kamikaze attacks in World War II. He would put all 10 of his children through college. In between, he was a 3-time New York Yankee. The Yankees signed him, traded him, brought him back, let him go, and brought him back again.
His claim to Yankees fame came in 1961, when he shared an apartment with Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, while they chased Babe Ruth’s HR record. The trio surely set a record for most HRs under 1 roof: Maris hit 61, Mantle 54, and Cerv 6.
Cerv got into 3 World Series, but he was a small cog in the powerful Yankee machine of the 1950s and early 1960s, as a pinch-hitter and platoon outfielder. Like his contemporaries, he was a prisoner of baseball’s reserve clause. When he finally got a chance to play regularly in his 30s, he set the Kansas City Athletics HR record.
Robert Henry Cerv was born in Weston, Nebraska, on May 5, 1925, the only son of Henry Cerv, a truck driver and the former Henrietta Staska. He had 3 younger sisters. The family name, Bohemian in origin, is properly pronounced “Cherf,” but was Americanized to “Serve.”
Bob’s father and an uncle played ball for the town team. When the boy visited his grandfather’s farm outside Weston, he didn’t want to pick up the walnuts that fell from a tree until his grandfather made him a bat. “After that,” Cerv recalled, “there never was a walnut on the ground. Hitting walnuts. I’d hit them into a little creek out there.”
His grandfather attached a baseball to a chain hanging from a cottonwood tree. “I’d hit that thing, and it would go out there and come back. I’d hit that thing by the hours.”
When Bob was 11 or 12, he rode with his father to New York, delivering eggs and milk in a refrigerated truck, and they took in some games at Yankee Stadium. After watching Lou Gehrig hit two home runs, he told his dad, “I’m going to play for the Yankees someday.”
The local high school had no baseball team, but Bob was a star in basketball. He didn’t go out for football because he didn’t want to risk an injury that would interfere with his baseball dream. He had played American Legion ball as a catcher and outfielder, once meeting a team from St. Louis whose star was Yogi Berra. Bob was still in high school when he began playing against adults in the Pioneer Night League, a semipro circuit of small Nebraska towns.
The 18-year-old joined the navy after graduation. Assigned as a radarman aboard the destroyer Claxton in the Pacific, he had escaped injury in several kamikaze attacks during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval engagement of the war. One of the suicide attacks, off the Philippines on November 1,1944, that killed 5 Claxton sailors. When the ship returned home, President Truman would present the destroyer squadron with Presidential Unit Citations and he shook the Nebraska boy’s hand.
Cerv had enrolled at the University of Nebraska in 1946 on the G.I. Bill. In his freshman year, he would met Phyllis Pelton and married her while still in school on June 5,1948. According to the university, he is the only Cornhusker to earn 4 letters each in basketball and baseball. His teams won or shared 2 Big 7 conference titles in each sport. After batting .444 and slugging .878 in his senior season, he was chosen in a coaches’ poll as Nebraska’s 1st baseball All-American.
By the time, he had graduated, Bob and Phyllis already had 2 daughters. At 25, he would sign with the Yankees for a $5,500 bonus and began his pro career at the top level of the minors, Triple-A Kansas City Blues in 1950. A right-handed batter, 6 feet tall and around 200 pounds, he would play center field and hit .304 in 94 games.
In July 1951, Cerv was leading the American Association in HRs, RBIs, and batting average, when the Yankees called him up and demoted their slumping rookie phenom, Mickey Mantle to Kansas City. Cerv took Mantle’s place in right field, but he was benched after managing only 1 single in his 1st 11 plate appearances.
Less than a month later, he and Mantle would swapped uniforms again. Back in AA A, Cerv’s season would end, when he separated his shoulder on August 31st.
His eye-catching stats in Kansas City were 22 doubles, 21 triples, 28 HRs and a league-leading .344 batting average that would put him in the Yankees’ plans for 1952. Even with Joe DiMaggio retired and Mantle limping from a knee injury that he had suffered in the 1951 World Series, the Bronx Bombers, as usual, had no shortage of talent. Gene Woodling and Hank Bauer locked down the outfield corners. Cerv competed for the center-field job with bonus baby Jackie Jensen, veteran Johnny Hopp, and rookie Archie Wilson.
Cerv hit 2 long HRs in spring training and Manager Casey Stengel commented, “He has power, he can run, he will make it.” But Jensen won the starting nod in center on Opening Day, with Mantle in right and Bauer and Woodling platooning in left.
In his 1st start in the season’s 9th game, Cerv had struck out 3 times and left 10 runners on base. Jensen wasn’t doing much better; he was 2-for-23 when the Yankees traded him to Washington for outfielder Irv Noren on May 3rd. A week later, Cerv crashed into Yankee Stadium’s outfield wall and knocked himself cold. That same day Mantle was moved to center.
That left Cerv as the 5th outfielder, pinch-hitting and platooning occasionally with Woodling. He was batting .241 in 56 games, when he was sent back to Kansas City in July. His Yankee teammates would voted him a $3,000 partial World Series share, he would pick up another $1,200, when Kansas City won the Junior World Series.
In 1953, another right-handed power hitter, Bill Renna, beat him out for the 5th outfield spot, Cerv would returned to Triple A. But that used up his last minor-league option; the next spring, the Yankees had to keep him or lose him, because several other teams had tried to get him in trades.
Renna was traded before the 1954 season, Cerv would spend the next 3 years on the Yankees’ bench. After Woodling was dealt away in 1954, Noren would become the primary left fielder in 1955. Elston Howard, a right-handed hitter like Cerv, won the job in 1956 and 1957. Cerv never started more than 30 games in the outfield. Stengel evidently thought his arm was inadequate for Yankee Stadium’s huge left- and left-center pasture.
It’s unlikely that Cerv ever talked to the Manager about playing time, because that wasn’t Stengel’s way. “No explanation. No nothing,” 2nd baseman Jerry Coleman said. “He never called anyone into the office and said, ‘I’m not going to do this because of this.’ He did it.” Coleman said Stengel spoke 5 words to him in 9 years.
Cerv gave the club a potent bat off the bench, racking up on-base plus slugging percentages of .800, .952, and .926. In his 1st World Series in 1955, he had replaced the injured Mantle in center in 4 of the 7 games. He had managed only 2 hits in the Series, but 1 was a pinch-hit HR in Game 5.
Late in the 1956 season, Stengel had told him, “Nobody knows this, but one of us has just been traded to Kansas City.” This story has often been debunked because the record shows that Cerv was not sold to the Athletics until after the season, but he said it was true. It appears that the Yankees secretly promised him to Kansas City as part of their deal to acquire Enos Slaughter in an August waiver transaction. That violated baseball rules; a waiver deal was supposed to be a straight cash sale.
“I was tickled to death,” Cerv said years later, “because I could play every day. And I proved to them that I could play every day.” He was liberated from the bench, but he was leaving behind any hope of another World Series check, because the Athletics were a tail-end team. His wife, Phyllis, was tickled, too. She liked Kansas City, and it was closer to home in Nebraska. Cerv moved his family, now numbering 6 children with a 7th on the way, to his new baseball home.
Bob Cerv Baseball Card
He was surrounded by familiar faces about half the Athletics had come from the Yankees in the incestuous relationship between the clubs, but his 1st year was a disappointment. Slowed by an ankle injury and admittedly overweight at nearly 240 pounds, he had started only 77 games with a batting line of .272/.312/.420 and 11 HRs. It didn’t make much difference; the A’s had finished 7th.
During the offseason, Kansas City writer Ernest Mehl said Cerv “realizes it is now or never as far as his baseball career is concerned.” He reported to spring training nearly 20 pounds lighter and started the 1958 season on a tear. In the 1st 3 games, he rapped out 2 HRs and 3 doubles, and drove in 9 runs.
By May 17th, he was leading the league with 11 HRs and 30 RBIs. That day, trying to score from 2nd on a squeeze bunt, he had crashed into Detroit Catcher Red Wilson, a former Big 10 linebacker. Wilson said Cerv “looked like a mad rhino” charging toward the plate. Cerv was out and down, with a broken jaw.
He would missed only 3 games, then returned to the lineup with his jaws wired shut. For nearly 4 weeks, he would play in every game, although every swing, throw and slide brought intense pain. He had trouble breathing, so the trainer treated him with oxygen in the dugout. The 1st time, he took a whiff, he hit a HR. His teammates began demanding oxygen before their at-bats.
Subsisting on a liquid diet, mostly pureed steak and potatoes, Cerv lost 30 points off his batting average, but he did hit 6 HRs in 28 games and was still leading the league when the wires came off. His jaws were so sore he couldn’t chew a steak for another 2 weeks.
After he had recovered, Cerv would break a toe, then sprained a knee and was hit in the arm by a Ryne Duren fastball, but he shrugged off those inconveniences. Players, managers, and coaches voted him the starting left fielder in the All-Star Game. On July 22nd, the Athletics would stage a Bob Cerv Night at the ballpark. Former President Truman and the Governors of Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska turned out to honor him. Cerv received more than $6,000 in cash as well as a slew of gifts.
Truman claimed to remember their wartime handshake and invited Cerv to visit him at his home in Independence, Missouri. Cerv stopped by several times to chat.
He would finish in the American League’s top 5 with 93 runs, 38 HRs, 104 RBIs, a .963 OPS, and 6.3 wins above replacement (WAR). His 38 HRs are still the most by any player for either of Kansas City’s 2 big league franchises as of 2017. He was 4th in the Most Valuable Player voting. It was a triumphant season, but only reminded the 33-year-old of what might have been.
He couldn’t do it again. Injuries to his back, thumb, and knee would limited Cerv to 125 games in 1959, with 20 HRs and an .812 OPS. After the season, he was invited to compete on the syndicated TV series Home Run Derby. At the filming in Los Angeles’s Wrigley Field, he had outslugg Frank Robinson to win $2,000, then lost to Bob Allison, taking home a $1,000 consolation prize, not as good as a World Series share, but a useful addition to his $30,000 salary.
In May 1960, Kansas City had traded him back to the Yankees for INF Andy Carey, who was once the club’s regular 3rd baseman, but he had fallen out of favor with Stengel. After dropping to 3rd place in 1959, New York was fighting the young Baltimore Orioles for the pennant. Cerv went into the lineup in left field, joining Mantle and his Kansas City roommate, Maris, in the outfield. The Athletics had traded Maris to the Yankees during the 1959 offseason.
Three days after Cerv arrived, the 2 former A’s would return to Kansas City for the 1st time. Fans welcomed them like old friends, but they abused the local hospitality, when they both hit HRs.
Cerv moved with Maris into an apartment near the Forest Hills tennis center in Queens. They left their families at home during the season. “We were a lot alike,” Cerv said, “just small-town Midwestern guys who did our jobs and let others make the noise.” His job soon became part-time left fielder. Slowed by a bad knee, he couldn’t cover the spacious Yankee Stadium outfield. He had started 65 games and went to bat 249 times, the most of his career in pinstripes. The results were better than average: 8 HRs and a .771 OPS.
Cerv had started 3 World Series games against Pittsburgh and had batted .357. After the Series, the Yankees had left the 35-year-old unprotected in the expansion player draft that would stocked 2 new teams: Washington Senators and the Los Angeles Angels.
1961 Baseball Card
The Los Angeles Angels had pick him along with other well-known veterans including 1B Ted Kluszewski, 3B Eddie Yost and Pitcher Ned Garver.
In the 1st inning of the 1st game in Angels’ history at Baltimore, Kluszewski and Cerv hit consecutive HRs. Klu would add another HR as the castoff lineup beat the Baltimore Orioles, 7-2. The Angels played their home games at Wrigley Field, the hitter-friendly site of Home Run Derby, but Cerv connected only once in 10 games there.
The 1961 AL season was less than a month old, when the Yankees brought him back in a 5-player deal that sent veteran reliever Ryne Duren and a young rookie slugger Lee Thomas to L.A. Cerv was primarily a pinch-hitter in New York, with a front-row seat for the Babe Ruth HR derby featuring Mantle and Maris.
When Maris suggested that Mantle move in with them, Cerv resisted. He knew the superstar deserved his reputation for drinking and womanizing. “I didn’t know whether I wanted him or not, ’cause I knew what he did. But I said, ‘These are the rules. If you break them, you’re outta here, no partying, no girls.’”
As Mantle and Maris chased Ruth, the apartment became their refuge from pandemonium. “I was the father figure,” Cerv said. “I did all the shopping and the cooking. I ran the place. We spent a lot of nights just sitting in the living room watching some television comedy and sipping a beer.” Sportswriters had invented a feud between the “M&M boys,” not knowing, they were housemates.
Mantle would stick with the quiet domestic life until around Labor Day. “Then he said, ‘I’ve had enough of this. I gotta have some good times,’” Cerv recalled. Soon after he moved out, the Mick caught what was described as a cold and got a shot from a shady doctor that Mel Allen had taken him to. Before the end of the season, he wound up in Lenox Hill Hospital with complications from the botched injection. Cerv was already in the same hospital after having knee surgery, when Maris had hit HR # 61 at Yankee Stadium on October 1,1961.
Forty years later, comic Billy Crystal directed a television movie, 61*, about the HR chase. “My wife says I’m better-looking than the guy who played me,” Cerv told an interviewer. The only 1 of the housemates still living, he judged the film to be about 70 % accurate. One scene showed him and Mantle watching on TV in a hospital room as Maris broke the record. Cerv said that happened only in the filmmaker’s imagination.
More knee problems sidelined Cerv in early 1962. On June 26th the Yankees would sell him to the expansion Houston Colt .45s, but Houston would release him a month later. He tried out with the Mets the next spring, but failed to make the team. His leg and knee problems would force him to retire from game.
That summer, he would manage Bob Cerv’s Home Plate Restaurant in Kansas City’s Berkshire Hotel, where some of the Athletics players lived. He had left professional baseball, but never left the game. In 1966, he began a 10-year stint as head coach at John F. Kennedy College in Wahoo, Nebraska, then moved to Sioux Empire, a junior college in Hawarden, Iowa.
He enjoyed his greatest success as Manager of the BeeJays, a semipro team in Liberal, Kansas for 10 summers between 1970 and 1982. He led the team to the finals of the National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita 3 times. Cerv’s Beejays won the national championship in 1979 behind the pitching of Mike Moore of Oral Roberts University, who went on to a 14-year MLB career. Others who played for him included Ron Guidry, Mike Hargrove, Rick Honeycutt and Doug Drabek.
“I got all 10 of my kids through college,” Cerv said “That’s my greatest accomplishment.”
In retirement, he would return to Yankee Stadium for Old Timers Days and picked up some extra money at autograph shows. Sometime after Phyllis had died in 2005, he would move to a nursing home in Blair, Nebraska. Several of his 7 daughters and 3 sons lived nearby, not to mention 32 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren.
For as long as he was able, he went with his son Joe to a Royals game, every time the Yankees came to town. Although he played fewer than half of his 829 big-league games in pinstripes, another son, John, said, “He was proud to be a Yankee. That’s who he felt he was.” Bob explained, “You just know when you put those pinstripes on that you’re carrying that tradition forward. There’s nothing like it, and it really stays with you for all your life.”
Bob Cerv died on April 6, 2017. The University of Nebraska baseball team went ahead with plans to give away Bob Cerv bobbleheads on May 5th, which would have been his 92nd birthday.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 22, 2024 16:55:31 GMT -5
Vic Power
The Yankees Minor League that Black Star that was Traded AwayThis article was written by Joseph Wancho, Edited by Clipper
  The game meant nothing. Well, virtually nothing. The Detroit Tigers were ending a 3-game series in Cleveland looking for a sweep after taking the 1st 2 contests. But that was all that Detroit was playing for on August 14, 1958. The Tigers and Indians were playing out the string, holding down 4th and 5h place respectively in the American League standings. Detroit was a distant 15½ games behind 1st-place New York. Cleveland was 18 games behind.
But even games played between noncontenders can bring excitement and record-worthy performances. Such was the case that Thursday afternoon, witnessed by a minuscule total of 4,474 fans in cavernous Cleveland Stadium. The Tigers looked well on their way to sweeping the Tribe, after building a 7-4 lead heading into the bottom of the 8th inning. Rocky Colavito led off the frame with his 2nd solo HR of the game. Pinch-hitter Gary Geiger walked. Next, Vic Wertz was summoned from the bench to bat for pitcher Morrie Martin. Wertz came through and hit a HR to tie the game.
Vic Power singled home Bobby Avila, then went to 2nd on an error by catcher Charlie Lau. On a wild pitch by Tigers hurler Bill Fischer, Power moved to 3rd base. Third-base Coach Eddie Stanky told Power to “go if you can get the jump.” Go Power did, swiping the plate and turning a 3-run deficit into a 2-run lead at 9-7.
Indians stopper Ray Narleski could not hold the lead and the Tigers scored 2 runs in the top of the 9th inning to send the game into extra innings. With 1 out in the bottom of the 10th, Power and catcher Russ Nixon each stroked a single. Nixon was forced at 2nd on a groundball off the bat of Minnie Miñoso. Larry Doby was intentionally walked, and up stepped Colavito with the bases full and 2 outs. This time, Stanky instructed Power “to play it safe and see what happens.” Power had been bluffing his way down the 3rd-base line, and Tigers pitcher Frank Lary was paying him no attention. “I told Eddie, ‘I think I can go,” Power said in the clubhouse after the game. “He say nothing so I go.” A startled Lary tried to hurry the throw home from his windup, but Power slid home, beating the throw easily. “Those were head plays, not leg plays,” said Cleveland skipper Joe Gordon. “Vic isn’t particularly fast, but he’s got baseball instinct. He bluffed the pitchers beautifully rushing up the line, pausing long enough to make them relax and then, poof, streaking all the way in.”
Power’s feat of stealing home twice in 1 game had been done just 10 times before in the major leagues. He was the 1st to turn the trick since 1927 and, more than a half-century later, the last player to have done it. How many bases did Power steal in 1958? 3.
Victor Felipe Pellot (Pove), who spent the month of September 1964 playing for the Phillies, was born on November 1,1927, in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. (The 2nd family name in most Spanish-speaking countries is the mother’s maiden name.) He was the 2nd youngest of 6 children born to Regino and Maximina Pellot (pronounced “pay-oat”). A monolingual 1st-grade teacher changed Maximina’s last name, Pove, to Power. The teacher, thinking that the illiterate Maximina was spelling her name wrong, changed the “v” to a “w” and added an “r” at the end. “Pove” was transformed to “Power,” a mistranslation that Maximina had no choice, but to accept. The name of the mother and the player was imposed, with no ancestors, and no lineage.
Regino Pellot, who worked at a sugar mill, died from tetanus, when Victor was 13. Maximina Pellot took in work as a seamstress. Quincy Trouppe, a veteran of the Negro Leagues and the Latin American leagues, had seen Power playing on the sandlots around Arecibo, befriended the young man. Trouppe would sign the youngster to play for Caguas of the Puerto Rican Baseball League. At the age of 15, Vic headed off to play professional baseball for a salary of $100 a week. Trouppe took the young Power under his wing, acting much like a 2nd father to him.
In 1949, the Drummondville (Quebec) Cubs, a team in the independent Provincial League, was searching for talented ballplayers for the summer. The Puerto Rican league had folded for financial reasons, and many players, Power and Trouppe included, made the trek north. For both seasons with the Cubs, Power played in the outfield. While there he changed his name, at least as used on the baseball diamond. “I used to write Victor Pellot Power. But the French Canadians would say ‘La Pellot,’ with an ‘L’ sound rather than a ‘Y’ sound. That sounded similar to a French sexual term and everyone would laugh. [Pelote means he who paws or pets women]. So, they started calling me Vic Power instead.”
New York Yankees Scout Tom Greenwade had seen Vic play in Puerto Rico years before, and dispatched Scout John Neun to look him over in Drummondville. Neun reported back positively. No matter how Power was pronounced, Greenwade would signed Power based on his solid performance. Power’s meteoric rise through the Yankees farm system began with the AAA Syracuse Chiefs of the International League in 1951 and continued for 2 years with the Kansas City Blues of the American Association. He was clearly one of the top prospects in the Yankees’ chain. At Kansas City, Power mostly played the outfield; Bill “Moose” Skowron had blocked his way at the position he desired, 1st base. Skowron had the power that the Bombers wanted to add to their lineup and he hit for average as well. But it was Power who led the league in hitting in 1953 with a .349 batting average and in hits with 217. In addition, he hit 16 HRs, 1 more than Skowron.
There was mounting pressure on the Yankees to add a black player. The Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants had been integrated for years. Special-interest groups were picketing Yankee Stadium, demanding racial equality for Power. Despite the numbers Power put up in Kansas City, the Yankees were unfazed. “My information is that Elston Howard, Negro outfielder with Kansas City, has a better chance to come up than Power,” said Yankees President Dan Topping. “Our scouting reports rate Power a good hitter, but a poor fielder.” Topping also said Blues Manager Harry Craft had benched Power for lack of hustle.
Yankees General Manager George Weiss was more direct and prejudiced in his views: “Maybe he can play, but not for us. He’s impudent and he goes for white women. Power is not the Yankee type. The truth is that our box-seat customers from Westchester County don’t want to sit with a lot of colored fans from Harlem.
"Fan expectations had been building to see Power play in New York. But Yankees Management found a way to discredit Vic. They planted a story with New York sportswriter Dan Daniel, who wrote, “Power is major-league material right up to his Adam’s apple. North of that location he is not extraordinary. He is said to be not too quick on the trigger mentally. ”There was little racial prejudice in Puerto Rico and Power did not realize the extent of the bigotry he faced in the United States. “Here we were all together,” he said of his native Puerto Rico. “We went to school together. We danced together. A lot of black Puerto Ricans marry white woman. When I got there the States, I didn’t know what to do.” Power often used sarcastic humor to defuse a racial situation. “They say they didn’t call me up because I was going out with white women, “said Power. “I told them ‘Jeez, I didn’t know white women were that bad. If I knew that, I wouldn’t go out with them.’ ”
Power was flashy on the field, making 1-handed grabs and often making a sweeping motion with his glove, which looked to some fans like grandstanding. “They called me a showboat, but it was just the way I did it,” he said. “I told them, ‘The guys who invented the game, if they wanted you to catch with 2 hands they would have given you 2 gloves, and I only had 1 glove.’ ” While at the plate, the right-handed hitting Power would swing the bat in his left hand, pendulum-style, awaiting the pitch. It was another trademark of Power’s that caused people to call him a “showboat” or a “hot dog.”
The Yankees had purchased the minor league player contracts of Power and Howard in October 1953. But on December 16th, Power was dealt as part of an 11-player swap with the Philadelphia Athletics. In 1955, the more reserved and conservative Elston Howard would became the 1st African American player to wear Yankee pinstripes.
Power settled in as a rookie for the Athletics in 1954. As black players did then, he would faced discrimination during spring training in Florida. He and the other black player on the Athletics, Bob Trice, were forced to bunk down about 2 miles from the training facility. They were not allowed to ride in taxis, so they walked to and from camp every day. Power had played in 127 games, mostly in the outfield. His average for the season was a career-low .255. “The moment I came to Philadelphia, they took my bat away from me,” Power said. “Wally Moses, the batting coach, told me the bat (36 ounces) I was using was too heavy.”
If New York was considered an American League oasis, Philadelphia was the dregs. Since 1940, the A’s had finished in last place 7 times, and they posted losing records 2 other years. They were a far cry from Connie Mack’s dominant teams of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The team was in financial straits and Shibe Park was a slightly shabby old stadium in a rundown neighborhood. Visitors had to contend with old facilities, poor transportation and bad parking. The other franchise owners in the American League griped about the low gate receipts, when their teams visited Philadelphia. The once-downtrodden Phillies had won the pennant in the National League in 1950. They established themselves as the people’s choice in the City of Brotherly Love.
After the 1954 season, the Mack family sold the team to Arnold Johnson, a businessman from Chicago. A year earlier Johnson had purchased Yankee Stadium and Blues Stadium in Kansas City. Knowing that the Athletics could not compete with the Phillies in Philadelphia, Johnson gained league approval to move the franchise to Kansas City.
The switch of scenery did not improve the Athletics’ performance; they continued to finish in the bottom half of the American League standings year after year. Manager Eddie Joost and his coaches, including Moses, were let go. Lou Boudreau took over the reins, attempting to change the A’s losing ways. He would install Power as the everyday 1st baseman. Power responded by leading the league peers in putouts (1,281), assists (130), and double plays (140) in 1955. He would pick up his old 36-ounce war club and hit .319, 2nd in the league only to Al Kaline of Detroit (.340). Power got the 1st of his 7 selections to the All-Star Game. He went hitless as a pinch-hitter.
“Vic never lacked confidence,” said Kansas City Catcher Joe Astroth. “He knew he could play the ball and he knew he could hit the ball. He always had a favorite expression when he’d go up to hit in spring training. He would look out there with that big bat and the way he’d swing and in his Spanish accent he would say ‘Hey peecher, I have a ‘prise’ for you. I’m going to get a heet.’”
“Right now, he is the best-fielding right-handed 1st baseman in the league,” said Boudreau, “and within the next 2 years, if he continues to show progress, I will take him over any 1st baseman, right-handed or left.”
Because of team owner Johnson’s connection to the Yankees, the Athletics soon became a dumping ground for New York. The Bombers would trade players past their prime or players, who would never have a prime and cherry-pick top talent from the Athletics. In spite of Boudreau’s fondness for Power, that did not stop the A’s from acquiring 1st sackers, notably from the Yankees. In 1956, they had picked up an aging Eddie Robinson, who had been in the 11-player trade 2 years earlier. Robinson had started in 47 games after the midseason swap and Power was moved to 2nd base. He would hit .309. The next season, Robinson would depart and the Athletics picked up Outfielder Irv Noren from New York.
On December 19, 1956, Power married the former Idalia Albarado. The couple had 3 sons, Jerry, Eddie and Dennis.
Although Power’s batting average slipped to .259 in 1957, he showed that he could play 1st base with few equals. He had a 69-game errorless streak. For the season he made only 2 errors and led the league’s 1st basemen in assists with 99, and in fielding percentage, at .998. Boudreau was fired during the 1957 season and replaced by Harry Craft, Power’s skipper at AAA Syracuse. Power had the reputation of being a clubhouse lawyer, a malcontent. But Boudreau and Craft, while agreeing that Power could be temperamental, also thought him an ideal teammate.
Cleveland General Manager Frank Lane had coveted Power. Lane, who made trades at a dizzying pace, talked at length with Kansas City about acquiring Power and outfielder Woodie Held. At first, Lane had offered Rocky Colavito, but soon settled on Roger Maris. Maris was one of the brightest prospects in the majors, but Lane chose to keep Colavito. Lane would package Pitcher Dick Tomanek and Infielder Preston Ward with Maris. The trade was well received by Indians Manager Bobby Bragan. “We’re building the type of club we want,” he said. “A player like Power can hit-and-run and steal a base. Maris has the potential to be a star. Power is one already.” Power was looking forward to the address change, as Kansas City was still a segregated city. He felt that Cleveland would be a better fit for him, both personally and professionally.
But not everybody was on board with the trade. Tribe pitcher Mudcat Grant, who later would become friends with Power, commented “That was a bad deal for us, because Roger was better than both players, we got for him. The guy was a star!”
At the time of the deal, Power was hitting .302, and was in the midst of a 22-game hitting streak, that season’s best in the major leagues. Cleveland Manager Joe Gordon, who replaced Bragan 11 days after the trade, used Vic all over the infield. Power fielded all of his positions at a .992 clip, committing only 6 errors on his way to claiming the 1st of 7 straight Gold Gloves.
Cleveland infielder Billy Moran recalled of Power: “Nobody could play 1st base better. He was also an offensive threat. He hit to all fields and always made contact. He had a big old bat. Vic was a smiling jovial person and didn’t cause trouble in the clubhouse.”
Power was right about the move to Cleveland being better professionally. In 1959, the Indians were in the thick of the pennant race with Chicago and New York. But they dropped a crucial 4-game set at home to the White Sox in late August. They never recovered, finishing in 2nd place, 5 games out of 1st. When 2nd baseman Billy Martin was struck in the face with a pitch in August, Power took his place at the keystone position and performed well.
Power was a likeable sort of fellow who liked to laugh, but could show a temper as well. He told a story about playing 2nd base and gaining the respect of Maris. “I was playing 2nd and Maris slid very hard with his spikes high and caught me in the ribs. I warned him that the next time he slid like that I was going to give him an eye for an eye. I had seen how Jackie Robinson would jump over a sliding runner and land on top of him with his spikes, and that’s what I had planned for Maris. And the next time, he slid hard into the base, I jumped into the air. But he slid past the base and I realized that I was about to come down directly on his face. It would have looked like an accident if I came straight down, but I quickly split my legs and landed with my spikes on both sides of his face. I didn’t hurt him, but I did teach him a lesson.”
Mudcat Grant recalled a time when Power took his frustrations out on his glove. “I remember once when he missed a popup down the right-field line. After the game, he took his glove into the clubhouse and cut it into little bitty pieces. He said, ‘I don’t need that glove anymore.’”
The Indians had a new manager in 1962, Mel McGaha, who told Power that he intended to platoon him at 1st base with Tito Francona. Francona was a left-handed hitter, who played the outfield for most of his career. He also fielded left-handed, which is considered a necessity by some managers. Power thought that McGaha was surely joking because Francona was certainly not the fielder or the hitter that Power was. Power suspected he might be traded, because he was too good to sit on the bench. But just before the start of the season, he and Pitcher Dick Stigman were traded to Minnesota for Pitcher Pedro Ramos. Minnesota Manager Sam Mele was pleased with his new 1st baseman. “In one of the first games he played for us,” said Mele, “there were runners on 1st and 3rd and somebody hit a shot to him and he had to dive for it. He got up on his knees, looked home, decided he couldn’t make it there, and still on his knees, threw to 2nd for the force. There isn’t another guy in the business who wouldn’t have gone for the sure play at 1st base. But he never does.”
Power played perhaps the deepest 1st base of any of his counterparts. He often liked to have the other infielders throw the ball to the base, rather than to him. He defied the conventional way of arriving at the bag and straddling it before the ball was thrown. Some of the younger Twins infielders, like 3rd baseman Rich Rollins, would pump and pump, hesitating to throw the ball to an empty base. After the season, Rollins told Power, “You must’ve saved me 25 errors this season.” The good-natured Power responded to the young 3rd sacker, “That’s OK. Next year, you give me half your pay.”
In 1964, Power was traded twice. On July 11th, he was moved to the California Angels as part of a 3-team deal with Los Angeles and Cleveland. On September 9th, the Angels would trade him to the Phillies. First baseman Frank Thomas had broken his thumb and the team was looking for a veteran 1st baseman to platoon with the left-handed hitting John Herrnstein. Thus, Power was able to witness firsthand the biggest meltdown in professional sports at that time. On September 20th, the Phillies were sailing along with a 6½-game lead over Cincinnati and St. Louis. But they dropped the next 10 games and finished the season tied for 2nd place, 1 game back of the pennant-winning Cardinals. Years later, Power was asked what he thought was the reason for the Phillies’ collapse. “I think Gene Mauch panicked down the stretch,” he said. Between September 10th and October 4th, Power made 11 starts at 1st base for the Phillies and also played in 7 other games. He had hit .208 (10-for-48).
In the offseason, the Phillies would sell Power back to the Angels. In 1965, he would hit .259 as a part-timer and then he would retire as a player. In 12 seasons, he would finished with a .284 batting average, 126 HRs and 658 RBIs. His MLB career fielding percentage at 1st base was .994.
In retirement, Power would scout in Puerto Rico for the Angels. He also set up baseball clinics for youngsters. He would continued to manage Caguas of the Puerto Rican Baseball League, extending a long relationship he had with the team, 1st as a player and then for years as a Manager.
In 2001, while the Cleveland Indians were celebrating their centennial, a panel of baseball writers, executives, and historians chose the team’s 100 greatest players. Power was 1 of 9 1st basemen selected.
Power would died on November 29, 2005, in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, after a long bout with cancer.
Major-league 1st baseman Willie Montañez, who hailed from Catano, Puerto Rico, who had played 18 seasons in winter ball, mostly for Caguas. “Whatever I learned about playing 1st base came from Vic Power,” Montañez said. “He is the person I am in debt for all he did – fielding tips, hitting left-handers, confidence factor.”
Contemporaries also admired the flashy 1st baseman. “Power plays 15 feet farther back than me or anyone else and takes the throw on the dead run,” said Bill "Moose" Skowron right after Power had died. “He can do it because his reflexes are so great and because he has the best glove hand in baseball.”
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 22, 2024 19:00:22 GMT -5
Yankees Pitcher Bill Stafford
Written by Dan McHale, Edited by Clipper
 1963 Topps Baseball Card
“You automatically go all out, regardless of pain or what.” This was the guiding principle of New York Yankees pitcher Bill Stafford’s baseball career. Never had his philosophy been more tested than on the afternoon of October 7, 1962. After a screaming liner off the bat of San Francisco Giants outfielder Felipe Alou smashed into Stafford’s shin in the top of the 8th inning, the right-hander instinctively grabbed the ball and flung it to 1st, throwing the runner out. Only then did he react to the searing pain. Stafford, however, did not leave the field. Despite his injury the New York hurler finished the contest, leading his team to a 3-2 victory over San Francisco in Game 3 of the 1962 World Series. It was a gutsy performance borne out of Stafford’s blue-collar background, and proved to be his magnum opus on the mound.
William Charles Stafford was born on August 13,1938, in the small Upstate New York town of Catskill, on the west bank of the Hudson River about 120 miles north of Manhattan. The only child of William L. Stafford, a brickyard worker, and his wife, Jane, Bill grew up a few miles north of Catskill in the village of Athens. His father, a onetime semipro pitcher, encouraged Bill’s pursuit of athletics. When Bill was in middle school, William the elder painted a target on canvas and set it up in the family’s backyard. Bill would spend his summers firing baseballs from a regulation mound at the bull’s-eye, building his arm strength and perfecting his control.
At Coxsackie-Athens High School, Stafford was a 2-sport star. On the basketball court he became the first player in the school’s history to score 1,000 points. On the baseball diamond, his statistics were even more impressive. He had hit over .400 in all but his freshman season. During his initial year on Coach Doug Erickson’s squad, Bill, then a shortstop, added pitching to his résumé. “I needed a relief pitcher so I thought I’d try Stafford,” said Erickson. “This is where it all started – he struck out all 15 men he faced.” In his first start, the young twirler K’d an astounding 31 batters in a 17-inning, 2-1 Coxsackie-Athens triumph over rival Ravena. He would finish his varsity career with a 19-2 record, which included 2 no-hitters his senior season. Spurning basketball scholarship offers to Duke, Syracuse, and Holy Cross, Stafford opted instead for baseball. On the day he graduated from high school in June 1957, there were 15 big-league scouts in Athens making their sales pitches in the Stafford home. Ultimately, Bill signed on June 28th with Tom Kane and Harry Hesse of the New York Yankees for $4,000.
The teenager was shipped south to St. Petersburg of the Class D Florida State League. He went 5-3 in 9 starts for the Saints, but he posted a stellar 0.88 ERA. His promotion to Class A Binghamton for the 1958 season was therefore no surprise, but Triplets Manager Steve Souckock’s decision to start the Hudson Valley native in the team’s season opener was indeed unexpected. Stafford would live up to his top-prospect billing, leading the club in wins with 11 and topping the Eastern League with a 2.25 ERA. On the strength of his performance, Bill was asked back to St. Petersburg the following February but this time as a spring-training invitee of the Yankees.
Despite his achievements, Stafford’s tenure with the Triplets was also marred by the 1st in a series of serious injuries that bedeviled the pitcher throughout his professional career. A fall down a flight of stairs in Binghamton led to chronic back issues. Lingering lumbar problems help explain the young hurler’s regression in 1959, when he played for the Richmond Virginians of the International League. Stafford’s statistics, including his 1-8 record and 6.17 ERA, justified his late-season demotion back to Binghamton. Stafford undoubtedly fared better off than on the field that year: In October, he would marry Janice Maher, his high-school sweetheart and the eventual mother of his 1st 2 children, Billy and Susan.
Stafford would rebound in 1960 with a dominating season in Richmond. He had tossed 58 more innings and allowed 26 fewer runs than he did in his previous stint with the V’s. He was, upon his late-summer call-up to the majors, among the International League leaders in wins, shutouts, and ERA. When several Yankee scouts recommended that Stafford was ready for the Bronx, club brass listened.
Stafford was a fresh-faced 22-year-old when he made his American League pitching debut on August 17, 1960. The 6-foot-1, 185-pound righty featured 4 pitches: fastball, curveball, changeup and slider. His fastball, when effective, had a devastating sink to it. “Stafford had this really nasty heavy sinker that he threw. He ate hitters up with it,” said Johnny Blanchard, the Yankees’ backup backstop. That summer Blanchard and his New York teammates were battling Chicago and Baltimore in a 3-team AL pennant race. The Yankees offense, led by Mickey Mantle and MVP-to-be Roger Maris, had been carrying the squad, as Manager Casey Stengel’s pitching staff was inconsistent at best. Throughout the season, the Old Perfessor used starters as relievers and vice versa, hoping to find the right elixir to cure his team’s pitching ills. Thus, when Stafford was brought up from Richmond on August 15th, Stengel started him 2 days later in an effort to jumpstart the team. Debuting at Fenway Park against Ted Williams and the Red Sox, Stafford held Boston to 2 runs and 8 hits in 6? innings. New York would go 7-1 in Stafford’s starts and Bill won some key games for the Yankees down the stretch, including a 6-hit, complete-game triumph at Detroit on September 9th, that cut the Orioles’ league led to a half-game. The 2 clubs were tied as late as September 15th, when the Bombers ripped off a year-ending 15-game winning streak, leaving the O’s and White Sox in the dust.
Awaiting the 97-win Yankees in the 1960 World Series were the National League’s 95-win Pittsburgh Pirates. Stengel’s mismanagement of the pitching staff during this fall classic was a major factor in the legendary manager’s termination after the season. Following Art Ditmar’s disastrous start in Game 1, Casey seriously considered starting Stafford for Game 5. Instead, he changed his mind and went with Ditmar, who was battered by the Bucs for 3 runs in an inning and a third. In relief, Stafford threw 5 scoreless frames, leading critics to question why the septuagenarian Stengel had started the veteran and not the rookie sensation. In Game 7, the Yankee Manager once again was going to pitch Stafford. The night before the game, he had informed Bill that he would be the starter.
Stengel, though, pulled another switch and decided to pitch Bob Turley, who had won the 2nd contest of the Series. However, Turley would struggled and was replaced by Stafford in the 2nd inning, but neither Bill nor the other 3 Yankee relievers used by Stengel that day in Pittsburgh were effective. The Yankees’ season would end in agony on a Ralph Terry hanging slider to Bill Mazeroski in the 9th inning.
Shortly after the Series, Stafford would enter the US Army under its 6-month program. He was discharged in March 1961, he missed 6 weeks of spring training. When he arrived at the Yankees’ camp in St. Petersburg, Bill was not in playing condition, and he struggled throughout the preseason. He also suffered from a sore shoulder. “It takes about a month to get in shape,” said Stafford. “I only had 2 weeks before the season began.” Beginning the year in the bullpen, Stafford found his way into new Manager Ralph Houk’s rotation by June. The hurler rewarded the Yankees with a trio of complete-game victories in his 1st 3 regularly scheduled starts. In July, Stafford recovered from another shoulder injury by twirling 2 shutouts.
The Yankees were in full swing, too, rattling off a record of 42-18 for July and August. The team had solved its early-season pitching problems, as Stafford and Rollie Sheldon became the young guns in a Pinstripe staff anchored by Whitey Ford and Ralph Terry and a bullpen dominated by Luis Arroyo. The Bronx was abuzz in the summer of 1961 with both the pennant race with the Tigers and with Mantle and Maris’s chase of Babe Ruth’s HR record. Stafford would win 14 contests that season, but his last victory was the most memorable of all. On Sunday, October 1st, with the Yankees having already wrapped up their 26th American League title, all eyes turned to Maris, who was stuck on 60 HRs, just 1 short of breaking the Bambino’s iconic mark. In the bottom of the 4th inning of his club’s final game, Maris deposited a Tracy Stallard pitch into the right-field seats, setting the record. “I don’t think I ever pitched a harder game in my life, Everyone was pulling for Roger that day,” said Stafford, the winning pitcher in New York’s 1-0 victory over Boston. “That’s just the kind of team we were, one that pulled for each other all the time.”
Stafford would finish his sophomore season with a 14-9 record, including 3 shutouts, and a sparkling 2.68 ERA, good for 2nd place in the AL. In the World Series against Cincinnati, Houk would hand the ball to Stafford in Game 3 and the budding star came through for his manager. Although Bill had exited the game trailing by a run, he pitched effectively, yielding 2 runs on 7 hits in 6 Innings, while striking out 5 Reds. The 109-win Bombers, meanwhile, used solo HRs by Blanchard and Maris in the final 2 innings to steal the game and capture momentum in the Series, which they won in 5 games.
Stafford’s contributions to the Yankees’ triumph did not go unnoticed by his skipper. “I want to give special tribute to pitchers Luis Arroyo and Billy Stafford,” said Houk. “I don’t think that we could have done it without them.”
In 1962, New York returned its top 3 starters from the previous year: Ford, Terry and Stafford. The upstate New York native had cemented himself into the number 3 slot in the rotation. Stafford certainly had reason for optimism: This season, he had no obligations to Uncle Sam; he would be with the Yankees the entire spring. Meanwhile, he was gaining repute in the New York media for being highly confident – arrogant, almost. This reputation was nothing new for Stafford. “Cocky? He even walked cocky,” recalled Coach Doug Erickson, commenting on the pitcher from his high-school days. “When you are that good, people don’t like you.” The Yankees beat writers took notice of the self-assured way Stafford strolled to the mound, which they described in great detail. “Bill had a lumbar curve and when he walked some could have judged it as being ‘cocky.’ As a teammate you knew differently,” said Sheldon.
Stafford had pitched poorly in April, but returned to form thereafter, winning 4 of his next 5 decisions, including a 2-hit blanking of the Cleveland Indians at Yankee Stadium on June 7th. The Yankees were, as expected, in contention once again for the pennant in the summer and fall of 1962. By the end of August, however, the Bronx Bombers’ once-comfortable lead over the upstart Minnesota Twins had shrunk to 2 games. A September surge by the Yankees helped extend the lead to 4 games, but the team lost the 1st 2 contests in a late-September series in Chicago. With the pennant almost within reach, it was Stafford’s responsibility to stop the team’s slump. On September 23rd, more than 30,000 fans watched as he outdueled Early Wynn of the White Sox in a 10-inning contest in which both pitchers went the distance. The Yankees would clinched the pennant 2 days later.
The Yankees’ opponent in the 1962 World Series was the San Francisco Giants, who had just won a dramatic 3-game playoff with New York’s other former National League team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. After splitting the 1st 2 games at Candlestick Park, the Series moved to the Bronx, where Stafford squared off against the Giants’ Billy Pierce. Although he labored through a 24-pitch 1st inning, the Yankee starter settled down nicely. Provided by his teammates with a 3-0 lead, Stafford returned to the mound in the top of the 8th. After giving up a leadoff single to José Pagán, Stafford induced pinch-hitter Matty Alou to ground into a fielder’s choice. The next batter up was Matty’s older brother, Felipe. The elder Alou rocketed a ball right up the middle, and squarely into Stafford’s shin. “Suddenly I got woozy,” said the pitcher, who despite the intense pain recorded the out. Yankees Trainer Joe Soares sprayed Stafford’s injured leg with ethyl chloride and provided him with smelling salts. After seeing a few warm-up pitches, Houk decided to leave his hurler in the game. It was a bold move by the Major which ultimately paid dividends. Stafford escaped the 8th, getting 2nd baseman Chuck Hiller to ground out to 2nd. Although he gave up a 2-run HR in the 9th, Stafford was allowed to finish what he started, as he retired Jim Davenport to end the game. The Yankees’ Number 22 had given his squad a 2-games-to-1 Series lead. His skipper was impressed. “Usually when a pitcher gets hit like that, he starts pitching up high because he won’t put weight down on that bad leg,” said Houk. “Stafford put more weight down on it after he was hurt. He really fired.” When he woke up the next morning, Stafford’s shin and knee were badly bruised and swollen. With a chance to close out San Francisco in Game 6, Houk decided to go with Whitey Ford on short rest instead of a gimpy Stafford. This Series, however, was destined to go 7 games. The Yankees came out on top in an epic Game 7. When 2nd baseman Bobby Richardson secured Willie McCovey’s liner, Ralph Terry’s 1-0 masterpiece was preserved. It was not the bats of 1962 MVP Mickey Mantle and the hitters that had won the fall classic; it was the pitching of the Yankees’ “Big 3.”
Stafford began the 1963 season with a new home address in Yonkers and with great confidence. The press had even taken to calling him the “Cool Cookie from the Catskills” following his World Series heroics. On April 10th the weather in Kansas City was cooler than cool frigid, in fact when Stafford made his 1st start of the year. “The temperature was about 20 and I was wearing an electric jacket while I was on the bench,” he remembered. Stafford was shutting out the Athletics’s 3-0 when, with 2 outs in the bottom of the 7th inning, he threw a fateful 1-and-2 fastball to Billy Bryan. He felt a sharp pain in his right shoulder and heard a frightening sound. “It was like a twig snapping,” he said. The injury, according to the Yankees’ team physician, Dr. Sydney Gaynor, did not appear to be serious. Doctors at the time “didn’t know the difference between a rotator cuff and a Dixie Cup,” declared Stafford. He was never the same pitcher that season, or for that matter for the rest of his career. Through July 14th, he had a 3-6 record with a dismal 5.75 ERA in 16 appearances, 13 of which were starts. In his 1st game after being removed from the rotation, Stafford hit a batter with a pitch and doled out free passes to 3 more. When reporters questioned him after the game about issuing the walk-off walk, an angered Stafford threatened to punch 1 of them in the face.
More frustrations were to follow. In addition to pitching with an undiagnosed rotator-cuff injury, Stafford hurt his groin sliding into a base and was afflicted by a mysterious body rash that season. His irregular pitching schedule and periods of inactivity contributed to his overeating, as he ballooned to 215 pounds. Stafford’s final stat line for the year included a 4-8 record, a 6.02 ERA and an especially abysmal 1.628 WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched). The Yankees again won the pennant in 1963. Stafford, however, was not utilized in the team’s 4-game World Series sweep at the hands of the Dodgers.
Looking to bounce back in 1964, Stafford came to spring training 29 pounds lighter. His plan was to regain his place on the Yanks’ starting staff. However, the emergence of young twirlers Jim Bouton and Al Downing meant that Bill would be consigned to the bullpen for the season. On paper his numbers looked good: a 5-0 record, 2.67 ERA and 5.83 strikeouts per 9 innings. Yet stamina issues and tendinitis limited Stafford to 60? innings pitched. The New York Times declared him to be “one of the most unsuccessful undefeated pitchers in history.” For the 5th time in his 5 big-league seasons, Bill was part of a pennant-winning Yankee team. But for the 2nd consecutive year, New York lost the fall classic, this time to the Cardinals. It was also the 2nd straight year that Stafford did not pitch in the postseason. Once again in 1965, Stafford took aim at a spot in the Bombers’ rotation. The season was, however, not a good one, neither for Stafford nor the Yankees. Although the right-hander secured a starting role, he was available only on a part-time basis. Flare-ups of tendinitis in his pitching shoulder kept Stafford out of action for parts of May and September and landed him on the disabled list for the entire month of July. He finished the year 3-8 for a 6th-place New York team. The Yankee dynasty was over. So too was Stafford’s career in the Bronx.
Stafford was in camp with the Yankees to start the 1966 season, but he was optioned to the club’s AAA affiliate the Toledo Mud Hens. He was called up on June 9th, but he was instead immediately traded to the Athletics. Stafford, Pitcher Gil Blanco and Outfielder Roger Repoz were sent to Kansas City in exchange for Pitcher Fred Talbot and Catcher Billy Bryan. The A’s would put Stafford in their rotation, with unsatisfactory results. He was sent down to the Class AA Birmingham Barons of the Southern League. In 1967, after spending most of the season with the AA Barons, Stafford was brought back to Kansas City at the end of July. He was used in a limited role out of the bullpen, and pitched in his final MLB game on September 19th, against the Twins. “I was just hanging around,” said Stafford of his time with the A’s. “When your shoulder hurts, you can’t do anything.” In his final 2 seasons in Organized Baseball, he bounced around the Pacific Coast League, moving from Seattle to Phoenix to Tucson. His last attempt to resurrect his MLB career came in 1969, when he had attended spring training with the expansion Seattle Pilots, but he was released just before the season began.
After retiring from the game, Stafford would gained employment in various sales and promotions jobs, working for companies including the Waterman-Bic Pen Corporation, Grolier Enterprises and the Shechter Association. At one point, he owned a country bar in Michigan called JR’s Place. His love of sport, however, never subsided. Even before he retired as a player, he became a coach, serving for 2 years as an Assistant Pitching Coach at Southern Connecticut State College in New Haven. “I really enjoy the coaching of clinics and would probably consider going into coaching full time with a major college team if the opportunity ever came up,” Stafford told a reporter. He went on to coach high-school baseball, in addition to serving as an instructor in numerous youth and fantasy camps.
As an athlete, Stafford’s prowess was not limited to baseball and basketball. He was a great bowler and pool player; he was especially proficient in golf. He shot a 1under-par 69 at the 1965 Montauk-Gurney’s Inn Invitational Amateur Championship, a performance that led golf pro Harry Obitz to promise his support if Stafford ever wanted to join the PGA tour. “We played a lot of golf together,” said Ralph Terry, a terrific golfer himself. “He was an excellent player.” The day before Game 3 of the 1962 World Series, Bill was nervous about his coming start and asked Rollie Sheldon to go golfing with him. “It started to rain, but we played on,” recalled Sheldon. Rollie was unprepared for this impromptu day on the greens, so he did not have a chance to change out of his new alligator shoes, which were ruined in the rainfall. “But it was worth it to help Bill relax,” he said. The 1960s Yankees were on the links frequently, both on off days and in the offseason. In addition to Terry and Sheldon, Stafford often golfed with teammates Mickey Mantle, Jack Reed, and Hector Lopez.
Life after the major leagues brought changes to Stafford’s family life. After a divorce from Janice, Bil would remarried, tying the knot with Sharon Beedell in October 1972. They had settled down in Canton, Michigan, where they raised 2 children, Kimberly and Michael. Mike carried on his father’s baseball legacy, pitching at Ohio State University before being selected in the 1998 June Amateur Draft by the Toronto Blue Jays. The younger Stafford, a lefty reliever, played 4 minor-league seasons in the Blue Jays, Yankees, and Milwaukee Brewers organizations before finding his true calling in the game: coaching. Returning to his alma mater in 2011 as an Assistant Coach, Mike credited his father with teaching him the art of pitching: “Dad always told me the most important thing was to know that you were better than the guy in the batter’s box.”
Just 8 days after the shocking national tragedy of 9/11, the Stafford family had endured an unexpected personal tragedy, when Bill suffered a heart attack and died in his Canton home. He was 63 years old. Although his life came to a premature end, Stafford’s Yankee legacy will live on. He will forever be remembered by fans in the Bronx for his heroics in the 1962 World Series and his role in Maris’s 61st-home-run game. Though injurie would cut his MLB pitching career short, Stafford had compiled a respectable 43-40 record and a 3.52 ERA in 8 big-league seasons. A member of 5 pennant and 2 World Series winners, Bill Stafford gave the game everything he had. “My father always told me to do the best you can,” Bill said. “That’s what I live by.”
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 23, 2024 15:48:13 GMT -5
Yankees Outfielder Norm Siebern(1956-1959)
The 1st James P. Dawson Award Winner (1956) and 1st Yankees Position Player to win AL Golden Glove for OF (1958)This article was written by Doug Skipper, Edited by Clipper
  Yankees Player Photo Casey and Norm winning the 1st Jame P. Dawson Award 1956
A strong, quiet, and athletic 205-pounder who stood 6-feet-2, wore glasses, batted from the left side and threw right-handed, Norm Siebern split time between 1st base and the outfield for 6 MLB teams. Originally a Yankee, he played in 2 World Series for New York, he was part of the package the Yankees sent to Kansas City for Roger Maris. He was an All-Star 1st baseman for the Athletics and the Baltimore Orioles, and later played with California and San Francisco before he closed out his MLB playing career in Boston in 1967 and 1968.
Norman Leroy Siebern was born on July 26,1933, in Wellston, Missouri. One of 2 sons of Milton Siebern, who later would serve as a scorer for the Kansas City Athletics, and Iva Siebern, he was a baseball and basketball standout at Wellston High; just outside St. Louis and managing editor of the school newspaper. Lou Maguolo, Midwestern Scout for the Yankees, had spotted Siebern, when the young slugger was 15 and signed him as soon as he had graduated from high school in 1951. That summer Siebern started his professional baseball career at the age of 17 at McAlester in the Class-D Sooner State League. He had appeared in 50 games, batted .331, and, though he homered just 3 times, he did lash out 18 doubles and 3 triples and drove in 31 runs.
Siebern would move up the next season to Joplin, Missouri, in the Class-C Western Association, where he batted .324, drilled 52 extra-base hits, including 13 HRs and drove in 95 runs in 137 games. He would lead the league with 33 doubles and 115 runs scored. That effort earned Siebern a promotion for 1953 to Birmingham of the Double-A Southern Association, where he hit .281 with 21 HRs and 97 RBIs. Siebern wasn’t busy just during the summer. He and fellow Yankee farmhand Jerry Lumpe played basketball at Southwest Missouri State Teachers College (later Southwest Missouri State University and now Missouri State University), they had helped the Bears win the 1952 and 1953 NAIA National Championship Tournaments. Southwest Missouri State posted a 10-0 record in the national tourney over the 2 seasons, including wins over Indiana State, Murray State and Gonzaga, though both Siebern and Lumpe headed to spring training prior to the title games. The NAIA rule allowing athletes to play minor-league baseball and college basketball was rescinded after the 1953 season and Siebern set aside his pursuit of a degree in journalism.
Like many players of the era, Siebern had entered the US Army and would miss the 1954 and 1955 seasons. He would return to baseball in 1956, he was voted the 1st James P. Dawson Memorial Award by the New York writers as the outstanding Yankees rookie during spring training camp. Still just 22 years old, Siebern would join the AAA Denver Bears of the American Association, the Yankees’ top farm team, to start the 1956 season. In 36 games, he had collected 30 hits in 100 at-bats, slammed 8 HRs and drove in 19 runs. The Yankees took notice and in mid-June, Siebern was called up to New York.
The youngster would joined Yogi Berra, Billy Martin, Phil Rizzuto, Whitey Ford, and 24-year-old Mickey Mantle, who was on his way to a 52-HR, 130-RBIs, MVP season. Mantle was entrenched in center field, Hank Bauer held down right field and Manager Casey Stengel was searching for a 3rd outfielder to spell the injured 40-year-old Enos Slaughter, using backup catcher Elston Howard in left field most often. Siebern wasn’t quite ready. He made his MLB player debut on June 15th and in 54 games batted just .204 with 4 triples, 4 HRs and 21 RBIs, while he quietly suffered in silence from knee and shoulder injuries incurred, when he chased a fly ball into a concrete wall. Meanwhile, the Yankees would cruise to their 7th AL pennant in 8 years and avenged their 1955 World Series loss to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Siebern, now 23, was retired in his only appearance, a pinch-hit opportunity in Game 2, won 13-8 by Brooklyn. Siebern watched the remainder of the 1956 Series from the bench as the Yankees won in 7 games.
The following spring, the young thumper was farmed back to AAA Denver, where he put together a spectacular season for Manager Ralph Houk. Siebern had batted .349 in 144 games, slugged 45 doubles and 15 triples, smashed 24 HRs, drove in 118 runs and teamed with 1B Marv Throneberry to lead the Bears to the American Association championship, plus a win over the International League champion Buffalo Bisons in the 1957 Little World Series. After the season, he was named The Sporting News Minor League Player of the Year. Despite leading the American Association in batting average, runs, hits, doubles, triples and total bases, Siebern would sit at home as the Milwaukee Braves would bounce the Yankees in the 1957 World Series.
Siebern was back in New York’s plans for 1958. The 24-year-old took over as the Yankees’ regular left fielder. He would play in 134 games and batted .300 with 19 doubles, 5 triples and 14 HRs. He had walked 66 times and stole a career-high 5 bases, but was cut down 8 times. He also won a Gold Glove for his fielding, and solidified left field, a Yankee sore spot. He did everything the Yankees asked, although more quietly than they preferred. “I wish he would show a little more aggressiveness,” Stengel said of his quiet young slugger. “He doesn’t even show as much life as he did here last year. Maybe that’s just as well. If he started hollering now, he might forget some of the other things he does so much better.”
For the 4th straight year and the 9 time in 10 seasons, the Yankees had won the AL pennant and for the 2nd time Siebern was World Series-bound, against Milwaukee. Stengel was faced with a dilemma. If Berra caught, then either Howard or Siebern sat. “Now what would you do?” Stengel said before the World Series. “For the 1st time in years I got a fellow who can play left field regular, and now you want me to start platooning?” But that’s just what he did. Siebern sat on the bench for Game 1 and the start of Game 2, while Berra caught and Howard played left field. After the Braves tallied 7 runs in the 1st inning of Game 2, Siebern had replaced Howard and banged out a hit in 3 trips to the plate against former Yankee hurler Lew Burdette.
With the Braves leading 2 games to none, the Series moved to New York. Siebern started Game 3 and walked twice in 4 plate appearances. The following day, Stengel would slot Siebern in the leadoff spot for Game 4. The youngster walked once in 4 trips to the plate, but he would struggle in the field. In the 6th inning of a scoreless pitching duel between Whitey Ford and Warren Spahn, Braves 2nd baseman Red Schoendienst lifted a fly ball to left-center field between Siebern and Mantle. Siebern, facing into the afternoon sun and lights turned on for the benefit of the color television broadcast, lost the fly ball, and it fell for a leadoff triple. Moments later, Tony Kubek booted Johnny Logan‘s grounder, and the Braves scored the first run of the day. In the seventh, right after Stengel motioned the outfield in, Spahn’s blooper dropped in front of Siebern to allow Del Crandall to score. And in the 8th, the Braves scored for a 3rd time when Logan’s fly fell to Siebern’s right and bounced into the stands for a ground-rule double. The Braves would win 3-0 and now led the Series 3 games to 1.
Newspapers would roast Siebern. One headline stated, “Siebern Sunburn Singes Yanks,” but the stoic youngster was toasted for his courage and honesty after he stood up to face the reporters and said, “I lost at least 4 balls out there, in the sun and against the lights.” Stengel came to the defense of his left fielder. “I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not asking waivers on him, and you can print that!” the Old Perfesser said. “He’s a nice kid and I know he’ll worry over this. He’s playing the toughest left field in baseball, don’t forget. He hit .300 for me. He’s good at getting walks and he’s good at going from 1st to 3rd. I think he did real good in his 1st full year in the majors. He’s not an easy man to get out.” But Stengel did not use Siebern again in the World Series, as the Yankees became just the 2nd team to rally from a 3-games-to-1 deficit to win the fall classic.
He seemed to lose confidence in the youngster in 1959. Siebern would play in just 93 games in the outfield (and 2 at 1st base) as Stengel would employ 13 outfielders during the season. He had tried eyeglasses to help in the outfield, but he had batted .271 with just 11 HRs. The Yankees would win 13 fewer games than the 1958 season before and slid to 3rd place in 1959. The team wasn’t close, and Siebern, Bobby Richardson, and Kubek, along with veteran Bobby Shantz, were referred to by Yankee insiders as the “Ice Cream and Popcorn Set” because they didn’t drink, smoke, or swear. Stengel questioned his silent young slugger’s effort, and whether the glasses would help him catch fly balls, recalling the youngster’s World Series travails.
Several years later, Siebern was generous about Stengel’s criticism in an interview with Leslie Lieber of the Los Angeles Times. “No, I don’t remember Stengel making me feel bad,” he said. “What I do remember is the way he stuck by me when I needed him in the World Series. I had had a bad day, losing a couple of easy fly balls in the sun. Milwaukee beat us and we were down in the World Series 3 to 1. I felt as low as anyone could. Stengel had every right to jump me, but he didn’t. Instead, he kidded me and cheered me up. I found out that day, who my friends were. Anybody who says Stengel broke my heart is inventing fairy tales. What he did was give me heart. I’m happy I had the chance to play for him.”
Nevertheless, on December 11,1959, the Yankees had traded Siebern, Pitcher Don Larsen, 1B/OF Marv Throneberry and OF Hank Bauer to the Kansas City Athletics for OF Roger Maris, Infielder Joe DeMaestri and 1B Kent Hadley. It was one of a series of trades the 2 teams made during the late 1950s and early ’60s that went in New York’s favor so much that Kansas City was referred to as a “Yankee farm team.” New York clearly got the best of the trade as Maris would win Most Valuable Player awards in 1960 and 1961, when he eclipsed Babe Ruth‘s MLB single-season HR record with 61. But the trade also worked out well for Siebern, who would blossom in Kansas City. Reunited with his old Yankee and Southwest Missouri State teammate, Jerry Lumpe for the 1960 season, Siebern would slug 31 doubles, 6 triples and 19 HRs, 7 more than anyone else on the Athletics roster for Manager Bob Elliott. He would split time almost evenly between the outfield and infield.
The A’s had started the 1961 AL season under Manager Joe Gordon, but Hank Bauer, a former Marine and Yankee, now an A’s Outfielder, took over at midseason. Siebern had played in 109 games at 1st base and 47 in the outfield and enjoyed another fine season at the plate. He would improve his batting average to .296, smacked a career-high 36 doubles and hit 18 HRs. The Athletics would finish tied for 9th with the Washington Senators, 47½ games behind the Maris- and Mantle-led Yankees. Mantle would finish 2nd to Maris in the MVP balloting. Siebern had tied for 14th, with 7 10th-place votes.
Under Manager Hank Bauer for a full season in 1962, the Athletics would improve by 11 games and Siebern would flourished. He had played all 162 games at 1st base, led the AL in putouts and steadied an infield that included Lumpe, shortstop Dick Howser, and 3rd baseman Ed Charles. He had batted .308 with 25 doubles, 6 triples, 25 HRs and 117 RBIs. He would walk 110 times and led the league with 296 times on base and with a .412 on-base percentage. In July, Siebern was the lone Kansas City player selected for MLB 2 All-Star Games. On July 10th at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington, D.C., he grounded out as a pinch-hitter in the 8th inning; he did not see action in the July 30th rematch at Wrigley Field in Chicago. At the end of the season, the bespectacled slugger had placed 7th in the MVP race with 53 points.
Former Yankees Pitcher Ed Lopat had replaced Hank Bauer in 1963 as the Kansas City’s Manager, the Athletics would improve by 1 game and with Siebern, playing 131 games at 1st base and 16 in the outfield, had slipped to a .272 average, but he still would hit 25 doubles and 16 HRs and drove in 83 runs. Once, again he was Kansas City’s lone All-Star and he would play the role of spectator, this time at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium.
At the end of the year, Siebern had received 1 10th-place vote for MVP, the last he would collect votes in his MLB playing career. Despite his success, on November 27,1963, the Athletics would trade Siebern to the Baltimore Orioles for 1st baseman Jim Gentile and $25,000 cash. Siebern’s old Yankees and A’s teammate Hank Bauer had recently been named Baltimore’s Manager. He would play him exclusively at 1st base for 149 games. Siebern would join an Orioles infield that included 2nd baseman Jerry Adair, shortstop Luis Aparicio, and 3rd baseman Brooks Robinson. Now 30 years old, Siebern would slump to .245. Though he did hit 24 doubles, he had managed just 12 HRs and 56 RBIs. The Orioles would contend for the American League title, winning 97 times to finish 3rd, just a game behind 2nd-place Chicago and 2 behind the pennant-winning Yankees. Despite his struggles at the plate, Siebern would join Robinson (the league’s MVP) and Aparicio (who missed the game with injuries) and his good friend Lumpe, who was then with Detroit, at the 1964 All-Star Game at Shea Stadium in New York. Pinch-hitting for Kansas City pitcher John Wyatt, his future 1967 Boston teammate, Siebern drove a ball that National League center fielder Willie Mays would track down.
The 31-year-old Siebern saw his playing time decrease in 1965, when 23-year-old Boog Powell moved from the outfield to 1st base to make room for a pair of 21-year-olds in the outfield, Paul Blair and Curt Blefary. Siebern had played 1st base in 76 games and pinch-hit in 30 games, while batting .256 with 8 HRs and 32 RBIs as the Orioles finished 3rd again. On December 2nd, he was traded to the California Angels for OF Dick Simpson. The Orioles had parlayed Simpson, along with Pitchers Milt Pappas and Jack Baldschun in a trade with Cincinnati for Outfielder Frank Robinson. Robinson would earn MVP honors in 1966, finishing ahead of teammates Brooks Robinson and Powell and Bauer’s Baltimore squad cruised to the AL pennant and a World Series sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Siebern, meanwhile, would spend the 1966 season in California and at 32 appeared in 125 games, 99 of them at 1st base. He had batted .247 for Bill Rigney‘s squad, with 5 HRs and 41 RBIs, he was on the move again after the season. This time Siebern was swapped to San Francisco for Len Gabrielson. Starting the 1967 season as a backup to All-Star 1B Willie McCovey, Siebern had played 15 games at 1st base and returned to the outfield for the 1st time since 1963, handling 3 fly balls in 3 games. He also pinch-hit in 29 games. His brief National League tenure ended on July 16th, when he was acquired by the Red Sox for the waiver price of $20,000. In order to claim Siebern on waivers, Boston had optioned injured infielder George Smith to the Giants farm club at Phoenix.
1968 Red Sox Card
Boston Manager Dick Williams, a teammate of Siebern’s at Kansas City in 1960, welcomed the well-traveled slugger. “I think Siebern can help us,” Williams said. “I’ve played with him and I like his hustle and effort.” But despite his hustle and effort, Siebern hit just .205 in 33 games for the 1967 Red Sox. His only 2 extra-base hits were triples. He had drew 6 walks and drove in 7 runs. Siebern would make 1 outfield appearance, recording an assist and had played 13 games at 1st base, where he handled 52 of 53 chances. But some of his appearances at 1st base were noteworthy. In Anaheim on August 11th, Williams told 1st baseman George Scott, who had battled weight problems, that if he weighed more than 215 pounds, he would sit out the 3-game series against California. Scott would tip the scales at 221 and Williams would pencil Siebern into the lineup. Three weeks later, after Boston had dropped the 1st game of a Labor Day doubleheader at Washington, Williams inserted Siebern into the lineup for the 2nd game. Scott responded by throwing ice across the room and knocking down a row of bats, continuing a season-long feud with Williams.
Scott continued to boom out base hits through the season, while Siebern sat, making an occasional appearance as the Red Sox clinched the AL flag on the season’s final day. For the 3rd time, Siebern would play in a World Series. He made 3 appearances, all as a pinch-hitter and all against Bob Gibson. In Game 1 at Fenway Park, Siebern hit for catcher Russ Gibson in the 7th inning, but was left standing at the plate when Reggie Smith was caught stealing. He would stay in and played right field, then led off the 8th inning with a single, 1 of just 6 Red Sox hits. Jose Tartabull ran for Siebern, but was stranded in Gibson’s 2-1 complete-game win. Siebern pinch-hit again in the 8th inning of Game 4, he was retired on a fly ball to center field. In Game 7, he faced the Cardinals ace in the bottom of the 8th inning with a runner on third and grounded out, plating the final Red Sox run of the Series in a 7-2 loss.
Siebern had appeared in just 27 games with just 4 in the field in 1968. He had played a pair of games in the outfield and a pair at 1st base and had collected 2 hits in 30 trips to the plate. He would play in his last MLB game on July 30th, Norm was released by the Red Sox on August 1st, a week past his 35th birthday.
His MLB playing days were now over, Siebern would return to Independence, Missouri, in the Kansas City area, where he and his wife, Elizabeth (Liz), had lived since he had been a member of the Athletics. The couple, who were married in 1958, had raised 3 daughters, Lisa, Jenny, and Saundra (nicknamed Sondy), and made their home in a neighborhood that included several former Athletics players, including Roger Maris and Norm’s old teammate, Whitey Herzog, who would live across the street. Siebern had scouted for the Atlanta Braves and then the expansion Kansas City Royals. He had played in several Yankees Old Timer’s games. Norm would joined his ex-Yankee teammates at several Roger Maris Memorial Charity Golf Tournaments held in Fargo, North Dakota. He later would move to Naples, Florida, where he owned an insurance agency for several years. He would sell the agency in 2000 and retired to Lady Lake, Florida. In 2002, he was honored by Missouri State University, when the 1952 and 1953 NAIA championship teams held a 50-year reunion.
In his later years, Siebern was an active member of the Naples chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research and the Kansas City Baseball Historical Society, which presented him with a lifetime achievement award in 2013. Siebern would pass away on October 30, 2015 at the age of 82, at Avow Hospice in Naples. A memorial service was conducted at the North Naples United Methodist Church. He was survived by his 3 daughters, Lisa Siebern, Jennifer (Chris) Spires, and Saundra (David) Bellamy; 8 grandchildren; and 4 great-grandchildren.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 23, 2024 17:27:23 GMT -5
1946-1954 Yankees Infielder Bobby Brown: The Yankees Doctor This article was written by Mike Huber, Edited by Clipper
 More than 19,000 players have played Major League baseball, but Dr. Bobby Brown’s life story has no parallel. He played professional baseball on a team that won 5 world championships, was a practicing cardiologist in Texas, served as interim president of the Texas Rangers, and spent 10 years as President of the American League.
Robert William “Bobby” Brown was born on October 25, 1924, in Seattle, Washington, to William and Myrtle (Berg) Brown. His father’s career caused several cross-country moves, but Bobby had excelled at baseball everywhere they lived. His father had been a semi-pro of some note with the Meadowbrooks in Newark, New Jersey. Bill Brown had even played against Lou Gehrig, when the latter played by the name of Lou Long. Bobby always felt that his father wanted him to give baseball a whirl, if consistent with his college plans and medical hopes.
Young Bobby was only 10 when he drop-kicked 24 field goals in a contest for youngsters staged by a Seattle, Washington newspaper, which tested football kicking and throwing skills. At age 12, he was playing American Legion Junior Baseball; by the 8th grade, he went to the try-out camp at Ruppert Stadium in Newark for the International League Newark Bears; and at 18, he was a freshman sensation at Stanford University, receiving offers from several Major League teams.
Bobby attended San Francisco’s Galileo High School, the same school as Vince, Joe and Dom DiMaggio, and Hank Luisetti, who was once considered America’s greatest basketball star. Brown was a straight-A student and president of the student body.
In 1941, while a junior at Galileo, he was noticed by a Cincinnati Reds scout, who had seen the Galileo squad destroy the University of California freshman baseball team. After the game, the scout, who was also a professor at Berkeley, had asked young Bobby if he would like to go to Cincinnati and work out with the Reds. Bobby, a shortstop, promptly agreed. That summer, he took the train to Ohio and worked out for 10 days with the Reds, followed by an additional 3-day workout, when the team went to Chicago. After graduation from high school, Bill Brown sent his son back east to work out with the Reds, the Detroit Tigers, the New York Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the Philadelphia Athletics.
Brown had entered Stanford in 1942 expecting to major in chemical engineering. While still at Stanford, he had enlisted in the Navy in 1943. Called up for duty on July 1, 1943, he was assigned to a naval unit at UCLA and given 5 semesters to finish his pre-med courses. Brown was at UCLA for 1 year, where he played baseball for the Bruins and he was then assigned to San Diego Naval Hospital for temporary duty.
On December 1, 1944, Brown was assigned to Tulane Medical School and was given a midshipman’s uniform. He had played a year at Tulane, the 1945 season. With Brown on the team, the Green Wave had its most successful season to that point, winning 21 of 27 games, including 12 in a row and Brown had batted .444. When he was mustered out of the Navy in January 1946, the MLB scouts came calling.
Brown convinced the dean of the medical school at Tulane that he could play ball and still go to medical school. On February 18,1946, he would sign a contract with the New York Yankees that stipulated he would receive $11,000 for 1946, $15,000 for 1947, $18,000 for 1948, as well as receiving a cash bonus of $10,000. According to Bobby, that was the 2nd highest bonus awarded up to that time. His highest per-season salary while playing was $19,500 (both 1952 and 1954), which was more than the dean at his medical school earned.
Bobby was at Tulane when the 1946 season began and with the Yankees when it ended. He spent most of the year with Newark, the Yanks’ top farm team, where he hit .341. Jackie Robinson would hit .349 for Montreal, edging Brown for the batting title. Because of his great season for the Bears, Bobby was honored in January 1947 at the Newark Athletic Club as one of the top 4 outstanding New Jersey athletes of 1946.
Brown was called up to New York after the International League season had ended. The 6-foot-1, 180-pound youngster made his Major League player debut on September 22, 1946, playing shortstop and batting 3rd in the 2nd game of a Yankee Stadium doubleheader against Philadelphia. He got his 1st big-league hit in that game, as did his roommate Yogi Berra, also making his MLB player debut. Bobby had appeared in 7 games, going 8-for-24.
In 1947, Bobby had batted .300 in 69 games, and then he would play an important role in the Yankees 7-game World Series win against the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yankees used the 22-year-old, left-handed hitting Brown as a pinch-hitter 4 times and 4 times he came through: 2 doubles, a single, and a walk. His 4th inning double in Game 7 tied the score at 2–2 and sent the eventual series-winning run to 3rd base.
In the 1949 World Series, Bobby had 6 hits in 12 at-bats, including a double and 2 triples, and he drove in 5 runs. Then in 1950, when the Yankees would sweep the Phillies in the Series, Bobby went 4-for-12, with a double and a triple. The next season, brought a 4th trip to the World Series for Brown. In 5 games, he had 5 hits in 14 at-bats with 2 walks. He had also won 4 world championship rings by the age of 26. Between 1948 and 1951, Bobby had averaged 104 games played per season, platooning with Billy Johnson (1948 to 1950) and Rookie Gil McDougald (1951) at 3rd base. He was a steady contributor to the Yankees line-up. During this 4-year span, Brown had collected 364 hits in his limited time, while sporting a .281 batting average.
In 1951, Bobby and his future bride, Sara Kathryn French, set their wedding date for October 12, 1951, which was shortly after the scheduled end of the World Series. The Yankees were playing in the Series against the New York Giants, but after Game 3, there was a heavy downpour that threatened to continue for a few days. Bobby and his bride had not planned a huge wedding, inviting only family and close friends, so he called her and changed the date to the 16th of October, giving enough extra time in case the weather combined with possibly 4 more games extended past the 12th. The 1951 World Series would lasted 6 games. Brown had batted .357 and the Yankees won another title. Brown’s 439 (18-for-41) career batting average in World Series play is the highest for batters with more than 20 at-bats.
Bobby and Sara were married at the Northway Christian Church in Dallas, Texas. Brown likes to tell folks that his was the only marriage postponed by rain. Following the honeymoon, he served as an intern at Southern Pacific Hospital in San Francisco.
On April 24, 1951, Bobby was shagging fly balls when he was called to the Yankees clubhouse. He was asked to treat Casey Stengel, who was suddenly overcome with nausea. As it turned out, Casey had had a kidney stone.
When the Korean War broke out, Dr. Brown was eligible for the “Doctor’s Draft,” since he had not actually served overseas during World War II. Consequently, he was sent to Korea to serve with the 45th Division in the United States Army and was assigned to the 160th Field Artillery Battalion, heading the battalion aid station. After 19 months of military service in Korea and at Tokyo Army Hospital, Brown would returned to the Yankees in May 1954. The Yankees had lost 9 of their 1st 16 games, leading Casey Stengel to exclaim, “Boy, do we need a doctor!”
While at Tokyo Army Hospital, Bobby would joined Joe DiMaggio and Lefty O’Doul to give baseball clinics to the Japanese teams, who were in spring training. Joe had brought his bride Marilyn Monroe to Japan for his honeymoon. Joe told the press the only doctor who could treat Mrs. DiMaggio was Lieutenant Brown.
Bobby Brown would retired from baseball in 1954 at the age of 29. He had spent parts of 8 seasons in New York, but he felt the calling to become a full-time doctor, a decision he never regretted. In 1974, Dr. Brown wrote, “the only regret I might have is that I didn’t play ball exclusively for 2 or 3 years. I’d like to know how well I could have done if I’d concentrated exclusively on baseball for several years.” His response is akin to Burt Lancaster’s line in Field of Dreams, when Ray Kinsella asks Moonlight Graham if he ever regrets becoming a doctor and not playing baseball. Dr. Brown will tell you, “Not going to medical school would have been a tragedy.”
After trading the bat and glove for a stethoscope and lab coat, Dr. Brown would served his residency in internal medicine at San Francisco County Hospital from 1954 through 1957 (he was chief resident the last year). He then would served a Fellowship in Cardiology back at his alma mater, Tulane Medical School, from 1957 to 1958. Following that, he would entered private practice in Fort Worth, Texas, on August 1,1958.
In May 1974, Brown took a 6-month leave of absence from his medical practice to become interim President of the Texas Rangers. Brad Corbett, a good friend, had purchased the team and needed Bobby’s help. Coincident with his appearance, the Rangers moved into 1st place. “Modesty keeps me from taking the credit,” Dr. Brown told the Los Angeles Times, “Modesty and Ferguson Jenkins and Billy Martin.”
Bobby Brown knew he had his work cut out. “Texas is football country,” he once said. “We’ve got to get them interested in baseball.” The 1974 Rangers would finish above .500 after 2 consecutive 100-loss seasons, but at the end of the 1974 season, Dr. Brown would returned to his practice.
When Bowie Kuhn retired as Commissioner of Major League Baseball in 1984, the owners had asked Bobby to interview for the job. However, the owners wanted a businessman to be the commissioner and offered Brown the job of President of the American League. It was a job, that he held for 10 years, before Gene Budig replaced him on August 1,1994. On August 10th, Bobby got on a plane to fly home to Texas. That was the same day the players went on strike, a strike that would end the season and cancel the World Series.
Brown would visited the United States Military Academy in January 2007, meeting with cadets who were students in a sabermetrics course. He was very candid in his remarks. Regarding the state of baseball at that time, Dr. Brown said television is driving the huge amount of money being given to players. Attendance is higher than ever, and millions of people are subscribing to teams’ television networks.
He is amazed that the distances set up over 125 years ago have proven to be “just right”—90 feet between bases and 60 feet, 6 inches to home plate from the mound. They’ve raised and lowered the height of the mound, but the horizontal distances are “just right.”
The former American League President was proud of having very few controversies during his tenure, but a few incidents still stick in his mind. Dr. Brown’s toughest cases involved 2 marquee players. The 1st was when Roger Clemens was ejected in a playoff game against Oakland in 1990 for arguing balls and strikes. He received an 8-game suspension for the next season. The 2nd involved Albert Belle, who was discovered to have used a corked bat on July 15, 1994. Belle received a 7-game suspension. Brown believed steroids were a huge temptation for ballplayers to perform better. Cocaine was a major problem in baseball when he became American League president. In 1984, he had suggested testing for illegal drugs 4 or 5 times per season. His proposal called for random testing with no identifying names on the specimen bottles, to simply determine the extent of the problem. The players’ union would refused his suggestion.
Joe DiMaggio was the best all-around baseball player he ever saw, Brown said. Joe never gave inspirational talks, but he always played at 110%, so others played hard, too. In fact, Bobby recalled that no player on the Yankees gave big inspirational speeches. “We all got along. At the end of the day, everyone knew who had played well in a game.” It was an 8-team league in those days, but Bobby felt that nobody stood out like DiMaggio. From 1937 to 1973, it was 457 feet to left center field in Yankee Stadium. In any other ballpark, Joe might have hit well over 500 HRs. Having said that, Bobby said Ted Williams was the best pure hitter he ever saw.
In June 1949, The Sporting News interviewed Brown about his future in both medicine and baseball. He replied, “The basic truth is this: Just as long as baseball wants me, I will want baseball. Inevitably, there will be a day when I will have to say to myself, ‘The time has come. Hang up your spikes and your uniform, put away the bats, and get down to working out the Oath of Hippocrates.’” The article ended with the following: “The day we talked with Brown, he was batting .333 and moving along impressively. A fine youngster, a credit to baseball and he will be a credit to medicine. As he left to go out on the field, Bobby laughed, ‘Here are 2 more points. I will not wear a goatee as a doctor. And I am not engaged to be married.’ The future Dr. Brown pulled on his glove and walked out on the field to do a little laboratory work under the watchful eye of Prof. Casey Stengel.”
Dr. Brown is a member of the Athletic Halls of Fame at Stanford, UCLA, and Tulane Universities, as well as those of Galileo High School, San Francisco Prep, and Greater New Orleans. He has received the Presidential Citation from the American Academy of Otolaryngology (1990), the Branch Rickey Award for Uncommon Service to Baseball (1992), and has been awarded three honorary doctorates (from Trinity College, the University of Massachusetts, and Hillsdale College). He was awarded the United States Coast Guard Silver Lifesaving Medal and served our country proudly during World War Two and the Korean War. He and Sara have 3 children and 10 grandchildren.
Epilogue
Dr. Bobby Brown would pass away at the age of 96 on March 25, 2021, in Fort Worth, Texas.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Jan 24, 2024 21:07:05 GMT -5
Former Yankees Pitcher and MLB Pitching Coach Johnny Sain
This article was written by Jan Finkel, Edited by Clipper
 First we’ll use Spahn, then we’ll use Sain,
Then an off day, followed by rain.
Back will come Spahn, followed by Sain
And followed, we hope, by two days of rain.
—Gerry Hern, Boston Post, September 14, 1948
Nobody would mistake Post sportswriter Hern’s famous lines for “Casey at the Bat” or even poetry except in the broadest sense, but it sums up most of what many people today know about Johnny Sain. That’s unfortunate, because Sain was so much more than someone whose name, fortuitously for Hern, rhymed with “rain” trainer of fighter pilots, ace pitcher, one of the great pitching coaches, and holder of a little-known but remarkable record attesting to his genius as a contact hitter.
He was born John Franklin Sain in the tiny town of Havana, Arkansas (population 375 in the 2010 census), on September 25,1917, to Eva and John Sain. An automobile mechanic and a good left-handed pitcher at the amateur level, the elder Sain would profoundly affect his son’s career, encouraging him early on and teaching him to throw a curve, while varying his motions and speed.
No one showed much interest in young Johnny as a pitching prospect, and his journey to the majors became a 6-year odyssey. According to author Al Hirshberg, Bill Dickey declined Johnny’s father’s request to talk to his son after watching him pitch in a high-school game because he didn’t want to tell the boy he didn’t have it. To make matters worse, Bill Terry tried soon after to talk him out of pursuing a baseball career.
Receiving little encouragement or interest, Sain began a long odyssey to the majors. After graduating from Havana High School in 1935, the 17-year-old Johnny reportedly signed a Class D contract from the Red Sox for $5. However, the Detroit Tigers signed him as an amateur free agent, the next year. Whose property was he? It’s a good question. He’d signed with the Red Sox 1st, but he was under age. He was of age when he signed with the Tigers, but he’d already signed a contract with Boston.
In any case, Sain wound up in the Red Sox’ farm system. Memphis native James “Doc” Prothro, Manager of the Red Sox farm club in Little Rock, part of the Class A Southern Association, sent him to Osceola in the Class D Northeast Arkansas League for the 1936 season. The 18-year-old gave up a HR to the 1st batter he faced in a pro game, but still managed to win the contest and go 5-3 with a 2.72 ERA. The Red Sox dropped whatever association they had with Osceola in 1937 and the team began an affiliation with the St. Louis Browns. Despite the change in affiliation, Sain remained with Osceola, the only player from the 1936 roster to do so. The Indians slipped from 2nd place to 5th (out of si6) in 1937, and Sain’s 5-8, 4.13 ERA slate would reflect the decline. Osceola left the league after the season and Sain landed with the unaffiliated Newport Cardinals of the same league.
Coming into his own in 1938, Sain finished up 16-4 with a 2.72 ERA for Newport, good for a spot on the league’s all-star team. Foreshadowing another of his talents, he also batted .257 with a HR and 14 RBIs. Remaining at Newport, now affiliated with the Detroit Tigers, who had originally signed him, Johnny had another strong year in 1939, his 18-10 mark accompanied by a 3.27 ERA; in addition, he and teammate Ed Hughes each set the league record for complete games with 27. Sain, who worked hard to become a good hitter and occasionally played in the outfield when not pitching, topped off his fine season with a .315 average, a pair of HRs and 20 RBIs.
Two good years with Newport weren’t enough to get Sain to the majors, but he was unwittingly approaching the turning point in his career. It started innocuously on December 9, 1939, when Detroit traded 2nd baseman Benny McCoy to the Philadelphia Athletics for outfielder Wally Moses. Citing corruption and cover-ups in the Tiger organization, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis nullified the trade and on January 14,1940, granted free agency to 91 Detroit players and farmhands. Sain was among the fortunate new free agents and 1 of 23 released players, who made it to the majors, although in his case it would take 2 more years.
Accordingly, 1940 found Sain with the Nashville Volunteers, a Dodgers affiliate in the Southern Association. His 8-4 mark and 4.45 ERA pale beside the Vols’ 101-47 record, good for a .682 winning percentage. The 1941 Vols, no longer a Brooklyn farm club, fell off to 83-70, in 2nd place and Sain fell much further to 6-12 and a 4.60 ERA. At this point, Johnny didn’t seem to be going anywhere, but the woeful Boston Braves, possibly on the advice of Pat Monahan, a longtime scout who worked for many teams, or Prothro and hungry for pitchers, had purchased his contract from Nashville and signed him to a major-league contract in March 1942.
Sain made his debut in the Braves’ home opener on April 17,1942 in relief retiring all 7 Giants batters that he faced and striking out 3 in a 4-3 Boston win. For his efforts he was awarded (retroactively) the 1st save of his MLB career. He would pick up his 1st MLB win on April 29th at Wrigley Field in relief of Al Javery. All told, he went 4-7 with a 3.90 ERA, mostly in relief, for Casey Stengel’s last Boston team, a dismal unit that could manage only a 59-89 record and a 7th-place finish.
Even with World War II on, Sain was able to complete the season. Upon receiving his draft notice, he had enlisted for aviation training in the Navy on August 21st. However, he didn’t have to report until November 15th, whereupon he was sent to Amherst College along with fellow big-league inductees Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Joe Coleman, and Buddy Gremp. Having completed preliminary ground training by May 1943, Sain was transferred to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for preflight instruction. After a few months there, he moved on to Corpus Christi Naval Air Training Base and graduated as an ensign in August 1944. He wound up teaching flying at Corpus Christi through the end of the war, receiving his discharge on November 25, 1945.
The experience proved seminal for the young man, who noted, “I think learning to fly an airplane helped me as much as anything. I was 25 years old. Learning to fly helped me to concentrate and restimulated my ability to learn.” Shortly before his discharge, on October 1st, Sain would marry Dallas native Doris May McBride. The couple had 4 children: John Jr., Sharyl, Rhonda and Randy.
Service in the war benefited Sain in a variety of ways. For one thing, his arm got some rest. He threw whenever he could, though and pitched on several teams against stiff competition that often include other major leaguers. He went 12-4 with the North Carolina Pre-Flight team, appropriately named the Cloudbusters, in 1943, but it was a war-relief game in Yankee Stadium on July 28th that stood out. The Cloudbusters were facing a team made up of reserves from the Yankees and Indians, whose regulars played a charity, regular-season doubleheader that same day. In the 6th inning, “Yank-Lands” third-base coach Babe Ruth left the box to pinch-hit. Seeing the game as a sort of audition in front of a number of big-league officials, Sain wanted to retire the 48-year-old Ruth, but catcher Al Sabo came out and told him not to throw Ruth any curves and risk embarrassing him. As Sain later said, “Taking away my curveball was like cutting off two of my fingers, but it was Babe Ruth in Yankee Stadium. Then, it became obvious that the home plate umpire wasn’t going to call any strikes on him. So, I threw 5 medium fastballs, almost batting practice pitches. Ruth took one, then hit a long foul ball and then walked on the last three pitches.” It was the Babe’s last at-bat in an organized game.
Another benefit of the war years is that a maturing Sain came to realize and accept that although he was large for his era at 6-feet-2 and 180-200 pounds, he didn’t have high-octane velocity. Accordingly, he’d have to rely on mechanics, finesse, and guile, letting batters hit the ball and letting his fielders do their jobs. Moreover, he changed his delivery. Through 1942 he constantly varied his arm action, even occasionally throwing from a crossfire motion. As Sain saw it, there were 2 problems with this approach: He risked hurting his arm, and it wasn’t effective (63 walks in 97 innings with Boston in 1942 were ample proof). After the war, he kept his windmill windup (he was one of the last pitchers to do so) and threw almost exclusively overhand, dropping down to side-arm on occasion if he was ahead of the hitter.
Finally, there was the curveball his father had taught Sain how to throw. Johnny had a good curve before the war, to be sure, but the knowledge of aerodynamics he’d absorbed as a pilot helped him turn his best pitch into so effective a weapon that he earned the nickname the Man of a Thousand Curves. Showing no signs of rustiness after a 3-year layoff, Sain became a star pitcher and Boston’s staff ace in 1946. He turned in a 20-14 slate, a career-best 2.21 ERA, and a league-leading 24 complete games for the Braves, who took a big leap to 81-72 and 4th place under new Manager Billy Southworth. Johnny also had the honor on May 11th of pitching the1st night game in Boston big-league annals. Facing the Giants in a special “sateen” uniform designed to stand out under the lights, he lost to the Giants, 5-1, in front of 35,945 fans at Braves Field. The pitching highlight of Sain’s year, however, came on July 12th at Cincinnati. In the 1st inning, Grady Hatton hit a pop fly that dropped among 3 Braves behind 3rd base for a double. No other Red reached base as Johnny would beat Ewell Blackwell, 1-0.
Life was improving for the Braves. Tommy Holmes was an effective contact hitter. Bob Elliott, a hustling, hard-hitting team player, was acquired from the Pirates over the winter and won the Most Valuable Player Award in 1947. And there was a decorated war hero, a southpaw who would be the perfect complement to Johnny Sain and a number of other pitchers over a long career Warren Spahn.
Spahn and Sain became a factor in 1947. Spahn had his 1st great year, going 21-10 with a 2.33 ERA, and Sain was close behind turning in a 21-12 mark and 3.52 ERA (the relatively high ERA partially offset by an outstanding .346 batting average and only 1 strikeout in 107 at-bats). At 86-68, the Braves moved up another notch to 3rd place. Sain even became a part of history on Opening Day, April 15th, becoming the 1st MLB pitcher to face Jackie Robinson. Robinson went hitless in 3 trips to the plate as the Dodgers won, by the score of 5-3 at Ebbets Field.
Sain’s reward for his fine early-season work was pitching in the All-Star Game at Wrigley Field. Replacing the Cardinals’ Harry Brecheen in the 7th inning of a 1-1 contest, he contributed to his own undoing. He got George McQuinn to ground out. Bobby Doerr followed with a single, then stole second. Sain had Doerr picked off 2nd but fired the ball into center field, sending Doerr to third. He struck out Buddy Rosar, but Stan Spence, batting for Spec Shea, singled, scoring Doerr with the go-ahead run. The American League held on for the 2-1 win, and Sain absorbed the loss. Nevertheless, it proved a good year, leaving the Braves and their fans reason to be optimistic.
The 1948 MLB season almost brought baseball Nirvana to Boston and New England. The Red Sox would finished 96-58, 2 games ahead of the hated Yankees. The bad news was that the Indians under the leadership of Lou Boudreau were also 96-58. The 1st playoff in American League history, a 1-game affair that saw the Sox go down 8-3 in Fenway Park as Boudreau put on a 1-man show with 2 HRs and 4 hits. However, the Braves, Boston’s “other team” and a perennial poor cousin to the aristocratic Red Sox, took the National League flag with a 91-62 mark that would have been good only for 4th place in the American League.
The close pennant race gave rise to Gerry Hern’s often quoted (and misquoted) lines about “Spahn and Sain.” In a way Hern took advantage of a little poetic license. He got the Sain part right, but at 15-12 with a 3.71 ERA, Spahn actually had one of the least effective seasons of his brilliant career, a season more typical of a 3rd or 4th starter than an ace. Starters Vern Bickford (11-5, 3.27 ERA) and Bill Voiselle (13-13, 3.63 ERA) were a touch more effective for the Braves.
As for Sain, he was in a class by himself, going 24-15 with a 2.60 ERA. He led the league in wins (24), games started (39), complete games (28), and innings pitched (314⅔). He pitched the Braves into 1st place on June 15th, beating the Cubs, 6-3. It was a historic moment, as the game at Braves Field was the first to be televised in the Boston area. Appearing in the All-Star Game on July 13, he had 3 strikeouts (Vern Stephens, Bobby Doerr, and Hoot Evers, all in the 5th) over 1⅔ hitless innings. The year also included an extraordinary streak of personal endurance. From August 24th to September 21st, Sain started and completed 9 games, winning 7 of them. Backed by Sain’s efforts, and equally hot hurling from Spahn, the Braves took 21 of their final 27 games to coast to the National League pennant by 6½ games over St. Louis. The Sporting News rewarded Sain by naming him National League Pitcher of the Year and he was runner-up to Stan Musial in voting for the NL Most Valuable Player Award.
The year wasn’t all roses. During the season the Braves signed 18-year-old southpaw Johnny Antonelli for a sum reported to be at least $50,000. As a “bonus baby,” Antonelli couldn’t be sent to the minors for 2 years; but since he almost never pitched, he was taking a place on the roster that most players believed belonged to a proven veteran while pocketing more money than most could make in several seasons. Not surprisingly, the presence of Antonelli and other bonus babies made for tension in major-league clubhouses. All of the Braves were annoyed, none more so than Sain, who took his frustrations straight to Owner Lou Perini in the front office. Mounting what he called the “Golden Staircase” that led to Perini’s door, Sain told the boss that as a proven pitcher he deserved better treatment than an untried teenager. Perini would listen and before the All-Star Game, the Braves gave Johnny a new contract for the remainder of the season and 1949 as well.
Bob Feller Johnny Sain 1948 World Series
The World Series opened in Boston on October 6th, with Sain drawing the nod against the Indians’ Bob Feller. It was all a Series contest should be, as both pitchers were at the top of their craft. With the game scoreless in the bottom of the 8th, Bill Salkeld led off with a walk. Phil Masi ran for him and Mike McCormick had sacrificed Masi to 2nd. Feller then intentionally walked Eddie Stanky, with utility infielder Sibby Sisti going in to pinch-run for him. With Sain at bat, Feller turned and fired to shortstop Lou Boudreau in an attempt to pick Masi off 2nd. As the story goes, everyone in Braves Field thought Masi was out — everyone, that is, except 2nd-base Umpire Bill Stewart, who had the majority vote and called him safe. Sain lined out, but Tommy Holmes singled past 3rd to score Masi from 2nd and put Boston up 1-0. Sain shut down the Indians in the 9th and Boston won. Sain had given up 4 hits on 95 pitches, Feller, 2 hits on 85 pitches in a game of exemplary efficiency.
After Cleveland won the next 2 contests, Johnny came back to face Steve Gromek in Game 4 at Cleveland and pitched superbly in a 2-1 loss. The Braves staved off elimination in Game 5, but the Indians took Game 6 back at Boston, and the Series. Sain was magnificent in defeat 2 complete games, a shutout, a heartbreaking loss, 9 strikeouts against no walks, 9 hits allowed and a 1.06 ERA.
All told, Sain was arguably the top pitcher in the National League from 1946 to 1948 with a 65-41 record and 2.77 ERA. Indeed, he fit in nicely with his American League counterparts Bob Feller (65-41, 2.75 ERA) and Hal Newhouser (64-38, 2.59 ERA). Johnny’s decline, however, was swift and sudden. He was up and down, mostly down from 1949 to 1951, going a combined 37-44 with an ugly 4.31 ERA. The kindest thing one can call the 1949 season is a disaster. Spent from his efforts of the year before and a sore shoulder that Sain blamed on his experimenting with a screwball during the spring, he had suffered through a career-worst 17 losses (against just 10 wins) with a horrendous 4.81 ERA. He had the dubious honor of leading the league in runs (150) and earned runs (130) allowed. For the only time in his career, he had walked more than he struck out (75 to 73), and he also surrendered more than a hit per inning (285 in 243 innings pitched), starting a pattern that would continue throughout the remainder of his career. True, he completed 16 of his 36 starts, but he was taking a beating most of the time. In short, there is no way to put the season in a positive light. The defending champs of the National League fell to 4th place with a 75-79 mark.
It wasn’t just Sain’s ailing shoulder at fault; almost everything went wrong for the Braves in 1949. Billy Southworth, whose demands were grudgingly accepted when his teams were winning, reportedly became intolerable during spring training. Claiming credit the players considered theirs and breaking rules that he set, Southworth put the defending National League champs through 2-a-day sessions that totaled 6 hours and instituted a midnight curfew, complete with room checks by clubhouse attendant and watchdog Shorty Young. An early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, Sain usually retired by 9:30. Young checked on Sain just once, waking him out of a sound sleep. Furious, Sain said that if it ever happened again, he’d send the offender out the window. A rumor got out that Southworth had checked up on his star pitcher, that Sain had threatened to throw him out the window and that Sain and Southworth weren’t speaking. For his part, Sain said he never socialized with his managers.
Although Sain had rebounded in 1950 with his 4th 20-win season (20-13), the won-lost record is deceptive. Even in a year replete with heavy hitters, his 3.94 ERA was well off the league pace. While he had completed 25 of his 37 starts, he gave up 294 hits in 278⅓ innings. Particularly ominous was Sain’s career-high and league-leading 34 HRs surrendered. He was lucky to win more than he lost, largely because he was pitching for a team that went 83-71 in a nice recovery from the debacle of 1949.
1955 Topps Baseball Card
All that kept Sain’s 1951 season from being a repeat of 1949 was fewer innings pitched, because the figures were pretty proportional (195 hits in 160 innings and a 4.22 ERA with the Braves). It added up to a 5-13 slate, when struggling Boston sold him to the Yankees for $50,000 and a young pitcher, who would pay long-term dividends to the Braves and haunt the Yankees a few years hence, Lew Burdette. Sain appeared in 7 games for New York, starting 4 and completing 1, while posting a 2-1 mark. The Yankees won the pennant and Johnny was brought in to relieve starter Vic Raschi in the 7th inning of Game 6 of the World Series with 2 on and nobody out. He would retire the Giants without allowing an inherited runner to score, and worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the 8th. The Giants loaded the bases on 3 singles in the ninth before Bob Kuzava came in and surrendered 2 runs (both charged to Sain) but he saved the game, 4-3 and the Series for the Yankees. It was hardly an auspicious start for Sain with a new team, especially one that had come to consider World Series titles their birthright (this was their 3rd straight).
Making matters worse, the shoulder injury that had ruined Johnny’s 1949 season had never completely gone away. With nothing to lose, he underwent a new radiation therapy from a doctor in Dallas, and was so pleased that he recommended it to others. Teammate Eddie Lopat tried it and was happy. In later years, Whitey Ford had it done 5 times, and Mel Stottlemyre went Ford 1 better.
One of many keys to the Yankees’ phenomenal success from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s was a genius for resurrecting the careers of players thought to be finished. Johnny Mize and Enos Slaughter, for example, had several productive years added to their careers, and Johnny Sain was a chief beneficiary among the pitching fraternity. How the Yankees did it was brilliant in its simplicity, and one wonders why nobody else figured it out. They made him a spot starter and reliever so that a bit fewer than half of his appearances were starts, 16 of 35 in 1952 and 19 of 40 in 1953. He completed half of his starts, 8 in 1952 and 10 in 1953, and relieved superbly the rest of the time. In 1954, his last full year in pinstripes, all 45 of his appearances were in relief and he saved a league-leading 22 games to become just the 2nd pitcher (after Ellis Kinder of the Red Sox turned the trick the year before) to win 20 games in one season and save 20 in another. As of 2020, Wilbur Wood, Dennis Eckersley, John Smoltz, Derek Lowe and Ian Kennedy were the only other pitchers to accomplish the feat.
Adapting to his new role, Sain began to pay dividends in 1952 as both starter and reliever. On May 20th, he scattered 6 hits to beat the White Sox, 4-3. He would rescue the Yankees twice at Fenway Park on September 24th, coming on in the 9th with the game tied and earning a 3-2 win in the opener of a doubleheader, then saving an 8-6 win in the nightcap. Two days later, he got the win in relief in the Yankees’ 11-inning pennant-clinching 5-2 win in Philadelphia. For the year, he was 11-6 with a decent 3.46 ERA and 7 saves. He pitched capably, but didn’t fare well in the World Series against the Dodgers. Taking over in the 6th inning of Game 5 for starter Ewell Blackwell with the Yankees leading 5-4, he gave up the tying run in the 7th and the winning run in the 11th to take the 6-5 loss. The Yankees didn’t use him again in their hard-fought 7-game win over their subway rivals.
Now a vital part of the Yankee machine, Sain was outstanding in 1953. Again, dividing his duties between starting and relieving, he had posted a 14-7 mark with 9 saves and a 3.00 ERA, while earning a spot on the All-Star team. Once again, the Yankees and Dodgers squared off in the World Series. Relieving starter Allie Reynolds in Game 1 with 1 out in the 6th and the Dodgers threatening, Sain stopped the damage, pitched the final 3⅔ innings and picked up the 9-5 win, even contributing a double and a run scored. He was not as effective in his other appearance, in Game 4, but the Yankees nonetheless captured their 5h straight world championship.
By 1954, Sain was a full-time reliever, going 6-6 with a 3.16 ERA and the aforementioned 22 saves. The Yankees had their best season under Casey Stengel with a 103-51 record, but it was only 2nd-best to the Indians’ 111-43 mark, the American League record at the time. Johnny wouldn’t get a chance to pitch in his 5th World Series.
Shortly into the 1955 AL season, after making 3 appearances and a 6.75 ERA, the Yankees had determined that Sain was finished. On May 11th, New York had traded Johnny and future Hall of Fame OF Enos Slaughter (he was hitting .111 at the time) to the Kansas City Athletics for journeyman Pitcher Sonny Dixon and cash. Sain would appear in 25 games for Kansas City, winning 2 and losing 5, while posting 1 save and an ERA of 5.44. He pitched his final game on July 15th and he was released the next day.
For someone who had toiled in the minors for 6 years, lost 3 more years to the war, and got started at an age when most players are entering their peak, Sain had a fine career: 139 wins against 116 losses, a solid 3.49 ERA; an award as The Sporting News Pitcher of the Year; 4 20-win seasons; 3 trips to the All-Star Game; 4 World Series; the league lead in wins once; the league lead in saves once; and league leads in other categories.
That’s just the pitching side of the Sain ledger. An outstanding contact hitter, Johnny had always helped himself with the bat. He sported a .245 career average, led the league with 16 sacrifice hits in 1948 (the 1st pitcher to lead his league in an offensive category), led his league’s pitchers in runs batted in 5 times, and struck out a mere 20 times in 774 lifetime at-bats. Those 20 strikeouts are extraordinary, the fewest for all hitters with between 500 and 800 at-bats from 1910 (when the National League began keeping strikeout records) and 1913 (when the American League followed suit) to the present.
While his playing days were over, Sain wasn’t really through. He would return to Arkansas, to Walnut Ridge and raised his children there. He’d had a prospering Chevrolet dealership in the town since 1952, but at heart he was a baseball man and was happy to get back into the game in 1959 as a MLB Pitching Coach for the Kansas City Athletics. Working with a veteran staff on a team that could do no better than 66-88, he got adequate seasons out of Ned Garver, Bud Daley, Ray Herbert and Johnny Kucks. Sain would resign after the 1959 AL season to concentrate on business at home.
Catching on in the same capacity with the Yankees, when Ralph Houk had replaced the fired Casey Stengel for the 1961 season, Sain showed what he could do with good material. Persuading Houk to go with a 4-man rotation, he would transform Whitey Ford from a perennially very good pitcher into a great one. Ford, who credited Sain with rejuvenating his career, posted a 25-4 mark and a 3.21 ERA in 1961, good enough to garner his only Cy Young Award; he followed that up with 17 wins in 1962 and 24 in 1963. Ralph Terry found his groove in 1962, leading the league with 23 wins. Jim Bouton, who called Sain “the greatest pitching coach who ever lived,” had a career year in 1963 with a 21-7 slate and a 2.53 ERA.
Three contradictory versions exist as to why Sain and the Yankees parted company. Sain said in 1993, that he had heard that Houk was going to move into the Yankee front office, with Yogi Berra taking over as manager. Since Sain doubted that Berra would be effective managing recent teammates, he claimed that he had resigned. His misgivings were well-founded in that Berra was fired after 1 season despite leading the Yankees into the World Series. The alternate version is that Houk showed his appreciation for Sain’s helping him to 3 World Series appearances and 2 world championships in 3 years by firing him after the 1963 season. The move mystified many people, but Bouton offered a possible explanation: “What general Houk started thinking of himself as a general wants a lieutenant on his staff who’s smarter than he is?”
The 3rd one is that he had asked the Yankees Front Office for a $2,500 pay raise for his efforts with the Yankees pitching staff. The Yankees front would refuse his pay raise request for the 1964 season and he would leave the team. After sitting out for a year, Sain would join the Minnesota Twins in 1965. Helping this club to its 1st pennant, he got Jim “Mudcat” Grant to achieve a 21-7 mark, good enough to lead the league in wins. Under Sain’s tutelage, lefty Jim Kaat went 25-13 with a 2.75 ERA in 1966 to lead the American League in wins and help the Twins finish 2nd. The Twins Manager Sam Mele was so happy with Sain’s contribution that he fired him.
Sain moved from Minnesota to Detroit in 1967. Working with Manager Mayo Smith’s staff that year, he had turned Earl Wilson into a 20-game winner for the 1st and only time in his MLB pitching career. In 1968, Sain had crafted his masterpiece, Denny McLain, whose 31 wins were the most since Lefty Grove achieved the same total in 1931 and haven’t been challenged since. With just 6 losses and a 1.96 ERA, McLain took home the Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards. With lefty Mickey Lolich picking up 3 wins in the World Series, the Tigers would beat the Cardinals and Bob Gibson. Sain would keep McLain sufficiently focused in 1969 to go 24-9 and share the Cy Young Award with southpaw Mike Cuellar of the Orioles.
World Series victory aside, Sain and Manager Mayo Smith were barely speaking. Sain’s tenure with Detroit soured for good in 1969. One day, Johnny took some time off to attend to some personal business. In his absence, Smith had the pitchers run, angering Sain, who asked Smith, if he wanted to stick with what worked or with what hadn’t worked for 25 years. Smith made his preferences clear on June 15,1969, when he sold Sain favorite Dick Radatz to Montreal. By August 10th, Sain was fired by the team.
The rest of Sain’s life was taking a bad turn as well. His marriage had fallen apart, as he later explained: “My 1st wife went back to college and got her degree at age 50 and it changed the tone of our relationship. My life in baseball seemed more and more trivial to her. The divorce was an enormous financial strain on me. I pretty much lost almost everything I had, to the point that I had to declare bankruptcy.”
Attempting to dig out from under, Sain would spend the 1970 season until late September as a roving minor-league pitching instructor for the California Angels, becoming friends with Angels Minor-League Manager Chuck Tanner. Next, Johnny was off to the White Sox, where he managed to stay for 6 years, in no small part because Tanner was manager the whole time and had the sense to let Sain go about his business. The approach produced incredible results. Wilbur Wood, who started out as a reliever, became a workhorse starter and won 20 games each year from 1971 to 1974. Wood’s ERA in 1971 was a minuscule 1.91 and his work in 1972 earned him The Sporting News Pitcher of the Year Award. Reunited with Sain, Jim Kaat won 21 and 20 in 1974 and 1975, respectively. Stan Bahnsen, Rookie of the Year with the Yankees in 1968, would reach his peak in 1972 with a 21-16 slate. Making Sain’s achievement remarkable is that the White Sox usually were a middle-of-the-pack club during his tenure, while the Yankees, Twins, and Tigers had all been contenders or pennant winners.
The years on the South Side of Chicago paid an even greater dividend than all those 20-game winners. On July 3,1972, now divorced, Sain was introduced to Mary Ann Zaremba, the 35-year-old widow of a Chicago policeman at a club in the suburbs. Johnny was smitten. Mary Ann remembered, “He called me the next day and said, ‘You have to marry me.’” That seemed a little impetuous, so they compromised on a date at Comiskey Park on the Fourth. The date must have gone well, for they were married on August 24th.
Sain would coach the Atlanta Braves pitchers in 1977, but on a miserable team that went 61-101, he had only one 1st-rate pitcher, future Hall of Famer Phil Niekro. Stints with several clubs in Atlanta’s farm system followed, and he went back to the Braves for 1 final fling from 1985 to 1986, where he was reunited with Chuck Tanner on a pair of 2nd-division teams.
Most of Sain’s coaching career followed a pattern: Almost immediate success, the lifelong loyalty and devotion of his pitchers that he reciprocated, inevitable conflict with management (and managers) and the search for another job. Often it seems to have been insecurity and jealousy on the manager’s part, knowing that the pitchers listened to and respected Sain more than they did him. Sometimes a manager simply thought he knew more or better than Sain and didn’t want to be challenged.
On the flip side, some of the difficulty was Johnny’s fault. To begin with, he encouraged pitchers to demand to be paid what they were worth, to mount the “Golden Staircase,” as he had done back in 1948. Naturally, this didn’t sit well with management. In the 2nd place, he was extremely protective of his charges and wouldn’t tolerate interference from anybody, including the Manager. His refusal to speak ill of any of his pitchers led Detroit skipper Mayo Smith to conclude that he could never get a straight answer from Sain on a pitcher’s physical condition, state of mind, or anything else.
Ironically, Houk, Mele, and Smith all won a Sporting News Manager of the Year Award with Sain as their pitching coach, then left town not long after Sain’s departure.
Always willing to stick up for his pitchers, he further endeared himself to hurlers by not making them run. Some baseball people found this strange, but Sain had two reasons for the tactic, one practical and the other philosophical or pedagogical. On the practical side he noted, “You don’t run the ball up to home plate.” On the philosophical or pedagogical side, Sain said, “I’ve always felt that a lot of pitching coaches made a living out of running pitchers so they wouldn’t have to spend that same time teaching them how to pitch.” On the other hand, he believed that pitchers had to keep their arms strong, so he had them throw almost every day, even after a long stint on the mound the day or night before. To keep pitchers mentally focused, he had, as an example, Wednesday’s pitcher chart pitches for Tuesday’s game; that way, the pitcher could observe both his teammates and the opposing pitchers and hitters. It seems of obvious benefit, and most managers and pitching coaches now have their pitchers chart the game, but Sain seems to have been the first to make it a practice.
Finally, Sain brought his own brilliant creation to the table. Noted baseball author Roger Kahn described it in The Head Game:
The Yankees had hired Sain in 1961 as pitching coach, replacing Eddie Lopat. He showed up with a briefcase full of inspirational books and tapes and a machine he was patenting as the “Baseball Pitching Educational Device,” which everyone soon called “the Baseball Spinner.” Baseballs were mounted on rotating axes one axis per ball and you could snap one in a variety of fastball spins and the other in rotations for sliders and curves. The baseballs were anchored. Except for rotating, they didn’t move. Using John Sain’s Baseball Pitching Educational Device, you could practice spinning your delivery at home or in a taxi or in a hotel room without endangering lamps, mirrors, or companions.
What Sain achieved as a pitching coach (16 20-game winners in all or part of 17 seasons) is impressive, given the diversity of talents he worked with. Some, like Whitey Ford and Denny McLain, had experienced considerable success. On the other hand, Jim Bouton, Jim Kaat, Mudcat Grant, and Stan Bahnsen had yet to show how capable they were. Then there was Wilbur Wood, undergoing the transformation from reliever to starter.
The project that best epitomizes Sain at work has to be Denny McLain. The quintessential flake, McLain had all the tools to be a great pitcher except seriousness of purpose, sense, and maturity. Sain took Denny for what he was and worked his magic indirectly. Learning that McLain was working to obtain a pilot’s license, Sain helped him prepare for the required tests, and even went up in the air with him. From that basis the 2 moved to McLain’s pitching so smoothly that he was the best pitcher in the American League in 1968 and 1969, winning 55 games, a Most Valuable Player Award and 2 Cy Youngs. At 25, he already had 114 wins under his belt and seemed on path for the Hall of Fame. What McLain’s career might have been had he had Sain’s guidance for a few more seasons is pure speculation, but the train wreck erratic and criminal behavior; suspensions from baseball; prison for drug dealing, racketeering, and extortion; poor health in the form of obesity and heart trouble; and who knows what else that has been McLain’s life in the more than 40 years since is indisputable. Denny needed grounding, and Sain gave it to him for a magical couple of years.
Out of baseball, the Sain’s would settle down to a quiet life in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, Illinois. John would lecture and consulted with various teams and players, happy to talk with anybody who wanted to listen about the fine art of pitching. Mickey Lolich, a beneficiary of Sain’s tutelage, could have been speaking for scores of pitchers when he described his mentor: “Johnny Sain loves pitchers. Maybe he doesn’t love baseball so much, but he loves pitchers. Only he understands them.”
Over the years there has been talk of enshrining coaches in the Hall of Fame. Writing of Sain in Newsday, Roger Kahn noted, “The Hall of Fame admits broadcasters, umpires, entrepreneurs, even newspaper writers. For goodness sake, let’s enshrine a great coach.” Mike Shalin, Neil Shalin, and Brent Kelley, authors of books about players who were not in the Hall of Fame at the time of writing, have indicated support for the cause. Former White Sox GM Roland Hemond, Jim Bouton, Jim Kaat, and others have spoken up for Sain. There have been some letter-writing campaigns. Nevertheless, the movement has never gained sufficient traction.
Cooperstown notwithstanding, the Boston Braves Historical Association saw that Sain was honored for his years in their city. Sain, Warren Spahn, and Sibby Sisti were inducted into the Boston Braves Hall of Fame on October 16,1994. Four years later, on October 4,1998, the Association sponsored a 50th-anniversary celebration of the Braves’ championship season. Bob Feller came to town, and the 2 aces revisited their pitching duel and the pickoff play that “failed.”
After suffering a stroke on March 31, 2002, Sain would spend his remaining years in ill health. On August 31,2002, he became the 7th player inducted into the Braves’ franchise Hall of Fame at Turner Field. Mary Ann wrote an acceptance speech for him; they couldn’t attend the induction, but Hank Aaron read the speech at the ceremony in Atlanta.
Johnny Sain died on November 7, 2006, in Resthaven West Nursing Home in Downers Grove. Surviving him were his wife Mary Ann, his 4 children, 11 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. Returning to Havana, he was buried in Walker Cemetery after a ceremony attended by many of his former pitching “pupils” and other friends he had made in the game. Several teams sent gorgeous floral arrangements; in death, all the hard feelings were forgotten.
The last pitcher to face Babe Ruth and the 1st to face Jackie Robinson, Sain started the 1st night game in Boston and the 1st game televised in New England, unleashed the potential of pitchers like Mudcat Grant, Jim Kaat, Earl Wilson and Mickey Lolich, and coached probably the last 30-game winner. In the words of baseball historian Maxwell Kates “a veritable Forrest Gump in baseball history,” Johnny Sain left a rich legacy.
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