The Players

[LouisvilleLipp]

Y4L, you are to be commended for creating these bios.  I enjoy reading them.

[Yankee4Life]

2 hours ago, LouisvilleLipp said:

Y4L, you are to be commended for creating these bios.  I enjoy reading them.

 

You're welcome. And if you can think of someone just let me know. Just be sure to check the list of completed players and if you do check the list that is in alphabetical order. It's easier that way.

[Yankee4Life]

Ed Figueroa

 

 

The New York Yankees won three straight American League pennants from 1976 to 1978, becoming World Series champions in the latter two years. Yet even devoted fans might have trouble recalling which pitcher got the most victories for the Bronx Bombers over this period. It wasn’t Catfish Hunter or Ron Guidry — it was Ed Figueroa, the only native of Puerto Rico (as of 2017) to have a 20-win season.

 

Figueroa relied on a good sinking fastball and a variety of breaking pitches. As Guidry described him, “Figgy was a good pitcher. He wasn’t an overpowering guy. He was always around the plate. He wasn’t flashy, wasn’t dominant, wasn’t a strikeout guy. He just won.”

 

Unfortunately, elbow problems ended his run of success after just four seasons.

 

Although he started the 1975 season at Salt Lake, Figueroa said in 2008 that it still might have been his best year overall. Crediting Angels pitching coach Billy Muffett, he became a sinker/slider pitcher. Figueroa told Phil Pepe, “I’d say those two pitches, plus the confidence I gained by pitching regularly at California, enabled me to have a winning season.” He was 16-13 with a 2.91 ERA for a team that “was one of the worst in baseball. . .We had no hitting.”  That season, he earned the nickname “Señor Stopper” – 15 of his wins came after the Angels had lost. Figueroa actually had a better year than Nolan Ryan in ’75, but teammate Frank Tanana emerged to lead the league in strikeouts.

 

On December 11, 1975, Yankees general manager Gabe Paul made another in his sequence of brilliant trades that helped lift the team back to pennant-winning status. He sent Bobby Bonds to the Angels and received both Mickey Rivers and Figueroa in return. The headline in the Los Angeles Times said “Angel Offense: More Security With Bonds” – but the Christian Science Monitor rightly observed, “The Yankees, in terms of youth and potential, got a lot from California for Bonds.” Bonds had a disappointing, injury-marred 1976, and though 1977 might have been his career year, he was traded again that December. Meanwhile, Rivers and Figueroa were vital parts of the Yankees’ 1976-78 run. Plus, while Paul said he hated to let Bonds go, the deal also allowed him to trade Doc Medich and obtain another key cog: Willie Randolph.

 

The Bonds swap was not received well in New York. As Phil Pepe wrote in 1977, “Remember the flak that was stirred? Remember how people criticized the deal? Figueroa was a tough sell to Yankee fans and know-nothing television critics.” But the club liked how well he had pitched against key divisional rivals Baltimore and Boston. “He’s going to be one of the best pitchers in baseball in the next few years,” predicted Gabe Paul and George Steinbrenner. They were right.

 

Figueroa (sporting a fierce-looking mustache by then, as did many of his Yankee teammates) won a club-high 19 games in 1976. He might have reached the 20-win plateau two years earlier than he eventually did, but he missed a couple of turns in August with a stiff elbow, lost his last two decisions, and then a rainout canceled his last start of the season. Right around that time, the Christian Science Monitor said, “When it comes to using only the corners of home plate, Ed Figueroa is a craftsman.”

 

Figueroa’s postseason record was not impressive. He was 0-2, 8.10 in four starts in the AL Championship Series of 1976-78, all against the Kansas City Royals. In Game Five of the 1976 ALCS, though, he pitched seven steady innings and left with a 6-3 lead. Grant Jackson then gave up a game-tying homer to George Brett (who hit an astounding .610 against Figueroa in his career during the regular season and .592 overall). An inning later, Chris Chambliss brought New York the pennant with his memorable homer off Mark Littell. In the 1976 World Series, Figueroa went eight innings and allowed five runs as the Cincinnati Reds completed their sweep in Game Four.

 

For reaching the 20-win milestone in 1978, Figueroa got a hero’s welcome in Puerto Rico. He threw out the first ball to open the PRWL season (although he did not play that winter and the next two). Governor Carlos Romero Barceló held a luncheon in Figueroa’s honor, and former Governor Luis Muñóz Marín invited the pitcher to his home.

 

However, Figueroa was never effective again in the majors after 1978. Author Bruce Markusen summed it up well in 2008: “Over a four-year span, he averaged 248 innings per season, a substantial workload that became exacerbated by an awkward motion. In his wind-up, Figueroa tucked his left leg and left arm in toward his mid-section; by the time he put himself in position to deliver the pitch, he was throwing the ball across his body. It was a fun delivery to imitate (as I know well from hours of throwing a ball up against a boulder outside of my house), but it sure did appear to put extra stress on the arm and shoulder. Figueroa’s arm problems began in 1979; by 1981, he was fully cooked.”

 

In his eight season career Figueroa had an 80 - 67 record with a 3.51 ERA. He started 179 games and completed 63 of them and had 12 shutouts. He struck out 571 hitters and walked 443 in 1,309 2/3 innings of work.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Norm Cash

 

 

 

 

Norm Cash came to Detroit in exchange for outfielder Steve Demeter. Detroit general manager Rick Ferrell was dumbfounded when Frank Lane, his Cleveland counterpart, offered Cash for Demeter, unsure if he meant “cold cash or Norm Cash?”  While Demeter’s career with the Indians consisted of merely four games, Cash became a fixture at first base in Detroit for 15 years. Lane was not through making controversial trades with the Tigers. Five days later, he sent Rocky Colavito to Michigan for Harvey Kuenn, and later in 1960, the two clubs swapped managers, Joe Gordon for Jimmie Dykes.

 

Cash’s teammates took an immediate liking to him. A comedian both on the field and in the clubhouse, he once tried to call time after being picked off first base. In another instance, Cash was stranded on second base during a thunderstorm. Once play resumed, however, he returned to third base. The umpire was baffled.

 

“What are you doing over there?”

 

“I stole third,” he answered.

 

“When did that happen?”

 

“During the rain.”

 

After a respectable 1960 season in which he batted .286 with 18 home runs, Cash captured the baseball world by storm in 1961. Although playing in the shadow of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, Cash posted one of the most outstanding offensive single season records in American League history. Stormin’ Norman led the junior circuit with 193 hits and a .361 batting average. Number 25 also established personal marks of 41 home runs, 132 RBIs, and eight triples. Even more astounding, he hit .388 on the road! Facing Washington’s Joe McClain on June 11, Cash became the first Detroit player to clear the Tiger Stadium roof, hitting a home run that landed on Trumbull Avenue. Another against Boston’s Don Schwall struck a police tow truck. He was equally skilled at first base, fielding a sterling .993 as he caught dozens of long foul balls before they could fly into the stands. With Kaline’s .324 batting average and Colavito’s .290 complementing Cash in the lineup, the Tigers, led by Frank Lary and his 23 victories, challenged the Yankees for the American League pennant. The Bengals came within a game and a half of the Bronx Bombers on September 1 before retracting to finish eight behind in the standings with 101 victories.

 

Was Norm Cash destined to become a one-year wonder? Even at the time, he knew his ’61 season was a freak, saying that everything he hit seemed to drop in, even when he didn’t make good contact. After Frank Lary injured his leg on Opening Day and Al Kaline broke his shoulder during a nationally televised game in May, it became clear that the Tigers would not again challenge the Yankees in 1962. The season was equally disappointing for Cash, who batted only .243 for the season. The 118 points shaved from his average remains a record of futility among batting champs. Cash ultimately found his swing, batting .342 in an autumn exhibition trip to Japan, but by that point, the regular season was long over. Still the 1962 season was far from a write-off for the affable Texan. Cash hit 39 home runs, including three more roof shots, as the league runner-up to Harmon Killebrew’s 48. His .993 fielding percentage was identical to his 1961 average.

 

Cash never again cracked the .300 plateau. Years later, when Mickey Lolich asked why, he replied that “Jim Campbell pays me to hit home runs.” Indeed, Cash’s 373 home runs for the Tigers remains second only to Al Kaline’s 399 among aggregate team records. However, it soon became evident that other factors besides the maturation of expansion pitching compromised Stormin’ Norman’s batting average. Cheating in baseball was as much an issue in 1961 as it remains today, and Sonny Eliot remembers why Norm Cash called that season “the Year of the Quick Bat.”

 

Cash was nothing if not consistent for the balance of the 1960s. He was the only American League hitter to slug 20 or better home runs each year from 1961 to 1969. In 1964, he set a record among Detroit first baseman by fielding an outstanding .997. On July 9, 1965, Stormin’ Norman hit an inside-the-park home run against the A’s at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City. The blast must have ignited Cash’s non-corked bat, as he decimated American League pitching with 23 home runs and 58 RBIs in 78 games after the All-Star break. His second-half exploits earned him Comeback Player of the Year honors, and in 1966, he was invited to the All-Star Game. Cash, once again, led junior circuit first basemen in fielding with a .997 percentage.

 

Stormin’ Norman proved to be the exception on the 1968 Tigers as he was fighting an early season slump. On July 27, the 6-foot-0 Cash was barely hitting his weight, batting .195 on a team cruising to its first American League pennant in 23 years. In dramatic fashion, he hit a torrid .333 in his last 54 games to finish the season at .263. Included in his 12 home runs and 33 RBIs in August and September was a three-run blast against Oakland on September 14. The winning pitcher of the 5-4 decision was Denny McLain, his 30th of the season. Cash led Tigers batsmen in the World Series, hitting .385 against Cardinals pitching. Setting a dubious October record as Bob Gibson’s 16th strikeout in Game One, he redeemed himself the following afternoon, homering off Nellie Briles in an 8-1 complete-game victory for Mickey Lolich. Facing elimination in Game Six, Cash enjoyed another productive day at the plate, accounting for two of the 13 Detroit runs, tying the Series at three games. This set the stage for an historic Game Seven. The Tigers were unfazed at the prospect of facing a pitcher who specialized in winning Game Sevens, Bob Gibson. In the clubhouse after practice, manager Mayo Smith encouraged his players that Gibson “can be beat, he’s not Superman!” To this, Cash chimed “Oh yeah? Just a little while ago, I saw him changing in a phone booth!” Tigers hitters proved to be Kryptonite with two outs and no score in the seventh inning. Cash ignited a Detroit rally with a single off Gibson, and later put the Tigers ahead as the first runner to score on Jim Northrup’s triple. The final score was 4-1, and the Detroit Tigers were world champions.

 

After being relegated to pinch hitting in 1970, Cash enjoyed a renaissance season playing in the Renaissance City in 1971. So torrid was his first half that spectators across Major League ballparks voted him to start the All-Star Game on July 13. Played in Detroit, it drew 53,559 spectators. American League manager Earl Weaver, however, took exception to Cash’s assignment, as he was not the reigning MVP playing for the defending World Champions. Boog Powell, Weaver’s first baseman in Baltimore, could claim both. Accordingly, Weaver, scrapped Cash from the lineup and replaced him with Powell. The roster move was not kindly received by the Detroit faithful. After public address announcer Joe Gentile introduced the National League All-Stars were announced, he began to present the American League. Starting with Weaver! Again, a cloud of boos rained over Tiger Stadium. Although Rod Carew was the next to be announced, the Twins’ second baseman did not take his place when called. Carew was apprehended by Cash and Bobby Murcer to prevent him from leaving the dugout, thereby prolonging the catcalls. Only after a prolonged interval did Carew emerge, breaking up the hecklers.

 

When the dust cleared on the 1971 season, the Tigers had won 91 games, but finished 10 games behind Earl Weaver and the Orioles. Stormin’ Norman clubbed 32 round trippers — one shy of Bill Melton’s league lead — while driving in 91 runs, batting a respectable .283. His offensive record was enough to win his second American League Comeback Player of the Year Award. It would have surprised nobody to hear Cash proclaim, after accepting the honor, that he hoped he would win the award again next year. Cash was, however, named to the All-Star team once again in 1972, his fourth and final trip to the midsummer classic. is offensive output may have retracted, but the Tigers vaulted ahead in the standings to win their first American League East Division title.

 

The 1974 season was a transitional one for the Tigers and their personnel. For only the second time in franchise history, Detroit finished the season in last place. Stormin’ Norman no longer held the nomenclatural monopoly when youthful infielder Ron Cash joined the Tigers in spring training. Equipment manager John Hand wanted to change the name on Norm’s uniform, but the first baseman refused. Cash exclaimed in disgust, “If the people can’t tell the difference between me and the other guy, something’s the matter!” He became even more incensed when he received a telephone call from the general manager on August 7. Batting only .228 with 12 home runs and 12 RBIs, Cash was released. “I thought at least they’d let me finish out the year. Campbell just called and said I didn’t have to show up at the park.”

 

Norm Cash was a player who knew his baseball career would not last forever. As a player, his offseason occupations included banking, ranching, and auctioning hogs. In the early 1970s, Cash hosted a local variety show in Detroit called “The Norm Cash Show.” In 1976, he teamed with former October archrival Bob Gibson as broadcasters for ABC Monday Night Baseball. Although Cash continued to display his brand of humor, it was not appreciated by all. On-air remarks such as equating entertainment in Baltimore with going “down to the street and [watching] hubcaps rust” earned Cash his dismissal from the network. In 1978, he made his film debut with a cameo appearance in One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story. In a scene filmed at Lakeland, Cash was standing with Kaline, Freehan, and Northrup to watch LeFlore in first spring training after accepting his release from Jackson State Prison. When the others marveled at his speed, Cash chimed in with “He can’t be too fast, the cops caught him.”

 

Cash died at the young age of 51 on October 11, 1986 when after having dinner he went to the dock to check on his boat. Unable to navigate the slippery pier in cowboy boots, he fell into the water and could not pull himself out. The next morning, he was found floating in 15 feet of water in St. James Bay. Norman Dalton Cash was pronounced dead the next day.

 

Perhaps the most vocal and outward posthumous tribute to Norm Cash in the final hours of the ballpark whose first base he called home from the Eisenhower to the Nixon administration. A sellout crowd of 43,556 jammed Tiger Stadium on September 27, 1999 for the final game against the Kansas City Royals. Several Tigers switched uniform numbers to pay homage to players who passed before them. Paying tribute to Ty Cobb, Gabe Kapler did not wear any number at all. Rookie Rob Fick switching his number 18 for 25 to honor Norm Cash. Only Fick went one step further. The Tigers enjoyed a comfortable 4-2 eighth-inning lead when Fick crushed a Jeff Montgomery fastball for a grand slam home run. In true Norm Cash fashion, the ball nearly cleared the right field roof. Tom Stanton reports in The Final Season, a diary which paints Tiger Stadium as a metaphor for the bond between fathers and sons, that Fick “looked up in the sky and thought of my dad,” who passed away the year before. “I know that he had something to do with all this.”

 

So did Norm Cash.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Willie Horton

 

 

A standout on the sandlots of Detroit, Willie Horton became the first black superstar for his hometown Tigers and spent parts of 15 seasons with the team. A tremendously powerful right-handed slugger, Horton was one of the strongest men in the game and launched 325 homers in his career. Extremely popular in Detroit, Horton worked in the Tigers front office after his playing career, where he helped bridge relations between the club and the African American community.

 

Called up by the Tigers at the tail end of the ’63 season, Horton came through in his first two pinch-hit at-bats and finished the season with a 6-for-10 stretch against the Orioles. Willie made a name for himself during spring training in 1964 when he led the team in home runs and drove in 18 runners. On Easter Sunday, he clubbed a ninth-inning, pinch-hit homer more than 420 feet to deep center field to win the first game of a doubleheader, and hit another game-winning homer in the second game. His play—and his weight—caught the attention of manager Charlie Dressen. The Tigers skipper stripped more than 20 pounds from Horton’s frame during the spring, after the youngster reported weighing 222 pounds.

 

“He looks like a natural hitter to me,” Dressen said. “Willie throws good, and he can run.”

 

His spring heroics earned Willie a spot on the Tigers’ roster, and he began the season platooning with veteran Bill Bruton in left field. But Horton struggled, especially against off-speed pitches, and slumped to an 8-for-59 start (.136 with no home runs). In mid-May, the Tigers shipped Horton to Triple A Syracuse, where Willie felt more comfortable playing every day, slugging 28 homers and batting .288 with 99 RBI for the Chiefs. His efforts earned him another late-season call-up to Detroit. In his final game of the season, Horton clubbed a home run against Milt Pappas in Baltimore.

 

While playing winter ball in Puerto Rico in early 1965, Horton received tragic news. Both of his parents were killed in a New Year’s Day car accident in Albion, Michigan. Horton quickly flew home to attend the services. The youngest child, Horton had been particularly close to his father, who had been in the stands at Tiger Stadium when his son hit his first major league home run, victimizing Robin Roberts.

 

Overcoming the death of his parents, Horton lost his usual off-season weight during the spring and made the big league club. “Whatever I do this year, I’m doing for my dad and mother,” Willie said. He began the 1965 season as Detroit’s fourth outfielder. But his hot-hitting quickly won him the left field job from Jim Northrup and earned him a spot on the American League All-Star team. In 143 games, the 22-year-old batted .273 with 29 homers and 104 RBI, finishing eighth in Most Valuable Player Award voting. During an East Coast road trip to Washington and Boston in May, Horton socked six homers in four games, each of the blasts traveling more than 400 feet. “Willie the Wonder” had arrived on the big-league scene.

 

Having established that he could hit right-handed pitching well enough to be in the lineup on a daily basis, Horton was entrenched in the starting lineup for Detroit in 1966. Once again he put up big offensive numbers, driving in 100 runs on the strength of 27 home runs. An ankle problem hampered him in 1967, but Willie still managed 19 homers and 67 RBI in 122 games. With the Tigers battling into the final weekend in a four-team race for the pennant, Horton hit homers in the first inning of the first games of doubleheaders on the last two days of the season to help defeat the Angels. However, Detroit lost the flag by one game.

 

That season, Horton thrust himself into the Detroit riots, fleeing Tiger Stadium in uniform to address the irate crowds in the streets of fire. Showing tremendous courage, Horton pled with Detroiters to calm the violence, but his efforts were in vain, and the city burned for nearly a week.

 

Horton was the most consistent bat in the Tigers’ lineup in the magical 1968 season. In a season dominated by brilliant pitching performances, Horton’s .285 average was fourth in the league, and his 36 homers were second to Frank Howard’s 44. In the World Series against the Cardinals however, it was Willie’s right arm that won him eternal fame with Detroit rooters. In the fifth inning of Game 5, with Detroit trailing 3–2 and St. Louis threatening to extend its lead, Lou Brock tried to score standing up on Julian Javier’s single to left field. Horton fielded the ball and fired a one-hopper to home plate. Freehan caught the ball and tagged Brock to swing the momentum in Detroit’s favor. The Tigers came back to win the game, 5–3, and captured the final two games to win the title. Horton batted .304 with six runs scored and three extra-base hits in the Series victory.

 

In contrast with the previous season, 1969 was filled with disappointment for Horton. Mired in a 4-for-35 slump on May 15, Willie left the team midgame and disappeared for four days due to “personal pressures.” When he came back, he had lost more than $1,300 in pay and was admonished by Detroit General Manager Jim Campbell. On June 28 in Baltimore, Horton pulled up at second base on a double and tore thigh muscle in his right leg. The injury forced him to miss 10 games and relegated him to the bench for seven more. He played the final weeks of the season with a sore right hand. Nonetheless, Horton still managed 91 RBI and 28 home runs.

 

Detroit returned to the postseason in 1972 while Willie suffered one of his most frustrating seasons, hitting .231 with 11 homers in 108 games. He reported to spring training overweight and fought hard to shed the pounds, but never got on track, and suffered foot and shoulder ailments that hampered his effectiveness.

 

Following that disappointment, Horton arrived at spring training in 1973 in good shape and focused on a return to form. He did just that, hitting .316 in 111 games, spending much of the season among the batting leaders in the league. Now 30 years old, Horton continued to have troubles with his legs, especially after the All-Star break, which limited his playing time. “By the fourth inning my legs are so stiff the way it is that I can hardly move,” Willie said. Horton also injured his wrist when he ran into a wall chasing a fly ball, but he credited his new roommate, veteran slugger Frank Howard, with helping him have one of his better seasons. He was also helped by a new daily exercise regimen that involved a broom handle Willie called “the wand.”

 

Yet despite the broom handle, his nagging legs bothered Horton again in 1974, and in early July, after nearly a month without hitting a homer, he was shut down and underwent knee surgery. Even though he had been unable to run very well all season, Horton had managed to hit .298 with 47 RBI in 72 games. In April he was involved in a bizarre incident at Fenway Park when he lofted a high foul fly directly over home plate that struck a pigeon. The bird landed at the feet of Red Sox catcher Bob Montgomery. On the next pitch, Willie singled.

 

With the retirement of Al Kaline following the 1974 campaign, Horton was now an elder on the club. Having always been sensitive to his status in the clubhouse, Horton aimed to have a big 1975 and boost his salary into the $100,000 mark that Kaline had received. Spurred by that possibility, Horton stayed healthy all season for the first time in six years. Manager Ralph Houk helped the situation by using Horton exclusively as a designated hitter. Horton played in 159 games and set career marks at that time for hits and at-bats. His 92 RBI were 32 more than any other Tiger, and his 25 homers were nearly double that of any of his teammates. He was named DH on The Sporting News’ AL All-Star team. Though he was not sure at first if he would like being a DH, Horton warmed to the role as the season wore on.

 

Horton’s tenure with his hometown team came to an end early in the 1977 season. After going 1-for-4 in left field on opening day against the Kansas City Royals, he sat on the bench until he was traded to the Rangers five days later. With a backlog of outfielders and Staub at DH, the Tigers shipped their slugger to Texas for reliever Steve Foucault. Willie packed his bats and his helmet (he wore the same helmet throughout his career, having it painted when he changed teams) and joined his new club. It began an odyssey for Horton that took him to six different teams in three seasons.

 

In the off-season, Horton tested the free agent market for the first time and received his long-sought-after two-year deal—with the Mariners. In Seattle, as a veteran on an expansion club, Willie found a comfortable environment and enjoyed playing for manager Darrell Johnson, who inserted Horton’s name in the lineup every day. Willie rewarded Johnson’s confidence, slugging 29 homers with 106 RBI, a career best, and earning American League Comeback Player of the Year honors. Seattle fans fell in love with 36-year-old Horton, dubbing him the “Ancient Mariner.”

 

Facing his former Tigers team June 5, 1979, Horton belted a ball at the Kingdome in Seattle that disappeared in the roof in left-center field. Initially ruled a home run—the 300th of his career—it was changed to a single when it was determined that it had struck a speaker. The next game, Horton hit his for-real 300th homer off Detroit’s Jack Morris.

 

With a two-year extension in his pocket, Horton got off to a dreadful start in 1980, and without a home run to his credit and his average languishing below .200, he sat for two three-game stretches during May. Later he spent two stints on the disabled list with a hand injury. He finished his 18th season with a .221 average and just eight home runs. He entered the off-season knowing he would have to fight for a job on the Mariners, but that didn’t matter on December 12, when he was dealt to the Rangers as part of an 11-player trade. After spring training in 1981, Horton was released by Texas.

 

In 2000, he was brought back into the Tigers organization by owner Mike Ilitch as a special adviser, and he still serves the team’s front office today. A bronze statue of Horton taking a mighty swing is located at Comerica Park beyond the left-field stands, and Willie is the only non-Hall of Famer to receive that recognition. His uniform number 23 was also retired by the club.

 

On September 27, 1999, the final game was played at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. As part of the postgame festivities, former Tigers ran onto the field in uniform and took their positions. When Horton ran into left field, he was greeted with a tremendous ovation from fans who appreciated his 15 seasons and 262 home runs wearing the Detroit uniform. Willie Horton, the slugger who starred for the 1968 World Champions, the little kid from the streets of Detroit, the teenager who belted a homer nearly out of the ballpark, the strong man who shattered bats with brute strength, broke down and cried like a baby.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Hal Trosky

 

 

Hal Trosky played first base for the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox in the 1930s and 1940s. His career reached its apex in 1936, when he led the American League in runs batted in with 162, yet he has largely been consigned to historical obscurity. This anonymity is not only due to the reality that his career overlapped a triumvirate of Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, and Lou Gehrig, a triumvirate of future Hall of Fame first basemen who held a virtual lock on the position on the American League All Star teams of the mid-’30s, but also because, at what should have been the peak of his career, Trosky was sidelined with two years of severe migraine headaches, pain so debilitating that he became unable to take the field for days in a row.

 

In 1934, Trosky’s first full year in the major leagues, he was little short of spectacular. He played every inning of all 154 games, hit .330 with 35 home runs, drove in 142 runs, and posted a slugging percentage of .598. He finished seventh in balloting for American League Most Valuable Player. (Triple Crown winner Lou Gehrig could muster no better than fifth place as the award went to Mickey Cochrane, catcher-manager of the pennant-winning Detroit Tigers.)

 

The 1935 season proved to be something of a sophomore slump for Trosky, marked by an almost 60-point drop in batting average and a commensurate drop in home runs, from 35 to 26. When mired in a September slump that year, a stretch in which he had exactly one hit in 40 at-bats, coach Steve O’Neill, his former manager at Toledo, suggested that Trosky try hitting from the right side against the Senators. The next day, in the opener of a doubleheader in Washington, Hal came up in the first inning and took a right-handed stance. He stunned his teammates by smoking an Orlin Rogers curve for a single. After a left-handed out in the fifth, he hit from the right side again in the eighth inning and knocked a Leon Pettit pitch into the distant reaches of Griffith Stadium’s left-field bleachers for his 23rd home run of the year. Overall in the two games, Trosky punched five hits in ten at-bats. Three singles and a home run came from the right side, and one long double from the left. It proved to be the last time he would try switch-hitting.

 

The 1934 model Hal Trosky returned for the ’36 campaign. Trosky put together a 28-game hitting streak and broke his own team record for home runs in a single season when he hit number 36 against the Senators. Although the AL pennant went to the Yankees, it was a memorable season for Trosky, as he led the league in RBIs (162) and total bases (405). His RBI total over his first three seasons was greater than the totals amassed by Gehrig, Foxx, or Greenberg over their first three years.

 

The years from 1937 to 1939 were relatively stable for both player and team. Rather than succumb to the hyperbole and inflated expectations that followed his 1936 season, Trosky chose to focus on improving his fielding. After achieving the rather dubious distinction of leading American League first basemen in errors in 1934 and 1936, he worked diligently to improve his footwork around the base. Along with the subsequent decline in errors, he sought a better approach at the plate, and elevated his batting average to .334 in 1938 and .335 in 1939. Naturally his home-run totals declined, but he found that he could still drive in more than 100 runs per season by putting a higher percentage of balls into play. Trosky and the Indians continued to win, but were competing with a Yankee juggernaut that dwarfed the rest of the league.

 

By 1939 the Indians had named Hal team captain. Trosky agreed not only for the extra $500 stipend, but because he felt that he could serve as a buffer between some of the less experienced players and their acerbic manager, Oscar Vitt.

 

In midseason Trosky lifted himself from the lineup and let understudy Oscar Grimes play a few games at first. Trosky never admitted it to the team, but there were times when his head absolutely throbbed. The season ended with Trosky recording only 448 at-bats, the first season since his 1933 overture that he appeared in fewer than 150 games. It was becoming difficult for him to bring the necessary intensity to the park each day. He was only 26 years old when the season ended, but the pain from the headaches sapped his vigor.

 

On August 11, 1940, in St. Louis, Trosky became the 17th major-league player to clout 200 home runs. He finished the season batting.295. His 93 RBIs marked his first full major-league season in which he failed to drive in at least 100 runs. He hit 39 doubles and a team-leading 25 home runs. The headaches hit hard again in August and September, but Hal loathed missing any game in the tight pennant race. The Indians finished second, one game behind Detroit.

 

Trosky’s migraines proved too much for him in 1941. They were striking with no notice and leaving a wake of debilitating agony. For a hitter who made a living off fastballs, he was powerless against a blurry white apparition that he said sometimes looked “like a bunch of white feathers.” He played less and less. The migraines were now almost unbearable. On August 11 Cleveland began a seven-game road trip without their slugger. Trosky was left home with Oscar Grimes assuming first-base duties.

 

The Indians finished in a tie for fourth place with the Tigers as Trosky drove in only 51 runs in 310 at-bats. In February 1942 he told reporter Gayle Hayes that he wouldn’t be playing baseball that year. It was, he was quoted, “for the best interest of the Cleveland club and for myself that I stay out of baseball. … I have visited various doctors in the larger cities in the United States and they have not helped me. If, after resting this year, I find that I am better, perhaps I’ll try to be reinstated. If I don’t get better, then my major-league career is over.”

 

Trosky passed 1942 and 1943 on his farm in Iowa. He devoured news of the war, farmed, and despite some interest from the Yankees, waited for a call from the draft board. He was evidently a decent farmer, averaging production of over 90 bushels of corn per acre in a time before the advent of modern farming technology. But he wanted to contribute on the front lines.

 

Trosky worked out for the White Sox and in November the Indians, perhaps willing to remove a piece of the Crybabies incident and aware that he was not the offensive force he had been earlier, sold his contract to Chicago for $45,000. As if an echo of Cleveland’s judgment, the Army officially declared Hal Trosky 4-F, unsuitable for military service, in March 1944, due entirely to his history of migraines. Despite a treatment protocol of vitamin shots, the Army wasn’t willing to take a chance on a compromised recruit.

 

Migraines notwithstanding, Trosky managed ten home runs in 1944, which was enough to lead his team in that category. Including his 1944 season, Hal led his teams seven times in home runs. According to the SABR Home Run Encyclopedia, Trosky homered in nine different parks and off 112 different pitchers during his career; his most frequent victims were Tommy Bridges and Bump Hadley. Of his 228 home runs, 106 were hit on the road, and 122 at home. No one but Earl Averill hit more at Cleveland’s League Park.

 

Trosky had a career .302 batting average, with a high of .343 in 1936. He hit 228 career home runs and had 1,012 RBIs. He had 1,561 career hits. His 216 HRs with the Indians ranks him fifth on the team's all-time list.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Mariano Rivera

 

 

The call on January 22, 2019, came from Jack O’Connell of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Everyone surrounding Mariano Rivera at his home in New Rochelle, New York, knew the call was coming. Rivera picked up the phone. As Nathan Macorbiski recounted in Yankees Magazine, “Rivera’s reaction was barely detectable to the naked eye. As a player, he stood on baseball’s grandest stage, performing solo under the most intense pressure possible, and, win or lose, was always in complete control. His demeanor as the phone rang was no different; if his heart were racing, only he and God knew it.” But upon hearing that his selection to the Hall of Fame was unanimous, even the normally stoic Yankee closer let down his guard and broke into the biggest of smiles.

 

Rivera, in 19 major league seasons, became the all-time leader in saves. He recorded 652 in the regular season plus another 42 in postseason action — converting a superior 89% of his save opportunities at both levels of competition. And he did it essentially relying on one pitch.

 

In 1997, he had been promoted to the closer role after being a dominant setup man when the Yankees won the World Series in 1996. On Monday, June 23, 1997, Yankee reliever Ramiro Mendoza halted a pregame catch with Rivera in Detroit out of anxiety, because he had to constantly move his glove to catch practice tosses.

 

When Rivera began warming up in the bullpen that evening, coach Mike Borzello was receiving his tosses. Like Mendoza, he could not anticipate the location of the pitch. He even thought that the ball may have been scuffed, but when he used another ball, the action was the same. That evening, Rivera entered the game in the ninth inning and recorded his 23rd save of the season. Over the coming days and weeks, Rivera worked with pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre and the result was a refinement of the cutting action on the ball. As Rivera wrote in The Closer, “As we tinker, I continue to pitch in games (he saved each of the three games in the Detroit series), and the more I throw this new pitch, the more I begin to get command of it. I am starting to throw it for strikes. And this is how my cut fastball, or cutter, is born. It is as if it dropped straight from the heavens.”

 

Acclaimed Yankee historian Marty Appel added that Rivera’s work was defined by “fielding his position with precision, and calmly walking off after the final out. Hitters knew what to expect, with his (two-seam) fastball setting up his rising cutter, leaving them, lefty or righty, flailing away or making weak contact. He turned games into eight-inning affairs for Yankee opponents.”

 

His effectiveness, dependability, and longevity amply demonstrated Rivera to be one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. He spent his full 19-year career in Yankee pinstripes, always doing his job with businesslike efficiency. He shattered the major league records for games finished (952) as well as total number of regular season and postseason saves. He was named to 13 All-Star teams and was a five-time World Series champion. And not only that, few players would be as respected by opponents as the humble Rivera.

 

Rivera struck out 1,173 opponents during regular season competition. He holds the all-time record for relief appearances by a Yankee with 1,105. He ranks fourth in major-league pitching appearances with 1,115, a record for right-handed pitchers. In seven World Series between 1996 and 2009, Rivera collected 11 saves and sported a 0.99 ERA. He recorded 42 saves in postseason play with an ERA of 0.70—both major league records. His 141 postseason innings are the equivalent of two seasons of work for a reliever. In postseason play, Rivera allowed only two homers, surrendered 21 walks (1.3 per nine innings), of which four were intentional, and struck out 110 batters (7.0 per nine innings).

 

Rivera’s 2.209 ERA at the 1,000-inning threshold ranks him 13th all-time. Of the 12 men ahead of him, only Walter Johnson pitched as recently as 90 years prior to Rivera’s last pitch. He pitched more than one full inning in 199 out of his 652 career saves to rank 11th in career “long saves.” 31 of his 42 postseason saves were long saves, putting him atop the list in this category as well.

 

In 19 seasons, Rivera posted a record 652 saves with a win-loss mark of 82-60. His career ERA of 2.21 ranks No. 1 among all pitchers who started their careers in the Live Ball Era (post 1919), and his 952 games finished also rank first all time.

 

On January 22, 2019, Mariano Rivera was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first appearance on the ballot. Quite in keeping with his peerless career, and as the pitcher who forever defined the role as “closer,” he became the first member of the HOF to be elected unanimously. He received votes on all 425 ballots cast by members of the BBWAA.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Bill Freehan

 

 

Widely regarded as one of the game’s best defensive catchers and the best catcher in the American League during his prime, Bill Freehan was a fierce competitor and a committed leader on the diamond. Described by sportswriter Arnold Hano as “a thinking man’s catcher” and “an elemental ballplayer,” the 6-foot-2, 205-pound Freehan displayed “an unusual blend of brawn and brains.” Freehan is in select company with Charlie Bennett, Mickey Cochrane, Lance Parrish, and Ivan Rodriguez as one of the most popular and talented backstops in Detroit baseball history.

 

Brought up to the Tigers again in 1963 after a brief appearance in 1961, Freehan got on base nine straight times, managing three home runs, one triple, three doubles, two singles, and three walks in 15 plate appearances. Over the remainder of his rookie season, the 21-year-old receiver committed only two errors in 73 games behind the plate, although he hit only .243. “I wanted to hit well,” Freehan said. “I just never put that ahead of my primary responsibility. The catcher has to be the captain of the field. I felt if I did my job behind the plate, I was contributing to the team in the best way I could.” Always a perfectionist, one Tigers front-office man said, “Bill’s biggest trouble is that he thinks he never should have a bad day.”

 

The next year marked Freehan’s arrival as the dominant catcher in the American League. A right-handed hitter who crowded the plate, Freehan became the first Detroit catcher to hit .300 since Mickey Cochrane batted .319 in 1935. At the time of his first all-star selection in 1964, Freehan had caught fewer than 200 major league games, but over the course of the season, the Detroit backstop demonstrated that he deserved to be an all-star. Freehan committed only seven errors in 141 games—catching the final 56 games of the season and logging a stretch of 517 consecutive innings behind the plate—with a .993 fielding percentage, and he belted 18 home runs with 80 RBI. More importantly, during the 1964 campaign, Freehan became the team’s “spiritual leader,” according to writer Jim Sargent. Manager Charlie Dressen noted that even a veteran pitcher like Dave Wickersham was willing to let the young catcher call the game. “He suddenly grew up,” Dressen remarked, “and his pitchers have confidence in him now. So do the other players. Quick-like, the Tigers had a leader.” Arnold Hano noted that Freehan “leads the way sergeants lead, not second lieutenants. He leads by example.” General Manager Jim Campbell said, “We put the full load on Freehan’s shoulders and he didn’t stumble.”

 

Although Freehan caught 129 games in 1965, he was frequently dinged up by injuries. In spring training, Freehan suffered a severe muscle spasm in his lower back while rounding second base, the injury putting him on the bench for three weeks. On May 29, a foul tip off the bat of Cleveland’s Max Alvis injured his throwing hand and, on June 25, a pitch deflected off Minnesota rookie Sandy Valdespino struck Freehan’s bare hand in the exact spot as the foul tip. While he avoided the disabled list, Freehan only hit a meager .234 in both 1965 and 1966. Still primarily known for his defensive prowess and his game-calling skills, Freehan won the first of five consecutive Gold Gloves in 1965 and, on June 15, 1965, he set a record by making 19 putouts in a single game—thanks in large part to Denny McLain’s 15 strikeouts in 6.2 innings of relief work.

 

At the beginning of the 1967 season, Freehan experimented with moving closer to the plate on the advice of new manager Mayo Smith and batting coach Wally Moses, and his hitting improved. Although he was hit by pitches 20 times that year, he hit .282 with 20 home runs and 74 RBI. It was an exceptional season, as Freehan caught 138 games with only six passed balls and eight errors, and he played in 155 games; no other catcher in the majors led his team in games played. Moreover, much to the consternation of Smith and the Tigers, Freehan caught all 15 innings of the 1967 All-Star Game in Anaheim. On September 10, Freehan was hit by a pitch in the third inning of the first game of a doubleheader, spoiling Joel Horlen’s otherwise-perfect game.

 

During the Tigers’ 1968 championship season, Freehan caught 155 regular-season games and all seven World Series games. In the regular season, he set career-high marks with 25 home runs, 73 runs scored, and 84 RBI, and he was hit by pitches 24 times. Bothered that he was hitless in the first five games of the World Series, Freehan shrugged, “You’ve got to understand that you’re facing Bob Gibson in three of those games. That’s not a joy for anybody.” In the first five games of the World Series, the Cardinals tested Freehan’s arm, stealing 11 bases in 16 attempts, but he managed to corral the running game in Games Six and Seven.

 

Freehan’s role in one of the most controversial plays in World Series history is familiar to most Tigers fans. The Cardinals led 3–2 when speedster Lou Brock tried to score from second on Julian Javier’s single to left field. Freehan caught Willie Horton’s perfect one-hop throw and blocked the plate, and Brock, who decided not to slide, was tagged out. “I’ve got to thank [University of Michigan football coach] Bump Elliott if I block the plate well,” Freehan said. Writing about the play, the Los Angeles Herald’s Milton Richman said, “What makes [Freehan] so extraordinary is that he plants his two big feet firmly in the ground, doesn’t bother giving the base runner barreling down on him from third base so much as a sidelong glance and plain refuses to budge even when said base runner hits him at midship like a torpedo. For that he has the respect of ballplayers everywhere. “They know they don’t make catchers like Freehan anymore.” White Sox manager Eddie Stanky added, “On any close play at the plate, it’s like running into a freight train.”

 

Freehan also caught Tim McCarver’s foul popup near the first-base dugout to secure the final out in Game Seven. The sight of Mickey Lolich leaping into Freehan’s arms will always be an iconic image in Detroit baseball lore. “When Lolich jumps on you, well, he’s not a small man,” Freehan said. “But it was a great feeling!” Finishing the World Series 2-for-24 with a double, Freehan observed, “I know I wasn’t very successful in hitting, but I’ve got the same World Series ring as everybody else.” Remarkably, Freehan was the only AL player to finish among the top three in MVP voting in both 1967 and 1968.

 

Freehan made a strong comeback from the surgery in 1971. Under Billy Martin, the Tigers bounced back into second place, and Freehan topped AL catchers with a .277 batting average, 21 home runs, and 71 RBI, while he caught 144 games, more than anyone else in the league. Freehan had the opportunity to start the All-Star Game at Tiger Stadium in place of the injured Ray Fosse, and had a three-homer game in a 12–11 loss to Boston that August 9.

 

He split time at catcher and first base under new manager Ralph Houk. With his poor showing the previous season and with the rise of Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk as the league’s premier catchers, Freehan felt he had to reestablish himself, but only two months into the season, the American League’s all-star catcher for the past 10 years was shifted to first base. In the Tigers’ biggest offensive bonanza of the year, Freehan belted a grand slam and drove in seven runs against the Yankees on September 8, 1974. Although his offensive production improved from the previous year—he hit .297 with 18 home runs and 60 RBI in 1974—Freehan was the cornerstone of a December deal that would have sent him with Mickey Stanley—“remains of a bygone era,” according to Detroit sportswriter Jim Hawkins—to the Philadelphia Phillies for catcher Bob Boone. As Freehan was preparing his family for the move to Philadelphia, the deal was nixed by the Phillies at the last minute.

 

Nevertheless, after the trade failed, Freehan could see the writing on the wall. Going into spring training in 1975, Houk tabbed Freehan as the Tigers’ starting catcher, unless “one of these other guys proves he’s better than Bill is.” At age 34, Freehan caught 113 games, hitting .246 with 14 home runs and 47 RBI, and he returned to the All-Star Game for the eleventh time. But over the winter, the Tigers traded for Milt May, putting Freehan in a reserve role for the first time in his career. May caught only six games before being sidelined for the season with a broken ankle. Freehan, as part of a backstop triumvirate, caught 61 games in 1976 as did Bruce Kimm (John Wockenfuss was behind the plate in 59 contests), and on December 12, 1976, the Tigers gave Freehan his unconditional release.

 

A driven leader and the best catcher in the American League for almost a decade, Freehan was an intelligent and durable backstop who caught more than 100 games for nine consecutive seasons. He won five Gold Gloves, was selected for 11 All-Star teams and played in eight All-Star games, retiring with a .262 lifetime batting average, 758 RBI, and 200 home runs (100 at home and 100 on the road). When he retired, Freehan held the major league career records for most chances (10,714) and putouts (9,941), and highest fielding average for a catcher (.993).

 

[Yankee4Life]

Tony Conigliaro

 

 

No matter how you measure it, Tony Conigliaro’s career got off to a terrific start, but tragedy repeatedly intervened and the great promise of his early years remained unfulfilled.  A local boy made good, Tony was born and raised in the Boston area, signed with the hometown team, and made his major-league debut in 1964 soon after he turned 19 years old. In his very first at-bat at Fenway Park, Tony turned on the very first pitch he saw and pounded it out of the park for a home run. By hitting 24 home runs in his rookie season, he set a record for the most home runs ever hit by a teenager. When he led the league in homers with 32 the following year, he became the youngest player ever to take the home-run crown. When he hit home run number 100, during the first game of a doubleheader on July 23, 1967, he was only 22 – the youngest AL player to reach the 100-homer plateau. He hit number 101 in the day’s second game.

 

Conigliaro’s first major-league game was in Yankee Stadium on April 16. In his first major-league at-bat, against Whitey Ford, he stepped into the box with men on first and second, and grounded into a double play. His third time up, he singled and finished the day 1-for-5. The next day, April 17, was the home opener at Fenway Park. Tony was batting seventh in the order, facing Joe Horlen of the White Sox. He swung at Horlen’s first pitch and hit it over the Green Monster in left field, and even over the net that hung above the Wall. Tony Conigliaro, wearing number 25, took his first home-run trot. Tony told writers afterward that he always swung at the first good pitch he saw. “I don’t like to give the pitcher any kind of edge,” he said.

 

In that same spirit, Conigliaro crowded the plate. And pitchers, quite naturally, tried to back him off the plate. He was often hit by pitches, and suffered his first injury on May 24 when Kansas City’s Moe Drabowsky hit him in the left wrist, causing a hairline fracture. Fortunately, Tony missed only four games.

 

Back in the lineup, back pounding out homers, Tony hit number 20 in the first game of a July 26 doubleheader against Cleveland. In the second game, he got hit for the fifth time in the season, by Pedro Ramos. It broke his arm. This time he missed a month, out until September 4. Conigliaro finished the season with 24 homers and a .290 average.

 

In 1965, under manager Billy Herman, Tony played in 138 games and hit 32 more homers, enough to lead the league, though his average dipped to .269. During the June free-agent draft, there was more good news for the Conigliaro family: The Red Sox used their first pick to select Tony’s younger brother, Billy. Tony was struck yet again by a ball on July 28, when a Wes Stock pitch broke his left wrist. It was the third broken bone Tony had suffered in just over 14 months. He simply refused to back off the plate. Orioles executive Frank Lane intimated that Red Sox pitchers could defend Tony a bit better by retaliating.

 

Suffering no serious injuries in 1966, Tony got in a very full season, seeing action in 150 games. He banged out 28 homers and drove in 93 runs, leading the league in sacrifice flies with seven. His average was .265 and the Boston writers voted him Red Sox MVP. The Red Sox as a team, though, played poorly in these years. In 1966 they were spared the ignominy of last place only because the Yankees played even worse. Boston ended the year in ninth place, 26 games out of first, and the Yankees ended in tenth, 26½ games behind the Orioles. In his first three years in the majors, the highest that one of Tony’s teams finished was eighth place in 1964.

 

The Red Sox surprised everyone with their play in 1967. Conigliaro contributed as well. One game that stood out was an extra-inning affair at Fenway on June 15. Boston was hosting the White Sox and the game was scoreless for 10 full innings. Chicago took a 1-0 lead in the top of the 11th, but Joe Foy singled and then Conigliaro hit a two-run homer off John Buzhardt for a walkoff win. The win moved the Red Sox up by percentage points to put them in a tie for third place, just four games out of first, and the next day’s Boston Globe referred to the “Impossible Dream” season the Red Sox team was having for itself.

 

It was on July 23 that Tony hit the 100th and 101st home runs of his major-league career. The Red Sox were just a half-game out of first place. It was a tight race, with Boston hanging just out of first, but never quite making it to the top. As late as August 14, the Red Sox were in fifth place – but only three games out.

 

On the 17th, Tony’s partner in the music business, Ed Penney, was visiting his sons at the Ted Williams Baseball Camp in Lakeville, Massachusetts. Ted warned Penney, “Tell Tony that he’s crowding the plate. Tell him to back off.” He said, “It’s getting too serious now with the Red Sox.” Penney remembered, “I told him I would. I’d see him the next night. When we were walking across the field to get the kids, and Ted was going up to the stands to make some kind of talk, he turned around and yelled over to me and said, ‘Don’t forget what I told you to tell Tony. Back off, because they’ll be throwing at him.’”  Penney did tell Tony, before the game the very next night. Tony was in a slump at the time, and told his brother Billy he couldn’t back off the plate or pitchers wouldn’t take him seriously. If anything, he was going to dig in a little closer.

 

The Red Sox were facing the California Angels the next day – August 18 – and Jack Hamilton’s fourth-inning fastball came in and struck Tony in the face, just missing his temple but hitting him in the left eye and cheekbone. Tony later wrote that he jerked his head back “so hard that my helmet flipped off just before impact.” He never lost consciousness, but as he lay on the ground, David Cataneo wrote, Tony prayed, “God, please, please don’t let me die right here in the dirt at home plate at Fenway Park.” Tony was fortunate to escape with his life, but his season – and quite possibly his career – was over. Conigliaro had been very badly injured.

 

There was concern that Conigliaro might lose the sight in his left eye. He tried to come back in spring training, but there was just no way. His vision was inadequate, and his doctor told him, “I don’t want to be cruel, and there’s no way of telling you this in a nice way, but it’s not safe for you to play ball anymore.” Tony C wouldn’t quit, though, and against all odds, his vision slowly began to improve. By late May he was told he could begin to work out again. Tony also learned new ways to see the ball. When he looked straight on at the pitcher, he couldn’t see the ball, but he learned to use his peripheral vision to pick up the ball and was able to see well enough by looking a couple of inches to the left.

 

Not only did Tony make the team in 1969, but he broke back in with a bang, hitting a two-run homer in the top of the 10th on Opening Day in Baltimore, on April 8. The O’s retied the game, but Tony led off in the 12th and worked a walk, eventually coming home to score on Dalton Jones’s sacrifice fly to right. Tony delivered the game-winning hit in the fourth inning of the home opener at Fenway Park on April 14, though admittedly it wasn’t much of a hit. He came up with the bases loaded and wanted to break the game open. Instead, he sent a slow dribbler toward Brooks Robinson at third, and beat it out as Ray Culp scored from third. Tony C was back.

 

The 1970 season was Conigliaro’s best at the plate, with 36 homers and 116 RBIs. He also scored a career-high 89 runs. Brother Billy had made the Red Sox, too, in 1969, getting himself 80 at-bats and acquitting himself well. Billy became a regular in 1970, appearing in 114 games and batting .271. Add his 18 homers to Tony’s 36, and the resulting total of 54 set a record for the most home runs by two brothers on the same major-league club. On July 4 and September 19, they each homered in the same game.

 

In October the Red Sox traded Tony. Stats aside, they knew that Conigliaro was playing on guts and native talent, but may have sensed that his vision was still questionable. His trade value was as high as it likely ever would be. Not even waiting for Baltimore and Cincinnati to finish the World Series, they packaged Conigliaro with Ray Jarvis and Jerry Moses and swapped him to the California Angels for Ken Tatum, Jarvis Tatum, and Doug Griffin. Even years later, Red Sox executives neither explained nor took credit (or responsibility) for the trade. The news stunned the baseball world – and Red Sox fans in particular.

 

When he heard the news that Tony had left the Angels, Billy Conigliaro exploded in the Red Sox clubhouse, telling reporters that the reason for the trade to California in the first place had been Carl Yastrzemski, that Yaz had all the influence on the ballclub. “Tony was traded because of one guy – over there,” he charged, indicating Yastrzemski. Yaz “got rid of Pesky, Ken Harrelson, and Tony. I know I’m next. Yaz and Reggie [Smith] are being babied, and the club better do something about it.”

 

Billy was part of a major 10-player trade with Milwaukee, but the trade was not made until October. Billy never rejoined the Red Sox. Tony did, but it took a while.

 

The Angels granted Tony his outright release in November 1974. The Red Sox offered him a contract with the Pawtucket Red Sox, which he signed on March 5, 1975. Tony took up the challenge, and he had an exceptional spring. On April 4 he got word that he had made the big-league team. Opening Day 1975 was four days later, at Fenway Park on April 8, and Tony was the designated hitter, batting cleanup. With two outs and Yaz on first, Tony singled and Yaz took third. The crowd gave Tony C a three-minute standing ovation. Perhaps Milwaukee pitcher Jim Slaton and his batterymate, Darrell Porter, were caught a little off-guard; the Red Sox scored a run when Tony and Yaz pulled off a double steal.

 

Tony’s first home run came three days later, off Mike Cuellar in Baltimore. With a first-inning single the following day, he drove in another run, but his .200 average after the April 12 game was the highest he posted for the rest of the season. He appeared only in 21 games, for 57 at-bats, and was batting just .123 after the game on June 12. He was hampered by a couple of injuries; it just wasn’t working out. The Red Sox needed to make room on the 25-man roster for newly acquired infielder Denny Doyle and they asked Tony to go to Pawtucket. After thinking it over for a week, he agreed to and reported, traveling with the PawSox, but getting only sporadic playing time. Manager Joe Morgan said, “He had lost those real good reflexes,” and teammate Buddy Hunter told David Cataneo, “Any guy who threw real hard, he had trouble with.” Hunter added, “He was dropping easy fly balls in the outfield.” In August Tony Conigliaro finally called it a day, and retired once again, this time for good. “My body is falling apart,” he explained.

 

Conigliaro batted .267, with 162 home runs and 501 RBI during his 802-game Red Sox career. With the Angels, he hit .222 with 4 home runs and 15 RBI in 74 games. He holds the MLB record for most home runs (24) hit by a teenage player. He is the second-youngest player to hit his 100th homer (after Mel Ott), and the youngest American League player to do so.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Carl Erskine

 

 

Romeo had Juliet, Anthony had Cleopatra, and the borough of Brooklyn had their Dodgers. Theirs was a love affair that included the likes of Duke, Campy, Pee Wee, Newk and Jackie. But the name of only one of the Boys of Summer was translated into Brooklynese. The 5’10”, 165-pound right hander, with the large number 17 inscribed on his arch back was born Carl Daniel Erskine. But between the years of 1948 and 1959, he was simply known as “Oisk.”

 

Carl Erskine would become known for his big overhand curve during his playing career. His father Matt would first teach him how to throw one. The elder’s curve was the “old fashion barnyard” variety, different from the one “Oisk” employed while pitching in the National League. His father threw his side arm, which would cause it to break flat, or with no break at all, just sideways.

 

“Oisk” reached the big leagues in 1948, the year after the color barrier was broken. While on the Dodgers, he would be one of the first Caucasians to have African-American teammates. Although the Dodger organization was applauded for knocking down the door, Carl had been introduced to racial integration long before the major leagues integrated.

 

Carl made his first start August 5, 1948. After one pitch Erskine felt a sharp, hot stab in the back of his shoulder. At the time he did not realize it, but he had pulled a muscle. It was an injury that would haunt him for the rest of his career. In the game, Gene Hermanski hit three successive home runs to offset six Brooklyn errors, as the Dodgers would go on to beat the Cubs by a score of 6-4. The win would move the Dodgers into second place and earn the young pitcher his third win.

 

When he went to spring training in 1949, he could hardly throw. The Dodgers sent him packing to Fort Worth. During those days, it was not a rehab assignment. A player was sent down because of his poor performance. Management in those days did not coddle players, especially pitchers. Erskine explained his determination and reasoning. “In all fairness, I didn’t say much at the time. It was so competitive in those days. The Dodgers had 26 farm teams and almost 800 players were under contract. They had an army of young arms throwing down in their farm system. If you faltered, it was potentially career threatening. They would ship you off to the minor leagues like they did to me for the first couple of years.”

 

Carl spent his career pitching with this injury, with the pain a constant presence. As he explained, the game was pretty simple to understand during those years, “When they gave you the ball, you pitched. You had to be productive or you didn’t stay. That’s the way it was for everybody.” He confessed that he never wanted to be known as a sore arm pitcher.

 

Carl started and finished a season with the Brooklyn Dodgers for the first time in 1951. His record was 16-12. Carl pitched a two-hitter against the Braves on June 17. The Dodgers swept the Giants in a double-header August 8, taking the first game with the help of solid relief work by Erskine. The sweep gave the Dodgers an 11-1/2 game lead, the greatest lead in Brooklyn’s history. A week later on August 17 Carl pitched a three-hitter against the Braves. Behind the 16th victory of Erskine on September 20, Brooklyn’s magic number was reduced to five games.

 

After that, however, the Giants came back to force the Dodgers to a best-of-three playoff. The playoff series ended with one of the greatest walk-off homers in the history of the game — “the shot heard around the world!” The story is cemented into the annals of the game, but Carl’s non-participation was important in the outcome of baseball history. Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns recount in their book, Baseball — An Illustrated History, “The score was still 4-2, Dodgers, but two Giants were on base and as the injured [Don] Mueller was being carried from the field and Clint Hartung trotted out to take his place on third, Dodger manager Charlie Dressen considered who might the best replacement for the battered Newcombe. Carl Erskine and Ralph Branca had both been warming up in the bullpen. But Erskine wasn’t having his best breaking ball that afternoon. So it fell to Branca to save the day and the pennant for Brooklyn.”

 

When Dressen called down to the bullpen, Sukeforth’s exact words that influenced the Dodger manager’s choice were, “They’re both ready . . . however Erskine is bouncing his overhand curve.” The next was the beginning to a moment that has been engrained into the historical annals of baseball history. Ralph Branca walked to the mound at the Polo Grounds and served up Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard around the world!” The timeless, screaming words of Russ Hodges echoed through millions of radios. “The Giants win he pennant, the Giants win the pennant!”

 

Whenever Carl is asked what his best pitch was, he always replies, “The curveball I bounced in the Polo Grounds bullpen in 1951.”

 

The 1956 season represented Carl’s last solid season with the Dodgers. Erskine finished the season at 13-11 as the Dodgers barely beat out the Braves by one game and lost to their yearly nemesis, the Yankees, 4 games to 3.

 

Carl’s career was slowly winding down and the next year would be the last year that the Dodgers would play at Ebbets Field. In 1958, they would join the New York Giants on a pilgrimage to the West Coast. Carl spent one and one half years in California. He was the starting pitcher in the first major league game played in Los Angeles before nearly 80,000 fans and got credit for the win.

 

Erskine would retire during the 1959 season. He would finish with a 122-78 record, throw 14 career shutouts and appear in eleven games during five World Series.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Bing Miller

 

 

Bing Miller had two stints playing for Connie Mack as a member of the Philadelphia Athletics and made the most out of it each time.

 

In 1922, his second major league season but at the age of 27, he hit what would prove to be a career-high 21 homeruns (fourth in the American League) and slugged at a .551 clip. He finished fifth in the batting race (.335), sixth in total bases, and fifteenth overall in the Most Valuable Player voting.

 

Despite his prowess at the plate, manager Connie Mack had a surfeit of talent in the outfield, and beginning in 1924 Miller occasionally saw time at first base. By 1926, coming off batting averages of .342 and .319, he was expendable. In June, the Athletics traded Miller to the St. Louis Browns for Baby Doll Jacobson. The change of scenery evidently reinvigorated Miller’s bat, as he hit .331 for the rest of the 1926 season, and followed that with a .325 average in 1927. The Browns, being the Browns, were always on the prowl for a better deal…something…anything…that might improve their league standing. In December 1927, Connie Mack rescued Miller from oblivion by sending Dolly Gray to the Browns in a straight-up trade.

 

Miller played the 1928 season as a senior citizen, a 33-year old rightfielder who still hit well enough to finish sixth in the AL batting race with a .329 average. In a category of more dubious distinction, he led the loop in being hit by pitches, getting plunked eight times over the course of the schedule. The team finished in second place that year, though, presaging the championship efforts of the next three seasons.

 

The Philadelphia Athletics dominated the American League in 1929, and Miller was a significant contributor to that success. He logged a career-high in base hits (184, including 16 triples) on the way to hitting .331, and stole 24 bases over the regular season. He also posted a 28-game hitting streak, and topped that by hitting .368 in the World Series against Cubs that year in buttressing a 4-1 Athletic victory.

 

On October 14, at the end of Game 5 at Shibe Park in front of President and Mrs. Herbert Hoover, Bing Miller snatched a small but permanent spot in the lore of the game. The Cubs’ Pat Malone had held the Athletics scoreless through eight and one third innings of a masterful pitching performance, and the game was just over an hour-and-a-half long at the start of the ninth. The Cubs led the game 2-0, but Philadelphia nosed its way back to a tie with a Max Bishop single and Mule Haas homerun. Malone maintained his composure, and enticed Mickey Cochrane to hit a ground ball for the second out. Sadly, though, the tragic mythology of the Cubs is built on real heartbreak. An Al Simmons double and an intentional pass to Jimmie Foxx brought Bing to the plate with the series on the line. Miller promptly smacked a double off the score board, and the Athletics took the game 3-2 and the Series 4-1.

 

Following the stunning conclusion of the 1929 season, in early 1930, Miller married Helen Fetrow of Philadelphia. Marriage appears to have agreed with him, at least on the diamond, as the Athletics followed up with another world championship. During that 1930 season Miller led the team in games played, at-bats, and steals, and drove in 100 runs, the only 100-RBI year in his career. The team earned a third consecutive American League pennant in 1931, and nearly claimed a third straight World Series, falling to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. This marked the end of the glory days in Philadelphia, though, and by 1932 Connie Mack began changing the Athletics roster.

 

Back in Philadelphia, young Doc Cramer, a rising talent in the outfield, forced Miller to take up the art of pinch-hitting. After 1932, Miller never had more than 197 plate appearances in a single season. [3] He was also, in 1933, the eighth oldest player in the league. In a sport for boys, Miller’s days were dwindling. He could still hit, though, and became one of the most oft-used pinch hitters in the league. In 1934, Bing had traded his jersey number “9” for a “27,” thus cementing his “bench status,” but he was still considered talented enough to be included on a roster of major leaguers barnstorming through Japan.

 

On January 14, 1935, Miller was sold to the Boston Red Sox, and he led the loop in pinch hits with 13 that season. In 1936, Bing Miller was the oldest player in the majors (age 41), and appeared in only 30 games over the entire year. He played in his last big-league game on September 5, and on September 28 the Red Sox named him to replace Al Schacht as a coach. Miller remained in Boston through the 1938 season, then coached for the Tigers between 1939 and 1941.

 

Miller’s contributions to the game extended beyond the foul lines. Over the winter of 1930, a young Iowa pitcher from the nearby hamlet of Norway came by for a visit, searching for some guidance as he pondered his own baseball future. Miller had heard of the boy, Harold Trojovosky, and of his talents on the mound and in the batter’s box. Eastern Iowa, in the days before mass communication, was a neighborhood unto itself, and once young Hal came under the scrutiny of the St. Louis Cardinals, Miller wasted no time in telling the young man to wait a bit until Connie Mack could weigh in. It was Bing Miller’s interest that convinced Hal Trosky that he should seriously consider professional baseball, and on the drive home that afternoon, Trosky decided to give the game a chance.

 

Sadly for the Athletics, it took three days for Connie Mack to send a contract to Trosky. By that time (and knowing that other teams were interested), Cy Slapnicka had signed Hal for the Indians. Hal returned Mack’s contract with a note of sincere gratitude. It is interesting to consider how the fates of both player and franchises might have turned had the mail been faster.

 

Bing Miller never lost his love for baseball. He was a lifetime .311 batter, and hit over .300 eight times. He earned two World Series rings with the Athletics, played in a third, and coached in one with the Tigers in 1940. It was part of a lifetime of memories.

 

 

  

[Yankee4Life]

Elmer Valo

 

 

 

 

Elmer William Valo was born in Czechoslovakia but lived the American dream during nearly sixty years in professional baseball. He insisted he was not a “natural athlete,” saying, “Being a baseball player is not a glamorous job, it’s hard work.” In twenty years as a major league player, he reached base as often as Joe DiMaggio.

 

As teammate Eddie Joost noted, Valo was a complete player who always put out 100 percent and was well liked. Though not a graceful outfielder, he used his sprinter’s speed, superior leaping ability, and sheer determination to make up for any deficiencies. He served as a player representative and goodwill ambassador for the Philadelphia Athletics, and had a lifelong commitment to youth sports as a baseball instructor at clinics and a basketball referee.

 

Al Simmons reportedly said of him, “There is a guy who should never hit less than .340. He has the timing, the coordination and the strength. If he could only learn to relax a little, he’d be great.

 

How Valo came to sign with the A’s while he was a junior in high school was reported by John L. Faust in a 1983 article in the Lehighton Times News. According to Faust, Elmer developed blisters on his feet in a touch football game and decided to caddy at a local golf course. Paulsen took off after Elmer, bought him a larger pair of spikes and drove him to the game. After a few more looks, Elmer was signed to an agreement to play after graduation in 1939. No money changed hands. He joined the Federalsburg, Maryland, team of the Class D Eastern Shore League. In his abbreviated season he hit .374 and helped the team win the championship.

 

It has been said that Valo had one at-bat as an 18-year-old for the Philadelphia A’s in the last game of the 1939 season, which would have made him a four-decade player. Red Smith, a sports writer with the the Philadelphia Record at the time, later wrote that this at-bat was expunged from the official record, supposedly because Valo was not on the active roster and Connie Mack would have incurred a stiff fine. Smith related the story in 1975 as if Valo were jogging his (Smith’s) memory about it. Smith had been the official scorer. When asked about the article years later, Valo politely refused to comment.

 

Valo rejoined the Athletics after the was in April, 1946. He played sparingly and was batting .083 at the end of the month as the team got off to a horrible 2-10 start. By June he began to hit the ball hard, getting four hits in a 10-4 win over Cleveland to help break a nine-game losing streak. Two days later his game-winning double beat the Indians again, 3-2. The Sporting News reported that he had been working hard on his fielding. He began to gain a reputation as a courageous outfielder. In Baseball’s Pivotal Era, author William Marshall tells how “Elmer robbed Ted Williams of a home run, crashing so hard into the fence he had to be carried off the field.” Valo finished at .307, the first of three consecutive seasons batting .300 or better, but the A’s 49-105 record was the same as 1943.

 

In 1947 the Athletics were the surprise team of the AL. By mid-June they were only seven games behind the Yankees. Valo missed three weeks after a beaning by Sid Hudson. On September 3, his first day back, he ran up the scoreboard in Shibe Park to make a brilliant catch of what seemed a certain extra-base hit by Mickey Vernon. The play preserved a 3-0, no-hit, no-walk game by Bill McCahan. Ferris Fain committed an error in the first inning of the otherwise perfect game. Valo was also the offensive hero with a two-run double. He batted .300 and the A’s finished over .500 for the first time in 14 years.

 

The A’s continued to surprise in 1948. The 35 days they spent in first place must have seemed like heaven to the perennial doormats’ fans. Valo hit .305 and provided superb defense. On May 15th before a then-record Saturday crowd at Yankee Stadium of 69,416 he went high up against the right field wall to make two improbable catches and then a third, leaping over the wall in the eighth inning to rob Yogi Berra of a home run and falling back to the field unconscious.

 

Trade rumors in 1951 had Valo and a pitcher going to the White Sox for slugger Gus Zernial. The A’s got Zernial for two other players, but not Valo. Despite the urgings of new manager Jimmy Dykes, the A’s were in last place on June 15. They then beat the White Sox, who had won 12 straight road games, in the eleventh inning of the opener of a doubleheader. Valo walked with two outs and scored on Zernial’s double to left-center field. Valo would have been out by 15 feet, but he bowled over catcher Gus Niarhos and knocked him unconscious, dislodging the ball. A bench-clearing brawl followed, and Valo and Chicago pitcher Saul Rogovin were ejected for fighting. Valo was injured and was suspended as well.

 

The Athletics’ move to Kansas City in 1955 was the first of three franchise shifts in Valo’s career. Even after the change of scenery, most sportswriters picked the club for last place. Manager Lou Boudreau announced he would platoon Valo in left field with Gus Zernial. After two years spent mostly on the bench and the disabled list, the 34-year-old Valo rebounded to put up the best numbers of his career: a .364 average and .460 on-base percentage in 338 plate appearances. As a pinch hitter he batted .452 with 14 hits in 31 at bats. He received five votes in the AL Most Valuable Player balloting as the Athletics rose to sixth place.

 

He moved with the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. As the club fell to seventh place in its new home, Valo hit .248 as a part-timer. After the season, he was assigned to Montreal but asked for and received his release. After 17 years in the majors, Elmer received no interest from major league teams and signed with the Seattle Rainiers as a player-coach in 1959. He became a hustling fan favorite there and big league clubs took notice. Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich wrote, “Who else but Elmer Valo is leading the Pacific Coast League in hitting at .340?” In August, the Cleveland Indians, still in the pennant race, purchased Valo’s contract. He hit .292 in 34 at bats, but the Indians finished third.

 

In October of 1961 he announced his retirement from baseball. In his twenty year big league career he hit .282, with 58 home runs, and 601 runs batted in.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Hoyt Wilhelm

 

 

There was nothing conventional about Hoyt Wilhelm's path to the Hall of Fame.

 

He spent most of his big league career coming out of the bullpen, becoming the first reliever ever enshrined. He didn't make his major league debut until he was 29 years old, then pitched until he was nearly 50. And his arsenal featured not overpowering fastballs or knee-bending curveballs, but instead relied almost exclusively on a darting, unpredictable knuckleball.

 

"I got to messing with the (knuckleball) in high school," Wilhelm said. "I started to see that the ball was doing something. I figured it was my only ticket to the big leagues, 'cause I couldn’t throw hard, and I knew if I was going to play ball, I'd have to make it some other way."

 

Wilhelm's big league career nearly ended before it began. While serving in the Army during World War II, shrapnel from a German artillery blast struck Wilhelm in the back and right hand. He received the Purple Heart for his actions, and he would pitch his entire career with that piece of metal still lodged in his back.

 

Wilhelm spent seven seasons in the minors before getting to the big leagues with the New York Giants in 1952. He'd been a starter throughout his minor league career, but Giants manager Leo Durocher moved him to the bullpen. As a rookie, Wilhelm went 15-3 with a league-high 71 appearances and an NL-low 2.43 ERA.

 

After helping the Giants win the 1954 World Series title, Wilhelm bounced to the Cardinals, Indians and then the Orioles. In Baltimore, manager Paul Richards gave Wilhelm the chance to be a starter again. In just his third start, Wilhelm threw a no-hitter against the Yankees on Sept. 20, striking out eight. He remained in the Orioles rotation in 1959 and won the AL's ERA title with a 2.19 mark before moving back to the bullpen the following season.

 

Richards helped increase Wilhelm's success by devising a larger catcher's mitt that was 41 inches in circumference – later reduced to 38 by rule – for Wilhelm's receivers to use, cutting down the passed balls that plagued him and so many other knuckleballers.

 

Wilhelm settled in as the premier relief pitcher in an era dominated by pitching. From 1964-68 with the Chicago White Sox, Wilhelm went 41-33 with 99 saves and a 1.92 ERA in 361 games – all coming after his 40th birthday. While some marveled at Wilhelm's longevity – he was the big league's oldest player from 1966 through the end of his career in 1972 – he himself was quite pragmatic about it. He took care of himself, and he recognized that the knuckleball wasn't as taxing on his arm as conventional pitches would be.

 

"He had the best knuckleball you'd ever want to see," Brooks Robinson said. "He knew where it was going when he threw it, but when he got two strikes on you, he'd break out one that even he didn't know where it was going."

 

An eight-time All-Star, Wilhelm finished his career with a record of 143-122, 228 saves and a 2.52 ERA in 1,070 games.

 

[marty65]

Hey Y4L 

I love these bios. 
As an Aussie, I didn’t get to marvel and enjoy a lot  of baseball’s amazing history and the great players that enriched it. I’d obviously heard of the BIG BIG names like Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio etc but these player profiles/bios are giving me a very real picture of baseball’s timelines and the stories and cultures that accompanied each “generation” of this wonderful game. 
 

Thanks again mate 

Very much appreciated

 

[Yankee4Life]

Hello Marty,
                        I am sorry I did to see this post before now. I started this thread back in 2005 and I have learned something about each player that I have featured in here even if I had heard of them or not.

 

                        It’s funny you should mention the profiles of players like Dimaggio or Gehrig for example. While most of us know a lot about these guys there is always going to be something that you end up learning about them and some of these under the radar players in here are down right fascinating. (Check out the Howard Ehmke profile on page eight.)

 

                       In this same section of the forum I have a list of the players that have been already done so if you want me to do one please take a look at that list and if their name is not there please let me know.

[Yankee4Life]

Eddie Cicotte

 

 

Though he didn’t invent the pitch, Eddie “Knuckles” Cicotte was perhaps the first major-league pitcher to master the knuckleball. According to one description, Cicotte gripped the knuckler by holding the ball “on the three fingers of a closed hand, with his thumb and forefinger to guide it, throwing it with an overhand motion, and sending it from his hand as one would snap a whip. The ball acts like a ‘spitter,’ but is a new-fangled thing.”

 

Cicotte once estimated that 75 percent of the pitches he threw were knuckleballs. The rest of the time the right-hander relied on a fadeaway, slider, screwball, spitter, emery ball, shine ball, and a pitch he called the “sailor,” a rising fastball that “would sail much in the same manner of a flat stone thrown by a small boy.” Whether he was sailing or sinking the ball, shining it or darkening it, the 5-foot-9, 175-pound Cicotte had more pitches than a traveling salesman. “Perhaps no pitcher in the world has such a varied assortment of wares in his repertory as Cicotte,” The Sporting News observed in 1918. “He throws with effect practically every kind of ball known to pitching science.”

 

But the most famous pitch Cicotte ever threw was the one that nailed Cincinnati Reds leadoff man Morrie Rath squarely in the back to lead off the 1919 World Series, a pitch that signaled to the gamblers that the fix was on. After confessing to his role in the scandal one year later, Cicotte was banned from the game for life, a punishment that perhaps denied the 209-game-winner a spot in the Hall of Fame.

 

Cicotte began his baseball career, according to some sources, as early as 1903, playing semipro ball in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In 1904 he pitched for Calumet (Michigan) and Sault Ste. Marie (Ontario) in the Northern Copper League, posting a record of 38-4 with 11 shutouts.5 Based on that dominating performance, Cicotte earned a tryout with the Detroit Tigers in the spring of 1905. The Tigers determined that he wasn’t ready for the majors, and optioned him to Augusta (Georgia) of the South Atlantic League, where he compiled a record of 15 wins against 9 losses, and brawled with his young teammate Ty Cobb after a Cobb stunt cost Cicotte a shutout. As a joke Cobb had taken popcorn with him to his position in center field and as a result committed an error that led to a run. This incident notwithstanding, among his teammates Cicotte was known as an easygoing prankster who enjoyed a good laugh.

 

Near the end of the season Detroit brought Cicotte up and he made his major-league debut on September 3, 1905, allowing one run in relief and getting tagged with the loss in a 10-inning game. Two days later Cicotte earned his first major-league win, a complete-game victory over the Chicago White Sox. He finished the year 1-1 with a 3.50 ERA, but would not return to the major leagues for another three seasons.

 

The Boston Red Sox purchased Cicotte’s contract for $2,500 at the end of the 1907 season. During his five-year stint with the Red Sox, Cicotte lost nearly as many games as he won, and frequently found himself in trouble with Red Sox owner John I. Taylor, who accused the pitcher of underachieving. After Cicotte started the 1912 season with a 1-3 record and a 5.67 ERA in six starts, the Red Sox, though no longer owned by Taylor, had finally seen enough. On July 22 the team sold Cicotte’s contract to the Chicago White Sox, where the 28-year-old right-hander began to mature into one of the game’s best pitchers. With Boston, Cicotte had won 52 games and lost 46. Over the next 8½ seasons with the White Sox, he won 156 games against 101 losses.

 

The biggest reason for this improvement was Cicotte’s gradual mastery of his expansive pitching repertoire. As his command over his knuckleball improved, Cicotte’s walk rate dramatically decreased; from 1912 to 1920 he ranked among the league’s 10 best in fewest walks per nine innings seven times, leading the league in 1918 and 1919, when he walked 89 in 572⅔ innings.

 

Cicotte also fully exploited the era’s liberal regulations regarding the doctoring of the ball. In this area, his most infamous pitch was the shine ball, in which he rubbed one side of the ball against the pocket of his right trouser leg, which had been filled with talcum powder.

 

Flustered opponents protested to American League President Ban Johnson that the pitch should be outlawed, but Johnson ruled the pitch legal in 1917, and it would remain so until February 1920. Thanks to the knuckleball, the shine ball, the emery ball (ruled illegal by Johnson in early 1915), and other trick pitches, Cicotte struck out a fair number of batters, placing in the top 10 in strikeouts per nine innings three times, even though his fastball probably couldn’t break a plane of glass. Asked to explain his success, Cicotte chalked it up to “head work,” adding, “It involves an ability to adapt pitching to certain conditions when they arise and perhaps use altogether different methods in the very next inning.”

 

In 1917 the White Sox captured their first pennant since 1906. Cicotte led the way, ranking first in the league in wins (28), ERA (1.53), and innings pitched (346⅔). Eddie also tossed seven shutouts, including a no-hitter against the St. Louis Browns on April 14, the first of six no-hitters pitched in the major leagues that season. In that year’s World Series, Cicotte contributed one win to Chicago’s six-game triumph over the New York Giants. He was, according to Grantland Rice, “the most feared pitcher of the series.”

 

After Cicotte’s breakthrough season, Comiskey offered his star pitcher a $5,000 contract, with a $2,000 signing bonus, making him one of the highest compensated pitchers in baseball. But Cicotte failed to produce an encore suitable to his dominant 1917 campaign, as he wrenched his ankle in early May, and limped his way through the season to a mediocre 2.77 ERA and 19 losses, tied for the most in the league. It was not a performance to inspire Comiskey to hand out a raise, and when the 1919 season began, financial troubles were weighing heavily on Cicotte. According to the 1920 Census, Cicotte was the head of household for a family of 12, including his wife, Rose; their three children; his wife’s parents; Eddie’s brother and wife; and a brother-in-law and his wife and child. To make room for his large family, Cicotte took out a $4,000 mortgage on a Michigan farm.

 

Cicotte regained his 1917 form, pitching the White Sox to their second pennant in three years. Once again, Eddie led the American League in victories (29) and innings pitched (306⅔, tied with Jim Shaw). His 29-7 record was good enough to lead the league in winning percentage (.806), and his 1.82 ERA ranked second. In early September, first baseman Chick Gandil and infielder Fred McMullin approached Cicotte about throwing the World Series. After thinking it over, Eddie agreed to the scheme, telling Gandil privately, “I would not do anything like that for less than $10,000.” Three days before the Series began, Cicotte demanded to have the money in hand before the team left for Cincinnati. That night, he found $10,000 under his pillow.

 

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Cicotte’s abysmal performance in the 1919 World Series was not a complete surprise to informed observers. Throughout September, reports surfaced that the overworked Cicotte was suffering from a sore shoulder. Prior to the first game of the Series, Christy Mathewson noted, Cicotte “has had less than a week [actually two days] to rest up for his first start. … And that may not prove to be enough. If he blows up for a single inning it may cost the White Sox the championship, for I think the first battle is going to have a very strong bearing on the outcome, especially if the Reds win it.”

 

With at least six of his other teammates in on the fix, Cicotte led the way in blowing the first game, surrendering seven hits and six runs in 3⅔ innings of work, and fueling Cincinnati’s winning rally by throwing slowly to second base on what should have been an inning-ending double-play ball. The performance was so bad that it generated renewed speculation that Cicotte was suffering from a “dead arm.”

 

Though Eddie had received his $10,000 before the start of the Series, many of his fellow conspirators had not received the money promised them by the gamblers, so before Cicotte’s third start, in Game Seven of the best-of-nine Series, the players decided to play the game to win. Accordingly, Cicotte put forth his best effort of the Series, allowing just one run on seven hits in a 4-1 Chicago victory. Lefty Williams threw the following game, however, giving Cincinnati the world championship. In the wake of Chicago’s defeat, Mathewson publicly tossed aside rumors that the Series had been fixed.

 

Despite the persistent rumors that swirled around the club that offseason, Cicotte re-signed with Chicago for 1920, and put forth another excellent season, posting a 21-10 record with a 3.26 ERA. That summer Babe Ruth electrified the sport with his 54 home runs for the New York Yankees, but Cicotte grabbed a few headlines of his own after he stymied Ruth in several encounters. Asked to explain his success, the crafty Cicotte allowed that he mixed up his pitches and relied heavily on the spitball, because the pitch was “hard to hit for a long clout.”

 

On September 27, 1920, the Philadelphia North American ran a story in which Billy Maharg, one of the gamblers in on the Series fix the previous fall, testified to his role in the affair, and specifically named Cicotte as the man who initiated the plot. The next day, Eddie met with White Sox counsel Alfred Austrian and admitted to his role in the scandal. He also implicated seven of his teammates. Afterward, he went to the Cook County Courthouse and repeated his story for a grand jury charged with investigating corruption in baseball. The grand jury responded to Cicotte’s testimony by indicting all eight of the “Black Sox” players for throwing the 1919 World Series.

 

Though he and the other seven accused players were acquitted of conspiracy charges the following year, Eddie Cicotte’s major-league baseball career ended with his confession. For the next three years he played with several of his banned teammates for outlaw teams in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but by 1924 Cicotte had moved on with his life. He worked as a Michigan game warden and managed a service station before finding a job with the Ford Motor Company, where he remained until his retirement in 1944.

 

In an interview with Detroit sportswriter Joe Falls in 1965 he said he lived his life quietly, answering letters from youngsters who sometimes asked about the scandal. He agreed that he had made mistakes, but insisted that he had tried to make up for it by living as clean a life as he could. “I admit I did wrong,” he said, “but I’ve paid for it the past 45 years.” Falls seemed to agree, noting that as he prepared to leave Cicotte’s home, he looked at Eddie’s socks. They were white.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Grover Cleveland Alexander

 

 

Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander broke into the big leagues with a flourish in 1911 with the Philadelphia Phillies, setting a rookie record with 28 wins.

 

And Alexander was just getting started. During his 20 seasons in the big leagues, Alexander would become one of the most successful pitchers the game has ever seen.

 

Using a wide variety of breaking pitches, deceptive speed and pinpoint control, Alexander soon found himself being compared to the top pitchers of his era. He averaged 27 wins per season during his seven years in Philadelphia from 1911-17, including one three-year span in which he won 31, 33 and 30.

 

“He made me want to throw my bat away when I went to the plate,” said Hall of Fame second baseman Johnny Evers. “He fed me pitches I couldn’t hit. If I let them go, they were strikes. He made you hit bad balls. He could throw into a tin can all day long.”

 

Alexander was traded to the Cubs in December of 1917. But after only three appearances in 1918, Alexander was drafted into the Army and served as a sergeant in France during World War I. He was gassed during his service and also suffered from partial hearing loss due to a shell explosion, but he returned to the Cubs in 1919 and led the National League with a 1.72 ERA.

 

Alexander won 27 games in 1920 and led the NL in ERA for the fifth and final time that season with a mark of 1.91. He continued to pace the Cubs' staff throughout the next few years until – at age 39 – he was claimed off waivers by the Cardinals, who were battling for the NL pennant. He won nine games down the stretch, helping St, Louis get to the World Series against the New York Yankees of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

 

After complete game victories in the second and sixth games, Alexander was called upon in relief in Game 7. St. Louis was ahead 3-2 in the bottom of the seventh, but starting pitcher Jesse Haines was in trouble, having loaded the bases with two outs. Called in from the bullpen only a day after his Game 6 triumph, Alexander would face rookie second baseman Tony Lazzeri, who had knocked in 117 runs during the season. After nearly giving up a grand slam homer down the left field line on a ball that went foul at the last moment, Alexander would strike out Lazzeri and then retire the next five batters before walking Ruth with two outs in the ninth.

 

With Bob Meusel at the plate, Ruth was caught stealing second base, ending the World Series and creating a legendary moment for Alexander.

 

Ruth would write years later: “Just to see old Pete out there on the mound, with that cocky little undersized cap pulled down over one ear, chewing away at his tobacco and pitching baseballs as easy as pitching hay is enough to take the heart out of a fellow.”

 

Alexander retired with a record of 373-208 with 90 shutouts and a 2.56 ERA. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1938.

 

[laroquece]

1 hour ago, Yankee4Life said:

Grover Cleveland Alexander

 

Alexander retired with a record of 373-208 with 90 shutouts and a 2.56 ERA. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1938.

 

Those stats are really impresive. Thanks Y4L for this thread about this great players  

[Yankee4Life]

8 hours ago, laroquece said:

Those stats are really impresive. Thanks Y4L for this thread about this great players  

 

You’re welcome. This thread is one of the oldest ones on our website and I love to contribute to it because I learn something about every player that gets featured.

[Yankee4Life]

Arky Vaughan

 

 

Arky Vaughan’s career achievements were remarkable. In 1935 Vaughan led the National League with a .385 batting average, and his .318 lifetime average is second among all shortstops to Honus Wagner’s .327. Over his career Vaughan walked 937 times, while striking out just 276 times. He was among the most difficult players to double up, grounding into only seventy double plays in the last thirteen years of his fourteen-year career. (GIDP was not tracked in 1932). Vaughan’s on-base average was an impressive .406 while his slugging percentage was a highly respectable .453. An All-Star selection for nine consecutive years, he compiled a .364 batting average in All-Star Games, and he was the first player to hit two home runs in one.

 

Joseph Floyd Vaughan was born on March 9, 1912, in Clifty, Arkansas, a farm village about twenty-five miles northeast of Fayetteville. When Arky was seven months old, his parents, Robert and Laura Vaughan, moved the family, including two older sisters, to Mendocino County near San Francisco. They later relocated to Fullerton, California, where Robert found work in the California oilfields. Joseph Floyd Vaughan’s childhood friends began calling him Arky as soon as they learned of his birthplace, and he was known as Arky Vaughan for the rest of his life.

 

Playing his first season of professional baseball for the 1931 Wichita Aviators of the Class A Western League, the nineteen-year-old Vaughan made an immediate impact. He batted .338 with twenty-one home runs, eighty-one runs batted in, and a league-leading 145 runs scored and forty-three stolen bases. Vaughan’s performance earned him a promotion to the Pirates.

 

No-hit, good-field Tommy Thevenow had been the Pirates’ regular shortstop in 1931, and manager George Gibson started him at the position in the 1932 opener. Five days later, on April 17, the twenty-year-old Vaughan made his major-league debut, striking out as a pinch-hitter against Cincinnati’s Larry Benton. Vaughan got his first start at shortstop on April 28, after Thevenow broke a finger. The left-handed hitting Californian made an impressive debut with two triples and three runs batted in. The next day, facing future Hall of Fame pitcher Eppa Rixey, Vaughan went 2-for-4. Now firmly established as the Pirates’ starting shortstop, Vaughan had a 5-for-5 day on June 7. He hit his first major-league home run on July 26, off Jim Mooney of the New York Giants.

 

Vaughan’s rookie batting average was .318, but he struggled in the field, committing a league-leading forty-six errors. On August 11, Vaughan the youngest player in the National League, made a crucial error in the tenth inning that allowed the Chicago Cubs to beat Pittsburgh and take over first place in the National League. The Pirates eventually finished second, four games behind the Cubs.

 

In 1933 Vaughan played shortstop in all but two of the Pirates’ games and began to exhibit good power as well as outstanding speed. On May 1 he and catcher Earl Grace both slugged grand slams in a rout of the Philadelphia Phillies. For Vaughan, whose home run was inside-the-park, it was the first of his four major-league grand slams. On June 24, he hit for the cycle, going 5-for-5 with five RBIs against Brooklyn.

 

In 1935 Vaughan had the best season of his career. He was hitting .401 in mid-September, but an eight-game slump lowered his final batting average to .385. Arky led the league in walks (97), on-base percentage (.491) and slugging percentage (.607), and his nineteen home runs and ninety-nine runs batted in were career highs. His .491 on-base percentage remains the highest ever for a Pirates’ player. Vaughan finished third in the baseball writers vote for the National League’s Most Valuable Player; however, The Sporting News selected him as their MVP in the National League and the shortstop on their postseason Major League All-Star team.

 

In 1940, under new manager Frankie Frisch, Vaughan batted an even .300, drove in ninety-five runs, and led the National League in runs scored and triples. The 1941 season was Vaughan’s last year in Pittsburgh. Playing in only 106 games, he hit .316 with six home runs and just thirty-eight RBIs. Vaughan’s playing time was limited by two injuries. In midseason he suffered a spike wound and was out of the lineup for two weeks. Then, on August 30, he suffered a concussion when he was hit in the head by a pitch during an exhibition game in London, Ontario. Vaughan tried to return to the lineup, but he had severe headaches, and the team doctors ordered him to bed.

 

Despite his drop in production, Vaughan was again selected as the starting shortstop for the National League All-Star team. In the All-Star Game at Briggs Stadium in Detroit, Vaughan had perhaps his most memorable performance. After getting a single early in the contest, he homered in the seventh with a man on base, putting the National League ahead, 3–2. In the next inning, Vaughan hit his second successive two-run homer, raising the National League’s lead to 5–2. Vaughan appeared to be the day’s hero until Ted Williams of the Red Sox won the game for the American League, 7–5, with a dramatic ninth-inning, three-run homer.

 

The Dodgers won the National League pennant in 1947, and Vaughan had an opportunity to play in his only World Series. Facing the Yankees, Vaughan drew a walk and belted a double in three pinch-hitting appearances. Vaughan returned to the Dodgers in 1948 as a part-time player, but by 1949, wanting to be closer to home, he joined the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. In his final season of professional baseball, Arky batted .288 in ninety-seven games.

 

Following his retirement from baseball, Vaughan devoted all his energies to his family, his ranch, and his hobby of fishing. On August 30, 1952, he and a friend, Bill Wimer, sailed their fishing boat to Lost Lake, east of the Northern California town of Eagleville. The lake, in the crater of an extinct volcano, had reportedly never been sounded. The skiff capsized and, according to a witness, Vaughan and Wimer started swimming for shore. The men swam about sixty-five yards in the chilly water and were only twenty feet from shore when they sank in water that was twenty feet deep. Later reports stated that Vaughan was trying to save Wimer, who, it was reported, could not swim. Their bodies were recovered early the next morning. Vaughan was forty years old.

 

Ignoring his accomplishments, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America never gave Vaughan more than 29 percent of their votes for the Baseball Hall of Fame. (75 percent is required for election.) Vaughan dropped off the BBWAA ballot after 1968, and not until 1985 did he at last gain election, by a vote of the Veterans’ Committee.

 

Yet Arky Vaughan remains relatively unknown in comparison to his fellow Hall of Famers. Overlooked and underappreciated, Vaughan ranks among the top shortstops and offensive stars of his or any era.

 

[laroquece]

14 hours ago, Yankee4Life said:

Ignoring his accomplishments, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America never gave Vaughan more than 29 percent of their votes for the Baseball Hall of Fame. (75 percent is required for election.) Vaughan dropped off the BBWAA ballot after 1968, and not until 1985 did he at last gain election, by a vote of the Veterans’ Committee.

that goes beyond my comprehension

[Yankee4Life]

Pie Traynor

 

 

Harold Joseph Traynor was born on November 11, 1898, in Framingham, Massachusetts, about 22 miles west of Boston. When Harold was 5 years old, the family relocated to Somerville, three miles northwest of downtown Boston, and soon he was nagging the older boys in his neighborhood to let him join their baseball games. When they finally gave in, they put 6-year-old Harold behind the plate — without a mask. In his first game, a pitch smacked him in the mouth and knocked out two teeth.Undeterred by that rough initiation, Harold became a fixture at the neighborhood games, where he met the man who tagged him with his memorable nickname. Traynor and the other kids in his neighborhood befriended a slightly older boy named Ben Nangle, whose family owned a popular corner store. “The kids, in fact nearly everybody in town, used to gather at [the] store in the afternoon or evening,” according to Traynor. Nangle sometimes would umpire the younger children’s games and then parade them back to the store. When they arrived, Nangle would ask them what they wanted. Without fail, Traynor would request a slice of pie. Nangle took to calling him “Pie Face,” which his buddies later shortened to “Pie.”

 

His father made a decent living working as a typesetter for the Boston Transcript, but with such a large family to feed, young Pie had to pull his weight. Starting at the age of 12, he worked after school as a messenger boy and office hand, adding a few extra dollars to the family war chest. When he wasn’t at school or work, Pie played pickup baseball games on Boston Common and for his high-school team in Somerville.

 

After the war, Traynor managed to secure a tryout with the Boston Braves. “I wanted to play for the Braves ever since I was a little boy in Framingham,” he said. But the tryout was a disaster. He started out by taking some groundballs during batting practice. “Then the bell rang for fielding practice and I stayed in the infield,” he remembered. “I didn’t even know what the bell meant. I soon found out. [Braves manager] George Stallings ran me out of there in a hurry and I was so scared I never came back.” Instead, he spent the summer of 1919 playing for Falmouth in the Cape League (later known as the Cape Cod League). The next spring, though, Boston Record sportswriter Eddie Hurley arranged for Traynor to work out with the Boston Red Sox. Veteran pitcher Joe Bush watched Traynor pick groundball after groundball during batting practice. “I grabbed a fungo stick one day and yelled to him, ‘Hey, Sonny, let’s see you get the ones I’m going to hit you.’ The kid was amazing.” But veteran Red Sox shortstop Everett Scott, perhaps with an eye toward protecting his own job, told manager Ed Barrow that he wasn’t all that impressed. So instead of signing Traynor, Barrow recommended him to Portsmouth of the Class-B Virginia League, a team with which the Red Sox had an unofficial but not legally binding working relationship. Traynor signed with Portsmouth for $200 a month on May 11, 1920. According to Barrow, “I made it plain [to Portsmouth owner H.P. Dawson] he belonged to Boston, even though I hadn’t signed him to a Red Sox contract.”

 

Batting leadoff and playing shortstop, Traynor batted .270 in 104 games. Although his glove work was suspect (31 errors), major-league teams took notice. So Dawson, who obviously looked at Portsmouth’s relationship with the Red Sox a little differently than Barrow did, sat back and dangled Traynor before one suitor after another. The New York Giants wanted Traynor, but refused to pay more than $7,500, an offer Dawson dismissed. Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith, still annoyed more than a quarter-century later, claimed that Traynor should have been his. “They owed me the pick of their club in exchange for three ballplayers I sent them the summer before,” Griffith griped to Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich in 1947. “So I picked Traynor and thought he belonged to me. Then the owner weaseled out of it. He told me I’d have to give him $5,000 extra. … If we’d have had Traynor for third base and [Ossie] Bluege for shortstop we would have won four straight pennants instead of two.” On September 11, 1920, it was the Pittsburgh Pirates who, on the recommendation of scout Tom McNamara, finally met Dawson’s asking price, shelling out $10,000 for Traynor; up to that point it was the largest amount ever paid for a Virginia League player. Like Griffith, Barrow thought he’d been had. “I hit the ceiling. I grabbed the phone and called Dawson and called him everything I could think of.” He even appealed to American League President Ban Johnson, but there was nothing Johnson could do. The Red Sox had just let one of the best players of his generation slip through their fingers. “I never stopped giving Barrow the needle about his mistake,” said Bush.

 

From 1923 until injuries started to take their toll around 1929, Traynor probably was the best defensive third baseman in baseball. He was 6 feet tall, which was large for a third baseman of his era, but very agile. He was brilliant at charging bunts and weakly hit groundballs, and had a knack for moving quickly to his right and making backhanded stops. “Pie had the quickest hands, the quickest arm of any third baseman,” said former teammate Charlie Grimm. “And from any angle he threw strikes.” The Cubs’ Billy Herman agreed. “Most marvelous pair of hands you’d ever want to see.” To columnist Red Smith, watching Traynor play third was “like looking over daVinci’s shoulder.” Traynor led National League third basemen in assists three times, putouts seven times, and double plays four times. His biggest defensive flaw was his arm — extremely strong, but often wild; but he learned how to compensate, according to Herman. “You’d hit a shot at him, a play that he could take his time on, and he’d catch it and throw it right quick, so that if his peg was wild, the first baseman had time to get off the bag, take the throw, and get back on again. It was the only way Traynor could throw; if he took his time, he was really wild.”

 

Traynor established himself as an offensive force in 1923, putting together what might have been his best overall season at the plate. He hit .338 with a career-high 12 home runs and 101 RBIs. His 19 triples tied teammate Max Carey for tops in the major leagues, and his 28 stolen bases were also a career best.

 

The Giants set the pace in the National League early in 1925, but by mid-June the Pirates were charging hard. After the Pirates beat the Giants 13-11 in 10 innings on June 16 to complete a four-game sweep), Harry Cross of the New York Times wrote of the Giants, “Their temperature is far above normal, respiration is alarming, blood pressure is kiting, and they are suffering from housemaid’s knee and their appetites have gone blooey.” The rumors of the Giants’ death were greatly exaggerated, though; they went back and forth with the Pirates until August. But from August 26 through September 23 Pittsburgh won 22 of 30 games, including a pair of nine-game winning streaks, and took the pennant by 8½ games. Traynor was marvelous, batting .320 with 106 RBIs, and leading third basemen in fielding percentage and total chances. His 41 double plays set a National League record for third basemen that stood for 25 years; four of those double plays came in one game, which set a major-league record later tied by Johnny Vergez in 1935.

 

After having an abscess on his hip lanced in late September, Traynor was fully healthy for the World Series matchup against defending champion Washington. In Game One, Traynor homered off Walter Johnson and made a spectacular diving grab of a Muddy Ruel smash, but the Senators won, 4-1. Down three games to one, the Bucs rallied to force a classic Game Seven. In the rain and muck of Forbes Field, the Senators touched Vic Aldridge for four runs in the first inning. But Pittsburgh chipped away; in the seventh inning, Traynor rocketed an RBI triple deep into the fog to tie the game, 6-6. He was tagged out trying to stretch it into a home run. Then with the score tied 7-7 in the bottom of the eighth, Kiki Cuyler lashed a bases-loaded two-run double off a worn-out Johnson to give the Pirates their second World Series championship.

 

The 1927 Pirates added little Lloyd Waner to the lineup. Traynor took one look at the 132-pound Waner and deemed him “too small, too thin, and too scrawny.” But his .355 batting average helped propel the Pirates to another National League pennant, as they edged out St. Louis and the Giants in a spirited race. Traynor batted .342, drove in 106 runs, finished seventh in the National League MVP voting, and was The Sporting News‘ all-star third baseman for the third straight season.

 

In the World Series, Pittsburgh was merely fresh meat for the ’27 Yankees, perhaps the greatest team ever. “We had just gone through as tough a pennant race as you could image … and we were worn to a bone,” recalled Traynor. He claimed that he was down to 150 pounds (from his normal playing weight of 170), while Paul and Lloyd Waner had shriveled to 125 and 127 pounds, respectively. “We were whipped before we took the field,” Traynor remarked. Legend has it that prior to Game One the young Pirates stood in front of their dugout mesmerized as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig sent one towering drive after another out of the park. Traynor always asserted that was bunk. “It’s just not true. We finished our batting practice and immediately went in for a clubhouse meeting.” There is no disputing what happened once the games began, however. The Yankees ripped through the Pirates in four straight, winning the deciding game on a wild pitch by Johnny Miljus in the bottom of the ninth.

 

A nasty eye infection had Traynor on the sidelines for several weeks during the spring of 1930. It was so bad that he could hardly see out of his left eye. Thinking that the infection stemmed from another infection in his teeth, doctors resorted to pulling two teeth in hopes of clearing the bacteria from his system; even after his vision returned to full strength, Traynor still had to wear smoked glasses to protect his eye from the sunlight. He didn’t return to the lineup full time until late May, but he compiled the highest batting average (.366) and on-base percentage (.423) of his career.

 

The Pirates struggled to a fifth-place finish in 1931 and Traynor was a big reason why. His defense was well below its usual standard, due in large part to a sore throwing arm that he nursed all season. It was a bit of an ordeal at the plate for him, too; for the first time in seven seasons, Traynor fell short of the .300 mark, at .298. Nonetheless, he drove in over 100 runs (103, to be precise) for the fifth straight year.

 

Traynor and the Pirates both enjoyed nice recoveries in 1932. Although a sore shoulder in late May snapped his streak of 317 consecutive games played, Traynor boosted his average back up to .329, tightened up his defense a bit, and finished third (behind Chuck Klein and Lefty O’Doul) in the balloting for The Sporting News‘ National League MVP. Against the Boston Braves on August 30, he recorded his 2,000th career hit. The Pirates entered August leading the National League by 5½ games, but a 10-20 record that month doomed them to second place, four games behind Chicago. The Cincinnati Reds wanted Traynor as their player-manager for 1933, but Traynor said he wasn’t interested — and even if he were, Pirates management wasn’t about to let him go. In ’33, the Pirates again came home in second place, this time five games behind the Giants. Traynor hit .304 and was named to his seventh and final Sporting News all-star team. On July 6 he appeared as a pinch-hitter in the inaugural major-league All-Star Game at Comiskey Park, doubling off Lefty Grove in the seventh inning.

 

The Pirates started strong in 1934. On May 24 they moved into first place, thanks in part to a reinvigorated Traynor, who was batting .469 (Traynor had played in only 13 games by this point thanks to a shoulder that sometimes hurt so much that he could hardly sleep). By June, though, the Pirates were in a tailspin and the fans, frustrated by the near misses of ’32 and ’33, had turned on Gibson. At a June 17 game, which the Pirates lost, 9-3, a crowd of 16,000 booed Gibson lustily every time he stuck his head out of the dugout. Two days later, with the Pirates 27-24 but losers of seven of their last eight games, Pirates president Bill Benswanger released Gibson and asked a stunned Traynor to take over as player-manager.  The Bucs won 10 of their first 16 games under Traynor; however, much of that record was built up against second-division punching bags Cincinnati and Philadelphia. During one of those games in Philadelphia he suffered an injury from which he would never fully recover. Traynor overslid the plate on a close play at home, and as he reached back to touch it, catcher Jimmie Wilson fell on his arm. “I felt something snap and was certain I had a broken arm,” said Traynor. “I didn’t, but I couldn’t throw well anymore.”

 

Just when it appeared Pittsburgh was crawling back into the race, the Pirates lost nine straight in July and freefell out of contention, eventually finishing in fifth place. Through it all, Traynor appeared to be teetering on the edge of nervous breakdown. Traynor was, in many ways, psychologically unsuited for the role of major-league manager. By August he had lost 10 pounds in two months, appeared remarkably gaunt, and had all but stopped sleeping.

 

Traynor played in 57 games in 1935, but the Pirates likely would have been better off if he hadn’t. He batted around .230 for much of the year. A late surge got him up to .279, but that was still the lowest mark of his career for a full season.

 

Traynor’s playing days quietly melted away. He spent the 1935-36 offseason working with doctors in Cincinnati and California trying to get his arm in shape. He came to spring training with plans to play if he had to, but Cookie Lavagetto and perennial prospect Bill Brubaker showed enough promise at third base that Traynor decided not to take the field at all in 1936, although he kept himself on the active roster. In July 1937 injuries forced Traynor back into the lineup for a series against the Dodgers. He hadn’t taken infield or batting practice in weeks and admitted before his first game back, “I’m nervous as a bride. I’m really a little scared.”

 

Then 1938. The Pirates caught fire in June and July, going 40-14 over those months, including a 13-game winning streak. They entered September with a comfortable seven-game lead over the Chicago Cubs. Chicago player-manager Gabby Hartnett returned from a broken thumb in September, and the Cubs immediately started playing their best baseball of the year. But still, seven games seemed a lot to overcome. Giants manager Bill Terry joked that the Pirates ought to quit baseball if they blew the lead. Traynor was irate when he read that, but a lot people agreed with Terry. On September 21, with the lead down to 3½ games, Shirley Povich wrote in the Washington Post that the World Series was coming to Pittsburgh “unless the Pirates suffer a complete collapse.” The next day Roscoe McGowen of the New York Times predicted that nothing short of “the greatest flop in history” would keep the Pirates from the pennant. A Chicago Tribune headline blared “Cubs Must Work Miracle.” The Pirates moved ahead with the sale of World Series tickets (they sold $1.5 million worth) and the construction of special bleachers at Forbes Field. But the Cubs didn’t care. They just kept on winning.

 

On September 27 the Cubs won the first game of the series, 2-1, to close to within a half-game. Then the next day, with darkness approaching, Hartnett smacked a Mace Brown pitch over the wall in the bottom of the ninth to give the Cubs a 6-5 victory. The home run became known in Cubs lore as the “Homer in the Gloamin’.” Although Pittsburgh still had five games remaining, that blow by Hartnett shattered their spirit. The Cubs won the next day, 10-1, and officially clinched the pennant on October 1.

 

In 1939 the Bucs hung around the periphery of the pennant race for a while, but a 12-game losing streak in August doomed the Pirates to their worst finish in 22 years. On September 28, exactly one year removed from Hartnett’s crushing homer, Traynor tendered his resignation, and accepted a job within the organization as a scout.

 

In a seventeen-year major league career, Traynor played in 1,941 games, accumulating 2,416 hits in 7,559 at bats for a .320 career batting average along with 58 home runs, 1,273 runs batted in and an on-base percentage of .362. He retired with a .946 fielding percentage.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Tris Speaker

 

Note: This photo was taken in September of 1920. The arm band that Speaker has on is in honor of shortstop Ray Chapman, who was killed by a pitched ball on August 17, 1920.

 

Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb’s friendly rival as the greatest center fielder of the Deadball Era, could field and throw better than the Georgia Peach even if he could not quite match him as a hitter. Legendary for his short outfield play, Speaker led the American League in putouts seven times and in double plays six times in a 22-year career with Boston, Cleveland, Washington, and Philadelphia. Speaker’s career totals in both categories are still major-league records at his position. No slouch at the plate, Speaker had a lifetime batting average of .345, sixth on the all-time list, and no one has surpassed his career mark of 792 doubles. He was also one of the game’s most successful player-managers.

 

“You can write him down as one of the two models of ball-playing grace,” Grantland Rice wrote of the Grey Eagle. “The other was Napoleon Lajoie. Neither ever wasted a motion or gave you any sign of extra effort. … They had the same elements that made a Bobby Jones or the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame — the smoothness of a summer wind.”

 

A born right-hander, young Tris taught himself to throw left-handed when he twice broke his right arm after being thrown from a bronco. Soon he began to bat left-handed as well.

 

In 1906 Speaker wrote several professional teams asking for a tryout and was signed by Cleburne of the Texas League for $50 per month. Tris bombed as a pitcher – he lost six straight games and once reportedly gave up 22 straight hits, all for extra bases – but as an outfielder he hit .268 and stole 33 bases in 84 games. When the North Texas League and South Texas League were consolidated in 1907, Speaker moved to Houston and hit a league-leading .314 with 36 steals in 118 games.

 

The Boston Red Sox purchased Speaker’s contract at the end of the 1907 season. He appeared in seven games for the big club, but hit only .158. Unimpressed with his play, the Red Sox did not send Speaker a contract for 1908. Speaker twice begged John McGraw for a chance to play for the New York Giants, to no avail, and was also rebuffed by several other major-league clubs. Finally, Speaker paid his own way to Boston’s Little Rock training camp to work out with the Red Sox. At the end of spring training, the Red Sox turned his contract over to Little Rock of the Southern Association as payment for the rent of the training field. There was one stipulation: If Speaker developed, Boston had the right to repurchase him for $500.

 

Well, he did. Speaker led the Southern Association in hitting in 1908 with a .350 average stole 28 bases, and drew raves for his outfield play. Despite interest from the Pittsburgh Pirates, Brooklyn Superbas, Washington Senators, and, at last, the Giants, the Travelers sold Speaker back to Boston. Speaker hit only .224 in 31 games for the Red Sox in 1909, but was flawless in the outfield. Speaker further honed his outfield skills by working with Red Sox pitcher Cy Young. “When I was a rookie,” Speaker later recalled, Young “used to hit me flies to sharpen my abilities to judge in advance the direction and distance of an outfield ball.”

 

Speaker led Boston to world championships in two of the next seven seasons, 1912 and 1915, hitting above .300 every year and perennially ranking among American League leaders in most offensive and defensive categories. With teammates Harry Hooper and Duffy Lewis, Speaker formed one of the best fielding outfields in history. During this period Speaker led AL center fielders in putouts five times and in double plays four times. Twice he had 35 assists, the American League record.

 

Relations between the Grey Eagle and team president Joe Lannin were also far from warm. After the Red Sox World Series victory in 1915, Lannin angered Speaker by proposing that the outfielder’s salary be cut from about $18,000 – higher at the time than that of Ty Cobb – to $9,000, since Speaker’s batting average had declined three years in a row. (Lannin had raised Speaker’s salary in 1914 to keep him from jumping to the Federal League’s Brooklyn Club, which had offered Speaker a three-year contract for $100,000 to be its player-manager). When Speaker held out, Lannin traded him to Cleveland for Sam Jones, Fred Thomas, and $55,000.

 

Speaker received a massive outpouring of affection from the fans when he returned to Boston in a Cleveland uniform on May 9, 1916, and even mistakenly headed toward the Red Sox dugout at the end of one inning. Boston pitchers, meanwhile, complained that without Spoke in center, they could no longer groove fastballs when behind in the count, certain that he would catch everything hit his way. The Red Sox won the World Series again, but Speaker became the idol of Indians fans and hit even better with his new club than he had in Boston.

 

In the outfield Speaker played so shallow that he was almost a fifth infielder. “At the crack of the bat he’d be off with his back to the infield,” said teammate Joe Wood, “and then he’d turn and glance over his shoulder at the last minute and catch the ball so easy it looked like there was nothing to it, nothing at all.” Twice in one month, April 1918, Speaker executed unassisted double plays at second base, catching low line drives on the run and then beating the baserunner to the bag. At least once in his career Speaker was the pivot man in a routine double play. As late as 1923, after the advent of the lively ball forced Speaker to play deeper, he still had 26 assists.

 

He was a remarkably consistent batter. In 1912, Speaker set a major-league record with three separate hitting streaks of 20 or more games, while his 11 consecutive hits in 1920 set a mark that went unsurpassed for 18 years. Speaker’s major weakness as a batter was the slow, high, curve.

 

Speaker spent 11 seasons with the Indians, compiling a batting mark that averaged over .350. He paced the American League in doubles four straight seasons. As late as 1925, the 37-year-old outfielder hit .389 in 117 games. The following year, his final season with Cleveland, he hit .304 in 150 games.

 

As player-manager, Speaker piloted Cleveland to a 617-520 record (.543) between 1919 and 1926. The Indians club he took to the World Series in 1920 had been demoralized by the midseason death of shortstop Ray Chapman when he was beaned by Carl Mays. Speaker rallied the team and in the Series, Cleveland defeated Brooklyn five games to two.

 

After the 1926 season, Hubert “Dutch” Leonard, a disgruntled former teammate, accused Speaker and Cobb of fixing a game in 1919. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis cleared both men of the charges, but by that time American League President Ban Johnson, who believed the men guilty, had persuaded Cobb and Speaker to resign in order to protect baseball’s image. In February 1927, Speaker signed with the Washington Senators, where he hit .327. Speaker finished his major-league career with Cobb on Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics in 1928. He spent 1929 and 1930 as the player-manager of the Newark Bears in the International League, where he hit .355 and .419 in limited play.

 

Speaker's major league playing career ended after 1928. He retired with 792 doubles, an all-time career record. Defensively, Speaker holds the all-time career records for assists as an outfielder and double plays as an outfielder. He remains the last batter to hit 200 triples in a career.

 

 

 

[Yankee4Life]

Lena Blackburne

 

 

Always hustling and full of pep, Russell “Lena” Blackburne was a superb defensive infielder from 1908 to 1926. Though a solid hitter in the minors, he struggled to hit major-league pitching. After his playing career ended, he served for three decades as a coach, manager, and scout. He is perhaps best known for a unique contribution he made to the game: supplying a muddy concoction for removing the slippery sheen from new baseballs.

 

Connie Mack, manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, signed Blackburne in the fall of 1907 and farmed him out to the 1908 Worcester, Massachusetts, team of the Class B New England League. Blackburne was a right-handed batter and thrower. He was quite lanky at 5-feet-11 and 160 pounds, and was called Leaner, Slivers, and Slats by Jesse Burkett, the Worcester manager. The nickname “Leaner” was repeated by Worcester fans with a New England accent and became “Lena,” a sobriquet that would stick with Blackburne for the rest of his life.

 

In 1912 Blackburne lost out to Buck Weaver, a 21-year-old rookie, for the shortstop position on the White Sox and was traded on August 9 to the Milwaukee Brewers for Ray Schalk, a 19-year-old catcher who would go on to have a Hall of Fame career for the Sox. Hugh Duffy managed the 1912 Brewers, and he was glad to give his former player another chance. Blackburne responded by batting .286 in 31 games. The next year, with Harry “Pep” Clark as manager, the Brewers won their first American Association pennant. Blackburne hit .264 in 165 games for the 1913 Brewers.

 

The White Sox reacquired Blackburne in 1914 and moved him to second base, alongside Weaver at short. Blackburne quickly adapted to the new position. He led American League second basemen in assists, and his .963 fielding percentage ranked second at the position, behind only the .970 rate achieved by Philadelphia’s Eddie Collins, the league MVP. Blackburne’s .222 batting average was underwhelming, but he contributed in other ways. He led the White Sox with 66 walks and stole the second most bases on the club with 25, and his 31 sacrifice hits were tied for fourth most in the league.

 

In the offseason, the White Sox acquired the great second baseman, Eddie Collins, from the Athletics, so Blackburne moved to third base in 1915. With Jack Fournier at first base, Eddie Collins at second, Buck Weaver at short, and Blackburne at third, the White Sox infield was regarded as one of the finest in baseball. Pitcher Red Faber, who won 24 games for the team, certainly appreciated them. Years later, he said, “Buck Weaver and Lena Blackburne were two I knew who never wanted to leave the field, not even in practice.”  But after Blackburne hit only .216 in 1915, the White Sox sold his contract to the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League.

 

Blackburne led International League third basemen in fielding percentage in 1916 and 1917, and his batting average was respectable both seasons: .279 in 1916 and .266 the following year. The 1918 Reds were managed by Christy Mathewson. Blackburne became the team’s shortstop and again excelled in the field, leading the National League in double plays by a shortstop (72) and recording the second highest fielding percentage at the position (.938). On July 25, in the second game of a doubleheader at Boston, Blackburne teamed with Reds first baseman Hal Chase on a triple play.

 

In the offseason, Blackburne worked at a New York shipyard at the tail end of World War I. In 1919 he played third base for the Braves and Philadelphia Phillies, but he hit only .199 for the Phillies, and the team sold his contract to the Toronto Maple Leafs in February of 1920. For the next two seasons, Blackburne played for the last-place Little Rock Travelers of the Southern Association, and he managed the team in 1925. That year he discovered Bill Dickey, a future Hall of Famer, who at the time was an 18-year-old catcher. In a semipro game, Dickey fielded a bunt and rifled a throw to first base that struck the right-field fence on one bounce. “Lena knew he had seen one of the greatest throwing arms in baseball and he wasted no time in signing Dickey to a Little Rock contract.”

 

He joined Connie Mack’s staff in 1933, and served for many years as a coach of the Philadelphia Athletics. He also scouted for the Athletics and managed several of their minor-league affiliates, including the 1944 and 1945 Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Red Roses, who won consecutive Interstate League championships. Teenage Nellie Fox was a member of those Lancaster teams and benefited from Blackburne’s mentoring.

 

In the late 1930s, umpire Harry Geisel complained to Blackburne about the difficulty in removing the slickness from new baseballs, which was one of the duties of umpires before a game. The glossy sheen on a new ball makes it hard to get a good grip on it.

 

Blackburne solved the problem. He dug up some mud at low tide from the bottom of Pennsauken Creek near his Palmyra home. He filtered the mud to remove any stones, and he added a secret ingredient that gave it the consistency of cold cream and prevented it from staining the ball. When rubbed on a new baseball, the muddy concoction worked like magic, removing the slippery sheen without discoloring the ball. Soon teams in major and minor leagues were purchasing cans of Blackburne’s “rubbing mud.” He shared the money he earned with his wife, who jokingly referred to it as her “mud money.”

 

Blackburne marketed his idea, and by 1938, he was supplying the mud to all American League teams; because Blackburne was a diehard American League fan, he refused to sell the mud to National League teams until the mid-1950s. Since then, every major and minor league team has used only his product. The mud is still collected today, from a new secret location.

 

One container, a little more than 16 ounces, will usually last a season. Blackburne's contribution to the game has earned him a mention in the Baseball Hall Of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Gil Hodges

 

 

After Gil Hodges’s sophomore year in college, he was offered a contract by local sporting goods storeowner and part-time Dodgers scout Stanley Feezle. The lure of playing in the major Leagues was too much this time, and Hodges left St. Joseph’s and signed with Brooklyn, who then sent him to Olean, New York. He worked out with the Class-D Oilers but did not appear in a game.

 

Brooklyn called up the 19-year-old Hodges late in the 1943 season. He made his debut at Crosley Field on October 3, the Dodgers’ last game of the year. Facing Cincinnati’s Johnny Vander Meer, Gil went 0-for-2 at the plate and made two costly errors at third base. Eleven days later, he entered the Marine Corps and was sent to Hawaii, first to Pearl Harbor and later Kauai. Hodges served as a gunner for the 16th Anti-Aircraft Battalion. From Hawaii he went to Tinian, the sister island of Saipan in the South Pacific. In April 1945, Sergeant Hodges, now assigned to his battalion’s operations and intelligence section, landed on Okinawa with the assault troops and was subsequently awarded the Bronze Star. Don Hoak, a future Dodgers teammate, said, “We kept hearing stories about this big guy from Indiana who killed [Japanese soldiers] with his bare hands.” Discharged in February 1946, Hodges went to spring training with Brooklyn.

 

The solidly built Hodges stood a half-inch over 6-foot-1, and weighed 200 pounds. He batted and threw right-handed, and was considered big for a baseball player of that era. However, Hodges was a gentle giant, often playing the role of peacemaker during on-field brawls. His hands were so large that teammate Pee Wee Reese once remarked that he could have played first base barehanded but wore a mitt because it was fashionable.

 

Dodgers president Branch Rickey sent the now 22-year-old Hodges to the Newport News (Virginia) Dodgers, the club’s entry in the Class-B Piedmont League, where he was converted from infielder to catcher. Gil played 129 games, hitting .278 with eight home runs for Newport News. For his efforts, Hodges was named to the all-league team. He went to the historic and tumultuous Dodgers 1947 spring training and made the team. He was the second-string catcher but played just 24 games behind the plate as the backup to Bruce Edwards.

 

On May 17 at Forbes Field, Hodges, batting for pitcher Harry Taylor, singled off Pittsburgh’s Fritz Ostermueller for his first major-league hit. Gil hit his first major-league home run on June 18, at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. His blast came in the seventh inning against Cubs starter Hank Borowy, and broke a 3–3 tie.

 

Hodges appeared in 28 games overall in 1947, hitting an anemic .156. He clearly needed more playing time, but he was not going to get it behind the plate. With Roy Campanella on the way to take over for Edwards, another position change for Hodges was in order. The next spring Dodgers manager Leo Durocher “put a first baseman’s glove on our other rookie catcher, Gil Hodges. . . Three days later,” Durocher said, “I’m looking at the best first baseman I’d seen since Dolph Camilli.”

 

By 1949 the Brooklyn Dodgers were poised for the most productive period in the franchise’s history. The fabled lineup was in place: Roy Campanella behind the plate, Hodges at first, Jackie Robinson at second, Pee Wee Reese at short, Billy Cox at third, Duke Snider in center, and Carl Furillo in right with a rotating cast in left. The team did not disappoint; Brooklyn won the National League pennant, edging the St. Louis Cardinals by one game. Hodges was now a key contributor. His first career grand slam came on May 14 off the Braves’ Bill Voiselle. Hodges hit for the cycle on June 25 in a 17–10 victory at Forbes Field. Gil hit a single, a double, a homer, and then a triple before hitting his second homer of the game in the ninth. He was 5-for-6 with four RBIs for the day.

 

The next two years, 1950 and 1951, brought consecutive second-place finishes. Hodges’s power numbers continued to improve, as he averaged 36 home runs and 108 RBIs for the two seasons. He established his career high in runs scored in 1951 with 118, one of three seasons in which he topped 100. He also established a career high in strikeouts, 99, which led the league. (He finished in the NL top 10 in strikeouts 11 times in his career.)

 

In the 1951 All-Star Game, Hodges went 2-for-5, including a two-run homer. However, his biggest day came on August 31, 1950, when he became the fourth major leaguer to hit four home runs in a nine-inning game. He went 5-for-6 and had nine RBIs that night at Ebbets Field, hitting the home runs off four different Boston Braves pitchers. His 17 total bases also tied a major-league record.

 

The Dodgers won pennants in 1952 and 1953, only to fall again each time to the Yankees in the Series. In 1952, Hodges hit 32 home runs and drove in 102, while in 1953 he had 31 home runs and 122 RBIs, despite hitting just .181 through May 23.

 

The 1954 season saw the Dodgers finish in second place and Hodges post career highs in batting average (.304), home runs (42), RBIs (130), and slugging (.579). It was his second consecutive year over the .300 mark. Hodges had 19 sacrifice flies, yet another career high, which also led the major leagues by a wide margin. On the last day of the regular season, September 26, Hodges had a solo shot and provided the only run rookie Karl Spooner needed for a 1–0 Dodgers victory. The homer was the 25th Gil hit at Ebbets Field in 1954, establishing a new club record. His 42 homers and 130 RBIs were both second in the National League in their respective categories. It was the closest he would come to winning a home run or an RBI title.

 

In 1955 the Brooklyn Dodgers won their first and only World Series. Hodges, now 31 years old, contributed 27 homers, 102 RBIs and a .500 slugging percentage to the Dodgers’ first-place finish. Brooklyn clinched the ’55 pennant on September 8 with a 10–2 drubbing of Milwaukee, the earliest a team had clinched the pennant in the 80-year history of the National League.

 

Hodges would appear in two more World Series, 1956 and 1959. He continued to play as a regular over the span of those years, averaging 26 home runs and 82 runs batted in. Hodges homered once in each Series; in the 1956 seven-game series loss to the Yankees, he had a hand in 12 of the Dodgers’ 25 runs, and he batted .391 in the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers series win over the Chicago White Sox. In that Series, he won Game Four with a solo homer in the bottom of the eighth that snapped a 4–4 tie. In all, Hodges played in 39 World Series games compiling a .267 average (35-for-131) with five homers, 21 RBIs, and 15 runs scored.

 

Hodges was active for parts of four more seasons, but knee and other injuries limited his playing time. Despite the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles, the Hodges family maintained their home in Brooklyn, and after the 1961 season, the newly formed New York Mets selected Gil in the first National League expansion draft. He hit the first home run in Mets history, on April 11, 1962. Overall, he appeared in 54 games for the woeful ’62 Mets, hitting .252.

 

Hodges began 1963 as an active player, but retired when the two-year-old Washington Senators asked him to be their manager. After clearing waivers, he was traded to Washington for outfielder Jimmy Piersall on May 23, ending his playing career.

 

Each season after Hodges’s arrival, the expansion Senators improved on their record from the previous season, peaking with a 76-85 record in 1967. On December 4, 1964 Senators management engineered a seven-player trade with the Dodgers. The Senators received Hodges’s former teammate, slugging outfielder Frank Howard, pitchers Phil Ortega and Pete Richert, first baseman Dick Nen, and third baseman Ken McMullen.

 

These players were the core of the Senators franchise for the next several years and helped Hodges bring the Senators from tenth place to their surprising sixth-place finish in 1967. Although he had one year left on his contract, Hodges would not be around to guide the Senators in 1968. When Wes Westrum resigned as manager of the New York Mets in September 1967, the Mets sought out Hodges as his replacement. Senators general manager George Selkirk did not want to lose Hodges, he eventually relented, aided by a Mets payment of $100,000 and a player to be named (pitcher Bill Denehy was sent to the Senators on November 27). Hodges then signed a three-year, $150,000 contract to manage the Mets.

 

The Mets had never finished above .500, but they were just four games below that mark at the 1968 All-Star break. They could not maintain the pace, however, and lost 46 of the remaining 80 games. On September 24, 1968 the 44-year-old Hodges suffered a “mild” heart attack during a game in Atlanta. In addition to the stress, which he always kept bottled up, and his father’s early death from an embolism, he also had developed a smoking habit on Okinawa, contributing factors for an attack so early in life.

 

Hodges’ first winning season as manager came with the 1969 Mets, a team that went 100-62, 27 wins more than the previous year. They were led by rising star pitchers Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and promising youngster Nolan Ryan, as well as left fielder Cleon Jones and center fielder Tommie Agee.

 

What is truly remarkable about Hodges’ managerial achievement, besides the 27-win improvement from the previous season, was the fact that the Mets only had two players (Jones and Agee) who had enough plate appearances to qualify for a batting title. In fact, Hodges platooned at catcher, right field, and all the infield positions. While the Mets did not finish above the league average in any major offensive statistic, they had one more run allowed than the league leading St. Louis Cardinals. Projecting wins based on runs scored and runs allowed (Bill James’ Pythagorean Projection), the Mets were expected to have 92 wins. They wound up with an even 100.

 

The Mets beat the Atlanta Braves, with four future Hall of Famers on its roster, in three straight games in the NL playoffs. The New Yorkers outscored the Braves by an aggregate score of 27-15. In the first game, despite five earned runs surrendered by eventual Cy Young Award winner Tom Seaver, the Mets won 9-5, capped off by a five-run rally in the top of the eighth which included a two-run single by pinch-hitter J.C. Martin. The Mets accomplished this victory without an appearance by eventual World Series MVP Clendenon, as the Braves did not start any lefty hurlers.

 

Speaking of the World Series, Hodges and the Mets defeated the heavily-favored Baltimore Orioles (also with four future Hall of Famers, including manager Earl Weaver) in five games in the World Series, making the Mets the first expansion team ever to participate in and win a World Series. The Mets had lost the first game but swept the next four, outscoring the O’s 14-5 in the process, a dominating effort by his young pitching staff.

 

Hodges was voted Manager of the Year for turning the lovable losers into World Champions. The Mets finished with identical 83-79 records in each of the next two seasons. For Hodges, there would be no more championships.

 

The spring of 1972 saw the first modern players strike. On April 2, Easter Sunday, Hodges played golf at the Palm Beach Lakes golf course in Florida with coaches Joe Pignatano, Rube Walker, and Eddie Yost. The first two were old Brooklyn Dodger pals, while Yost had been with Hodges since the Senators days. As they walked off the final hole of their 27-hole day toward their rooms at the Ramada Inn, Pignatano asked Hodges what time they were to meet for dinner. Hodges answered him, “7:30,” and then he fell to the pavement. He was pronounced dead of a coronary at 5:45 p.m. in West Palm Beach. He was just 47 years old.

 

The Mets were scheduled to open the season in Pittsburgh on April 7, the day of the funeral, but the players agreed to forfeit the game to attend. The Pirates graciously canceled the game, which was not played anyway because of the lingering strike. Coach Yogi Berra took over the stunned Mets as Hodges’s replacement and led the Mets back to the World Series in 1973.

 

Hodges’s funeral Mass easily could have been held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, but that would have not been in keeping with his unassuming ways. During his funeral Mass, held at his Flatbush parish church, Our Lady Help of Christians, the Reverend Charles Curley said, “Gil was an ornament to his parish, and we are justly proud that in death he lies here in our little church.”

 

Hodges led all major-league first basemen of the 1950s in the following categories: home runs (310), games (1,477), at-bats (5,313), runs (890), hits (1,491), runs batted in (1,001), total bases (2,733), strikeouts (882), and extra-base hits (585). He made the All-Star team eight times, every year from 1949-55 and again in 1957, the most of any first baseman of the time. In addition, Hodges was considered the finest defensive first baseman of the era, winning Gold Gloves the first three years they were given out (1957-59, and there were no separate AL and NL awards). Also, he was second among all players in the 1950s in home runs and RBIs, third in total bases and eighth in runs. Not to mention the managerial feat of 1969.