With that swing of the bat, along with the 714 that preceded it, Hank Aaron not only passed Babe Ruth as major-league baseball’s home run leader. He also made a giant leap in the integration of the game and the nation. Aaron, an African American, had broken a record set by the immortal Ruth, and not just any record, but the all-time major-league home run record, and in doing so moved the game and the nation forward on the journey started by Jackie Robinson in 1947. By 1974 Aaron’s baseball career was within three years of sunset, but the road he’d traveled to arrive at that spring evening in Atlanta had hardened and tempered him, perhaps irrevocably, in ways that only suffering can produce. Aaron finally shrugged off the twin burdens of expectation and fear that evening, and few have ever stood taller.

Henry Louis Aaron was born February 5, 1934, in Mobile Alabama, to Herbert and Estella (Pritchett) Aaron.1 Among Henry’s seven siblings was a brother, Tommie, who later played in parts of seven different seasons in the major leagues. For whatever such records are worth, the brothers still hold the record for most career home runs by a pair of siblings, 768, with the elder Henry contributing 755 to Tommie’s 13. They were also the first siblings to appear in a League Championship Series as teammates.

Henry was born in a poorer neighborhood of Mobile called “Down the Bay,” but he spent most of his formative years in the nearby district of Toulminville. Aaron’s father worked at a local shipyard performing manual labor.2 The Aaron family lived on the edge of poverty, in part due to the general economic conditions of the Great Depression, so every member of the family worked to contribute. Young Henry picked potatoes and tended the Aaron garden, and also worked for an ice-delivery truck, among other odd jobs, and while his parents could not afford proper baseball equipment for recreation, Aaron still practiced in endless sandlot games by hitting bottle caps with ordinary broom handles and sticks.3

One of the consequences of this self-coaching was that he developed a cross-handed batting style, a habit he kept until his early days as a professional. In fact, it was not until he was in spring training with the then-Jacksonville Braves that coach Ben Geraghty convinced him to switch hands in his grip. “He came in and was unorthodox as a hitter; he hit cross-handed,” minor league teammate Johnny Goryl said during a 2011 interview. “He went to Jacksonville to play for a Ben Geraghty who got him to hit more conventionally without the cross-handed grip. That’s when his power started surfacing, and the rest was all history.”4 But in high school, Aaron was a gifted athlete and starred in both football and baseball at Central High School for two years. On the diamond he played shortstop, third base, and some outfield on a team that won the Mobile Negro High School Championship during his freshman and sophomore years.  

In 1949, the 15-year-old, 140-pound Aaron – inspired by the exploits of Jackie Robinson, whom he’d seen on several exhibition passes through Alabama –tried out with the Brooklyn Dodgers but did not earn a contract offer, likely due to his unorthodox batting grip. Now a high school junior, he transferred to the private Josephine Allen Institute for his final two years of education. The Allen Institute had been founded by Clarence and Josephine Allen in 1895. The Allens were unusually accomplished, educated, and wealthy for Black Americans in that time and place, and their school provided critical education for many children who would have otherwise been denied due to race.

Aaron had been playing for the semipro Pritchett Athletics since age 14, and during those games, and in some of his softball contests, he drew the attention of scout Ed Scott, who convinced Henry and his mother that it would be a good move to sign with the Mobile Black Bears, a semipro team, for $3 a game.5 Estella granted her son permission to play, but only on the condition that he did not travel, thus limiting him to local games.  

On November 20, 1951, despite his mother’s concerns about his not continuing on to college, Henry signed for $200 a month with the Negro American League champion Indianapolis Clowns. Scout Bunny Downs had discovered Aaron playing with the Black Bears during an earlier exhibition, and Aaron flourished with Indianapolis, helping guide the team to the 1952 Negro League World Series crown. In 26 games, he posted a .366 batting average, hit five home runs, and stole nine bases. The series, and the season, allowed Aaron to showcase his range of skills not just for regional scouts, but for several major-league organizations as well.

Following the championship, two telegrams reached Henry – one with an offer from the New York Giants, and a second with an offer from the Boston Braves. Aaron chose the latter, evidently because of a $50-a-month difference in salary, and Boston immediately purchased his contract from Indianapolis.6 On June 14, 1952, Aaron signed with Braves scout Dewey Griggs, and reported to the Class-C Eau Claire (Wisconsin) Bears. Despite playing in only 87 games, Aaron batted .336 with 9 homers, 19 doubles, and 61 RBIs, earned a spot on the league’s All-Star squad, and was selected as the Northern League’s Rookie of the Year. As impressive as his on-field performance was, though, it may have even been exceeded by his calm mien both on and off the diamond. The teenager’s demeanor seemed impenetrable to the occasional bigots in the stands, and the clear absence of racial incidents that season proved his maturity in a way that could not be measured by simple interviews. Aaron not only showed the Braves that he was a wonderful prospect on the field, but also that he could handle the inevitable racism with detachment.

The next season found him and Black teammates Horace Garner and Felix Mantilla on the Jacksonville Braves (South Atlantic League). Given Mantilla’s superior ability at shortstop, Aaron moved to second base for the season.7 Along with two other players from the Savannah (Georgia) Indians, Fleming “Buddy” Reedy and Elbert Willis “Al” Isreal, the quintet broke the color line in the South Atlantic or Sally League (or SAL), playing in the heart of old Dixie without the top-cover of a sympathetic national press.8 Aaron, playing second base, almost single-handedly forced the Jacksonville fans to accept him, regardless of race, by leading the entire league with a batting average of .362, and also being the top producer with 115 runs, 208 hits, 36 doubles, 338 total bases, and 135 runs batted in (RBI) title. To cap the first integrated season in SAL history, Aaron led Jacksonville to the title and was named the league’s Most Valuable Player.9 Because many parts of the South were still governed by Jim Crow laws, circumstances that forced the Black players to live in separate accommodations and dining on the road, one pundit wrote, “Henry Aaron led the league in everything except hotel accommodations.”10

That year Henry also met a young woman named Barbara Lucas.11 On a lark, she had decided to attend a Jacksonville game one night early in the season, and watched Aaron single, double, and homer. On October 6, 1953, Aaron, not yet 20, and Lucas were married and within a year welcomed their first child, a daughter they named Gaile.

Aaron spent part of the offseason playing winter ball in Puerto Rico, learning to play the outfield and working with coach Mickey Owen on his batting stance, refining his new swing after switching his grip months earlier. On March 11, 1954, in spring training, Henry was penciled into the Braves’ starting lineup as leadoff hitter and right fielder. He homered and singled. Two days later, on March 13, Milwaukee’s left fielder Bobby Thomson severely fractured his right ankle sliding into second base. In the ensuing lineup shuffle, Aaron took his spot as a regular outfielder. The young slugger made the most of his chance.12

The Braves purchased Aaron’s minor-league contract just as spring training ended. On Tuesday afternoon, April 13, 1954, Aaron made his major-league debut in the season opener at Cincinnati, playing left field and batting fifth. Two days later, on April 15, he doubled in the first inning off Cardinals pitcher Vic Raschi for his first major-league hit, and a week later in St. Louis, on April 23, he victimized Raschi again, this time for his first home run. Aaron fractured his left ankle sliding into third base on September 5, ending his season with what would be the only significant injury of his career. Still, in his first 122 big-league games, he batted .280, homered 13 times, and finished fourth in the voting for Rookie of the Year. In 1955 Aaron was moved to right field, and there his league-leading 37 doubles, .314 batting average, and .540 slugging percentage helped him earn the first of 21 consecutive All-Star team slots en route to finishing ninth in NL MVP balloting.

During the early days of his career, Milwaukee’s public relations director Don Davidson began referring to Aaron as “Hank,” not “Henry” as he was known by those close to him, to make the quiet player appear a bit more accessible.

In 1956 Aaron hit .328 to win the first of his two NL batting titles, led the league in doubles (34) and hits (200), and was named The Sporting News NL Player of the Year. He would lead the league four times in doubles and twice in hits. It proved to be mere foreshadowing for the following year.

Aaron’s 1957 baseball season began under less-than-ideal circumstances when he missed his train in Mobile and reported one day late to spring training in Bradenton, Florida. Because he had signed a new contract during the offseason, one that raised his salary to $22,500 for the coming campaign, Aaron’s conspicuous tardiness drew the attention of national papers like The Sporting News, as well as the Milwaukee press. The other potential omen came with the distribution of his Topps baseball card. It was printed as a photographic reverse, with Hank appearing to bat left-handed. On closer inspection, his uniform number “44” is reversed, and clearly underscores the mistake, but the Topps corporate leadership chose not to correct the error and reprint the card.

Regardless of what the baseball card showed, Aaron was not affected on the field. Over that March in Florida he batted .390 with 11 home runs, despite missing seven games due to a sprained ankle. Manager Fred Haney, in the March 27 edition of The Sporting News, was quoted: “He [Aaron] hasn’t reached his potential yet. I expect him to do better this year. That’s how we’ve got to improve to win the flag.” Aaron tinkered with his approach in the batter’s box, switching from a 36-ounce bat to a 34-ounce model, and he opened the 1957 season by batting safely, and scoring, in the Braves’ first seven games.

The public praise rolled in during those early weeks. On April 24 Sporting News writer Dick Young noted that Dodgers coach Billy Herman “rates Hank Aaron over Willie Mays as a hitter – and over everyone in the N. L. for my money.”13 The following week, in the same magazine, Bob Wolf wrote: “Whether or not he wins the triple crown, or even two-thirds of it, Aaron certainly must be considered the favorite in the batting derby … and while Aaron isn’t high on his chances of leading the league in homers or runs batted in, he agrees that he should repeat as batting king.”14 After 25 games,  Aaron was hitting at a .369 clip and had committed no errors in the field.

Stan Musial, however, was not as impressed as the reporters who followed the team. In a June 26 Sporting News article by Cleon Walfoort, Musial left no room for doubt, stating, “[Aaron] thinks there’s nothing he can’t hit. He’ll have to learn there are some pitches no hitter can afford to go for. He still has something to learn about the strike zone.” His reference to Aaron as an “arrogant hitter” drew a response, cited in the same article, from Pittsburgh manager Bobby Bragan. “Sure, Aaron’s a bad-ball hitter and he always will be, but it would be a bad mistake to try to change him.”15

Given the late arrival to spring training, Musial’s comments, and a general undertone in the wider reporting on Aaron and what was occasionally dismissed as a lack of effort, Haney again came to his slugger’s defense. “That loping gait of Hank Aaron’s is deceptive. You’d almost get the impression he wasn’t hustling at times, but he’d be about the last player you could accuse that of. He just runs as fast as he has to, and you’ll notice he always seems to get to a fly ball or a base in time when there’s any chance of making it.”16

Normally such an offensive outburst would result in a nearly automatic selection to the NL All-Star team, but according to a retrospective article from ESPN, a huge glut of votes from Cincinnati elected Reds to eight National League starting positions. “The lineup was so stacked, in fact, that Commissioner Ford Frick felt he had to intervene, so he replaced outfielders Gus Bell and Wally Post with two guys named Willie Mays and Hank Aaron.”17

The All-Star Game was little more than a brief respite in Aaron’s terrific season. On July 5 he surpassed his 1956 season home run total when he hit number 27 off the Cubs’ Don Elston, which, by mid-month, prompted The Sporting News’ Bob Wolf to begin touting the hitter’s chances for the Triple Crown. Despite his preseason protestation that he did not see himself as a power hitter, after 77 games he was on pace to tie Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, and on August 15 he smacked career homer number 100. One week later he drove in his 100th run of the season. All the numbers, though, paled in comparison to a single swing of the bat the following month.

On September 23, in the bottom of the 11th inning facing St Louis, Aaron stroked a breaking ball over the fence at County Stadium. The two-run shot was the only homer that Cardinals pitcher Billy Muffett surrendered all year, but the walk-off win clinched the NL pennant for the Braves. Aaron was carried off the field that night by his jubilant teammates, and he always remembered that hit, that game, and that night as one of the greatest moments of his career.

In a February 26, 2012, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel retrospective, baseball commissioner Bud Selig was quoted: “Henry Aaron in ’57 was, well, he was a player for the ages. I have never seen a hitter like him. Forget our relationship. I’m telling you in the ’50s, when you watched Hank Aaron, you knew you were watching something really special.”18 That year, Aaron led the NL with 44 home runs, 132 runs batted in, 369 total bases, and 118 runs scored, but failed to meet his batting goal of .350. Instead, he finished a “mere” fourth in the league race with a .322 average. It was enough to earn him the only Most Valuable Player trophy of his career.

He followed that with 11 hits, including three homers, in 28 at-bats in the World Series. His .393 average certainly contributed to the Braves’ world championship, and was a fitting conclusion to a remarkable season. Both the man and his team walked off the field after the final out that October as, unquestionably, the best in baseball.

The year 1957 was also special for the Aarons for other reasons. In March, Barbara had delivered their first son, Hank Jr., and in December twins Lary and Gary arrived. Tragically, Gary died in the hospital, but the family carried on. It would grow once more, in 1962, with the birth of youngest daughter Dorinda.

In 1958, due in large part to Aaron’s 30 home runs, the Braves returned to the World Series, but lost to the Yankees in seven games. Although Henry Aaron only finished third in MVP voting for the year, he did win his first Gold Glove award. The following year the rising star appeared on the television show Home Run Derby, and won six consecutive matches – along with $13, 000 – before falling to the Phillies’ Wally Post. Afterward, Aaron noted that he changed his swing to help him hit more home runs because “ … they never had a show called ‘Singles Derby.’”19

His 1959 season was, arguably, the best of Aaron’s extraordinary career. Not only did he lead both major leagues in hits (223), batting average (.355), slugging (.636), and total bases (400), he committed only five errors all season while winning his second of three Gold Glove awards. The fielding mark is even more impressive in that, although he played 144 games as right fielder, he also played 13 in center and even five full games in the infield, at third base.  

Aaron hit his 200th career home run on July 3, 1960, off Cardinals pitcher Ron Kline, and on June 8, 1961, he joined Eddie Mathews, Joe Adcock, and Frank Thomas as the first quartet to hit successive homers in a single game, a 10-8 loss to the Cincinnati Reds. In 1963 he led the NL in home runs and RBIs, and also became the third-ever member of the 30/30 club, stealing 31 bases and socking 44 homers. That year Aaron barely missed winning the Triple Crown, losing the batting title to Tommy Davis by a scant .007 points, finishing in a tie with Dick Groat for fourth place in the major leagues with a .319 batting average.

He continued to excel throughout the decade. In the mid 1960s, though, the Braves uprooted the team and moved to Atlanta, as far south as any team in the major-league game. From a 2014 interview by Aaron, published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle, he “was not upset that his team would be moving to the segregated South. Aaron, who had grown up in Mobile, Alabama, played for the Jacksonville Braves and had traveled throughout the South when he was in the minor leagues. “It was something I had to get used to … I’m going to be playing baseball.

Coming up through the minor league system, I had always been affiliated with the Braves,” Aaron said. Because he cared about playing baseball, it didn’t matter if he was in Milwaukee or Atlanta. “I don’t have to be associated with anybody but the baseball players.”20

In 1966, the first season for the Braves in Georgia, Aaron hit his 400th career home run off Bo Belinsky in Philadelphia, and crested the 500-plateau two years later, in 1968 against Mike McCormick and the San Francisco Giants. He moved into third place on the all-time career home run list on July 30, 1969, when he passed Mickey Mantle with number 537. Despite his personal successes, and another third-place finish in the MVP race, the Braves were swept in three games by the improbable New York Mets in the new League Championship series. In the inaugural NLCS, Aaron batted .357 with three home runs.

The 1960s marked the peak of Aaron’s career. From 1960 to 1971, he averaged 152 games per season. In an “average” season, Aaron batted .308, scored 107 runs, amassed 331 total bases, hit 38 homers, and drove in 112 runs. This was all the more remarkable in that the time frame is widely remembered as the “decade of the pitcher,” yet Aaron gave no quarter when batting against some of the best in the game. Don Drysdale was his most frequent career home run victim, yielding 17, but the slugger also punished luminaries like Sandy Koufax and Juan Marichal, along with a wide array of less-gifted hurlers.   

His gift in the batter’s box flowed through his hands and wrists. In the 1990 book Men at Work:  The Craft of Baseball, author George Will summarized Hank’s approach: “Henry Aaron once said, ‘I never worried about the fastball. They couldn’t throw it past me. None of them.’ That was true, but that was Aaron, he of the phenomenally quick wrists and whippy, thin-handled bat.”21 Despite standing six feet tall, Aaron weighed a mere 180 pounds, almost scrawny in comparison to later sluggers, but his unique physical talent allowed him to wait on the pitcher for a split second longer than most other hitters, to seemingly pluck the ball from the catcher’s glove with his bat, and made him one of the most feared sluggers in the league.  

With his 3000th career hit, a single against the Cincinnati Reds on May 17, 1970, Henry Aaron became the first player ever to reach the dual milestones of 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. That year, with his 38 homers, he established a new NL record for most seasons by a player with 30 or more home runs. The following year, on April 28, Aaron hit homer number 600 off future Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry, joining Ruth and Mays in a most exclusive power-hitting fraternity. With his career-high 47 home runs that year he also set a new league record for most seasons with 40 or more homers with seven, and set an unofficial mark for “close-but-no-cigar” when he finished third in MVP balloting for a sixth time.

On the personal front, things between Henry and Barbara came to a head. The couple had been having marital difficulties since 1966, and had drifted apart. In February 1971, they formalized the separation with a legal divorce. Two years later, in 1973, Aaron married Billye Williams, a former Atlanta television journalist, in Jamaica.

Despite major-league baseball’s first labor-related work stoppage in 1972, Aaron passed Mays on the all-time home run list when he hammered number 661 off Reds pitcher Don Gullett on August 6. The impact of the strike wouldn’t really show until the following season. The two weeks that were lost to pension benefit negotiations represented eight lost opportunities for Aaron to continue his chase of Ruth’s career home run record, and by the end of 1973, with the national media working itself into a lather over Aaron’s pursuit of the iconic total, he ended the season with 713, one shy of tying the Bambino.

The stresses on the player, the team, opposing pitchers, and the sport that were spawned – or perhaps revealed – by Aaron’s 1973 season have been chronicled in a variety of sources. He retained an essential quiet dignity with the media and never allowed the moment to cause him to break in public, although a lesser man certainly might have cracked. Aaron received, literally, thousands of letters every week, and the torment prolonged over the winter of 1973 due to the strike in 1972. In 1973, however, the nation was a scant decade past the passage of the contentious Civil Rights Act, and less than a generation since Rosa Parks had refused to move to the back of her bus, so overt bigotry was not nearly as foreign as it might be now. Some of the letters that Aaron opened, however, are almost unbelievable for any era.

Some of the notable ones from the collection at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (spelling is verbatim):

“Hi, Hank,

I sees you hit 711 homers. When I goes to sleep every night I pray as follows:

1 – That you’se stop hitting these cheap homers

2 – That the pitchers stop lobbing in the ball for you to hit.

3 – That youse have a good accident when youse hit 713 and never been able to play another game.

4 – That youse get good and sick.

5 – That Babe Ruth is the best homer hitter & 714 is always the record.

6 – That youse get mugged by one of our brothers of the Black Panther Party.”

Another one, from mid-1973, read:

“Dear Hank Aaron,

Why are they making such a big fuss about your hitting 701 home runs.? sic

Please remember, you have been at bat over 2700 more times than Babe Ruth. If Babe Ruth was at bat 2700 more times he would have hit 814 home runs.

So, Hank what are you bragging about. Lets have the truth. You mentioned if you were white they would give you more credit. That’s ignorance. Stupid.

Hank, there are three things you can’t give a Nigger. A black eye, a puffed lip or a job.

The Cubs stink, the Cubs stink, Hinky Dinky, Stinky Parlevous. The Cubs are through, the Cubs are through, Hinky Pinky Parlevous.”

These are just a tiny sample of the venom and rage directed at Aaron throughout the later stages of his quest. In a third letter, a self-described “50 year old White Woman from Massachusetts” wrote, “To Hank Aaron: A Rotten Nigger … .you must have made every intelligent white man hate you and your opinions even more … ”.22 Describing those letters as mere irrational raving is reasonable nearly 40 years after the chase, but at the time, with a Black player pursuing the record of a White one, the threats seemed very real.

On the positive side, once the nation became aware of the bigotry, public support for Aaron poured in. But Aaron, perhaps channeling his inner Jackie Robinson, took the field without apparent regard for the attention surrounding his play. Atlanta opened the 1974 season in Cincinnati, and although the Braves management wanted Hank Aaron to break Ruth’s record in Atlanta, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn decreed that Aaron had to play at least two of the thee-game road series.

Aaron sat on his 713 total for one at-bat, hitting number 714 on April 4 off Cincinnati’s Jack Billingham. On April 8, in front of 53,775 fans in Atlanta, Aaron finally broke the record with a fourth-inning shot off the Dodgers’ Al Downing. Dodgers radio announcer Vin Scully captured the moment: “What a marvelous moment for baseball; what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia; what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron. … And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months.”23 

The euphoria lasted all season, until October 2, when Aaron hammered his 733rd, and final, homer in Atlanta for the Braves. One month later, on November 2, Atlanta traded the all-time home run king to the Milwaukee Brewers for minor-league pitcher Roger Alexander and outfielder Dave May. “When Bud Selig called me,” [Aaron, talking about the trade] said to the New York Times. “I was too sleepy to get all the details … All I know is that I’m happy to be going back home. This is the first time I’ve ever been traded. If I was being traded to a city like Chicago or Philadelphia, I’d frown on it. But I’m going back to Milwaukee … I’m going back home.”24

Hank Aaron became a “designated hitter.” The next season, on May 1, 1975, Aaron became the all-time RBI leader, and on July 20, 1976, he hit the 755th home run of his career in Milwaukee’s County Stadium. He appeared in his final major-league game on October 3, calling it a career after 3,298 games.

In that career, Aaron scored 2,174 runs, and is the all-time leader in RBIs (2,297), total bases (6,856), and extra-base hits (1,477). The total bases figure is ‘just another stat’ at first blush, but Aaron’s lead over Albert Pujols, #2 on the list, is 645, or almost 10%. It is one of Aaron’s most remarkable displays of dominance across all eras. His 12,364 at-bats remain the second highest total ever, and he is on many of Major League Baseball’s “top ten” lists, including doubles, plate appearances, and hits (3,771). Even more remarkable is that he remains on these lists more than 35 years since he last took the field. In his otherwise hilarious and irreverent book Catcher in the Wry, former Aaron teammate and longtime Brewers’ broadcaster Bob Uecker is quite serious when he observes that, “[Aaron] was the most underrated player of my time, and his.”  This period included tremendous players like Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, and Roberto Clemente, yet Aaron did more for less recognition than anyone else. Uecker continued, “I asked him once if he felt slighted. He said, ‘What difference does it make?’”25

After retiring, Aaron returned to Atlanta as vice president of player development for the Braves, and on August 1, 1982, was formally inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, although an inexplicable 2.2 percent of the ballots did not contain his name. He also worked for a time for Turner Broadcasting, and opened Hank Aaron BMW in Atlanta. His auto empire eventually grew to multiple dealerships in Georgia, although he sold all but one in 2007, and he expanded his business venture to include a number of smaller restaurants as well. The 755 Restaurant Corporation grew to 18 fast-food venues in the Southeast, including several Church’s Fried Chicken outlets.

It was not a simple, happy ending. In 1984, brother Tommie passed away due to leukemia. Older brother Hank later said in an interview: “I was sitting in my office one day in 1982,” Aaron wrote later wrote, “when my brother Tommie walked in and told me that he had some kind of blood disorder … the whole time, Tommie never demonstrated any pain until the very last night before he passed … It was the hardest night of my life.”26

In 1990 he wrote his autobiography, I Had a Hammer, and in April 1997 the Mobile Bay Bears (Southern League) christened “Hank Aaron Stadium” in Mobile. In 1999 Major League Baseball created the Hank Aaron Award to be awarded to the best offensive performers in each league each season, and in 2000 Aaron was named to MLB’s All-Century Team. In 2001, he was awarded the Presidential Citizen’s Medal by President Bill Clinton, and in 2002 was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.

That slew of awards underscores Aaron’s fame and his relevance not only to baseball’s past, but also to America’s history. He was a Black man who successfully challenged the record of a White player whose legacy borders on mythical, and he did so with a poise so unshakable that it remains a study in professionalism. Naturally taciturn in public, he was only rarely able to convey his inner feelings with words, but he reserved one of his finest moments for the end of another controversy-laden home run chase, by Barry Bonds in 2007. When Bonds finally hit his 756th homer, Aaron’s face appeared on the JumboTron scoreboard in San Francisco, and he relayed a message to his replacement:

“I would like to offer my congratulations to Barry Bonds on becoming baseball’s career home run leader. It is a great accomplishment which required skill, longevity, and determination. Throughout the past century, the home run has held a special place in baseball and I have been privileged to hold this record for 33 of those years. I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historical achievement. My hope today, as it was on that April evening in 1974, is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams.”

Henry Aaron passed away in his sleep on January 22, 2021, just two weeks shy of his 87th birthday.27 He is buried at South View Cemetery in Atlanta.28

Dignity. Pride. Courage. Those are words often reserved for describing heroes. They also describe Henry Aaron.

Photo credits

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Trading Card Database, Atlanta Braves.

Notes

1 “Henry Aaron,” Alabama, U.S., Surname Files Expanded, 1702-1981; Alabama Department of Archives and History, online: https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61266/images/41904_539897-00023?pId=61280

2 Bill James, “Henry Aaron,” The Baseball Book: 1990 (New York: Villard, 1990), 161.

3 Hank Aaron and Lonnie Wheeler, I Had A Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story (New York, Harper Perennial, 1991), 14.

4 Nick Diunte, “Hank Aaron’s Lone Season in Puerto Rico Forever Altered His Path to the Hall of Fame,” Forbes.com, January 22, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickdiunte/2021/01/22/hank-aarons-lone-season-in-puerto-rico-forever-altered-his-path-to-the-hall-of-fame/

5 Aaron and Wheeler, 32.

6 Aaron and Wheeler, 53.

7 James, 161.

8 Isreal’s last name is often spelled “Israel” – like the nation, but Baseball-Reference.com uses “Isreal”. https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=isreal001elb. Of note, however, is that his father Frank’s World War II draft card spells the name (and in the signature), “Israel”.

9 “Henry Aaron, Negro Athlete, Is Voted Sally’s Most Valuable,” Panama City News Herald, August 19, 1953: 5.

10 Larry Schwartz, “Hank Aaron: Hammerin’ Back at Racism,” ESPN.com, accessed September 20, 2024, http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00006764.html

11 Howard Bryant. The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron (New York: Random House, 2010), 56.

12 Bryant, 69.

13 Dick Young, “Clubhouse Confidential,” The Sporting News, April 24, 1957: 17.

14 Dick Young, “Aaron Whipping Up Plate Breeze Aided By Lighter Bludgeon,” The Sporting News, May 1, 1957: 11.

15 Cleon Walfoort. “Aaron Turns Bad Pitches Into Base-hits,” The Sporting News, June 26, 1957: 7.

16 Walfoort, 7.

17 Steve Wulf, “The stuff of legends: In 1957, Cincinnati fans stacked the All-Star team too,” ESPN.com, June 29, 2015, https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/13168334/1957-cincinnati-fans-stacked-all-star-team-too 

18 Gary D’Amato, “Seasons of Greatness: No. 2 Hank Aaron 1957,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 26, 2012, http://m.jsonline.com/more/sports/brewers/140517023.htm

19 “Images from Hank Aaron’s chase for the career home run record,” ESPN.com, January 22, 2021, https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30759553/images-hank-aaron-chase-career-home-run-record

20 Maria Saporta, “Hank Aaron reflects on past 50 years in Atlanta; Braves move to Cobb,” Atlanta Business Chronicle, October 24, 2014, https://saportareport.com/hank-aaron-reflects-on-past-50-years-in-atlanta-braves-move-to-cobb/sections/abcarticles/maria_saporta/

21 George Will, Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball (New York: MacMillan, 1990), 206.

22 Archives, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York (visited: 2011).

23 Jon Paul Hoornstra, “Relive Hank Aaron’s 715th Homer Through Vin Scully’s Historic Call,” Newsweek.com, accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/relive-hank-aaron-s-715th-homer-through-vin-scully-s-historic-call/ar-BB1lioQU 

24 Alex Coffey, “The Braves Trade Hank Aaron to the Brewers,” BaseballHall.org, accessed September 20, 2024, https://baseballhall.org/discover-more/stories/inside-pitch/the-braves-trade-henry-aaron

25 Bob Uecker and Mickey Herskowitz, Catcher in the Wry (New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, 1982), 167-168.

26 Aaron and Wheeler. I Had a Hammer; 434.

27 Richard Goldstein, “Hank Aaron, Home Run King Who Defied Racism, Dies at 86,” New York Times, January 22, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/sports/baseball/hank-aaron-dead.html

28 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/221485980/hank-aaron

The only ballplayer named for a sitting United States president and portrayed on film by a future one (Ronald Reagan in The Winning Team) was born February 26, 1887, in the tiny farming community of Elba, Nebraska. He was one of thirteen children (twelve boys), the sixth of eight to survive into adulthood, born to the former Margaret Cootey and William Alexander.

Life on the Nebraska plains was harsh, as the infant and child deaths in the Alexander family amply prove. The Alexander farm was self-sufficient, however, and there was always enough food. Alex-called “Dode” by family and folks around Elba and St. Paul-considered himself “an average farm boy” and described his youth as “more or less a matter of long days of work and short nights of sleep.” He acquired a reputation as a corn shucker, a task his father credited with giving him the powerful right wrist that made his curveball so deadly. Alex developed his control throwing stones at clothespins or chickens (if his mother needed to fill the dinner pot). To be fair, he gave the chickens a running start. Despite the hardships, he graduated from St. Paul High School.

William Alexander hoped his son would study law as had his presidential namesake, but Dode wasn’t interested. Instead, he became a lineman with the telephone company so he could play ball on the weekends. Acquiring a local reputation as a pitcher, he signed with Galesburg (Illinois-Missouri League) for the 1909 season. After a slow start, he went 15-8 with an estimated ERA of 1.36 and 6 shutouts. On July 22, pitching in Galesburg against Canton, he threw the only no-hitter of his career, a 2-0 masterpiece in which he struck out ten, walked one, and hit a batter. A few days later, he beat Macomb, 1-0, in eighteen innings while allowing eight hits, hitting a batter, walking no one, and striking out nineteen.

In late July, however, he suffered an injury that ended his first season prematurely and cast doubts about his future. Alex was running from first to second trying to break up a double play when the shortstop’s throw hit him square in the right temple. Reports vary, but he was unconscious between thirty-six and fifty-six hours. He awoke suffering from double vision, which he endured through the fall and winter into the next spring. The double vision disappeared as suddenly as it came, and he was able to pitch again. The short-term effect, then, was relatively negligible. The long-term effect of the blow might have been the epilepsy that would do much to make the last half of his life a living hell.

The 1910 season got off to a bizarre start for Alexander. Galesburg sold him to Indianapolis, who, having heard of Alex’s double vision and believing that Galesburg had been too anxious to let him go, sold him to Syracuse (New York State League) without even giving him a look. Syracuse prospered from the gift. Alex went 29-11 with an ERA of 1.85. Thirty-one complete games and 217 strikeouts against only 74 walks in 345⅔ innings made for a nice bonus. Particularly eye-popping was the number of shutouts—15. He put to rest the rap in the Syracuse press that he was a bit soft on July 20 by beating Wilkes-Barre in two well-pitched complete games. He resolved any other questions about his stamina with a string of 52 consecutive scoreless innings and 6 shutouts that only the end of the season stopped.

Alexander was clearly ready for the majors, but the Phillies were particularly interested in George Chalmers of Scranton. They got Chalmers for $3,000 and, as insurance, drafted Alex from Syracuse for $500. Chalmers struggled over seven seasons, but Philadelphia’s investment in Alex paid a better dividend.

Alex caught the National League by surprise. He didn’t look like a pitcher, as did his older contemporaries Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson. All three were in the six-foot-one range, but whereas Alexander was a wiry 185 pounds, Mathewson and Johnson were a hard, chiseled 195 to 200 pounds. Matty and Walter had a majestic, almost regal way about them while Alex always had an unhurried shuffle, a uniform that never seemed to fit just right, and a cap that looked a size too small and stood on his head at a precarious tilt. All that changed when he pitched. He was the picture of grace and efficiency—often completing games in ninety minutes—with a smooth, usually sidearm delivery, possessing excellent control of a sneaky fastball and a devastating curve.

Alexander didn’t impress anyone at spring training except catcher Pat Moran, who saw something in him and persuaded the team to take the new pitcher north. He got to show his potential in the last game of the pre-season City Series, pitching five scoreless innings against the defending World Series champion Athletics. Alex debuted in Boston on April 15, losing a 5-4 decision on an unearned run in the ninth. He picked up his first win on April 26, beating Brooklyn in the first game of a doubleheader, 10-3.

Alex’s performance in 1911 is arguably the greatest season by a rookie pitcher in the twentieth century—28-13 with a 2.57 ERA. Twenty-eight wins led the league and remain the twentieth-century record for rookies. One of his biggest wins came in Boston against Cy Young in September, a one-hit 1-0 shutout. His 227 strikeouts, good for second in the league, stood as the record for rookies until Herb Score gunned down 245 for the Indians in 1955. He also led the league in complete games with 31, innings pitched with 367, and shutouts with 7 (four of them consecutive). His ERA was good enough for fifth. Pitching relief occasionally between starts, he picked up three saves. All of this came as part of a 79-73 team.

The Phillies in 1912 reversed their numbers to 73-79 and took Alexander down a bit with them. He went 19-17 with a 2.81 ERA but led the league with 195 strikeouts and 310 innings pitched. Philadelphia improved to second, well behind the Giants, in 1913, Alex contributing a 22-8 mark and a league-best 9 shutouts. Consistently inconsistent, the Phils fell to sixth in 1914 with a 74-80 slate. The fall was no fault of Alexander’s; he went 27-15 with a 2.38 ERA, leading the league in wins, innings pitched (355), strikeouts (214), and complete games (32).

The Phillies decided to make a change. Out went skipper Red Dooin. Enter Pat Moran, the good-field-fair-hit catcher who had persuaded the team to give Alex a real chance. Moran, an extraordinary manager who was building a Hall of Fame career until he died suddenly during spring training in 1924, was a genius at getting the absolute best out of his pitchers, as Alexander, Eppa Rixey, and a number of lesser talents had their finest seasons under him. Grover Cleveland Alexander was about to become Alexander the Great.

Beginning with the 1915 season, Alexander embarked on a three-year reign of terror over the National League. He went 31-10 to lead the league in wins and achieved his first pitcher’s Triple Crown, leading the league with a microscopic 1.22 ERA and a career-high 241 strikeouts. He led the league in every important pitcher’s category: innings pitched (376⅓), complete games (36), winning percentage (.756), and shutouts with an incredible 12, a figure that stood as the National League record for one year. To make his domination of hitters humiliating as well as complete, he pitched four one-hitters. The first one-hitter, a 3-0 win in St. Louis on June 5, was the closest Alex ever came to a major-league no-hitter, as shortstop Artie Butler singled past Alex’s head with two down in the ninth.

Behind Alex’s leadership, the Phillies edged out the Braves by one game and headed into the World Series with the Red Sox. He defeated Ernie Shore, 3-1, in Game One as both pitched a complete game. Dutch Leonard beat Alex, 2-1, in Game Three as Duffy Lewis singled in the bottom of the ninth to score Harry Hooper. Moran hoped to use Alexander in Game Five, but Alex felt worn out from the long season, and the Phillies lost a heartbreaker, 5-4, behind Erskine Mayer and Rixey.

Alexander rebounded from the disappointment of the Series loss with another Triple Crown: 33-12, 167 strikeouts, and a 1.55 ERA. He reached a career-high and league-leading 389 innings, 45 starts, and 38 complete games—and 16 shutouts. With the shutouts Alex reached two pinnacles: He’s the only National League pitcher to reach double figures twice in shutouts, and he holds the major league record for shutouts by three over Jack Coombs in 1910 and Bob Gibson in 1968. Coincidentally, he pitched his record-breaking 14th shutout on September 1, a 3-0 gem over Brooklyn’s Jack Coombs. Making his shutout record yet more astonishing is that he attained it pitching half his games in tiny Baker Bowl, a graveyard for pitchers. Alex’s heroics weren’t enough for the Phillies, who improved their won-lost record from the previous year but slid in 2½ games behind Brooklyn.

Philadelphia remained in second in 1917 albeit ten games behind the Giants, but it wasn’t Alexander’s fault. He went 30-13 and with 200 strikeouts to lead the league along with a 1.83 ERA and a league-best 8 shutouts, 44 starts, 34 complete games, and 388 innings pitched. Under the rules of 1917, Alexander was awarded the ERA title because he pitched 10 or more complete games. However, under today’s rules, the award goes to the Giants’ Fred Anderson, who compiled his 1.44 ERA in 162 innings with a nondescript 8-8 record and fewer than 10 complete games.

With the war raging in Europe and the United States having entered the fray the previous April, the Philadelphia front office carried off one of the most cynical acts in baseball history. Gambling that Alexander would be drafted into the army, on December 11, 1917, they sent Alex and catcher Bill Killefer to Chicago for Mike Prendergast and Pickles Dillhoefer and $55,000.

Adapting to Chicago nicely, a $5,000 bonus from Charles Weeghman helping the process, Alex won two of his three decisions in 1918, all complete games, with a 1.73 ERA when the army came calling. Philadelphia’s gamble paid off. Ironically, the Cubs won the pennant anyway behind the Triple Crown pitching of southpaw Jim Vaughn.

Alexander invested his bonus in Liberty Bonds and reported for duty at Fort Funston, Kansas. On May 31 he married Amy Marie Arrants of Omaha, whom he’d met on a blind date several years before when she was visiting friends in St. Paul.1 A sergeant assigned to the 89th Division and the 342nd Field Artillery, Alex shipped out from New York on June 28 and arrived in Liverpool on July 9. His unit went to the front late in July.

Many men survived the war, but they didn’t recover from it. One of the many cruel coincidences of the war is that it destroyed the two greatest National League pitchers of the Deadball Era, if not of the twentieth century, Christy Mathewson and Grover Cleveland Alexander.

Alexander spent seven weeks at the front under relentless bombardment that left him deaf in his left ear. Pulling the lanyard to fire the howitzers caused muscle damage in his right arm. He caught some shrapnel in his outer right ear, an injury thought not serious at the time but which may have been the progenitor of cancer almost thirty years later. He was shell-shocked. Worst of all, the man who used to have a round or two with the guys and call it a day became alcoholic and epileptic, a condition possibly caused by the skulling he’d received in Galesburg. Alex tried to cover up his epilepsy, using alcohol in the mistaken belief that it would alleviate the condition. Living in a world that believed epileptics to be touched by the devil, he knew it was more socially acceptable to be a drunk.

A human wreck, Alexander returned to the Cubs on May 11, 1919. Working his way back into pitching shape, he dropped his first five decisions. Once he got turned around, Alex finished 16-11 for a distantly third-place team and led the league with 9 shutouts and a sparkling 1.72 ERA. His ERA remains the lowest for a Cub pitcher since the team began playing in Wrigley Field. He transcended his fifth-place team in 1920 with his last Triple Crown season: 27-14 with 173 strikeouts and a 1.91 ERA. In addition, he led the league in starts (40), complete games (33), and innings pitched (363⅓) and threw in 7 shutouts and 5 saves.

From 1921 on, Alexander was a different pitcher, depending on finesse and pinpoint control, never striking out a hundred batters again, walking very few, having ERAs over three for the first time in his career, but still winning more than he lost. Alcohol was taking over his life, as he drank to relive the past, forget the present, and forestall the future. No longer a great pitcher, he was still a very good one, capable of picking up 22 wins in 1923 and setting a major-league record by starting the season pitching 52 consecutive innings before issuing a walk.

After the Cubs finished last in 1925, the front office brought in a career minor-leaguer named Joe McCarthy to manage in 1926. McCarthy, who would become a great manager, thought Alexander’s drinking was hurting the team. Alex made clear from the start that he had no use for McCarthy. With Alex muddling along at 3-3, the Cubs traded him to St. Louis for the waiver price on June 22. Legendary Cardinals player-manager Rogers Hornsby, wanting to win the pennant, figured Alex could help him and tolerated the drinking as long as it didn’t interfere with business. Alex helped, his 9-7 effort providing the margin in St. Louis’ two-game lead over Cincinnati.

The 1926 World Series, pitting the Cardinals against a powerful Yankee team featuring veteran bombers Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel and young guns Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri, cast the Alexander legend in stone. Alex pitched complete-game wins in Games Two and Six before the climactic seventh game. Alex entered the game to relieve Jesse Haines in the seventh inning with bases loaded, two out, and the Cardinals hanging on to a 3-2 lead. He struck out Lazzeri, held the lead, and the Cards were champs. Whether he was hung over, drunk, or sober — Alex and Amy always maintained he was sober — will probably never be known. Two interesting footnotes to the tale emerge: (1) Alexander, though striking out only 48 batters in 200⅓ innings during the season, struck out 17 Yankees in 20⅓ innings; and (2) Lazzeri, also hiding epilepsy, fell down a flight of stairs to his death during a seizure in 1946.

Reveling in his Series glory, Alexander enjoyed his ninth and last twenty-win season in 1927, going 21-10 with an ERA of 2.52. He slipped to 16-9 in 1928, pitched his ninetieth and last shutout, and was pounded mercilessly by the Yankees in their Series sweep of the Cardinals. His ninth and last win of the 1929 season, against eight losses, gave him 373, the number he believed put him ahead of Mathewson’s 372 and gave him the National League record for wins. It wasn’t to be, however, as researchers in the 1940s discovered an error in Matty’s 1902 numbers, improving his record from 13-18 to 14-17. The two righthanders, both victims of the war, would be forever linked in the record books. On December 11, twelve years to the day after Philadelphia traded him to Chicago, the Cardinals traded Alexander and Harry McCurdy to Philadelphia for Homer Peel and Bob McGraw—three of the most insignificant players ever connected to a Hall of Famer.

Alex lost all three decisions with Philadelphia in 1930, his first losing record ever, and was released. He tried to continue with Dallas in the Texas League but was ineffective and was soon let go. He pitched a few games over the next three years as a novelty with the House of David team. He was allowed to shave, but since a shot and a beer cost the same as a razor blade, he frequently had a stubble. Failing here, he was out of baseball for good. The coaching position he longed for never materialized because no one wanted to take a chance on him.

The last two decades of Alexander’s life are the picture of a man spinning out of control with nobody able to stop the free-fall. Alex entered various sanitariums seeking help, but nothing worked. He was hooked. Having put up with enough, Amy divorced him in 1929, hoping to shock him to his senses. Roy H. Masonnof of St. Paul filed a $25,000 lawsuit against him in January 1930, charging him with being a “love pirate.” Everybody cooled off, and Alex and Amy remarried in 1931. He shuffled around the country in an odyssey of odd jobs (including a stint recounting his strikeout of Lazzeri in a Times Square flea circus), cheap hotels, boarding houses, and the like. His poverty and inability to straighten out became an embarrassment to the National League. The Alexander file at the Hall of Fame contains a collection of letters exchanged among Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, National League president Ford Frick, Cardinal president Sam Breadon, and Cardinal general manager Branch Rickey—all of them addressing the question “What to do about Alexander?” They finally settled on the ruse of a National League pension of fifty dollars a month that was actually paid by the Cardinals and sent to whoever was keeping Alex to dole out to him as necessary. That, they hoped, with his small army pension, might keep Alexander from drowning.

Alexander’s desperate situation found relief only in his election to the Hall of Fame in 1938. He pulled himself together enough to go to Cooperstown for the first induction ceremony on June 12, 1939, and thoroughly enjoyed the time with the honorees. It was bittersweet, though, as Alex said in 1944, “I’m in the Hall of Fame, . . . and I’m proud to be there, but I can’t eat the Hall of Fame.”

The Alexanders divorced again in 1941 but remained close. Amy thought Alex never really considered them divorced and said he always sought her advice and friendship. He suffered a heart attack on October 15, 1946, as he was leaving Sportsman’s Park after watching the Cardinals beat the Red Sox in the World Series. In 1947 he was injured in a fall during an epileptic seizure in Los Angeles. He developed cancer on his right ear, necessitating its amputation. Amy thought the cancer might have been sun-related because Alex was fair and got sunburned often. It’s possible, too, that the root of the cancer stemmed from the shrapnel fragments he took during the war and the infection he suffered upon their removal. He made his last public appearance as the Yankees’ guest for Games Three and Four of their World Series sweep of the Phillies. Back in St. Paul after the Series, on November 4 he left his hotel room to mail a letter to Amy telling her he was looking forward to meeting her in Kansas City. He went back to his room and—mercifully—died. He was buried with full military honors in his family’s plot in Elmwood Cemetery outside St. Paul. His death certificate said Alex died of cardiac failure. Amy thought he died in a fall from an epileptic seizure. Either way, having reached the zenith, he had fallen to the depths. Never meeting a batter he couldn’t beat or a bottle he could, pursued by demons one can only imagine, Alexander was the cursed pitcher.

Amy, ever speaking kindly of Alex, died in Los Angeles in December 1979 at age eighty-seven.

An earlier version of this biography appeared in SABR’s “Deadball Stars of the National League” (Brassey’s, Inc., 2004), edited by Tom Simon.

Sources

Grover Cleveland Alexander Files at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

Hoie, Bob, Carlos Bauer, et al, eds. The Historical Register: The Complete Major & Minor League Record of Baseball’s Greatest Players. San Diego and San Marino: Baseball Press Books, 1998.

Honig, Donald. The Greatest Pitchers of All Time. New York: Crown Publishers, 1988.

Kavanagh, Jack. Ol’ Pete: The Grover Cleveland Alexander Story. South Bend, Indiana: Diamond Communications, Inc., 1996.

Meany, Tom. Baseball’s Greatest Pitchers. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1951.

_____. Baseball’s Greatest Teams. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1949.

Ritter, Lawrence S. The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It. New York: Macmillan, 1966.

Schechter, Gabriel. Unhittable! Baseball’s Greatest Pitching Seasons. Los Gatos: Charles April Publications, 2002.

Thorn, John, Pete Palmer, and Michael Gershman, eds. Total Baseball. 7th ed. Kingston, New York: Total Sports Publishing, 2001.

Wilbert, Warren, and William Hageman. Chicago Cubs: Seasons at the Summit. The 50 Greatest Individual Seasons. Champaign, Illinois: Sagamore Publishing, 1997.

Notes

1 Bob Broeg notes in his Foreword to Jack Kavanagh’s Ol’ Pete that Miss Arrants’ name was originally spelled “Amy” and that she experimented with other spellings, including the frequently cited “Aimee.”

Roberto’s father, Sandy Alomar, spent 15 years as a major-league infielder, and Roberto and his brother, also Sandy, spent most summers in major-league locker rooms. It was during these times that the brothers learned the intricacies of the game from the best players in the world – Nolan Ryan taught 4-year-old Roberto how to pitch while Ryan was a teammate of Sandy, Sr.’s on the Angels.1 Perhaps just as important, they also learned how to handle themselves like major-league ballplayers. The offseason brought with it the Puerto Rican Winter League (in which his father and three of his uncles all starred) and the annual Caribbean World Series.2 Roberto frequently made the trek to games with his father, sometimes completing his homework in the dugout.3

Roberto Alomar was born on February 5, 1968, in Ponce, on Puerto Rico’s south coast, to Santos (Sandy) and Maria (Velasquez) Alomar. He had an older brother, Santos Jr. (Sandy), and a sister, Sandia. They grew up in Salinas, 20 miles from Ponce. Roberto’s baseball ability and instincts were evident even as a boy. When he was 6 a scout reportedly saw him playing pepper and inquired of his father (presumably tongue in cheek) if he could sign him.4 By the age of 7, Roberto was selected as an all-star for the Salinas little league, but was declared ineligible when it was discovered that he was too young to play in the league.5 The time for Roberto to sign his first professional contract came soon enough. When he was 16 he signed with Caguas in the Puerto Rican Winter League, where he was managed by Felipe Alou.6 Alou later said that Roberto “was the best I had ever seen. He was a natural and definitely had the instincts that you just don’t teach.”7

On February 16, 1985, shortly after he turned 17, Roberto signed with the San Diego Padres – the same club for which his father was a coach and with which Sandy Jr. had signed two years earlier. While other teams (most notably Toronto) had expressed interest in the middle infielder and made higher offers than the approximately $50,000 Roberto received, Sandy Sr. had given his word to family friend and Padres scout Luis Rosa that Roberto would sign with the Padres.8

Unlike many newly signed minor leaguers, Roberto did not have to adjust to living on his own for the first time. He was assigned to the same team, Class-A Charleston in the South Atlantic League, for which his father was a coach and to which Sandy Jr. was also assigned. His mother also made the trip and the family lived together and provided a stable foundation as Roberto’s professional career began to flourish.9 Roberto hit .293 and stole 36 bases for Charleston, and his manager Jim Skaalen recalled that “He was tearing up the league against older college players.”10

Skaalen moved up along with Roberto the next season to Reno in the Class-A California League.11 His brother and father, however, did not. Sandy Jr. was ticketed for Double-A Wichita (Texas League) and Sandy Sr. was promoted to coach with the Padres. Roberto later recounted the challenges of his time in Reno: “In the minor leagues everything is different. I was making $700 a month. I had to pay for rent, utilities, food, clubhouse dues. All I had in the house I rented was a mattress on the floor, not even a table. I had no car and had to walk everywhere.”12

Skaalen, though, saw him maturing on and off the field: “He seemed more relaxed away from his dad and brother. He got stronger and seemed to be enjoying every day. He was far ahead of the rest of the talent at that level, and I began to see the good, solid major-league player he was going to become.”13 Whatever the challenges off the field, Alomar’s play certainly did not suffer. He led the league after 90 games with a .346 average and 123 hits, earning him a promotion to Double-A Wichita (and a reunion with Sandy Jr.).14 Sharing a one-bedroom apartment with his brother, Roberto continued his torrid pace and finished the season hitting .319 with 12 home runs and 43 stolen bases.15

Roberto’s minor-league success provided real hope going into the spring of 1988 that he could break camp with the Padres. His performance did nothing to dampen that enthusiasm, as he hit .360 and put together a 10-game hitting streak.16 Padres manager Larry Bowa noted that “this kid is a finished product. All he has to do is go out there and play. He has all the tools; just turn him loose.”17 The Padres, though, had been burned each of the prior two seasons when they tried to promote second basemen (Bip Roberts and Joey Cora) from Double A to the big leagues, and Bowa was directed to give Roberto the bad news that his season would begin at Triple-A Las Vegas, not San Diego.18 The 20-year-old Roberto took the news hard, tearfully retreating to the training room, where he was consoled by his father along with several teammates.

For his part, Bowa had no explanation for the sentence he was ordered to deliver: “I told him he did everything I asked,” said Bowa. “I just told him to keep his head up, that it’s a long season. The chances of Robbie coming to the big leagues in 1988 are pretty good.”19 They were pretty good indeed, as Roberto made quick work of the Pacific Coast League and was leading the league with 14 runs batted in when he was called up to San Diego 2½ weeks into the season.20

On April 22, 1988, Roberto stepped into the batter’s box as a major leaguer for the first time. On the mound was none other than Nolan Ryan – the same Nolan Ryan who had helped teach him to pitch as a toddler. Unfazed, he beat out an infield single in his first major league at-bat.21 Roberto finished the season with 145 hits, a .266 batting average, and 24 stolen bases, finishing fifth in the National League Rookie of the Year voting. He was even stronger the next season, his first full year in the big leagues, batting .295 with 42 stolen bases in 158 games.

Continuing his ascent onto the national radar, Roberto was selected for his first All-Star Game in 1990. What made the honor even more special was that Sandy Jr. (who had been traded to Cleveland), was also selected. The two became the first pair of brothers to be selected for an All-Star Game since Jim and Gaylord Perry in 1970.22 Sandy Sr. reflected on the accomplishments of his two sons: “People have to realize I’m very proud of my kids for the way they act as persons. And they have talent and know how to display that talent.”23

While it appeared that Roberto had established himself as a core piece of the Padres’ future, the Padres had other ideas. After the 1990 season the Padres and Blue Jays struck a blockbuster deal that sent Alomar and outfielder Joe Carter to Toronto in exchange for Fred McGriff and Gold Glove shortstop Tony Fernandez.24 Along with Alomar and Carter, Blue Jays general manager Pat Gillick had also added center fielder Devon White days earlier as Toronto worked to position itself in the competitive American League East.25 Padres’ general manager Joe McIlvaine said, “We just felt it was something we wanted to give a shot to. It was kind of a gutsy trade on both ends.”26 Roberto was shocked: “I didn’t expect it; I didn’t understand it,” he later recalled.27

Surprised or not, Roberto joined a collection of talented players in Toronto and paid immediate dividends north of the border, putting together an early six-game hitting streak as the Blue Jays streaked to the top of the American League East.28 In May, however, Roberto once again ran into the task of facing Nolan Ryan – now pitching for the Texas Rangers. With two outs in the top of the ninth, the 44-year-old Ryan was one out away from his seventh no-hitter when Roberto strode to the plate. As the Fort Worth Star Telegram put it 25 years later, “[T]he kid he’d once coached stood between Ryan and history.”29 Ryan had the last laugh; he struck out Alomar on a 2-and-2 fastball to end the game.30

Later in the season, Roberto was once again elected to the All-Star Game, this time as an American League teammate of Sandy Jr. The long ovation he received from the Toronto crowd served as confirmation of how the city had taken to him: “When I was introduced they gave me such a long, loud ovation, I never expected it,” Roberto said.31

As the season wore on, Alomar kept hitting and the Blue Jays kept winning, clinching the American League East. In his first postseason, Alomar’s.474 batting average could not keep Toronto from being eliminated in five games by the Minnesota Twins. Alomar won his first Gold Glove, and it was clear that the Blue Jays were set to contend in the years to come. The offseason brought with it new riches as well: a three-year, $14 million contract that was the highest at the time on three fronts – for a second baseman, for a player 24 or younger, and for a player with four years or less in the major leagues.32 The average annual value of $4,666,667 made Alomar the ninth-highest paid player in the game.33

Bolstered by the acquisition of Dave Winfield in the offseason and David Cone in August, the Blue Jays again clinched the American League East in 1992. At midseason Alomar returned to San Diego for the first time since being traded and participated in the All-Star Game – once again with Sandy Jr. as a teammate.34

Alomar was named the most valuable player in the ALCS, with the most memorable moment being his game-tying two run home run off A’s closer Dennis Eckersley in the ninth inning of Game Four. He relished the opportunity to be part of the first Blue Jays team to reach the World Series: “I wasn’t here when they didn’t win in the past. … I just want to be here in the present when we win the big one, so we won’t have to hear anymore about the past.35 Alomar continued his clutch hitting and superb defense in the World Series, and helped the Blue Jays defeat Atlanta for their first championship. Alomar’s contributions led Dave Winfield to comment that “You’re one of the best players I’ve ever seen.”36 Manager Cito Gaston agreed: “I could talk about Robbie for an hour,” he said.37

After a slow start in 1993, the Blue Jays took off yet again and Alomar had career highs in numerous categories, including 55 stolen bases and 17 home runs. In the ALCS against the Chicago White Sox, he stole four bases as the Blue Jays won, four games to two. In the World Series, against the Philadelphia Phillies, Alomar hit .480 and drove in six runs as the Blue Jays, on Joe Carter’s game-winning home run in Game Six, won the World Series for the second year in a row.38

With two World Series titles in his back pocket, it was hard to imagine things ever going wrong for Alomar in Toronto. But go wrong they did. After a strike-shortened 1994 season, the Blue Jays began to take a step back in 1995 and look toward the future. This included trading veteran David Cone in July – a move that Alomar protested by sitting out the next game.39 Alomar was also removed from a game in early July when a fan, Tricia Miller, walked into the Skydome hotel where he lived and told employees that she planned to kill him.40 Alomar said, “I wasn’t shaken by it. I never knew that person. I never really knew what was happening. Cito told me in the dugout. They took me out of the game, but they had caught her by then, so I don’t know why.”41

By the end of the season, with rumors swirling about his future, Alomar was unhappy with what he felt was unfair treatment by the Toronto front office and local media:

“I never said that I want to be traded. … They made it sound like I said, ‘Trade me now, I want out of here.’ And the fans believed what they read in the papers. When I stood out on the field in Toronto and heard them booing me, I knew they didn’t understand or know what the truth was. I hadn’t said anything like what the writers wrote. But I could do nothing about it, and I learned how the media is.”42

With no offer from the Blue Jays, Alomar was ready to hit free agency: “If [the Blue Jays] had offered me something before the All-Star break, then maybe I would’ve thought about it and gone for it. Now you’re in the last week of the season. … Now maybe it’s time for me to try the market.”43

At 27 years old and already a six-time All-Star, Alomar inked a three-year, $18 million contract with the Baltimore Orioles in December 1995.44 He was thrilled to team up with fellow All-Star Cal Ripken Jr.: “I never expected to play alongside one of the legends of baseball. … It’s going to be like a dream come true for me.”45

Alomar carried his winter-ball success (he led the league in hitting) over to Baltimore, going on a tear to begin the season, hitting .410 in the beginning part of June.46 Former teammate Tony Gwynn heaped praise on the player Alomar had become, saying, “He has the ability to hit a home run, or work the count and hit a double down the opposite line and do whatever he wants to do. He’s probably the best all-around player in the game.”47 Alomar went on to make his seventh consecutive All-Star Game, collect his sixth consecutive Gold Glove and set numerous career highs as the Orioles clinched the American League wild-card playoff spot.48

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the season, however, occurred during a late-September game in Toronto. After being called out on strikes in the top of the first, Alomar argued with home-plate umpire John Hirschbeck on his way back to the dugout. When Hirschbeck threw him out of the game, Alomar returned to the field. During the course of the argument, Alomar took offense to being called a derogatory name, and spit in Hirschbeck’s face.49

Alomar apologized and donated $50,000 toward research into Lou Gehrig’s disease, which Hirschbeck’s son had.50 This did nothing to prevent his being relentlessly booed for the remainder of the season and the playoffs, or from receiving a five-game suspension to be served at the start of the 1997 season.51

Alomar delivered a game-tying two-out single in the deciding Game Four of the Division Series against Cleveland, and then hit the game-winning home run in the 12th inning.52 Brother and Indians catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. said, “He’s my brother and with all the things that happened with this incident, I felt kind of sorry for him.”53 Roberto was ready to turn the page on the incident: “I’ve been going through a tough time. … Human beings make mistakes. I apologized to the umpire, his family, and all of baseball. It’s time to move on.”54 The Orioles did move on to the ALCS, but were eliminated in five games by the New York Yankees on their way to the World Series title.

The fact that Alomar was even allowed to play in the playoffs did not sit well with many, including major-league umpires. When it was announced that his suspension would be delayed until the next season, the umpires voted to not work the playoffs unless the suspension was changed to apply to the first round.55 The boycott was abandoned, however, when an agreement was worked out in a Philadelphia federal court.56

After he served his five-game suspension to start the 1997 season, Alomar helped the Orioles to 98 wins and the American League East crown. He also took the first step toward putting the spitting incident behind him, publicly shaking hands with Hirschbeck near first base in April before the first Orioles game Hirschbeck called since the incident.57 Several nagging injuries pestered Alomar throughout the season, including a nagging groin injury in late July that made him miss close to a month of playing time. Alomar said the injury “made me grow up. I now knew what it was like to be hurt and what you had to do to come back.”58 After defeating the Mariners in the Division Series, the Orioles came up short of the World Series yet again, this time losing to Sandy and the Cleveland Indians in six games.

The Orioles were nowhere near contention in 1998. The season was not without its highlights though, as Roberto collected three hits (one of them a home run) and the All-Star Game MVP award in Denver, making the Alomar brothers back-to-back winners of the award since Sandy had won the year before. As his three-year contract with the Orioles came to a close, Roberto once again found himself on the free-agent market.

It did not take long for Roberto to find a new home. He signed a four-year contract with the Indians, reuniting with Sandy.59 “It means a lot to be beside my brother, not only to me but to my family,” Roberto said.60 Indians general manager John Hart stated the obvious: “We are elated to have the Alomar brothers in the Indians family.”61 In addition to Sandy, the move to Cleveland also allowed Roberto to team with shortstop Omar Vizquel, who along with Roberto had also won six Gold Gloves. “It would be worth the price of a ticket just to watch Omar and Robbie turn a double play,” said Hart.62

Free from the injuries that plagued him in 1998, Alomar made an immediate impact on the Indians. “Robbie is one of the few players in the game that can make everybody around him better,” Indians manager Mike Hargrove said.63 The Indians had compiled an enviable offense that exploded out of the gates, and Alomar ended the year with what proved to be a career high 24 home runs. He finished third in the MVP voting (the highest he would ever finish). His hot hitting continued in the playoffs; he went 5-for-8 while the Indians surged to a 2-0 series lead over the Red Sox in the ALDS.64 The Tribe would not win again, however, and fell in five games.65

Although things did not turn out as hoped in October, a late-season meeting helped Alomar to finally turn the page on the spitting incident, which had continued to follow him through the jeers of fans around the country. On September 5, during a rain delay at Camden Yards, John Hirschbeck and family came knocking on the visitor’s clubhouse door, asking for Roberto. Hirschbeck’s 13-year-old son was a fan, and wanted to meet Roberto. The moment together allowed both families to heal. “I don’t see why he should be booed,” Hirschbeck said afterward. “If he and I can forgive and forget, why not everyone else?”66

The next two seasons also ended in disappointment for the Indians. In 2000 they missed the playoffs altogether despite winning 90 games. They charged back to the playoffs in 2001, but fell in five games in the ALDS to the Seattle Mariners. Alomar won Gold Gloves and was an All-Star in both seasons, and stole a combined 69 bases. He still looked to be in his prime with one year left on his contract. But another change of scenery was in store.

On December 11, 2001, the Indians traded Alomar, pitcher Mike Bacsik, and first baseman Danny Peoples to the New York Mets in exchange for outfielders Matt Lawton and Alex Escobar, relief pitcher Jerrod Riggan, and two players to be named later.67 While the move was designed to clear payroll and acquire younger talent, Indians general manager Mark Shapiro knew that the deal would not sit well with all fans. “I think I’ll need a flak jacket when I get off the plane [from the winter meetings], probably,” he said.68 Alomar said he was “kind of disappointed … I was real happy in Cleveland and thought I did a great job.”69 Mets General Manager Steve Phillips was elated: “We sit up in that room and all we do is dream all day about different scenarios,” he said, adding that “I have to admit that I thought this was a long shot.”70

But what had seemed like a dream scenario for Phillips at the Winter Meetings would soon turn into a nightmare. The Mets came nowhere near meeting expectations, finishing in last place in the National League East, 26½ games out of first place. Alomar also began to show the first sign of decline, hitting .266 and snapping his 12-year streak of appearances in the All-Star Game. The 2003 season began much the same way, with Alomar hitting.262 on July 1 when the Mets shipped him to the White Sox for three prospects.71

All told, Alomar played only 222 games for the Mets, and for his part understood that he did not perform at the high level that the Mets, and he himself, had expected. “Sometimes, you put too much pressure on yourself in New York, and maybe I did that,” he said.72 Along with providing a change of scenery, joining the White Sox allowed him to reunite again with Sandy.73 But Roberto hit only .253 down the stretch and the White Sox finished in second place in the American League Central, missing the playoffs.

A free agent once again, Alomar signed a one-year deal in the offseason with the Arizona Diamondbacks in the hopes of rejuvenating his career. “If I can get in good shape, I think I can play the way I used to play,” he said.74 Despite missing 56 games with a broken right hand suffered when he was hit by a pitch in late April, he did indeed experience a resurgence of sorts in his limited time on the field with Arizona, carrying a .309 batting average into early August.75 With the Diamondbacks hopelessly out of contention, Alomar was once again an attractive commodity for teams looking to add a veteran presence for the stretch run. So it was that the White Sox acquired him for the second consecutive season. Alomar struggled mightily in sporadic action, though, batting only .180 in 65 plate appearances as the White Sox once again missed the playoffs.

After multiple seasons of declining performance, Alomar made one last run at extending his career, this time with Tampa Bay, signing a one-year, $600,000 contract in January.76 When he committed multiple errors in one inning of a spring training game, however, he decided it was time to walk away. “I played a lot of games and I said I would never embarrass myself on the field,” he said, adding, “I had a long career, but I can’t play at the level I want to play, so it’s time to retire. I just can’t go anymore. My back, legs and eyes aren’t the same.”77 Alomar concluded his 17-year career with a .300 batting average, 2,724 hits, 210 home runs, and 474 stolen bases to go along with 12 All-Star Game selections and 10 Gold Glove awards.

There was no question that Cooperstown would be the final stop of Alomar’s career. With some Hall voters still holding the Hirschbeck incident against him, though, he came up eight votes short of admission in his first year of eligibility, in 2010. “I feel disappointed, but next year hopefully I make it in,” he said, adding that “at least I was close.”78 Some sportswriters were not as gracious in their assessment of the snub. The Chicago Tribune’s Phil Rogers wrote, “If anybody didn’t vote for Robbie because of the spitting incident, then shame on them.”79

Whatever the concerns some Hall voters had in Alomar’s first year of eligibility, resistance to his election was all but nonexistent the next year. He was named on 90 percent of the ballots, far over the 75 percent needed for induction into the Hall of Fame.80 Even Alomar was surprised by the drastic increase in support from the previous year. “I didn’t expect to get that many votes,” he said.81

Alomar, who went into the Hall wearing a Blue Jays cap, opened his induction speech in Spanish and spoke fondly of his father’s and brother’s impact on his life and career.82 Sandy Jr. recounted the brothers’ year-long wager as teammates/roommates for Class-A Charleston: “We said whoever had the best game, would get the bed. I slept on the couch the whole year.”83 He added, “We didn’t win a championship together but we won this together. And this is a big one. In my heart, you are a Hall of Famer.”84

Statistics aside, it is the way Alomar’s former teammates describe him that truly tells the story of the player that he was. Toronto teammate Pat Hentgen, asked how he described Alomar to present-day players, said, “I tell them Robbie was a career .300 hitter, a clutch hitter, a guy who could hit for power, a great baserunner and basestealer … and (pause) his best asset of all was his glove.”85 The Orioles’ B.J. Surhoff perhaps best summed up Alomar’s baseball career: “Robbie could beat you with the bunt, with the extra base, with the homer. He could beat you with a stolen base. He could beat you by going from first to third, a baserunning move. He could beat you by making plays in the field. Robbie’s a baseball player. And a damn good one at that.”86

Alomar continued to be involved in baseball after his retirement. In January of 2016, he and his wife, Kim, launched Foundation 12, a Canadian charitable organization serving youth baseball players, though the organization does not appear to be currently active as of 2022. In 2021, Alomar was placed on the ineligible list by Major League Baseball following an investigation into a 2014 sexual assault allegation.87 Alomar stated that he was “disappointed, surprised, and upset” with the decision, and that he would “continue to spend my time helping kids pursue their baseball dreams.”88

Last revised: March 9, 2022

Notes

1 “25 Years Later, Nolan Ryan Remembers His Seventh No-Hitter,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 30, 2016, star-telegram.com/sports/mlb/texas-rangers/article74925477.html.

2 Norman L. Macht, Roberto Alomar (Childs, Maryland: Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc., 1999), 9-11.

3 Macht, 3.

4 Macht, 10.

5 “Like Father Like Son?: Padres Think Roberto Alomar Is a Bit More Than a Chip Off the Old Block,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1988, articles.latimes.com/1988-04-22/sports/sp-2096_1_roberto-alomar.

6 Macht, 15.

7 Macht, 15.

8 Macht, 16.

9 Macht, 16.

10 Macht, 17.

11 Macht, 18.

12 Macht, 18.

13 Macht, 19.

14 Macht, 19

15 Macht, 21.

16 “Padre Notebook: Few Except Feeney Appear Satisfied as Roberto Alomar Is Sent Down,” Los Angeles Times, March 26, 1988, articles.latimes.com/1988-03-26/sports/sp-354_1_roberto-alomar.

17 Macht, 23.

18 “Padre Notebook.”

19 “Padre Notebook.”

20 “Like Father Like Son?”

21 Macht, 25-26.

22 “Alomars an All-Star Family: Padres: Roberto Alomar, Along With Teammate Tony Gywnn, Is Named an NL Reserve. Brother Sandy Had Already Been Selected as The Starting AL Catcher for Tuesday’s Game,” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1990, articles.latimes.com/1990-07-06/sports/sp-113_1_sandy-alomar-jr.

23 “Alomars an All-Star Family.”

24 “Blue Jays Land Carter, Alomar From Padres San Diego Gets Fernandez and McGriff in Deal,” Baltimore Sun, December 5, 1990, articles.baltimoresun.com/1990-12-06/sports/1990340005_1_blue-jays-fred-mcgriff-tony-fernandez.

25 “Blue Jays Land Carter, Alomar From Padres San Diego Gets Fernandez and McGriff in Deal.”

26 “Blue Jays Land Carter, Alomar From Padres San Diego Gets Fernandez and McGriff in Deal.”

27 Macht, 31.

28 “Padres Winning December Deal Looks Like Tie With Blue Jays in April,” Baltimore Sun, April 21, 1991, articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-04-21/sports/1991111135_1_blue-jays-roberto-alomar-deal.

29 “25 Years Later.”

30 “25 Years Later.”

31 Macht, 33.

32 “Cadaret and 8 Others Settle Contract,” New York Times, February 8, 1992, nytimes.com/1992/02/08/sports/baseball-cadaret-and-8-others-settle-contracts.html.

33 “Cadaret and 8 Others Settle Contract,”

34 Macht, 35.

35 “Blue Jays Eck Out a 7-6 Victory in 11: AL Game 4: Alomar’s Two-Run Homer Off Eckersley Ties It in Ninth as A’s Blow 6-1 Lead,” Los Angeles Times, October 12, 1992, articles.latimes.com/1992-10-12/sports/sp-138_1_blue-jays.

36 Macht, 37.

37 “Alomar’s MVP Play Points to New Star,” Baltimore Sun, October 15, 1992, articles.baltimoresun.com/1992-10-15/sports/1992289072_1_alomar-blue-jays-toronto.

38 Macht, 42.

39 Macht, 43-44.

40 “Orioles’ Multitalented Alomar Is Second to None,” Washington Post, March 31, 1996, washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1996/03/31/orioles-multitalented-alomar-is-second-to-none/b8cd697d-9630-464e-bcd9-84d6ba8db8cf/?utm_term=.9d34bd1c1107.

41 “Orioles’ Multitalented Alomar Is Second to None.”

42 Macht, 44.

43 “Jays’ Alomar in No Rush to Decide ’96 Destination He, Molitor Express Interest in Joining Ripken,” Baltimore Sun, September 27, 1995, articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-09-27/sports/1995270116_1_alomar-blue-jays-second-baseman.

44 “O’s Wave Money Wand Building Winner: Signing Six-Time All-Star Roberto Alomar Adds Exclamation Mark to New General Manager’s Swift Revamping of Orioles,” Baltimore Sun, December 22, 1995, articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-12-22/news/1995356066_1_gillick-orioles-roberto-alomar. New manager Davey Johnson was informed of the signing in the dentist’s chair when he answered a call from General Manager Pat Gillick who said, “Well, you’ve got yourself an All-Star second baseman.” Johnson claimed to not feel any pain for the remainder of the day. “Alomar finds O’s 2nd to none Six-time All-Star signs, three-year, $18 million deal,” Baltimore Sun, December 22, 1995, articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-12-22/sports/1995356093_1_roberto-alomar-cone-orioles.

45 Macht, 47.

46 Macht, 46, 51-52.

47 “Alomar Hitting His Prime at Plate,” Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1996, articles.latimes.com/1996-05-28/sports/sp-9201_1_alomar-hitting.

48 Macht, 51-52.

49 Macht, 52-53.

50 Macht, 54.

51 Macht, 54.

52 “Alomar Shows Some Spit and Polish,” Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1996, articles.latimes.com/1996-10-06/sports/sp-51279_1_sandy-alomar.

53 “Alomar Shows Some Spit and Polish.”

54 “Alomar Shows Some Spit and Polish.”

55 “Umpires Vote to Boycott Over Alomar,” New York Times, October 1, 1996, nytimes.com/1996/10/01/sports/umpires-vote-to-boycott-over-alomar.html.

56 “Umpires Abandon Boycott,” Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1996, articles.latimes.com/1996-10-02/sports/sp-49681_1_umpires-working-game.

57 Macht, 57.

58 Macht, 59.

59 Macht, 62.

60 “Cleveland Lures Roberto Alomar,” CBS News, November 23, 1998, cbsnews.com/news/cleveland-lures-roberto-alomar/.

61 “Cleveland Lures Roberto Alomar.”

62 “Cleveland Lures Roberto Alomar.”

63 “Alomar: Villain Turned Hero in Cleveland,” Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1999, articles.latimes.com/1999/jun/27/sports/sp-50609.

64 “Baines Goes Deep as Indians Move One Game From Sweep,” Baltimore Sun, October 8, 1999, articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-10-08/sports/9910080129_1_roberto-alomar-baines-cleveland.

65 “Red Sox Ace Out Indians,” Los Angeles Times, October 12, 1999, articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/12/sports/sp-22770/2.

66 “Score One for Friendship,” Baltimore Sun, October 27, 1999, articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-10-27/news/9910270108_1_roberto-alomar-john-hirschbeck-holy-water/3.

67 “Indians Trade Alomar to Mets,” Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau, Missouri), December 12, 2001, semissourian.com/story/54375.html.

68 “Indians Trade Alomar to Mets,” CBC Sports, December 11, 2001, cbc.ca/sports/baseball/indians-trade-alomar-to-mets-1.257404.

69 “Indians Trade Alomar to Mets,” CBC Sports.

70 “Indians trade Alomar to Mets,” Southeast Missourian, December 12, 2001, www.semissourian.com/story/54375.html.

71 “Mets Trade Roberto Alomar to White Sox,” New York Times, July 1, 2003, nytimes.com/2003/07/01/sports/baseball/mets-trade-roberto-alomar-to-white-sox.html.

72 “Mets Trade Roberto Alomar to White Sox.”

73 Sandy Alomar signed with Chicago prior to the 2003 season.

74 “Alomar Jr. Joins Diamondbacks, CBC Sports, January 7, 2004, cbc.ca/sports/baseball/alomar-jr-joins-diamondbacks-1.516620.

75 “Diamondbacks Trade Alomar to White Sox,” Orlando Sentinel, August 6, 2004, articles.orlandosentinel.com/2004-08-06/sports/0408060185_1_dominican-republic-clemens-white-sox.

76 “Notebook: Roberto Alomar: “It’s Time to Retire,” Seattle Times, March 20, 2005, seattletimes.com/sports/notebook-roberto-alomar-its-time-to-retire/.

77 “Notebook: Roberto Alomar: “It’s Time to Retire.”

78 “Hall Passes: Alomar 8 Short,” Baltimore Sun, January 7, 2010, articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-01-07/sports/1001060140_1_hall-s-veterans-committee-john-hirschbeck-roberto-alomar.

79 “Hall Passes: Alomar 8 Short.”

80 “Alomar, Blyleven Elected to Hall of Fame,” Baltimore Sun, January 5, 2011, articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-01-05/sports/bs-sp-hallofame-01-20110105_1_sandy-alomar-sr-pitcher-bert-blyleven-induction.

81 “Alomar, Blyleven Elected to Hall of Fame.”

82 “Alomar, Blyleven and Gillick Enter Baseball Hall of Fame,” USA Today, July 24, 2011, usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/hallfame/2011-07-24-hall-of-fame-alomar-blyleven_n.htm.

83 “Alomar, Blyleven and Gillick Enter Baseball Hall of Fame.”

84 “Alomar, Blyleven and Gillick Enter Baseball Hall of Fame.”

85 “Robbie Was Best of the Best,” Toronto Sun, July 16, 2011, torontosun.com/2011/07/16/robbie-was-best-of-the-best.

86 “Alomar Falls Just Short in First Bid for Hall of Fame,” Baltimore Sun, January 7, 2010, articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-01-07/sports/bal-sp.alomar07jan07_1_roberto-alomar-greatest-second-basemen-ballot/2.

87 Keegan Matheson, “MLB Puts Roberto Alomar on Ineligible List,” MLB.com, April 30, 2021. https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-puts-roberto-alomar-on-ineligible-list

88 “MLB puts Roberto Alomar on Ineligible List.”

Walter Emmons Alston was born on December 1, 1911, in Venice, Ohio, a few miles northwest of Cincinnati. His father, Emmons Alston, was a farmer, and Walt’s mother Lenora (Neanover) was a homemaker.  Walt’s formative years were spent on a farm near Morning Sun, Ohio, but there were few neighbors nearby with which to play. Alston shared some thoughts on his childhood with John Flynn Dreyspool of Sports Illustrated magazine in 1955: “When the old man wasn’t there to play catch with me, I was bouncing the ball around on the barn door. That’s how I got my nickname, ‘Smokey,’ ‘cause I used to have a real fast fireball.”

The Alstons moved to Darrtown when Walt entered his teenage years, and that gave him the chance to play baseball more regularly on a local sandlot. At Darrtown High School “Smokey” captained the basketball and baseball teams and helped the 1928 baseball squad the Butler County championship. He graduated from high school in 1929, two years after electric power arrived in Darrtown, and enrolled at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Alston drove a laundry truck to finance part of his education, and also worked in the school cafeteria and moonlighted at a local pool hall.

In 1930 he married local girl Lela Alexander. The responsibilities of marriage forced Walt to withdraw from college for two years in order to establish a more reliable financial plan for his education. He re-enrolled in 1932, at the nadir of the Great Depression, yet was able to not only letter in both baseball and basketball all three years, but also to complete work for his degree in education. He found time to play Sunday baseball in the Clark-Butler County League, where he pitched and played both corner infield positions.

After he left college in 1935, Alston accepted a position as a high school science, biology, and industrial arts teacher, and basketball coach, in the New Madison school district. It was around this time that the St. Louis Cardinals, who were familiar with his success on the college diamond, offered Alston a contract and a chance to play third base for the Greenwood Chiefs of the class C East Dixie League. In 319 at-bats Alston hit .326 and, after an offseason of teaching and coaching, earned a move to the Huntington Red Birds of the Mid-Atlantic League. At the end of the 1936 minor league season, a year in which his batting average of .326 and his 35 home runs garnered the attention of team executives in St. Louis, Alston was called up as insurance for  what proved to be an unsuccessful September pennant run.

On September 27, 1936, Cardinal star rookie Johnny Mize was ejected in the final game of the season, a Sunday tilt against the Cubs, and manager Frankie Frisch sent Alston in to make his major league debut. It was hardly the stuff of legend. In three innings at first base behind pitcher Dizzy Dean, Alston had two chances in the field and made an error on one of them. At the plate in what turned out to be his sole major league at-bat and facing Cub ace Lon Warneke, Walt whiffed on three pitches.  The next spring the Cardinals, having Mize ensconced at first base, assigned Alston to the Houston Buffaloes of the Texas League. The slugger never played in the majors again.

Smokey had given up teaching, but with daughter Dorothy to look after, he and Lela spent the next decade in the minor leagues, in cities like Rochester (New York), Portsmouth (Ohio), Columbus (Georgia), and Springfield (Ohio), chasing another shot at the majors. They would return to Ohio after every offseason until his retirement in 1976, but each spring he would try again to prove his worth. His offensive production never again equaled that 1936 season, however. Eventually the Cardinals, having observed him closely, suggested Walt try managing. In 1940 he replaced Fred “Dutch” Dorman at the helm and served out the season as player-manager for Portsmouth in the Mid-Atlantic League. On the field he knocked 28 home runs, but on the bench managed just well enough to keep the Red Birds out of the cellar.

Alston played and managed the next two seasons at Class C Springfield, in 1941 hammering 25 more homers and guiding the team to a 69-51 record and the playoffs before losing in the first round. In 1943 Walt relinquished the reins and returned to full-time playing for Rochester in the International League, but his batting average dipped to .240. It was the last season that he would not manage a team. Walt started the 1944 Rochester season with only three hits in the team’s first thirteen games. The Cardinals, reasonably assuming that the shelf life on the 32-year-old minor league slugger was nearing expiration, released him.    

The Brooklyn Dodgers jumped at the opportunity afforded by the Cardinals’ decision and signed Alston as player-manager of the Trenton Packers in the Class B Interstate League on July 28. Alston replaced Joe Bird as skipper and led the team, with a record of 32-57 when he arrived, to a 31-18 mark over the final 49 games. Two years later Alston managed the Nashua Dodgers to the 1946 New England League title, and repeated the feat with the Pueblo Dodgers in the Western League the following season. Walt was promoted to manage the Dodgers’ AAA American Association team in St. Paul, and then moved to Montreal in 1950.

In his six years managing at the AAA level, between 1948 and 1953, Alston’s teams won three league titles, one Junior World Series championship (1949), and posted a composite 544-373 record. When Brooklyn owner Walter O’Malley decided he would not meet Dodger manager Charlie Dressen’s request for a multi-year contract, the owner chose his AAA skipper to manage the big-league club. O’Malley gave Alston a one-year contract, the first of 23 that the manager would eventually sign.

“Who’s he?” New York Times sportswriters queried as spring training began in 1954.  Alston was taking over a team that had been riding a wave of success. Since Bobby Thomson’s home run in the 1951 playoff with the Giants, the Dodgers had won consecutive National League pennants in 1952 and 1953, losing to the Yankees both years in the World Series. It was a roster filled with talented players like Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Duke Snider, so expectations were high. In Alston’s first year in the dugout, 1954, the team won 92 games. But lost the pennant to the cross-town rival Giants, a team that rode the shoulders of Willie Mays in defeating the heavily favored Indians in the World Series, but the new manager endured public criticism for failing to meet expectations.

The team was only one game out of first place on June 27, but within three weeks had slumped to seven games back. The Dodgers rallied back to within a game of the lead, but another slump in September scuttled their chances. There was scuttlebutt that Jackie Robinson did not respect Alston. In Rudy Marzano’s book The Last Years of the Brooklyn Dodgers: A History, 1950-1957, he quoted Robinson in the aftermath of an early September loss in Chicago, a game in which Duke Snider had been awarded a double on a fly ball that should have been ruled a home run, yet Alston did not contest the call. “The team might be moving somewhere if Alston had not been standing at third base like a wooden Indian,” Robinson said. Between the slumps and comments such as those from Robinson and Billy Loes, the daily sports pages became a daily workshop for dissecting the manager.

Following the next season, after 98 wins and a World Series victory over Mickey Mantle and the Yankees, Alston went all the way from “bush leaguer” to Sport magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1955.  It was a turnaround possible only in a media capital like New York City.

Alston’s Dodgers followed in 1956 with another National League pennant but lost to the Yankees in a World Series rematch. It took the American Leaguers seven games, including a perfect game by Don Larsen, to wrest the title from Brooklyn, and it proved to be the Dodgers’ final title shot before moving to Los Angeles.

Walter O’Malley’s move, along with Horace Stoneham’s Giants, to the West Coast created a tectonic shift in the baseball landscape. Both teams arrived in their new cities to play in interim ballparks. The Dodgers made camp in the Los Angeles Coliseum, a single-tiered, oval edifice constructed in the 1920s that was well suited to track and field, most visibly during the 1932 Olympic Games, and football, as home to the University of Southern California, but required some creative adaptation as a baseball facility. For a team constructed to exploit the dimensions and nuances of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the new home offered a schizophrenic challenge to pitchers, hitters and managers. There was virtually no foul territory on the first- base side, yet the area behind the plate and on the third-base side was vast. Conversely, the left-field foul pole was a mere 251 feet from home plate, and Commissioner Frick demanded that the Dodgers put up a 42-foot-high fence in left field to minimize, as much as possible, cheap home runs. The Dodgers fell to seventh place in their new home.

Alston, with a pitching staff that included youngsters Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, as well as veterans Johnny Podres and Roger Craig, led his 1959 team to the National League pennant, their first in Los Angeles, and a World Series win over the “Go Go” White Sox. The seeds of the team’s future were also faintly visible on the 1959 champions. Along with Brooklyn transplants like Snider, Hodges, Podres, and Craig, there were a number of new Los Angeles Dodger faces on the roster. Names like Ron Fairly, Maury Wills, Tommy Davis, Frank Howard, and Stan Williams began to show up in box scores. Those players formed the core of the team that would open Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine in 1962.

The 1961 Dodgers finished only four games off the pace, behind the Cincinnati Reds, a favorable portent for 1962. It was that year, however, that provided another test of Alston as a major league manager.  The team was ahead of the Giants by four games with only seven to play yet fell into a tie with their long-time rivals at the end of the regular season. San Francisco won the three-game playoff two-games-to-one and went on to the World Series against the Yankees while the Dodgers went home. There were heated calls in the Southern California press for Alston’s ouster, and some rumored dissent in the locker room, but Smokey never panicked, never wavered. He had told Sports Illustrated in 1955, “I think I learned my lesson in St. Paul. One year we had a six-game lead and nine games to play and we end up winning the pennant by one-half game and we had to win a double-header the last day of the season to do it.” For Alston, it was paramount to play the next game and not worry about the game next week, or next season. In 1963 the Dodgers won 99 times en route to another National League pennant, and then swept the defending champion Yankees 4-0 in the World Series.

In 1965, the Dodgers defeated the Minnesota Twins in the Fall Classic, but Alston again fell under the media microscope the following year when the Dodgers fell to the Baltimore Orioles in a four-game World Series sweep. The team spent the next decade re-inventing itself a third time.

The “Boys of Summer” had won in 1955 with a veteran roster laden with power hitters and adequate pitching. By the end of the 1965 championship, the team was clearly built around pitching prowess and the physical advantage provided in the wide open spaces of Dodger Stadium. In 1974, the year of Alston’s final National League championship, the team had shifted to a balance of pitching (Don Sutton, Tommy John, and Mike Marshall) and all-around offense (Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, and Jimmy Wynn, among many). In each iteration, the colors of the uniforms remained constant but the names on the backs changed and the managerial approach necessary for success altered dramatically.

Walt Alston, clearly, handled those changes well. On July 17, 1976, he became the fifth manager ever to reach 2,000 career wins (in 2011 he remains ninth all-time). Two months later—after his final game as Dodger manager, a 1-0 loss to J.R. Richard and the Houston Astros on September 28, 1976–his season’s record stood at 90-68.  Following that game the 64-year old Alston handed the team over to third-base coach Tommy Lasorda, a long time ally since their days in Montreal, and walked away.

He and Lela returned to Darrtown, their home until Walt passed away on October 1, 1984, in Oxford, Ohio. He is buried in Darrtown Cemetery. In 2000 the proud town erected a statue of Alston, in the center of the town.

Walter Alston’s legacy is dazzling, even decades after his retirement, and choosing his second-most impressive achievement, after the 1955 championship, is nearly impossible. His Dodger teams, over 23 years, suffered but four losing seasons despite franchise relocation and three different home parks. His teams won 90 or more games in 10 different years, and he was three times named Major League Manager-of-the-Year, and six times National League Manager-of-the-Year. He managed eight National League All-Star teams, winning seven of those games, and even found time to co-author a book, the Complete Baseball Handbook: Strategies and Techniques for Winning, with Don Weiskopf, along with his autobiography, A Year at a Time, with Jack Tobin. His Dodgers won 2,040 games under his leadership, and in 1983 the Veteran’s Committee elected him to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Widely acclaimed sportswriter Jim Murray wrote a column–it appeared in the Hamilton (Ohio) Journal-News, among many outlets—about Alston following the manager’s retirement. “I don’t know whether you’re Republican or Democrat or Catholic or Protestant and I’ve known you for 18 years.” He continued, “You were as Middle-Western as a pitchfork. Black players who have a sure instinct for the closet bigot recognized immediately you didn’t know what prejudice was…There was no ‘side’ to Walter Alston. What you saw was what you got.”

Photo credit

Walter Alston, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Sources

Alston, Walter, and Jack Tobin. A Year At A Time. Waco: Word Books, 1976.

Alston, Walter, and Don Weiskopf. Complete Baseball Handbook: Strategies and Techniques for Winning. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1972.

Dreyspool, John Flynn. “Subject: Walter Alston.” Sports Illustrated, July 11, 1955.

Fiztgerald, Ed. “Man of the Year.” Sport, March 1956.

Hamilton Journal-News (Ohio). October 8, 1976.

Marzano, Rudy. The Last Years of the Brooklyn Dodgers: A History, 1950-1957. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007

New York Times. October 1, 1956.

www.baseball-reference.com

www.thebaseballpage.com/players/alstowa01.php

Born in Bridgewater, South Dakota, on February 22, 1934, to LeRoy and Shirley Anderson, George relocated with his family in 1942 to Southern California, where his father and grandparents found wartime work in the shipyards. LeRoy played some semipro baseball and passed his love of the game on his son. Young George became a batboy for the University of Southern California’s Trojans baseball team, coached by Raoul “Rod” Dedeaux, an early influence in Anderson’s baseball life.

During his childhood Anderson played a lot of sandlot ball. In 1951 his American Legion team won a national championship at Briggs Stadium in Detroit (later renamed Tiger Stadium), the place where Anderson later managed the Tigers. His Dorsey High School team won 42 consecutive games, and Anderson was named an all-city player in his junior and senior years. Despite passing up a school closer to home and having to take two buses to get to Dorsey, Anderson chose it for its baseball program.

While still in high school, Anderson worked a summer job loading lumber on boxcars. In the evenings he played with a semipro team. He graduated from Dorsey High in 1953 and Dedeaux offered him a partial baseball scholarship to USC. Anderson never went to college, though, because a Brooklyn Dodgers scout he had met years earlier on the sandlots, Lefty Phillips, offered him $250 a month to play for the Dodgers’ Santa Barbara team in the Class C California League. Anderson’s parents knew and trusted Lefty, who by the time Anderson graduated from high school had moved up from sandlot scouting to scouting for the Dodgers. Anderson called Lefty “the sharpest baseball man I ever met.”

Phillips knew Anderson’s limitations and told him that to make it in baseball he would have to work very hard. Anderson was only 5-feet-9 and weighed just 170 pounds, but his determination and will to win gave him an edge. Anderson’s boyhood friend Billy Consolo signed his first major-league contract that same year, with the Boston Red Sox. Consolo was one of baseball’s bonus babies, with the rule at the time requiring the team providing the bonus to keep him on its major-league roster for two seasons. Anderson’s signing gave him a steady income, even if it wasn’t as a bonus baby, and he bought an engagement ring for his childhood sweetheart, Carol Valle. The two had known each other since the fifth grade and began dating in high school. They married in October 1953, at the end of Anderson’s first minor-league season as shortstop for the Santa Barbara Dodgers. He played in 141 games and hit for a .263 average.

The playing manager at Santa Barbara was George Scherger, a man Anderson would later invite to coach for him in Cincinnati. Anderson described Scherger as a man who wanted to win badly. Whenever the team lost, there would be extra practice the next day. This drive influenced Anderson, who adopted it when he became a manager himself.

Anderson moved around in the Brooklyn minor-league system, playing in Pueblo, Colorado, Fort Worth, Los Angeles in the Pacific Coast League, and Montreal in the International League. In Pueblo he hit .296 in 1954. In 1955 he moved up to Double A with the Texas League’s Fort Worth Cats. Tommy Holmes was the manager. (The team produced several future big-league managers. Anderson; Dick Williams, who was Anderson’s opposing manager in the 1972 and 1984 World Series, managed in the majors for 21 seasons, and joined Anderson in the Hall of Fame in 2008; Danny Ozark, who managed the Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants; Norm Sherry, who managed the California Angels and coached on several major-league teams; and Maury Wills, who managed two years in Seattle.)

Anderson received his nickname in Fort Worth. A radio announcer dubbed him Sparky because of his feistiness. It was a trait that sometimes got him into trouble. He wanted to win so badly that he could not tolerate anything that got in the way.

In 1958 the Dodgers put Anderson on their 40-man roster. He later remembered, “I had no right to think I could break in with a club that had [Gil] Hodges, [Charlie] Neal, Don Zimmer, Junior Gilliam, Dick Gray, [Carl] Furillo, Duke Snider, Gino Cimoli, Norm Larker, and Johnny Roseboro — and with a pitching staff built around Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Johnny Podres. I simply didn’t belong in that kind of company.” Sparky was sent back down to Montreal. Dodgers Manager Walter Alston broke the news of his demotion to him at a time when most managers left this duty to the traveling secretary. This impressed Sparky, who as a manager followed that example. He was told that the Philadelphia Phillies had expressed an interest in him, and since they had an International League farm team in Miami, they would be able to get a look at him.

Sparky played reasonably well in Montreal, batting .269 and stealing 21 bases for the Royals. He even hit two home runs. (“That’s what’s so good about not hitting many. You remember them all,” he said.) He was named the club’s most valuable player and finished second in the running for the league MVP. He did indeed catch the eye of the Phillies, who traded for him and made him their starting second baseman.

Sparky’s first day in the big leagues came on Opening Day of 1959 against Cincinnati at Philadelphia’s Connie Mack Stadium. In the eighth inning, he singled home what became the winning run in a 2-1 game. He received his first media barrage afterward. In his autobiography The Main Spark, he wrote that there was no more media attention for him until August that year. He played in 152 games, but batted only .218 and drove in only 34 runs. It was to be the only year he played in the big leagues.

That year he noticed a difference in the routine compared with the Dodgers’ big-league spring camp. The Dodgers operated on a set schedule, discipline that Sparky would come to value. In Philadelphia no one kept track of when players rolled in for practice, and often there would be no coaches around, according to Sparky’s account. The Phillies that year were a last-place team, as they had been the year before. Sparky said he would never forget the thunderous boos the hometown crowd greeted the Phillies with as they took the field on Opening Day. There was definitely not an attitude of winning in Philadelphia, and Sparky had been raised in an organization with the opposite outlook.

Sparky later said, “I realized you can’t be in a game as a professional unless winning and losing are everything, your whole life.”

During 1960s spring training, when he didn’t make it into many games, Sparky knew he would not stay with the team. He had hoped he would be traded to another major-league team, but instead was sold to Toronto. With one child and another on the way, Sparky was about to quit. Toronto’s owner, Jack Kent Cooke, offered him $10,000 to play, $2,000 more than he had made in Philadelphia. Because he had bills to pay, he accepted. Cooke told him he planned to sell him to a major-league club, but Sparky did not believe it would happen. He called the 1960 season a turning point in his career. He decided to start observing baseball strategies with the idea of one day becoming a manager. After four more years in the minors, all with the Maple Leafs, he landed his first managerial job, in Toronto in 1964. He uttered what would be the beginning of many boasts that he would later regret by saying, “If I can’t win with this club, I ought to be fired.”

Anderson’s temper made him a prophet. He was fired at the end of the season and soon realized that jobs for managers who could not control their emotions during the games were few. By his own admission, he was lucky to get his next job, with the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm club in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1965 because the Cardinals were desperate to find a manager just before spring training. Bob Howsam was the Cardinals’ general manager; the association proved to be advantageous a few years later. In 1968, when Howsam was the GM of the Cincinnati Reds, Sparky was hired to manage the Reds’ minor-league club in Asheville, North Carolina.

Anderson could not make ends meet during his minor-league managing career, so he took various odd jobs, including a factory job, a stocking job at Sears, and some offseason gigs selling used cars.

Then, after five years as a minor-league manager, Anderson landed a major-league coaching job with the San Diego Padres in 1969. At the end of the season, he resigned to accept a job coaching with the California Angels under his old mentor Lefty Phillips. But he never took that job.

While the ink was still drying on Anderson’s contact with the Angels, California general manager Dick Walsh received a phone call from Bob Howsam, the Reds’ GM, requesting permission to speak with Sparky about managing in Cincinnati. It was Walsh who broke the news to Sparky.

Sparky’s hiring prompted Cincinnati newspapers to declare: “Sparky Who?” He was only 35 years old and unknown to the public.

One of Anderson’s first moves as Reds manager was to make Pete Rose the team’s captain. Because Willie Mays was so well received in San Francisco as the Giants’ captain, Anderson thought Rose could serve the same role in Cincinnati. Rose was very popular, a hometown boy, and the top player on the team. With Rose delivering the lineup to the umpire before the game, perhaps people would not focus on “Sparky Who?”

Anderson inherited a talented team and remarked to his coach, George Scherger, that it would win the division by 10 games. These types of statements were often seen as exaggerations, and Sparky himself admitted that he was overconfident, but the fact remained that the 1970 Reds were an excellent team. Catcher Johnny Bench was on the verge of a breakout career season. Tommy Helms, Lee May, Tony Perez, Bernie Carbo, and Bobby Tolan joined Rose on that team. The Reds had finished in third place in 1969, winning 89 games, and they were primed to be winners. The 1970 team brought in rookie shortstop Dave Concepcion and pitchers Don Gullett and Pedro Borbon. In July of that year the team moved from aging Crosley Field into the new Riverfront Stadium and began to play on artificial turf.

The Reds won 102 games in Anderson’s major-league managerial debut season, a record that gave them the National League West Division championship over the Los Angeles Dodgers by 14½ games. The Reds swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the best-of-five National League Championship Series to take the pennant and meet the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. The Reds fell to the Orioles in five games, but it was a stunning first year for Anderson.

Anderson brought his work ethic with him to Cincinnati, and some players called his spring training a “slave camp.” GM Howsam insisted on a clean-cut look for the team: no facial hair, no long hair, and suit jackets for traveling, which Anderson supported and enforced. He believed that mannerisms and dress carried over into a kind of self-discipline that helped his players work together as a team.

But probably more central to Sparky’s success as a manager was the way he cared about his players. He allowed them to question him, and even encouraged it. He said, “I know there are managers who would never allow themselves to be put on this level with their own ballplayers, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a form of communication.”

The following season was not a good one; the Reds finished below .500 and in fifth place. The following offseason brought the “Big Deal.” The Reds traded Lee May, Tommy Helms, and utility man Jimmy Stewart to the Houston Astros for Joe Morgan, Denis Menke, Jack Billingham, Cesar Geronimo, and Ed Armbrister. Cincinnati made the trade to gain speed at first and third base, essential for playing on Astroturf.

Besides being known as Sparky, Anderson was called Captain Hook because he never hesitated to pull a pitcher out of the game. The Big Red Machine was not blessed with superior starting pitching, and in an age when complete games were still common, Anderson’s tendency to replace pitchers during a game drew notice. He said, however, that he could always sense when a pitcher was just about to lose his effectiveness. His players realized that while he cared for players as individuals, he would not cater to one man. Second baseman Joe Morgan said, “In his passion for winning, he will not ever put the feelings of any individual above the team.”

The Reds returned as pennant winners in 1972 and faced the Pirates again. This time the NLCS went five games with the Reds coming out on top. The finish was so exciting that before the World Series against the Oakland A’s, Anderson made a statement he later regretted. He told the press that the two best teams in baseball had already played a series (Cincinnati and Pittsburgh) and that the World Series would be anticlimactic. Although he said what he really thought, the statement fired up the Oakland team. After the Reds lost the first two games, Anderson realized how much he had underestimated his opponents. The Reds lost to Oakland in seven games, but the Big Red Machine was building momentum.

In 1973 the Reds again won their division, but lost to the New York Mets in the League Championship Series, three games to two. In 1974, the Reds finished second behind the Los Angeles Dodgers, despite winning 98 games.

The Reds teams of 1975 and ’76 secured the label of dynasty and have been considered two of the best of all time. In 1975 they took first place early in June and never relinquished it. Pitcher Don Gullett was on his way to a remarkable season when he fractured his thumb. Without their star pitcher, the rest of the staff had to pick up the slack. Because the Reds’ bullpen was strong, the Captain Hook strategy was key. And with hitters like Morgan, Rose, George Foster, and Ken Griffey Sr. batting over .300 and Bench and Perez driving in more than 100 runs, the Big Red Machine usually outscored their opponents anyway. The Reds finished the season 20 games ahead of the second-place Dodgers with 108 wins, and swept Pittsburgh in the NLCS.

The 1975 World Series has gone down as one of the greatest ever. As the Series opened, Sparky began feeling the pressure. He was more cautious this time about feeling overconfident. The Boston Red Sox were the American League champs after sweeping the Oakland A’s in the ALCS. The opening game was an eye-opener for the Big Red Machine when they faced the pitching mastery of Luis Tiant and lost 6-0. After winning the next game in a tight match, the Reds won Game Three in extra innings. Tiant pitched the Red Sox to another victory in Game Four, but the Reds came back to win Game Five. When the Series returned to Boston, rain delayed play for 72 hours. Game Six, however, proved to be worth waiting for — the game that many, including Sparky himself, say was the single best game in World Series history.

Captain Hook pulled pitcher Gary Nolan after two innings, trailing 3-0. The Reds got to Tiant this time and evened the score in the fifth. By the eighth inning, leading 6-3, the Reds were thinking the championship was in the bag. After Pedro Borbon put two runners on, he got the hook and was replaced by Rawly Eastwick, who got two batters out. Then Bernie Carbo, a former Red, came in to pinch-hit. Carbo had already had a pinch homer in the Series, and Sparky didn’t figure he had another in him. But on a 2-2 count, Carbo drove the ball over the center-field wall to tie the game. After the Reds were retired in order in the ninth, the Red Sox loaded the bases with nobody out — but were unable to score. In the 10th inning, Red Sox outfielder Dwight Evans made a spectacular catch on a line drive by Morgan, robbing him of a possible home run and then doubling up Griffey off first base. The Reds threatened in the 12th, but didn’t score. In the bottom of the 12th, Pat Darcy, the Reds’ eighth pitcher in the game, came in to face catcher Carlton Fisk, who hit a high fly ball to deep left field. As Fisk ran to first base, he — and everyone else in the park — wondered if the ball would stay fair. Fisk jumped up and down waving his arms toward fair territory in what has become an iconic image. It was a homer, barely, hitting the foul pole. The Red Sox won, sending the Series to a deciding Game Seven. Sparky later said, “How can a manager of a losing team call it the greatest game ever played? Well, winning or losing, a man can’t lie to himself.”

Game Seven was a come-from-behind affair with the Reds finally coming out on top, 4-3, and winning their first world championship under Anderson. Sparky was unprepared for the media blitz that continued to follow him into the next season and the expectation of winning another championship, but he soon learned to make the media his friend and to encourage his players to do so also. Pete Rose said, “He didn’t make an enemy out of the press. He used it. And he taught us how to use it.” Later, Lance Parrish echoed this sentiment in Detroit: “Sparky let us know it wasn’t fair to treat the media any differently that we would treat anyone else. They had a job to do.”

Pete Rose and Joe Morgan led the league in several offensive categories in 1976, and while the Reds had no big winning pitchers, they did have seven pitchers who won at least 11 games each. After their 102-win regular season, the Reds did not lose a postseason game, sweeping the Philadelphia Phillies and then the New York Yankees in the World Series.

During that World Series, a reporter asked Anderson to compare his catcher to Yankees backstop Thurman Munson. Sparky said, “Don’t ever embarrass nobody by comparing him to Johnny Bench.” Sparky meant it as a general statement. When he returned home to California, he wrote Munson a letter of apology.

In 1977 the Reds finished second behind the Dodgers, and although 1978 was a better year, they finished second again. The Big Red Machine was being dismantled. Bob Howsam retired after the season. Winning was expected in Cincinnati, and Anderson was fired late that year. He was upset about how it happened. The Reds had just finished a tour in Japan, and management did not want to fire Sparky before that had been completed. But it was late, and most major-league clubs had already chosen their managers for the coming season. The firing was unpopular with the fans in Cincinnati and with the players. Joe Morgan said, “Sparky’s firing was wrong and to this day, I don’t understand it.” It was a blow that Sparky didn’t see coming.

Anderson was about to sign a long-term contract to manage the Chicago Cubs in 1979 when Detroit Tigers general manager Jim Campbell got wind of the deal. He contacted Sparky, who realized that the team was filled with young players. Anderson had enjoyed mentoring young players in his minor-league days.

At the press conference announcing his hiring, Anderson made another of his infamous predictions, saying the team would win a world championship in five years.

With talent like Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Kirk Gibson, Lance Parrish, Jack Morris, and Dan Petry, Sparky was confident. He also realized that discipline and conduct as a professional would have to be taught. Kirk Gibson later said, “He wanted me to learn the game of baseball and learn how to treat people right. It took four to five years to get through to me.”

As he did in Cincinnati, Anderson kept an open-door policy. Players were encouraged to speak their minds, but Sparky had the final say. He called the team “rougher than a three-day beard.” He started with fundamentals, drilling the players until their skills became routine. He insisted on coats and ties for traveling, saying, “If you carry yourself proudly, you look like a pro.”

In 1981 the Tigers surprised the American League by making an East Division pennant run during the second half of the strike-split season. In 1983 the team began to show its potential by winning 92 games. The next season was magical.

The 1984 Tigers led their division wire to wire, starting off by winning nine straight games, and then going an unbelievable 35-5 to leave their opponents in the dust in what became a 104-win season. What Sparky had in Detroit, which he had never had in Cincinnati, was two superior starting pitchers to lead his rotation, Jack Morris, who pitched a no-hitter in April, and Dan Petry. Reliever Guillermo Hernandez, acquired in a trade in March, was an All-Star while winning the American League Cy Young and Most Valuable Player Awards.

But pitching was not the team’s only strength. Trammell led the team in batting with a .314 average. Parrish was an All-Star that year, won the second of three straight Gold Gloves, and hit 33 home runs.

When the team clinched the division championship, Anderson felt vindicated. He remembered thinking, “No one will ever question me again.” No matter what happened in the postseason, the best team, he said, was the one that had won 104 games in the regular season and wore a big “D” on its uniforms.

The Tigers swept the Kansas City Royals in the AL Championship Series. Sparky took a team to the World Series for the fifth time in his career, this time against a National League club, the San Diego Padres. The first game was close, with Detroit winning, 3-2. After the game, Lou Whitaker complimented his manager: “When Sparky came to us from Cincinnati, he brought us back to fundamentals. We had a lot to learn and it’s paying off.” The Tigers lost Game Two, but that was the only game they would lose, and they became world champions before the hometown crowd.

After the Series, Sparky’s wife wanted him to quit. He thought about it. It had been a tough year. He was proud of the team and happy for the city of Detroit, but for five years he had struggled with trying to prove Cincinnati wrong for firing him, and with the success of Detroit that year, the pressure he put on himself became almost unbearable. He had to get back to the business of baseball and to enjoying the game again. He couldn’t do that if he quit.

There would be no back-to-back championships for Anderson in Detroit. In 1985 and again in 1986 the team finished third. The 1987 Tigers were not expected to do much better and early in May were in last place. Anderson chose that time to make another prediction, saying his team would be in the race by the end of the season. The Tigers started putting together some win streaks. Before a season-ending series in Detroit against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Tigers were one game behind Toronto. Detroit finished with a flourish, winning three straight one-run games to clinch the AL East title, although the Tigers lost to Minnesota in five games in a best-of-seven ALCS.

The team that year had no outstanding talent save for Alan Trammell, who finished second in the voting for Most Valuable Player. Anderson said, “We had no business running with the big boys. It was pure determination.” Pitcher Jack Morris said, “In 1984, we probably had the best club I ever played on in Detroit. In ’87 we were less talented but typical overachievers. We didn’t realize we weren’t that good.”

Sparky’s efforts with the team that year won him the American League Manager of the Year award. He said, “When I look back on that year, I still feel a high. The guys on that team can be proud of themselves for the rest of their lives.”

In 1988 the team finished second behind the Red Sox, but 1989 saw the Tigers lose 103 games. For a man who wanted to win more than anything else, it was a horrible year. Anderson was also experiencing personal problems as his daughter was undergoing a painful divorce in California and he felt guilty about his own absence from the family.

Anderson, who believed that because baseball had blessed him he had a responsibility to give back to the community, was always participating in charity events. In May of that year he attended an event at Children’s Hospital and afterward grew so fatigued that Tigers president Jim Campbell sent him home to California to rest. When Sparky left Detroit, he believed he wouldn’t manage again. He blamed himself for Detroit’s terrible year, but with the team he had and the injuries they suffered, even Sparky Anderson could not coax a winner. He was finally able to give up his obsession for winning after spending 17 days away from the team. He said, “My greatest gift today is knowing I have a tomorrow.”

Anderson continued to manage mediocre teams in Detroit through 1995. That season, during spring training, he drew a lot of attention for refusing to manage replacement players during a player strike. But he said later that that was not the whole story. He knew that management would never open the season with replacement players; it was a ruse. “I managed 25 years at that time in the major leagues, and I was no joke. I wasn’t going to be part of a joke. That was the biggest travesty I have ever seen in my career.”

Sparky was granted a leave of absence and returned to manage that year when, as he predicted, the strike was settled and replacement players were dismissed. While rumor said he was forced out of the game, Anderson had been considering retiring for some time. He left as one of baseball’s winningest managers, fifth all-time as of 2010. He was the first manager to win the World Series in both leagues. In 1984 and 1987 he won the American League Manager of the Year award. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000.

Anderson’s return visits to Detroit were not all that frequent in retirement. He stayed away from the final game at Tiger Stadium in 1999. But he turned up in uniform at the Tigers’ spring training home in Lakeland in 2003 to give support to new Detroit manager Alan Trammell, one of his protégés. Sparky also showed up at the 25th anniversary gathering of the 1984 Tigers championship team in Comerica Park in Detroit. Tigers teammates noted Anderson looked frail.

After the 2010 World Series had ended, Anderson’s family said that Sparky was in hospice care as he was suffering from the effects of dementia. On November 4, two days after the family’s announcement, Anderson died at age 76.

An earlier version of this biography appeared in “Detroit Tigers 1984: What A Start! What A Finish!” (SABR, 2012), edited by Mark Pattison and David Raglin and SABR’s “The Great Eight: The 1975 Cincinnati Reds” (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), edited by Mark Armour.

Sources

Anderson, Sparky, with Dan Ewald. They Call Me Sparky. Sleeping Bear Press. 1998.

Anderson, Sparky. Bless You Boys: Diary of the Detroit Tigers’ 1984 Season. Contemporary Books. 1984.

Anderson, Sparky, and Si Burick. The Main Spark: Sparky Anderson and the Cincinnati Reds. Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1978.

Pattison, Mark. “Excerpts From CNS Newsmaker Interview with Sparky Anderson” Catholic News Service, August 29, 1996.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Detroit_Tigers_season

Yuhasz, Dennis. “Sparky Anderson Biography,” http://baseball-almanac.com.

Adrian Constantine Anson, named after two towns in southern Michigan that his father admired, was born in a log cabin in Marshall (later Marshalltown), Iowa, on April 17, 1852. Adrian was the youngest son of Henry and Jeannette Rice Anson, and was the first pioneer child born in the town that his father had founded. Henry Anson, who was born in New York State and had drifted westward as a young adult, was a surveyor, land agent, and businessman who brought his wife and oldest son Sturgis to Iowa in a covered wagon. He found a promising valley in the center of the state, built a log cabin, and laid out a main street. Henry worked tirelessly to build and promote Marshalltown, and is recognized to this day as the patriarch of the city. Jeannette Anson was a sturdy pioneer housewife who died when Adrian was seven years of age, leaving behind an all-male household.

Adrian, whose family proudly claimed descent from the British naval hero Lord Anson, was a strong, strapping boy with reddish hair and a self-admitted aversion to schoolwork and chores. Not until his teenage years, when baseball fever swept through Marshalltown, did Adrian find an acceptable outlet for his energy and enthusiasm. He practiced diligently and earned a place on the town team, the Marshalltown Stars, at the age of 15. The Stars, with Henry Anson at third base, Adrian’s brother Sturgis in center field, and Adrian at second base, won the Iowa state championship in 1868.

Henry Anson enrolled his sons in a preparatory course at the College of Notre Dame for two years beginning in 1865, but Adrian was more interested in baseball and skating than in his studies. A later sojourn at the state college in Iowa City (now the University of Iowa) ended similarly. Young Adrian Anson wanted to play professional ball, and his break came in 1870 when the famous Rockford Forest City club and its star pitcher, Al Spalding, came to Marshalltown for a pair of games. The Forest City team won both matches, but the Anson clan played so impressively that the Rockford management sent contract offers to all three of the Ansons. Henry and Sturgis turned Rockford down, but Adrian accepted and joined the Forest City squad in the spring of 1871.

The 19-year-old Adrian, dubbed “The Marshalltown Infant,” batted .325 for Rockford and established himself as one of the stars of the new National Association. The last-place Rockford team disbanded at season’s end, but the pennant-winning Philadelphia Athletics quickly signed Adrian to a contract. He rewarded the Athletics with a .415 average in 1872, third best in the Association. He played third base for the Athletics that season, but spent the next three seasons shuttling from first to third base with occasional stops at second, shortstop, catcher, and the outfield. The hard-hitting utility man quickly became one of Philadelphia’s most popular athletes.

Boston Red Stockings manager Harry Wright had always dreamed of introducing baseball to England, his home country, and in 1874 Wright and his star pitcher Al Spalding organized a mid-season trip to England. The Red Stockings and the Philadelphia Athletics took a three-week respite from National Association play and sailed to the Old World, where they played both baseball and cricket for British crowds. Adrian Anson led all the players on both teams in batting during the tour, and, more importantly, began a friendship with Spalding. Both were young men from the Midwest, less than two years apart in age, and both had willed themselves to prominence in the baseball profession. Each found reasons to admire the other, and their relationship would play an important role in Anson’s life for the next 30 years.

During the 1875 season, Chicago club president William Hulbert signed four of Boston’s brightest stars, including pitcher Al Spalding, to play for his White Stockings in the new National League in 1876. Spalding recommended that Hulbert also sign two Philadelphia standouts, Ezra Sutton and Adrian Anson. Sutton and Anson reached agreements with Hulbert, though Sutton later reneged on his deal and returned to the Athletics. Anson moved to Chicago in early 1876, and the White Stockings, managed by Spalding and powered by Anson and batting champ Ross Barnes, won the first National League pennant that year.

On a personal note, Anson began dating Virginia Fiegal, daughter of a saloon owner, during his Philadelphia days. He met Virginia when he was 20 and she only 13 or 14, though this was not considered unusual at the time. Their relationship hit a roadblock after Adrian signed his contract with Chicago, when Virginia strongly objected to Adrian’s desire to leave Philadelphia. Anson was no contract-jumper, so he offered William Hulbert $1,000 to buy his way out of the agreement. Hulbert refused, and Anson, unwilling to break his contract and not wanting to lose Virginia, asked Virginia’s father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Adrian and Virginia were wed in November 1876 and started a family that eventually produced four daughters, all of whom grew to adulthood, and three sons who died in infancy.

Adrian Anson, powerfully built at 6-feet-2 and over 200 pounds, was the biggest and strongest man in the game during the 1870s. Some reports state that he did not take a full swing at the plate; instead, he pushed his bat at the ball and relied upon his strong arms and wrists to produce line drives. An outstanding place hitter, Anson and the White Stockings worked an early version of the hit-and-run play to perfection. So good was Anson’s bat control that he struck out only once during the 1878 season and twice in 1879. He also served as Spalding’s assistant on the field, enthusiastically cheering his teammates and arguing with opponents and umpires. Anson had managed the Philadelphia Athletics for the last few weeks of the 1875 season, and looked forward to the day that he would succeed Spalding as leader of the White Stockings.

The Chicago team failed to repeat as champions under Spalding in 1877. Spalding then moved into the club presidency, but passed over Anson and appointed Bob Ferguson as his successor. Ferguson’s regime was a failure, and Spalding named Anson as captain and manager for the 1879 season. He was now “Cap” Anson, and in one of his first decisions, the former utility man planted himself at first base and remained there for the rest of his career. His 1879 team challenged for the pennant, but fell apart after Anson was sidelined due to illness in late August. However, Anson’s 1880 White Stockings, fortified by newcomers such as catcher Mike Kelly, pitcher Larry Corcoran, and outfielders George Gore and Abner Dalrymple, won the flag with a .798 winning percentage, the highest in league history.

Two more pennants followed in 1881 and 1882 as Anson, who won the batting title in 1881 with a .399 mark, cemented his stature as the hardest hitter and finest field general in the game. He used his foghorn voice and belligerent manner to rile opponents and frighten umpires, and made himself the focus of attention in nearly every game he played. His outbursts against the intimidated umpires earned him the title “King of Kickers.” His White Stockings followed Anson’s lead and played a hustling, battling brand of ball that won no friends in other league cities, but put Chicago on the top of the baseball world. As baseball grew in popularity, the handsome and highly successful Cap Anson became the sport’s first true national celebrity.

Regrettably, Anson used his stature to drive minority players from the game. An 1883 exhibition game in Toledo, Ohio, between the local team and the White Stockings nearly ended before it began when Anson angrily refused to take the field against Toledo’s African-American catcher, Moses Fleetwood Walker. Faced with the loss of gate receipts, Anson relented after a loud protest, but his bellicose attitude made Anson, wittingly or not, the acknowledged leader of the segregation forces already at work in the game. Other players and managers followed Anson’s lead, and similar incidents occurred with regularity for the rest of the decade. In 1887, Anson made headlines again when he refused to play an exhibition in Newark unless the local club removed its African-American battery, catcher Walker and pitcher George Stovey, from the field. Teams and leagues began to bar minorities from participation, and by the early 1890s, no black players remained in the professional ranks.

Chicago was the highest-scoring team in baseball, and Anson, as its cleanup hitter, was the leading run producer in the game. The Chicago Tribune introduced a new statistic, runs batted in, in 1880 and reported that Cap Anson led the league in this category by a healthy margin. The statistic was soon dropped, but later researchers have determined that Anson led the National League in RBIs eight times. He is credited with driving in more than 2,000 runs, behind only Henry Aaron and Babe Ruth on the all-time list despite the fact that National League teams played fewer than 100 games per season for much of Anson’s career.

Anson hit more than 12 homers in a season only once. He swatted 21 round-trippers in 1884 by taking advantage of the tiny Chicago ballpark, which featured a left-field fence only 180 feet from home plate (balls hit over the fence had been ruled as doubles in previous seasons). On August 5 and 6, 1884, Anson belted five homers in two games, a record that has been tied (by Stan Musial, among others) but never broken. However, Anson drove in most of his runs with sharp line drives that the barehanded infielders found nearly impossible to stop. Fielding gloves found their way into the National League by the mid-1880s, but Anson’s production continued uninterrupted. He batted .300 or better in each of his first 20 professional seasons, and by 1886 he was baseball’s all-time leader in games played, runs, hits, RBIs, and several other categories.

He was less successful as a fielder, leading the league in errors several times and setting the all-time career mark for miscues by a first baseman. However, Anson was fearless in stopping hard-thrown balls with his bare hands, and his size made him an excellent target for his infield mates. He was an integral part of the celebrated “Stonewall Infield” with third-baseman Tom Burns, shortstop Ed Williamson, and second-baseman Fred Pfeffer. This unit remained together for seven seasons, from 1883 to 1889, and formed the backbone of the Chicago defense.

Anson had been a teetotaler since his younger days, but his White Stockings were a hard-drinking crew that kept their captain up nights with their behavior. His 1883 and 1884 teams failed to win the pennant, partially due to off-the-field controversies, but in 1885 the White Stockings reclaimed their place at the top of the league. New pitcher John Clarkson posted a 53-16 record and led the team to the pennant after a spirited race against the New York Giants. However, Anson’s team played poorly in a postseason “World’s Series” against the St. Louis Browns of the American Association. The series ended, officially, in a tie after a disputed Browns victory caused no end of controversy. In 1886 Anson drove in 147 runs in 125 games and led the White Stockings to the pennant once again, but his charges lost the six-game World’s Series against the Browns when some of the Chicago players appeared to be inebriated on the field.

Spalding and Anson decided to break up the team, selling Mike Kelly to Boston for a then-record $10,000 and dropping veterans George Gore and Abner Dalrymple, among others. The 1887 squad was a better-behaved bunch, but finished in third place despite Anson’s outstanding performance at bat. The 35-year-old captain won the batting title with a career-best .421 in a year in which walks counted as hits (though later researchers removed the 60 walks from his hit totals, leaving his average at .347 and giving the title to Detroit’s Sam Thompson). In early 1888 Spalding sold John Clarkson, baseball’s best pitcher, to Boston for $10,000. Several new men tried, and failed, to fill Clarkson’s shoes, and the White Stockings finished second despite another batting championship by Anson.

After the 1888 season Spalding, owner of the sporting goods company that still bears his name, took the Chicago club and a team of National League all-stars on a ballplaying excursion around the world. Virginia Anson accompanied the party as Anson directed the White Stockings in New Zealand, Australia, Ceylon, Egypt, and the European continent. The trip lost money for its backers, including Anson, but it introduced baseball (and advertised Spalding’s business) to countries that had never seen the sport before. The six-month adventure was the high point of Cap Anson’s life, and takes up nearly half of Anson’s autobiography, published in 1900. At the conclusion of the trip, in April of 1889, Spalding signed Anson to an unprecedented 10-year contract as player and manager of the White Stockings.

By 1890, Anson was a stockholder in the Chicago ballclub, owning 13 percent of the team. A company man through and through, he bitterly criticized the Brotherhood of Professional Ball Players, whose members quit the National League en masse in early 1890 and formed the Players League. Anson, one of a handful of stars who refused to jump to the new league, hastily assembled a new group of youngsters (which the newspapers dubbed Anson’s Colts) and finished second that year. Spalding worked behind the scenes to undermine the rival circuit, while Anson led the charge in the newspapers, denouncing the jumpers as “traitors” and gleefully predicting the eventual failure of the upstart league. The new circuit collapsed after one season, but Anson’s role in the defeat angered many of his former players.

Some reporters called Anson “the man who saved the National League,” but many former Players Leaguers hated the Chicago captain for his attitude toward them. Such stars as Hugh Duffy and George Van Haltren refused to return to Chicago after the collapse of the rival circuit, costing Anson much-needed talent. In 1891, Anson’s Colts held first place until mid-September, but an 18-game winning streak vaulted Boston into the lead amid rumors that Boston opponents threw games to keep the pennant out of Anson’s hands. Chicago finished in second place, and Cap Anson believed for the rest of his life that he lost the championship through the machinations of his former Players League rivals.

Anson, after more than 20 years as a player, began to slow down. His average dipped below .300 for the first time in 1891, though he led the league once again in runs batted in with 120. He had never been a great fielder, but covered so little ground at first base that the pitcher and second baseman had to help out on balls hit to the right side. As stubborn as ever, Anson was the last bare-handed first baseman in the major leagues, finally donning a glove in 1892. At bat, Anson produced one last hurrah with a remarkable .388 average in 1894 at the age of 42, but his slowness on the basepaths bogged down the Chicago offense. As a manager, his increasing strictness and inflexibility angered his charges. He was baseball’s biggest celebrity, even enjoying a run as an actor on Broadway in a play called A Runaway Colt in December of 1895, but his Colts fell steadily in the standings.

His position as manager was weakened in 1891 when Al Spalding stepped down as team president. Anson might have been willing to retire from the field and accept the position, but Spalding, who retained controlling ownership in the team, appointed former Boston manager Jim Hart to the post. Anson held little regard for Hart, who had served Spalding as business manager of the round-the-world tour four years before, and the two men clashed often over personnel and disciplinary matters during the next several seasons.

Spalding and Hart reorganized the club in 1892, and Anson signed a new contract with the Chicago ballclub. This agreement retained Anson’s 13 percent stake in the team, but cut one year off his previous 10-year pact, though Anson claimed that he did not discover the discrepancy until later. At any rate, the new agreement expired on February 1, 1898. Anson, who by 1894 was the oldest player in the league, stubbornly kept himself in the lineup despite his dwindling production and his deteriorating relationships with Hart and the Chicago players. He batted .285 in 1897, a respectable figure today but well below the league average, and his Colts finished in ninth place. Spalding and Hart declined to renew his contract, and after 27 seasons, Cap Anson’s career was over. The 45-year-old Anson retired as baseball’s all-time leader in games played, times at bat, runs, hits, doubles, runs batted in, and wins as a manager.

Spalding offered to hold a testimonial benefit for Anson and raise $50,000 as a going-away gift, but Anson proudly turned it down, explaining that accepting such an offer would “stultify my manhood” and smacked of charity. The former Chicago captain then accepted a position as manager of the New York Giants, succeeding Bill Joyce, who had been sharply criticized by the national press for his part in an ugly on-field brawl. Giants owner Andrew Freedman promised Anson full control of the team, but continually interfered with personnel and management issues. He also ignored Anson’s request to trade or release Joyce, who remained on the team and retained the allegiance of many of the players. Anson led the Giants to a 9-13 record before Freedman fired him and reinstated Joyce after the controversy over the brawl died down.

After his humiliating exit from the Giants, Anson tried to obtain a Western League franchise and move it to the South Side of Chicago, but Spalding, whose approval for the move was necessary under to rules of the National Agreement, refused permission. This act ended the decades-long friendship between the two men. Anson then served as president of a revived American Association, which attempted to begin play in 1900 but folded due to financial pressures. After this defeat, Anson expressed his bitterness in his autobiography, A Ball Player’s Career. “Baseball as at present conducted is a gigantic monopoly,” stated Anson, “intolerant of opposition, and run on a grab-all-that-there-is-in-sight basis that is alienating its friends and disgusting the very public that has so long and cheerfully given to it the support that it has withheld from other forms of amusement.”

Cap Anson was finished with the National League, and although he lived for another two decades, he would never again hold any official position in organized ball. Instead, Anson opened a bowling and billiards emporium in downtown Chicago and served as a vice-president of the new American Bowling Congress. He captained a team that won the ABC five-man national title in 1904, making Anson one of the few men in history to win championships in more than one sport. He then turned his energies to what appeared to be a promising political career. Elected to a term as Chicago city clerk in 1905, Anson soon became embroiled in numerous controversies that he was, by personality and temperament, unable to overcome. He lost a bid for renomination, and his career in public office ended ignominiously. His bowling and billiards business floundered, and in late 1905 the cash-strapped Anson sold his remaining stock in the Chicago ballclub and severed his 29-year connection with the team.

He then devoted himself to semipro ball, investing most of his remaining money in his own team (called Anson’s Colts) and building his own ballpark on the South Side. This effort was a money-loser, and in desperation Anson donned a uniform in 1908 and played first base at the age of 56. He could still hit, but was nearly immobile in the field, and his Colts finished in the middle of the City League standings for three seasons. In those years, Anson played many games against the Chicago Leland Giants, the leading African-American team of the era, without apparent complaint. Anson, his finances stretched to the limit, sold his team after the 1909 season and returned to the stage. He created a monologue and performed it in vaudeville houses throughout the Midwest for the next few years.

Anson’s later life was filled with disappointment. The National League offered to provide a pension for the ex-ballplayer, but Anson stoutly refused all offers of assistance. He declared bankruptcy in 1910, and by 1913 he had lost his home and moved in with a daughter and son-in-law. Virginia Anson died in 1915 after a long illness, and the widowed ex-ballplayer resumed his stage career in a skit written by his friend Ring Lardner titled “First Aid for Father.” The skit starred Anson and his daughters Adele and Dorothy, and the Anson clan crisscrossed the nation, sharing bills with jugglers and animal acts in small town and big city alike. Vaudeville allowed Anson to support himself, but barely, and he retired, penniless, from the stage in 1921. He died on April 14, 1922, three days shy of his 70th birthday, and was buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago. The National League paid his funeral expenses. Seventeen years later, on May 2, 1939, Anson and his former friend and mentor Al Spalding were named to the Baseball Hall of Fame by a special committee.

A version of this biography is included in “Nuclear Powered Baseball: Articles Inspired by The Simpsons Episode Homer At the Bat” (SABR, 2016), edited by Emily Hawks and Bill Nowlin. For more information, click here.

Sources

Books

Anson, Adrian C. A Ball Player’s Career (Chicago: Era Publishing, 1900).

Brown, Warren. The Chicago Cubs (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946).

Levine, Peter. A. G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball: The Promise of American Sport (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

Spalding, Albert G. Base Ball: America’s National Game (New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1911).

Zang, David W. Fleet Walker’s Divided Heart (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995).

Newspapers and Magazines

Chicago Tribune, The Sporting News, Baseball Magazine, Sporting Life, and The New York Times for the 1870-1920 period.

The younger Aparicio was much more than an outstanding baseball player whose endurance, defense, and speed during an 18-year old major-league career earned him a spot in baseball’s Hall of Fame. He was a symbol of the growth and development of the game of baseball in Latin America — specifically in Venezuela and in his hometown of Maracaibo. Aparicio’s place among the greatest players in baseball signified the climax of a cycle of progress for the game of baseball, which has become the national sport of Venezuela and an intrinsic part of its cultural heritage.

To fully understand the significance, impact, and legacy of Aparicio’s career, one needs to take a journey back into the first steps of the game in Maracaibo.

The emergence of baseball in Maracaibo began around the turn of the 20th century when an American businessman, William Phelps (who later became a media mogul and philanthropist), opened the first department store in town, the American Bazaar. While he imported baseball equipment from the United States, he also saw the need for educating local children about the game in order to sell his merchandise. Phelps became a baseball enthusiast and taught schoolkids the rules of the game, which they quickly understood. He served as the first umpire of documented games and built the first baseball field in the coastal city of Maracaibo.

From the sport’s inception around 1912, baseball quickly became a favorite pastime of people of all classes. Several fields were created throughout the small urban area, and both adults and children were fascinated with the sport. In just a few years, the game spread throughout the region and it was soon established as a professional game. People fell in love with the game, and were willing to gather and pay to watch the best players and teams. They called it “the game of the four corners.” The game of baseball had found its stage in the country.

Through the years, the region had a constant flow of American workers from oil companies who helped shape the identity of the city as well as the influence of American culture. Baseball was no exception. By 1926, a heated rivalry between Vuelvan Caras and Santa Marta was catching the attention of followers and local sports media. In fact, the first big hero of local professional baseball was a shortstop from Vuelvan Caras, Rafael “Anguito” Oliver. Early on, the media shone a spotlight on the role of the shortstop.

Oliver became an icon and two brothers were some of his biggest fans — Luis and Ernesto Aparicio Ortega. The Aparicio Ortega brothers (in the Latin American custom, they used their father’s and mother’s surname) were also natural athletes; Luis enjoyed soccer but ended up practicing baseball with Ernesto. Both became quality infielders. Luis, however, became the big star, the super athlete, while Ernesto, who had great playing tools, concentrated on learning the game as a science. He became a successful manager, coach, and team owner, transmitting his knowledge over generations.

Luis gained fame for his great plays and intelligence in the position of shortstop. He became a reference, a master, and a key player sought by many teams throughout the country. He played in both professional leagues in the country, in Caracas and Maracaibo. He became the first player “exported” from Venezuela when he signed with Tigres del Licey of the Dominican Republic in 1934.

Also in 1934, Ortega and his homemaker wife, Herminia Montiel, welcomed their son Luis Ernesto Aparicio Montiel. By the time Aparicio was born in Maracaibo on April 29, his father was shining as one of the first baseball superstars of Venezuela and Latin America. Ortega was an All-Star player and one the most famous players ever of Venezuelan baseball. “An artist in the shortstop position,” many called him.

Uncle Ernesto became a mentor to Luis. In Gavilanes, where his father also played, little Luis got his first job in baseball: batboy. His father and uncle taught him the secrets of the game. He also had the chance to learn from players of all nationalities, including Cuban, Dominican, and American players.

Baseball was his life. Aparicio recalls his mother washing baseball uniforms for his team and talking about baseball all day. From the age of 12, when he played shortstop for a team called La Deportiva, Aparicio displayed the grace and elegance he learned from his father. From then on, Aparicio was a member of several teams in Maracaibo, Caracas, and Barquisimeto. He was constantly moving with his family, depending on the time of year and which team his father was playing for.

That was his life: baseball, the stardom of his father, the knowledge of his uncle and whatever the game brought to the family table.

In 1953, Caracas hosted the Baseball Amateur World Series, and Luis Aparicio, then 19 years old, was selected to represent Venezuela. It was his first big tournament, and he played shortstop, third base, and left field. Although Cuba won the tournament, Aparicio was recognized both in the stands and in newspapers as the most electrifying player, who made great plays and showed security and maturity in all positions. Fans waved white handkerchiefs during this tournament, praising the teenager with great speed and a solid glove. All eyes were on him for the first time, but the name of his famous father would always be on his shoulders if he chose to be a professional player.

Soon after the Amateur World Series, the day arrived. Aparicio had to tell his parents he was quitting school to become a professional baseball player. His mother was not happy with the decision. His father, on the other hand, told him something that would stand out in his mind for the rest of his career. “Son, if you are going to play baseball for a living, you will have to be the number one always,” said his father. “You will never be a number two of anybody, always be the number one.”1

That winter, the best four teams in Venezuela played in the country’s first national tournament. The teams — Gavilanes and Pastora from Maracaibo, and Caracas and Magallanes from Caracas — rotated their games in four cities and it was the first tournament played under the umbrella of major-league baseball.

Aparicio signed with Gavilanes and his debut was scheduled for November 17, 1953, in Maracaibo. That day it rained, and his debut was postponed until the next day, November 18, which is a special holiday in Maracaibo. The city celebrates the day of its lady patron, the Virgin of Chiquinquirá, and festivities are held all around. Among them is the special baseball game between the crosstown rivals Pastora and Gavilanes.

Aparicio’s father, Ortega, who also played for Gavilanes, led off the game against Pastora’s Howie Fox, a major-league veteran. After the first pitch, Ortega went back to the dugout and pointed to his son with his bat, signaling it was time for Luis to take his father’s bat and replace him at home plate for his first official at-bat.

The crowd of 7,000 gave a 15-minute standing ovation to this simple but magical gesture. They were recognizing Ortega — known as “The Great of Maracaibo” — for his outstanding career, his talent as the best shortstop in Venezuelan baseball, for his dedication on the field, and for more than 20 years of contributing to the development of the game in Maracaibo. At the same time, people were showing Luis the huge burden he had on his shoulders for carrying his father’s name, and for the responsibility he had on the field from that moment.

Aparicio Jr., at 19 years old, understood the situation and embraced it with maturity. “I knew the responsibility on me. I knew about the expectations people had everywhere I stepped on a field. I just had to be great as my father, otherwise people would consider me a total deception,” he said in later years. “It was destiny.”2

Panorama, the local newspaper, wrote the next day: “Aparicio´s son’s debut was patronized by the Virgin herself.” For a very Catholic-religious region, this was a big deal.3

Aparicio ended up being named the best shortstop of the tournament. By December, the Cleveland Indians were negotiating with him. Gavilanes manager Red Kress, who was a coach for the Indians, spoke with general manager Hank Greenberg about signing Aparicio, but Greenberg replied that he thought Luis too small to play baseball. Chico Carrasquel, who was playing for Caracas and Chicago at the time, talked to Chicago White Sox general manager Frank Lane and told him about Luis, asking him to sign the youngster before someone else did. Caracas’s manager, Luman Harris, also talked to Lane. Soon after, Lane sent an offer and a contract for Aparicio with a $10,000 check. Young Luis became a member of the White Sox.

Aparicio’s days in the minor leagues were hard. His English was very limited. He knew he belonged in the majors, but the learning process was strict. Carrasquel was the big-league shortstop. After spring training in 1955, Aparicio was sent to Memphis in the Double-A Southern Association. He thought about going back to Venezuela and quitting the White Sox, but both his father and Carrasquel convinced the novice of his potential and explained to him the process of reaching the majors, a road even tougher for Latinos, especially in those years. Carrasquel, who was the big baseball idol in Caracas, became Aparicio’s mentor and a father figure for him. Aparicio also recalls meeting a singer that season in a small bar in Memphis, a young man named Elvis Presley.  

In October 1955, the White Sox traded Chico Carrasquel to the Cleveland Indians, leaving the door open for Aparicio. When Lane announced the trade, a Chicago journalist said: “You are trading your All-Star shortstop? You will need a machine to replace Chico.” Lane replied, “Yes, that’s precisely what we have — a machine, and his name is Luis Aparicio.”4

Aparicio was named the American League Rookie of the Year in 1956. He was the first Latin American player to win the award. He finished with a .266 batting average and a league-leading 21 stolen bases, and also led the league in sacrifice hits. The stolen base as a strategy was becoming less and less used in baseball in those years. Aparicio revived the essence of the stolen base from the moment he reached the majors. He injected the White Sox with the game of speed, the Caribbean game, where speed is a key. He was praised for his defense but during his first season had 35 errors.

Luis needed work on his throw. Venezuelan journalist Juan Vené, who covered Aparicio’s entire career, recalled, “Fans were afraid to sit behind first base and they were really aware of the throw every time Aparicio was fielding a grounder because the ball often ended into the stands.”5

His debut met everyone’s expectations at home, but he knew he needed to do more. After his first season, when he returned home with his wife, Sonia, Aparicio said, “By seeing how so many people have gathered to welcome me at the airport just to say hello and congratulations, it makes me realize that I still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do to go beyond their expectations. I need to put the name of my country and my people up high; I feel my game represents them.”6

In 1958, Aparicio won his first Gold Glove, was named to his first All-Star Game, hit .266, and led the league in stolen bases for the third consecutive year, with 29. Chicago ended up in second place for the second year in a row behind the Yankees. The situation in the American League was tough. The Chicago White Sox was an outstanding club but the Yankees were the Yankees, and in those years they simply dominated baseball. There were no playoffs. To go to the World Series they just needed to finish first in the American League. The White Sox needed to reach one more step, and they did it in 1959.

Dámaso Blanco, a former infielder for the San Francisco Giants, remembers 1959: “I went to Chicago in August 1959 with the Venezuelan baseball team for the Pan Am Games and they took us to Comiskey Park to watch the White Sox and Luis Aparicio. It was my first MLB game ever and I was very anxious. Aparicio hit a single on his first at-bat and we all noticed that people started to yell: ‘Go! Go! Go!’ At first we did not understand what was happening and then our guide explained people were actually rooting for Aparicio to steal second base. I can’t really describe how proud we felt listening to a full Comiskey Park rooting for a fellow Venezuelan and the team leader of the ‘Go Go White Sox.’ ”7

That season, the White Sox won 94 games and finally won the pennant. Among the keys to their success were Aparicio’s base-stealing skills and his defense along with his double play partner and close friend, Nellie Fox. For Chicago it was a magical era. It was their first trip to the World Series since 1919. This team was the complete opposite of the Black Sox. It was fun to watch. Aparicio remembers: “We were so close, like a family. We enjoyed our game and the fans of Chicago so much during 1959. Having guys in the team like Ted Kluszewski, Jim Rivera, Sherm Lollar, and Early Wynn was just amazing. We just had to win the league because we were good, having fun in the field, and playing very seriously.”8

Aparicio ended up second to his double-play partner Fox in the voting for the American League’s Most Valuable Player. He stole a career-high 56 bases that year. He realized no one in baseball was better than him at stealing. His speed was a key to victory. He led the team in runs with 98. “Before the season Al Lopez, our manager, told me he wanted me to focus on my base stealing,” Aparicio said long after his career ended. “They wanted me to spice things up in the club and that was going to be our key to win games that season.”9

After their great season, the White Sox lost the World Series to the Dodgers in six games. Aparicio hit .308 (8-for-26), and although he was thrilled to participate in the fall classic, he was deeply frustrated in not winning the Series. “The people were very excited in the city, because they waited 40 years to see their team in a World Series. They were disappointed, but at the same time they treated us like winners,”10 he recalled. This first trip to the Series made Aparicio realize how important it was to be a winner and how hard a team needed to work to win it all.

Hoping to return to the World Series in 1960, the White Sox instead slipped to third place. They fell to fourth place in 1961 and fifth in 1962. The Sox wanted to rebuild their team, and in January of 1963, Aparicio and veteran outfielder Al Smith were traded to the Baltimore Orioles for Ron Hansen, Pete Ward, Dave Nicholson, and Hoyt Wilhelm.

The trade was a jolt to Luis, but he was moving to a contending team built around a foundation of power and pitching. Aparicio added speed to the Baltimore lineup, winning two more stolen base titles in 1963-64 to give him nine consecutive seasons as the American League stolen base champion, an all-time record. More importantly, he helped solidify the Oriole defense. Luis and future Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson formed one of the best shortstop-third base combinations of all time.

In 1966, the Orioles won the American League pennant, and Aparicio once again faced the Dodgers in the World Series. Although his offense was not as solid as it was in 1959, he still contributed with four hits and great defense during the series, which the Orioles swept in four games. It was first and only championship ring of his career. He came back to Maracaibo as a hero, dedicating his part of the title to his parents, who were his biggest supporters.

In November of 1967, Luis was traded back to the White Sox. As a veteran player, he became the team leader and mentor. During his second stint in Chicago, his glove was still his great tool, though his speed was not the same. He worked on his offense and in 1970, at the age of 36, batted a career-high .313.

Before the 1971 season, Aparicio was traded to the Boston Red Sox and played with them for three more seasons. In two of them was he was selected to the All-Star Game. In 1973, at the age of 39, he batted .271 in 132 games and stole 13 bases in 14 attempts.

Vené remembers March 26, 1974: “Luis was in the Red Sox spring camp when he got the notice that he was being released. He wanted to play one more season; he was 40 and still felt he had it. When he went back to the hotel he had a letter from Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. It was an open contract that had a note saying: “You put in the amount to play for the New York Yankees.” 

Aparicio sent the envelope back with a note that said: “Dear Mr. Steinbrenner, thank you very much for your offer but I just get released once in my lifetime.”11 That was the end of Aparicio’s playing career. He went back to Maracaibo that day with his family.

From 1956 to 1973, no other shortstop was more dominant in his position than Luis Aparicio, who won nine Gold Gloves. He was a profound influence on the game during his era with his speed, helping to revive the stolen base as an offensive weapon. He was selected to 10 All-Star teams. He played in two World Series and won one, and he set the most significant personal record for himself: No player had played more games at his beloved position in the major leagues than he (2,583). (The record has since been broken by Omar Vizquel.) He finished his career with 2,677 hits, a .262 batting average and 506 stolen bases.

After 10 years of eligibility and a huge crusade by many Hispanic journalists pushing his candidacy for the Hall of Fame, he was elected to the Hall in 1984, becoming the first Venezuelan to ever receive this form of baseball immortality. “This is a triumph of Venezuela for all Venezuelans,” said Aparicio when he heard of his election.12

His biggest regret is that his father didn’t live long enough to see his son elected to the Hall of Fame. Luis Aparicio Ortega died on January 1, 1971. After his death he was honored with his election to the Hall of Fame of Venezuelan Sports. The Maracaibo baseball stadium was officially named Luis Aparicio Ortega “El Grande de Maracaibo.” After the creation of the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, the Aparicio Ortega brothers, Ernesto and Luis, were also inducted.

After retirement, Luis moved back to Venezuela and worked during the Venezuelan league in winter as manager. He managed Caracas, Zulia, Lara, La Guaira, Magallanes, and Cabimas. He was a celebrity and his retirement was not easy for him. They were hard times, not economically because he was very organized financially, but emotionally. He spent more time with his family and was part of many local projects of many kinds.

In the early 1980s he became a television commentator for Radio Caracas Television during the Venezuelan League. In fact, when he got the notice about his selection to Cooperstown, he was working with RCTV. Although he enjoyed it for a while, television was not his passion, but at least something to stay close to the game, if he was not managing.

In the 1990s Luis was back to the field with Tiburones de La Guaira in the winter league as a manager and coach. Aparicio moved to Barquisimeto. He enjoyed spending time with his family and especially his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His family suffered a big setback when his daughter Sharon was the victim of a crime in Venezuela. After this incident, he concentrated even more on his family. He continued to enjoy and follow baseball and kept his participation in baseball and Hall of Fame events with the help of his son Nelson.

After his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Aparicio’s status of celebrity increased greatly. He became known as the most important and influential Venezuelan athlete of all time, the most revered and followed. He also made several trips a year to the US to participate in autograph sessions, fan festivals and former player activities. He was a constant supporter of Hall of Fame gatherings, including All-Star games and Cooperstown induction weekends.

 His solid and impeccable image and personality caught the attention of ESPN International and ESPN Deportes who invited him as a special color analyst for the international broadcasts of Venezuelan baseball from 2011 to 2013, alongside veteran and famed Spanish-broadcasters such as Emmy-award winning Ernesto Jerez.

Aparicio has since become an active baseball follower and his voice is present through his social media accounts, where he has provided opinions and personals perspective of issues around baseball. Most notably in 2017 he was invited to participate in a ceremony honoring the Latino members of the Baseball Hall of Fame prior to the 2017 All-Star Game in Miami, Florida. Aparicio respectfully declined the invitation and publicly stated: “Thank you for the honor @mlb, but I cannot celebrate while the young people of my country are dying while fighting for freedom”13

Aparicio did not attend the 2017 Hall of Fame induction for the same reasons and actively became a strong opponent of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and the regime that has ruled Venezuela since 1998.

Maracaibo still remembers every November 18 as part of the festivities around the Virgin holiday, the anniversary of Luis Aparicio’s debut. At the Aguilas del Zulia game, Aparicio has made the ceremonial first pitch. Every year the Luis Aparicio Award is given to the best Venezuelan player of the major-league baseball season. It was a tribute to his career and to the memory of his father.

In 2006 the Chicago White Sox unveiled the Luis Aparicio statue at the U.S. Cellular Field in the center-field concourse and created by artist Gary Tillery. Aparicio attended the event with Sonia celebrating 52 years of marriage and with his son Luis Jr and daughter Karen. The sculpture is part of a two-player series depicting Aparicio waiting to catch a ball from his longtime double-play partner Nelly Fox, whose widow, Joanne, also attended the ceremony. “This is my biggest moment in baseball. I thank the White Sox organization for giving me the opportunity to play baseball, and I thank God for giving me the ability to play this game. The only thing I can say is baseball is so much of me, I even met my wife playing baseball.”14

The 2014 season of the Venezuelan Winter League was played in honor to the 30^th anniversary of Aparicio’s induction to Cooperstown and he was honored at every ballpark of the league and the league reinforced and emphasized the biggest honor ever made to a Venezuelan baseball player: the retirement of his number 11 from every team in the country.

Much more than a great player, Aparicio was recognized as a great human being. Most people knew Luis for his playing feats, but ignored his great heart and family values. During his career the integrity he brought to the game was one of his strongest assets. He gave everything he had to win and help his teams. He played simultaneously for 19 years in Venezuelan baseball, doubling the amount of work year round. As a major-league player he played fewer than 130 games in a season only once.

Maybe his greater value was how he embraced and understood his position and his significance on and off the field for the people of Venezuela, a country filled with social problems that universally celebrates the achievements of its people. He was much more than an icon.

People always expected the best from him, and he gave nothing but the best both as a player and as a human being, working hard enough and using his abilities to be among the greatest players of all time. He had huge shoes to fill under the shadow of his father and he never let this issue pressure him during his life. Luis Aparicio assumed a social responsibility and went beyond expectations.

Aparicio was named the Athlete of the 20th Century in Venezuela. Beyond his recognition for being the best player ever born in the country, his integrity and family values always accompanied him. Moreover, he is the role model for future generations and the “godfather” of the dynasty of Venezuelan shortstops in the history of the major leagues. Panorama published a letter Aparicio sent to his mother in March 1956: “To Herminia de Aparicio, Maracaibo. Dear Mom: You are finally the mother of a big leaguer. Try to figure out what it means to me to become ‘a big leaguer.’ Today I’ve cried alone, when they told me they were sending my luggage to Chicago because I had made the big league team. Tears came out by themselves and I just thought about Dad. Mom, please tell Dad that my debt with him is finally paid. Kisses, your son, Luis.”15

Luis has said: “When my father asked me to be always a number one, I always kept that on my mind. I think I didn’t disappoint him. I wanted him to be proud of me, and I know he definitely was. That’s the achievement of my life.”16   

Last revised: January 23, 2018

An earlier version of this biography originally appeared in SABR’s “Go-Go To Glory: The 1959 Chicago White Sox” (ACTA, 2009), edited by Don Zminda.

Sources

In addition to the sources in the Notes, the author also consulted

Verde, Luis. The History of Baseball in Zulia (Maracaibo: Editorial Maracaibo SRL, 1999).

Perfiles: Luis Aparicio. ESPN International. 2002-2007. 

Author interviews with Luis Aparicio, Juan Vené, Dámaso Blanco, Angel Bravo. Luis Verde, Nelson Aparicio, and Rafael Aparicio.

¡A La Carga! Tripleplay Sports Productions, Maracaibo, Venezuela. Various televisión episodes 1998-2002.

www.eljuegoperfecto.com

www.baseball-reference.com

Notes

1 Author interview with Luis Aparicio, July 2008.

2 Aparicio interview.

3 Diario Panorama (Maracaibo, Venezuela), November 19, 1953.

4 Carlos Cárdenas Lares, Venezolanos en las Grandes Ligas (Caracas: Fondo editorial Cárdenas Lares, 1990), 78.

5 Author interview with Juan Vené, Cincinnati, August 2007.

6 Diario Panorama, October 10, 1956. 

7 Author interview with Dámaso Blanco, Cincinnati, August 2007.

8 Aparicio interview.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid..

11 Vené interview.

12 Revista IND, Instituto Nacional de Deportes, Caracas, Venezuela. August 1984. 

13 Luis Aparicio, via Twitter, July 11, 2017.

14 Scott Merkin, “Aparicio, Fox honored with statues,” MLB.com, July 23, 2006.

15 Diario Panorama, March 2, 1956. 

16 Aparicio interview.

At a time when America, along with the rest of the world, was struggling to cope with the worst depression in its history and the ominous rise of fascism in Europe, baseball provided some diversion from dark times. Appling started his major league career in 1930, just about the beginning of the Depression. The best word to describe Luke Appling is durability, a quality he showed throughout his baseball career and his life. He was emblematic of an America struggling through the Depression and digging into their psyches (perhaps unknowingly) to prepare for another world war. Appling endured and so did America.

“Old Aches and Pains,” as Appling was called, was arguably the greatest hypochondriac to ever play the game. Backaches, headaches, bad knees, eye problems would torment him-and then he’d go out and get three hits.

Lucious Benjamin Appling, born in High Point, North Carolina, on April 2, 1907, was clearly no slouch when he took the field. All of his medical complaints disappeared when game time came. He was so infirm that he managed to collect only 2,749 hits in a career that spanned twenty years, all with the Chicago White Sox. Appling never let a backache or headache get in the way of playing shortstop and getting in his licks as a hitter. He even complained about field conditions at Comiskey Park. “I swear that park must have been built on a junkyard,” he exclaimed. It turned out later he was right.

Appling attended Fulton High School in Atlanta and spent two years at Oglethorpe College. In 1930, when he was a sophomore at Oglethorpe, he signed with the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association. He hit the ball solidly for the Crackers, but his fielding at shortstop left something to be desired, as he committed 42 errors.

Late in the 1930 season the Atlanta Crackers were sold to the Chicago Cubs. But due to the intervention of Milt Stock, Appling joined the White Sox in a cash transaction that also involved an outfielder named Doug Taitt. Despite his fielding woes the White Sox bought his contract for $20,000. Appling made his debut for the White Sox at the end of the 1930 season. Appearing in six games, he committed four errors but also collected eight hits. He had a strong arm, but many of his throws ended up in the stands, sending fans scurrying out of the way.

The 1931 season was less than stellar for Appling. His fielding troubles still plagued him, and his hitting fell off. The White Sox tried to trade him, but there were no takers. White Sox manager Jimmy Dykes took Appling in hand and with great patience helped Appling polish his fielding skills and had him stop swinging for the fences.

Appling married Faye Dodd in 1932. They had two daughters (Linda and Carol) and one son (Luke III).

In 1932 the Pale Hose finished in seventh place behind the lowly St. Louis Browns. Appling batted .274 with ten triples and 63 runs batted in. He still was swinging for the fences and got himself out innumerable times through his lack of patience at the plate.

It all came together for Luke Appling in 1933, when he stopped trying to hit home runs, learned to use the entire field, and batted .328 for the season. Eight more years of .300 or better followed, and he improved enough to become an adequate fielder. He showed great range in the field, leading the American League in assists seven times. On the minus side he led the league in errors five times.

The apex of his career came in 1936. He won the American League batting title with a .388 batting average, the highest in the twentieth century by a shortstop. Luke also had a 27-game hitting streak that year. After winning the batting title, Appling was promised a $5,000 bonus, but General Manager Harry Grabiner reneged. In disgust Appling tore up his 1937 contract. Lou Comiskey, the owner, withstood Appling’s protests, and when Appling cooled down and was ready to play gave him a new contract. Unfortunately, it was for $2,500 less than he had wanted. In 1940 Appling, Rip Radcliff of the St. Louis Browns and Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees battled each other for the batting title with DiMaggio winning out.

The White Sox contended only once during Appling’s tenure at short. They lacked power, so Appling, a natural leadoff hitter, batted third in the lineup. Never a slugger, he did manage to drive in 1,117 runs during his career. Appling remembered that his teammates were not great baserunners. Player-manager Jimmy Dykes instituted an automatic fine for any baserunning blunders. The very next day Dykes was on second base when he became lost in thoughts about his managerial duties. He wandered off second base, wondering whether he should hit for the pitcher, and in a flash he was picked off. The players on the bench howled with delight and had some uncomplimentary words about the gaffe. When Dykes sheepishly returned to the bench he said, “All right say it, come on, I’ve got it coming,” but no one said a word. Later he asked Appling why they didn’t say anything. Appling replied, “They already said it before you got back to the dugout.”

Championships eluded the White Sox and the Cubs year after year. Ironically, the two greatest players in Chicago, Luke Appling and Ernie Banks, both shortstops, never played in a World Series.

Appling was a pitcher’s nightmare. He could and would foul off pitch after pitch until he got the one he wanted. Pitchers would get so frustrated they’d almost dare him to hit the blasted thing. Appling struck out only 528 times in his career and coaxed out 1,302 walks.

As one story goes, Appling once asked the tight-fisted business manager of the Sox for several balls to sign for friends. The business manager refused, citing the Depression and that each ball cost $2.75. Appling turned and walked out without a word. That afternoon in his first at bat he fouled off ten consecutive pitches into the stands. Turning to the club official in the owner’s box, he said, “That’s $27.50 and I’m just getting started.”

In 1938 the Sox had a chance to beat out the Yanks for the pennant. However, Appling suffered the only major injury of his career when he fractured his ankle, thereby hampering the chances of the club.

DiMaggio got a break during his 56-game hitting streak in 1941 when he hit a slow roller that bounced up on Luke. Joe was given a hit on the play to keep his streak going at 30 games.

Bill James in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract named Luke Appling the best player of the 1943 season as Appling won his second batting title with a .328 average. Of course, 1943 was a war year and most of the stars were in the service.

Teammate Ted Lyons recalled Appling’s ability to foul off pitches until he got the one he wanted. Red Ruffing was pitching for the Yankees against the Sox on a miserably hot, humid day in Comiskey Park. Appling came up with two men on base and worked the count to 3-2. He then proceeded to foul off 12 pitches in a row. The profusely sweating Ruffing finally walked Appling and gave up a grand-slam homer to the next batter. Ruffing was in a cool shower immediately after. Pitchers considered themselves lucky if Appling got a hit early in the count.

Despite all his alleged ailments Appling was a good-natured person and popular with his teammates. The only White Sox player to win a batting championship until Frank Thomas, he was also voted the greatest White Sox living player by Chicago writers in 1969.

Appling entered the service in 1944 and returned to baseball late in 1945. At the time Appling entered the service his wife said, “The war will be over soon. Luke has never held a job for more than two weeks outside of baseball.” His hitting did not suffer when he returned in 1945. He batted .368 in his shortened season.

Appling was still playing ball at age 41, having been moved to third base from his shortstop position. Before a doubleheader in 1948 he complained of not being able to get his throwing arm loose. In the first game he lashed out three hits and with a supposedly crippled arm set an American League record with 10 assists. Before the nightcap he complained of severe pains in his legs and went out and did a sterling job.

In 1949 he batted .301 at the age of 42, but “Trader” Frank Lane, general manager of the White Sox, was committed to a youth movement, and Chico Carrasquel took over at shortstop. Appling helped Carrasquel adapt to the big leagues and at playing shortstop. Appling was asked to play first base, but after a few lackluster attempts he gave it up and filled in as a utility infielder. He played in 50 more games for the White Sox in 1950 and then retired. At the time of his retirement he held the American League records for most games played, assists, putouts and chances accepted by a shortstop. Appling also eclipsed the major league record for most games played at shortstop previously held by Rabbit Maranville. Maranville had played 2,153 games at short, and Appling exceeded that with 2,198. Luis Aparicio later eclipsed most of these records. Appling is still the club leader in runs, games played, hits, doubles, total bases, runs batted in, walks, and at bats; he’s also third in triples. In 1951 Appling was asked to manage the Memphis Chicks and surprised everyone including himself when he accepted.

The quality that emerges from Appling’s career and character is his durability. Maybe his ailment complaints were his way of exorcising the demons that baseball players (probably the most superstitious athletes to play sports) exhibited. Whatever his secret, his major league career spanned twenty years. Long after his retirement he showed he could still hit when in an appearance in a Cracker-Jack All-Star Old-Timers game in Washington, D.C., at the age of 75 he hit a homer off Warren Spahn. He said, “It was a good pitch and I just swung away.” The ball traveled only 250 feet as the fences were moved in for the old-timers game, but it’s still a good distance for a 75-year-old.

Appling managed in the minors for quite a few years, winning pennants for Memphis in the Southern Association and Indianapolis of the American Association. Named Minor League Manager of the Year in 1952, he still had only one chance managing in the majors, at Kansas City replacing Alvin Dark. He was not very successful as his team went 10-30 during his tenure. He also managed at Richmond and coached in the majors at Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Kansas City. He served as batting instructor for the Braves until 1990.

Appling died suddenly from an abdominal aneurysm on January 3, 1991, in Cumming, Georgia. His wife Fay; a brother Clyde; sisters Dela Campbell, Inez Jones, and Marie Shelton; his three children; and six grandchildren survived him. Appling is buried in Sawnee View Memorial Gardens, Mausoleum Chapel West in Cumming.

Luke Appling was in the mold of most Depression ballplayers-tough, somewhat hard-bitten, often with lean faces that showed the rugged times all Americans were enduring. Happy to be playing ball when so many others were standing on street corners selling apples or standing in line for soup, they brought some relief to a nation back on its heels. Appling along with others helped take people’s minds off the Depression if only for a few hours and made life a bit more bearable. It was the endurance of players like Luke Appling who carried baseball through these troubled times and sparkled even in a time of misery and foreboding as the sound of cleats on the dugout steps would soon be muffled by the hobnailed boots of oppressors.

Photo credit

Luke Appling takes batting practice before a game at Comiskey Park in 1940. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Sources

Cataneo, David. Peanuts and Crackerjack. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1991

Creamer, Robert W. Baseball In 1941. New York: Penguin, 1991.

James, Bill. The New Bill James Baseball Historical Abstract. New York: The Free Press, 2001.

Luke Appling File at National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, New York.

Nemec, David, and Saul Wisnea. Baseball: More Than One Hundred Fifty Years. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications International, 1997.

Don Richard “Richie” Ashburn, a Hall of Fame outfielder, who made the most putouts of any outfielder in major-league baseball during the 1950s, started out as a catcher, which should not be surprising because throughout his long career in baseball, Richie Ashburn had always been his own man. His independent quality even emerged during his acceptance speech in Cooperstown. After waiting 28 years for induction, he expressed his opinion about the long wait: “They didn’t exactly carry me in here in a sedan chair with blazing and blaring trumpets.”1

Because of such candor and homespun humor, Ashburn became an iconic figure in fan-gritty Philadelphia during his careers with the Philadelphia Phillies — as a speedy center fielder for 12 years, and as a broadcaster for 34 years. He starred in center field and as a leadoff hitter for 12 seasons, including the pennant-winning Whiz Kids of 1950. Ashburn won two batting titles and earned four All-Star selections. After retiring from the field, he thrilled and amused not only Phillies fans but all baseball fans with his colorful, witty commentary of action on and off the field from 1963 until his sudden death shortly after he broadcast a Phillies-Mets game September 9, 1997.

A son of the Plains, Ashburn came into this world on March 19, 1927, in Tilden, Nebraska, as one of a pair of identical twins, Don and Donna, to his parents Neil and Genevieve “Tootie” Ashburn. Nicknames were common in the Ashburn household: Everyone called the male twin by his middle name, Richie, to further distinguish him from his sister; and Genevieve was called Tootie because of her tiny size at birth.2

Ashburn’s father, Neil, was a blacksmith and monument maker who played semipro baseball on the weekends. His brother Bob said he made more money playing baseball than at his trade. On some occasions the money was just enough to keep his family in food. Neil Ashburn had a very close relationship with his athletically-inclined son — he encouraged Richie in his boyhood activities and steered the boy throughout his developmental years.3

Ashburn tried to play all the sports — except football; his father ruled that out because of the threat of injury, but baseball and basketball were his favorites. He began playing baseball in 1935 as an 8-year-old in the Tilden Midget Baseball League under the tutelage of Hursel O’Banion. He played catcher because his father thought it would be the quickest way to get him to the major leagues, and he batted left-handed because his father said his speed would give him a better jump to first base from the port side.

The term “speed” would always be associated with Ashburn. His high-school basketball teammate Jim Kelly said that Ashburn could dribble down the court faster than the other players could run down it. In his 1948 major-league rookie year, one sportswriter said of the 21-year-old, “He’s no .300 hitter, he hits .100 and runs .200.”4 And even after his playing days ended, Ashburn challenged a young Dick Allen in a foot race and beat him.5

He played baseball and basketball for Tilden High School but the baseball season was short and his coach, Harold Mertz, suggested to Neil Ashburn that his boy needed more playing time. Neil agreed.

Ashburn graduated to American Legion baseball with the Neligh Junior Legion team and continued as a catcher. He was derided at first for his small stature, but he soon drew the admiration of his teammates with his speed and his concentration at the plate. He also played the outfield and it was during this time that Richie’s speed helped him in another way. His coach, Harold Cole, recognized that Ashburn lacked a strong throwing arm. He trained him to compensate for this deficiency by charging balls hit to him and throwing on the run. Ashburn later used this technique in the major leagues.6

It is difficult to imagine the Hall of Fame outfielder continuing on in baseball as a catcher because of his burning speed but, being a good son, Ashburn followed his father’s wish — despite advice to the contrary. As the state of Nebraska’s representative on the West team of Esquire Magazine’s American Legion Junior Baseball East/West All-Star game in 1944 at the Polo Grounds, Ashburn’s quality of play and his size caused Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack to advise him to play another position.7

At his Legion games, baseball scouts quickly recognized Ashburn’s talent and began following him. In fact, he signed three contracts to play professional baseball. He signed first with the Cleveland Indians in 1943 at the age of 16, again in 1944 with the Chicago Cubs to play for their Nashville farm team, and in 1945 with the Phillies. Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis voided the Cleveland contract because the rules then prohibited the signing of boys still in high school. He also nullified the Cubs contract because of an illegal clause that would have paid Ashburn if the Nashville franchise was sold while he was playing there. The two nullifications soured Ashburn’s opinion on the integrity of major-league baseball.8

The elder Ashburn shared Richie’s doubts and supported his son’s decision to go to college in 1944 even though 13 of the 16 major-league clubs had showed interest in his son. After one semester at Norfolk Junior College, the Phillies convinced the family that their intentions were honest, and Neil approved Richie’s signing with them. Delighted by this change of mind, Phillies scout Ed Krajnick said, “Something tells me this is about the most important deal I ever made.”9

Ashburn reported to the Utica Blue Sox of the Class A Eastern League in 1945 and it was there that his speed finally changed everyone’s mind about his future position in baseball. He utterly astounded them on one occasion when he beat the batter to first base and took the throw for a putout. His manager, future Whiz Kids pilot Eddie Sawyer, forthwith converted the speedster to a center fielder. According to teammate Putsy Caballero, Richie’s father initially disliked Sawyer’s decision and objected to the new direction. But Neil eventually agreed that Sawyer’s decision appeared right for his fleet-footed son. During his time in Utica the players started calling Ashburn Whitey because of his light blond hair. The new moniker stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Early in the season, Ashburn was drafted by the US Army. Fortunately for Ashburn, the allowed him to finish the season, in which the Blue Sox won the Eastern League pennant while Ashburn led the team in batting with a .312 average. The Blue Sox held a Richie Ashburn Day in August and fans passed the hat and collected $357 for him, an amount he likened then to a million dollars.10

The Army sent Ashburn to Alaska, about which he later quipped: “Sending a ballplayer to Alaska was like sending a dog sledder to the Sahara Desert.”11 He spent a year there and missed the 1946 season.

Ashburn returned to the Blue Sox in 1947, and his team again won the Eastern League championship. Ashburn set a league record for the most hits in a season with 191 in only 137 games. After this successful season he went back to school for a second semester at Norfolk Junior College, where he met his future wife, Herberta “Herbie” Cox.12

Ashburn made the 1948 Phillies team as a 21-year-old rookie and opened the season as the starting left fielder. He replaced veteran Harry “The Hat” Walker, the reigning NL batting champion, as the team’s leadoff hitter. He started the first 12 games in left field before replacing Walker as the regular center fielder.

Ashburn engineered an unusual living arrangement in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd — a home rental with fellow rookies Robin Roberts, Jack Mayo, Curt Simmons, and Charlie Bicknell, a move that saved everyone money, especially when Ashburn’s parents moved in in midseason. On the ballfield, he electrified the crowds at Shibe Park with his hitting, speed, and outfield play.

At the conclusion of a doubleheader with the Cubs in Chicago on June 5, Ashburn sported a .380 batting average and had a 23-game hitting streak. A local sportswriter said, “Richie Ashburn is the hottest thing to hit this town since the great Chicago blaze.”13

Ashburn was the only rookie chosen to the National League All-Star team. In the game held in Sportsman’s Park, St. Louis, won by the American League, 5-2, he hit two singles, garnered the only stolen base in the game, scored one of the NL runs and was named by sportswriters as the outstanding player on the losing side. It was there that Ted Williams bestowed Ashburn with another nickname, “Putt-Putt,” because, as Ashburn explained later, “I ran as if I had an outboard motor in the seat of my pants.”14

Ashburn’s season ended abruptly in August when he broke his finger. He started a total of 101 games in center field and 13 games in left field and finished the season with a .333 batting average. At season’s end The Sporting News named him its Rookie of the Year. In the selection process for Major League Baseball’s Rookie of the Year, he finished third behind Al Dark and Gene Bearden.

Whitey experienced a sophomore slump in 1949, finishing with a .284 average, although he continued to exhibit stellar fielding play, setting a major-league record for outfielders with 514 putouts. Some writers said his sensational catch of a Ralph Kiner liner on September 14 was the greatest catch they’d ever seen at Forbes Field.15

The next season Ashburn returned to the Phillies a married man. He was in top form as the youthful Phillies, known as the Whiz Kids, captured the NL pennant. Richie made a “veteran” adjustment borrowing one of teammate Del Ennis’s heavier bats to fool opposing teams that used a “creeping shift” to thwart the speedster’s infield hits. It worked. He started off at .370, weathered a slump in June, and finished at .303 while leading the National League in triples with 14.

Ashburn’s biggest contribution to the NL champs was a fielding play in the final game of the season, October 1 against the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field. The play itself wasn’t extraordinary but its timing was. The Whiz Kids had squandered a six-game lead in first place and faced a tie with the Dodgers if they lost the game. With no outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and the score tied, 1-1, the Dodgers had men on first and second. Duke Snider hit a liner into center field and if the runner on second, Cal Abrams, could score, the Dodgers would force a one-game playoff for the pennant. Ashburn charged the ball, scooped it up, and uncorked a perfect running throw right into catcher Stan Lopata’s mitt in plenty of time to tag Abrams at the plate.

The Phillies won the pennant in the tenth inning when Dick Sisler hit a momentous three-run homer and Robin Roberts retired the Dodgers. Ashburn’s play is considered one of the most significant defensive plays in Phillies history.

Ashburn again led the NL in putouts with 405. He did not perform well in the World Series against the New York Yankees as the Phillies were swept in four games, though the games were close, with three being decided by a single run. He batted only .176 in the Series, 3-for-17, and his disappointment could be summed up with a comment he made as he turned down refreshment after the final game, “I couldn’t swallow a cornflake.”16

The Phillies would not appear in the Series again for many more years as they slid down in the NL standings during the 1950s, but Ashburn’s career did not suffer. He had great years from 1951 through 1954, averaging .318 while leading the NL twice in hits and being named an All-Star in 1951 and 1953. In 1954 he had a career-best 125 walks to lead the league in that category and in on-base percentage with .441.

In 1955 Ashburn received a new $30,000 contract. But before the season began he landed on the disabled list following a collision with Del Ennis that ruined his 731-consecutive-game streak. He recovered relatively quickly — starting in the third game of the season before missing nine games. He pinch-hit in the 13th game, and then resumed playing and went on to have a memorable season — with one exception. For the first time in seven seasons, he failed to lead the league in putouts — but he still posted an outstanding .983 fielding average. His batting excelled — by June he led the NL and had a 17-game hitting streak. He sported a .341 average in July, but incredibly, was not chosen for the NL All-Star team. He shrugged off that slight and finished the season with a .338 average and the NL batting title — his first.

The next three seasons the Phillies continued their slide, never leaving the second division. Ashburn’s play was steady though not stellar with .303 and .297 finishes in 1956 and 1957. The Phillies held a Richie Ashburn Day on August 14, 1956.

In 1958 Ashburn broke out and won his second batting title with a .350 average, edging his center-field rival of the San Francisco Giants, Willie Mays, on the last day of the season with a 3-for-4 effort. He led the league in hits, triples, walks, and on-base percentage. Teammate Robin Roberts remembered that Richie’s first hit that day came on a ball that bounced 50 feet in the air after hitting home plate. Roberts said Ashburn chortled loudly as he safely crossed first base. Richie had told Roberts before the game that for Mays to win the title he needed to get three hits while Whitey went hitless. The chortle erupted because that odd hit practically gave Whitey the title.17

Ashburn’s other accomplishments that year included an unusual double play when he backed up second base on an infield rundown. On June 12 he ran down a Los Angeles Dodgers runner, John Roseboro, who was caught off second base, unaware that Whitey had crept up behind him from center field, for an unusual shortstop-catcher-third base-center fielder double play. And at the end of the season he led the league in putouts, tying Max Carey for the most seasons leading the NL in that statistic. It was only the second time in his career up to that point that he did not finish with double-digit assist totals. Additionally, he served as Nebraska chairman of the American Cancer Society during the offseason.

Ashburn’s 1959 season was largely forgettable. All of his offensive stats fell: hits by 65, walks by 18, stolen bases by 21, and batting average by 84 points. Defensively, it was the same: putouts declined by 136, errors rose to 11, and outfield assists dropped to 4, while his fielding percentage fell 13 points. He suffered through the worst performance of his career.

Richie’s tenure with the Phillies ended when the team traded him to the Chicago Cubs in December 1959. In retrospect, it was a terrible trade for the team as Ashburn rebounded to have three good seasons — two with the Cubs and one with the Mets, although his speed had slowed and his outfield putouts declined all three years. The players the Phillies obtained for Ashburn performed horribly, contributing to their further decline. The Phillies finished last; the third of four straight bottom-of-the-heap finishes from 1958 through 1961. Ashburn’s replacement in center field hit just .237.

Ashburn’s time with the Cubs coincided with their “College of Coaches” experiment — a system of rotating a different coach to manage the Cubs each day, which didn’t work. Some of the coaches were rotated to the minors and back again. A visiting Philly sportswriter asked Ashburn how he was doing: “Not so good,” quipped Richie, “the guy who likes me is in Des Moines.”18

Ashburn’s last season spent as a player spawned a second career in baseball. After playing fairly well on one of the most unforgettable and bumbling teams in baseball history, the 1962 New York Mets (40-120), he sent back his contract offer unsigned — not to get more money, but with the thought that he didn’t want to go through another season like the one he had had with the lowly NL expansion team. His Mets tenure was a horrible season of improbable losses, unbelievable errors, and inept baseball manifested by the quintessential story Yo la tengo.

The story revolved around the antics of the Spanish-speaking shortstop for the Mets, Elio Chacon, and his penchant for frequent near-collisions with outfielders. This was especially true with Ashburn on short fly balls to center field. Ashburn realized that Chacon did not understand the English warning: “I have it,” so he went to a bilingual Mets player and was told that Chacon would understand the warning in Spanish, yo la tengo; that it meant the fly ball was the center fielder’s to catch. Soon enough a short fly ball was hit and a back-pedaling Chacon veered off, following Ashburn’s admonition in Spanish. What was unexpected was that onrushing, English-only left-fielder Frank Thomas completely flattened Ashburn. After pulling his center fielder from the ground, Thomas asked him “What’s a Yellow Tango?”19

Selected as a National League All-Star, he became the Mets’ Most Valuable Player with a batting average of .306. The award merited him the gift of a boat, of which he later said: “…to be voted the MVP on the worst team in the history of baseball is a dubious honor for sure. I was awarded a 24-foot boat equipped with a galley and sleeping facilities for six. After the season had ended, I docked the boat in Ocean City, New Jersey, and it sank.”20

Ashburn also dubbed the much-maligned first baseman for the Mets with his famous moniker, “Marvelous Marv” Throneberry.

He accepted a broadcasting job in 1963 with the Phillies to provide “color” to the regular broadcaster. When asked if he had been making more with the Mets, Ashburn said, “Much more.” And a query as to why he would quit such a good-paying job in a sport he loved and accept a much lower salary elicited a simple, “Well…” 21

Ashburn was not the only candidate for the broadcasting booth. The Phillies first offered it to Robin Roberts, who declined — he played baseball for four more seasons — but who suggested Ashburn to Les Qually, the Phillies official in charge of broadcasting. “The rest is history,” said Roberts.22

It turned out Ashburn had the gift of providing commentary during a broadcast and he parlayed this gift into a career that spanned 35 seasons. His career as a color man enabled his voice and his personality to touch more Phillies fans in the Delaware Valley than all of his on-field heroics at the Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium venue. Folks all over the area listened as he spoke with an infectious zest, corny humor, admirable candor, unflinching disbelief, and an understated outrageousness that endeared him to millions. He spoke his mind and fans loved it along with his wit and humor delivered in his trademark deadpan style. Soon, his aphorisms percolated throughout the Delaware Valley: “This fella on first looks runnerish,” “It’s a leadpipe cinch that they’ll bunt here,” and “Hard to believe, Harry,” among others.

Other, nonverbal, sounds tickled listeners’ ears as well. People recognized Ashburn lighting his pipe when they would hear a match being scratched while on the air. Or they heard him puff his pipe as he piped in with another comment on something odd or good or bad during a game.

Ashburn first teamed with Bill Campbell and By Saam but his true broadcast partner became Harry Kalas when Kalas joined the Phils on-air team in 1971. Kalas gave him another nickname that gave tribute to Ashburn’s unique status with Phillies fans, “His Whiteness.”

The team of Kalas and Ashburn clicked. They complemented each other so well that author Curt Smith said of their rapport and teamwork, “Where chemistry really works … at any time in any franchise was, of course, Harry Kalas and Whitey Ashburn.”23 The pair worked together for 27 seasons and their partnership became noted for Kalas’s smooth delivery of game action and Ashburn’s quips, insights, and critiques.

Besides his broadcasting, Ashburn wrote a regular column for the Philadelphia Bulletin and later for the Philadelphia Daily News. His columns were noted for his candor as well as his insights into sports and baseball.

Ashburn was so well liked that in one of his columns he noted that Cal Abrams — whom he had thrown out at home plate during the 1950 pennant-clincher — paid Richie a compliment: Abrams, wrote Richie, thanked him for throwing him out because that play bestowed more recognition upon Abrams than his short baseball career did. He also noted that Abrams saved all of his baseball cards — including Ashburn’s 1948 rookie card — and, in selling them, was making more money than he did as a player.24

Ashburn stayed married to his wife, Herberta Cox “Herbie” Ashburn, until the day he died. And he stayed true to his roots, returning to his Tilden home every offseason until 1964, when they moved to Gladwyne, a Philadelphia suburb. With Herbie he had six children; he missed every one of their births because all of them were born when he would be with the Phillies. “I was a miserable 0-for-6,” he would quip.25 But he made sure to make it up with them during the offseason and his children referred to him as a good dad.

However, although Whitey’s love for Herbie remained strong, their marriage was not. In 1977, after 28 years of living together, the two separated but did not divorce. The Ashburns lived apart for the rest of their lives but by dint of their unique natures they kept their children together and Whitey remained their father forever.

The Ashburns experienced tragedy when their daughter Jan died in an automobile crash in 1987. It is always a crushing blow when a parent has to bury a child and this loss hurts most. Richie’s grief remained with him and a year later, during a Phillies tribute to Ashburn at the Vet, he thanked the fans for the “thousands of cards and letters” that shared his family’s grief. His column allowed him to make that grief public with Jan’s eulogy in the Philadelphia Daily News of April 28, 1987.

Ashburn’s personality was often described as honest and open. It seemed to allow him to hang out with kings and janitors and everyone in between because he treated everyone the same way. It seems he had the moxie to present himself naturally to anyone, and folks accepted it– and forgave him for it. Stories abound about Richie and this unique quality.

He could be ribald, too. Once, after a lengthy discourse during a game by broadcaster Tim McCarver on the qualities of Mount St. Helen’s volcanic ash, Ashburn opined that “If you’ve seen one piece of ash, you’ve seen them all.”26 On another occasion he admitted that he slept with his bats when he was going good. “In fact, I’ve been in bed with a lot of old bats in my day,” he said.27 And he could be disarmingly charming, often referring to anyone within listening distance as the youngest of men. Once he took leave from some to go into the broadcasting booth, “Well, boys, I can’t be sitting around talking to fans.”28

Richie Ashburn’s induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown took some time. In his 15 years of eligibility his vote count did not engender continuation after 1982 and his status was relegated to the Veterans Committee. His candidacy stalled and then ended with the passing of the “60 percent rule” in 1991 that stated eligibility by the Veterans Committee for players whose careers began after 1946 was limited to those who garnered 60 percent of the ballot in previous elections.

Ashburn’s run up to his Hall of Fame induction included two fans who recognized his numbers and took up his banner: SABR member Steve Krevisky and superfan Jim Donahue. Krevisky would appear at every New England SABR gathering and expound on Ashburn’s qualities, especially educating attendees on his defensive statistics but also pointing out that Richie had the most hits of any major leaguer during the 1950s. Donahue organized his campaign around overturning the 60 percent rule, one time forwarding 55,000 postcards to the Hall of Fame. Both men’s efforts paid off and the rule was overturned in 1993. In the spring of 1995 the Veterans Committee voted Whitey into the Hall. The first person Ashburn called was his 91-year-old mother, Tootie, who wept.

The largest crowd in the history of the induction ceremony, more than 15,000 fans, showed up that summer to celebrate not only Ashburn’s induction but that of the greatest third baseman of all time, the Phillies’ Mike Schmidt. Several times during his acceptance speech, Whitey was overcome as he looked out onto a “sea of red clad” Phillies fans.29

It is generally considered that Ashburn’s defensive skills got him in. Although he finished with a .308 average which ranks 120th in major-league history, he hit only 29 home runs, and 82 percent of his hits were singles. However, he led the majors in putouts in nine of the ten years from 1949 through 1958. And he is the only outfielder in major-league history to record four seasons of 500-plus putouts. Despite his “weak” arm, he led NL outfielders in assists three times. Another factor was his durability. He possesses the seventh longest consecutive-game streak in National League history and missed only 20 games from 1948 through 1960.

And his fielding prowess was not limited to the can-of-corn variety. Some of Ashburn’s catches remain as the best in baseball. In addition to the aforementioned Kiner catch, Ashburn’s sensational outfield play at Forbes Field on June 20, 1951, led one famous fan in attendance to wonder. Hall of Famer George Sisler commented, “I’ve been around major-league baseball for 35 years. I’ve seen every great center fielder since [Tris] Speaker. I thought I had seen every sort of impossible catch. But that’s the greatest piece of center fielding I ever saw anywhere by any fielder. I still don’t believe it.”30

Richie’s competitive nature also kept his Hall of Fame candidacy alive. He especially would voice his own self-promotion, since he often mentioned it on air and during off-mike events. And he didn’t hesitate to use his especial candor. “You know, you can also get into the Hall of Fame as a writer or a broadcaster,” Ashburn once said. “I could be the first person in history to miss it in all three categories.”31

Ashburn sometimes kept to himself and he did so on a late summer evening in 1997 after calling a game in New York, telling friend and fellow broadcaster Kalas that he didn’t need any company. Later that night he reached out to a Phillies official, complaining that he didn’t feel well. At 5:30 A.M. on September 9, 1997, Ashburn was found dead in his hotel room.

The city of Philadelphia, Phillies fans, and team officials as well as other major-league teams and their cities descended into collective grief as news of Ashburn’s death percolated across telephone, teletype, audio, and video machines. His wake at Fairmount Park’s Memorial Hall drew thousands and his memorial service generated poignant remembrances as his family and myriad friends in the game sought solace through words, hugs, and tears.

Some years later, his son, Richard, spoke for thousands of us when he said of his father, “To this day some one will tell me a story about him every day. He just blew people away. And he didn’t even know he was doing it.”32

The Phillies have honored the memory of Whitey Ashburn in Citizens Bank Park, their much-admired ballyard off Broad Street in South Philadelphia. There is a long, concession-filled broad walk behind center field dubbed Ashburn Alley where an exciting statue of the former Whiz Kid is prominent. And the TV/radio booth has been named the Richie “Whitey” Ashburn Broadcast Booth. The Phillies also retired his playing number, 1, in 1979, the second number given that honor, and his plaque is featured on the Phillies’ Wall of Fame in Ashburn Alley.

This biography is included in the book “The Year of the Blue Snow: The 1964 Philadelphia Phillies” (SABR, 2013), edited by Mel Marmer and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

http://articles.mcall.com/1995-07-28/sports/3052376_1_richie-ashburn-elmer-flick-consummate-leadoff-man

baseball-reference.com.

http://www.ultimatemets.com/profile.php?PlayerCode=0012&tabno=7

http://www.centerfieldmaz.com/2011/03/original-1962-mets-center-fielder-hall.html

Notes

1 Dan Stephenson, Richie Ashburn, A Baseball Life. DVD. Written and produced by Dan Stephenson, Narrated by Harry Kalas (New York: Arts Alliance America LLC, 2008).

2 Stephenson.

3 Stephenson.

4 Joe Archibald, Richie Ashburn (New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1960), 47.

5 Stephenson.

6 Archibald, 25.

7 Archibald, 32.

8 Archibald, 29, 30.

9 Archibald, 33, 34.

10 Archibald, 38, 39.

11 Bill Conlin, “Missing Whitey 10-Fold,” Philly.com, September 7, 2007. http://articles.philly.com/2007-09-07/sports/24995587_1_radio-hall-tv.

12 Archibald, 42.

13 Archibald, 46.

14 Archibald, 49.

15 Archibald, 64-65.

16 Archibald, 87.

17 Robin Roberts and C. Paul Rogers, III. My Life in Baseball (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2003), 161.

18 Roberts, 252.

19 http://phillysportshistory.com/2011/05/21/richie-ashburn-is-the-inspiration-for-the-band-name-yo-la-tengo/.

20 http://www.centerfieldmaz.com/2011/03/original-1962-mets-center-fielder-hall.htm”

21 Jimmy Breslin, Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game (New York: Viking Press, 1963), 85.

22 Roberts, 252.

23 Stephenson.

24 Philadelphia Daily News, December 9, 1986.

25 Fran Zimniuch. Richie Ashburn Remembered (Chicago: Sports Publishing LLC, 2005), 83.

26 Zimniuch, 57.

27 Zimniuch, 53.

28 Zimniuch, 61.

29 Stephenson.

30 Frank Yeutter, “They Call Him Mister Putt-Putt,” Baseball Digest, October 1951.

31 Don Bostrom, “Richie Ashburn From Cornfield to Cooperstown,” The Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), July 28, 1995.

32 Zimniuch, 99.

The last baseball on the wall displayed the number 3, which belonged to Cleveland outfielder Earl Averill. He was likely the least recognizable of the quartet. His years (1929-1939) in Cleveland were not punctuated with a pennant. The team finished no higher than third place and no lower than fifth in the American League standings during Averill’s tenure. Cleveland had competitive teams with good players; however, during the decade of the 1930s, when Averill was with the Indians, they could not put it all together for one season. New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Washington all won pennants during those years, while Cleveland was left looking forward to next season.  

Despite the club’s lackluster performance, Averill’s offensive impact could not be overlooked. When he was traded to Detroit in 1939, he was the Indians’ team leader in seven offensive categories. In 2024 Averill remained the franchise leader in runs (1,154), RBIs (1,084), triples (121), total bases (3,200), and extra-base hits (724). Averill is also in the top five in five other offensive categories.1

Averill finally reached the World Series with the Detroit Tigers in 1940. Although he was a backup outfielder at this point of his career, Averill proved how valuable he could be, batting .308 as a pinch-hitter.

In 1975 the Veterans Committee elected Averill to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Finally, 34 years after he played his last professional season, he took his rightful place with the game’s greatest players.

Howard Earl Averill was born on May 21, 1902, in Snohomish, Washington. He was the youngest of three children (brother Forrest and sister Valera) born to Jotham and Anna (Maddox) Averill. Jotham Averill died in 1904 and Anna had to take on work in a shingle factory to support her family.  

Averill dropped out of high school his freshman year. He worked in lumber mills and on road crews. He was not a big man (5-feet-9½, 160 pounds), but the hard labor resulted in brawn and muscle in his upper body. Averill played baseball on the Snohomish town team, battling neighboring cities after work and on the weekends. Although the players did not receive a salary, fans often took up a collection for the player who distinguished himself the most in the game. Averill was often the recipient of this largesse, one time receiving a pot of $80.

On May 15, 1922, Averill married Gladys Loette Hyatt in Mount Vernon, Washington.2 Earl and Loette were married 61 years and had four sons: Howard, Bernard, Earl, and Lester.3 

In 1924 citizens of Snohomish raised money to send Averill to Seattle to try out for the Seattle Indians of the Pacific Coast League. However, manager Red Killefer was not as impressed with his abilities and sent Averill home.

The Averill family grew to four when Bernard was born in 1925. Averill played two days a week for Bellingham (Washington), earning $15 a game. He also worked for the county painting bridges and picked up other jobs to support his growing family. After a few weeks in Bellingham, he moved on to Anaconda (Montana), where the baseball team paid $250 a month.4 Averill batted .430 at Anaconda, drawing interest from the San Francisco Seals of the PCL.

Averill won a spot on the Seals’ roster during spring training in 1926. Before long he was slashing line drives all over Recreation Park in San Francisco as well as the other venues in the league. In his three years with Seals, Averill averaged 250 hits and 50 doubles, 26 home runs, and a .342 batting average.5  

What was the secret to Averill’s hitting success? Why, it was sauerkraut juice. When Averill mentioned to Seals manager Nick Williams that he might give up the bitter elixir in favor of milk, Williams balked. “If you do, I’ll run you clean out of the joint,” threatened Williams. “If there are base hits in sauerkraut juice, as I suspect, you are going to drink lots of it and what is more, I think I’ll drink some myself and hit in a pinch.”6 

In 1928 Cleveland general manager Billy Evans had a pocket full of cash as he headed to the West Coast to sign players. The first player on his list was Seals outfielder Roy Johnson. But Detroit beat Evans to the punch and signed Johnson. Next was another outfielder, Smead Jolley. Seals pitchers Duster Mails and Dutch Ruether interceded, sending Evans in a different direction. “Forget Jolley. Forget Johnson, too. Buy that Averill,” they told Evans.7    

Evans took their advice, plunking down $45,000 to acquire Averill. “The Snohomish slugger came fast last season,” wrote the San Francisco Examiner. “He was always a good hitter, but last season he polished up his play in the outfield; learned how to play for batters and once he learned the lesson, did not forget it.”8

When Indians owner Alva Bradley first saw Averill, he said to Evans, “You paid all that money for a midget.”9 Bradley and the rest of the Indians would soon learn that Averill packed plenty of power in his compact body.

In 1929 Roger Peckinpaugh was in his second season as the Cleveland skipper. The year before, the team finished the season with a 62-92 record. Averill and fellow rookie outfielder Dick Porter garnered many of the headlines during the ’29 spring training. However, Irving Vaughan, beat writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, doused any hope that Cleveland fans might have for their team, writing, “There may be some improvement if a rookie comes through, but while these happenings are always looked for, they occur only about as often as Halley’s comet whistles through the heavens.”10

Maybe he wasn’t a comet, but Averill quickly became a star. Cleveland opened the 1929 season on April 16 against Detroit at League Park. Averill, playing center field and batting third in the lineup, came to bat in the bottom of the first inning. Detroit starter Earl Whitehill threw the rookie a fastball on a 0-and-2 count. The left-handed-hitting Averill sent a towering drive over the 45-foot right-field fence. The blast warmed the chilled crowd as Averill became the second American League player to homer in his first big-league at-bat.11

Later in the game, in the top of the sixth, the Tigers had a baserunner on first when Averill lunged forward and caught a sinking line drive off the bat of Detroit’s Marty McManus. Both plays contributed to the Cleveland 5-4 win. “Whitehill apparently thought he could slip a fast one by me,” said Averill. “I was all set, took a healthy swing and as the ball hit the bat, I knew it was going somewhere.”12 

Decimating minor-league pitching on the West Coast was one thing, but hitting against major-league talent was another. Averill batted .332 his rookie season and set a team record for home runs in a season at 18. As a team, the Indians finished in third place.

Averill also demonstrated a keen batting eye. While some home-run hitters tend to be free swingers and would rack up the whiffs, Averill did not. In the first 11 seasons of his career, he totaled more walks than strikeouts. He was the perfect hitter who combined hitting for power and average. 

Despite his size, Averill wielded one of the heaviest bats in the league. His bat was 36 inches long and weighed 42 ounces. Averill would also swing a 44-ounce bat from time to time.13

While many batters stand toward the back of the batter’s box to better pick up a pitch, Averill had a different philosophy. “I virtually straddled the plate,” he said. “The farther you stand in front, the smaller the break on the ball when you meet it. “I kept two things in mind at the plate. One was that I was up there to swing; the other was to keep my eye on my target. That was the pitcher’s cap. I always aimed for that, tried to go to the middle. But, if the ball was outside, I’d hit to left.”14 

One of Averill’s signature games occurred on September 17, 1930, at League Park. In a doubleheader against Washington, he smashed three home runs in the opener and drove in eight runs to set a team record in Cleveland’s 13-7 victory. In the second game, Averill came to the plate in the first inning with two runners aboard and smacked a drive to deep center field. He raced around the bases for an inside-the-park home run, his fourth home run and 11th RBI for the day.        

Averill was not the only formidable batsman in the Cleveland lineup. In 1930 the Indians hit .304 as a team. Besides Averill, who hit .339, their lineup consisted of Porter (.350), Johnny Hodapp (.354), Eddie Morgan (.349), Charlie Jamieson (.301), and Joe Sewell (.289). But opposing teams batted .305 against the Indians pitching staff. The result was an 81-73 record, earning the club a fourth-place finish, 21 games behind first-place Philadelphia.

Peckinpaugh was replaced as manager by Walter Johnson on June 9, 1933. Peckinpaugh was a players’ manager and Averill was sorry to see him go. “He knew more baseball than the rest of them put together,” Averill said, comparing Peckinpaugh to his other managers.15 Johnson had recent success as a field manager, guiding the Senators to 92 and 93 wins in 1931 and 1932. However, he had been replaced by Joe Cronin, who led the Senators to the AL pennant in 1933.      

The 1933 season was a historic one for major-league baseball. The year marked the first-ever All-Star Game, pitting the best players of the NL against the AL. Billed as “The Game of the Century,” the game was played on July 6, 1933, at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Cleveland pitchers Oral Hildebrand and Wes Ferrell joined Averill as members of the American League squad. Averill was the only one of the trio to see action, pinch-hitting for Washington pitcher Alvin Crowder in the bottom of the sixth inning. Averill singled sharply to center field to drive Cronin in from second base, giving the AL a 4-2 lead that ended up being the final score.

Hal Trosky moved into the Cleveland lineup as the starting first baseman in 1934. Averill and the young Iowa slugger each played in all 154 games. They combined for 66 home runs and 255 RBIs. Trosky became another solid player in the lineup, one who could hit for power and average.

After the season, Averill joined a traveling all-star team that went to Japan. Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Gomez, Lou Gehrig, Lefty O’Doul, and manager Connie Mack were among the party who made the trip.

Averill was awarded a Japanese sword for being the first American player to hit a home run against the All-Nippon Stars. He treasured the gift for years.16 “The Earl of Snohomish has been doing some long-distance clouting on his own hook in the land of cherry blossoms,” wrote Ed Bang of the Cleveland News. “Truth be, he has experienced no trouble in holding to the pace of the other sluggers. It so happens that Averill is the smallest member of the ‘Big Four’ home run manufacturers and that being the case, he should inspire the Japanese players far more than those Goliaths – Ruth, Gehrig and Foxx.17 

“The Japanese are small in size, and their main drawback is our national pastime, which they appear to have adopted as their own, has been their inability to pack enough force to drive the ball for the well-known bacon-getting route. However, since they have not seen Averill, who, while small, still is well-muscled and has perfect timing at the plate, they have evidently concluded they, too, can develop the well-known punch at bat.”18 

On June 28, 1935, the Indians had a day off and were enjoying a team picnic. “Earl threw a firecracker that didn’t go off,” said Mel Harder. “When he picked it up, it exploded. Joe Vosmik and I put him in a car and took him to St. Luke’s Hospital. It looked bad. There was a lot of blood.”19 This incident resulted Averill getting his nickname, Rock.20  

Averill missed three weeks as his right hand healed from the burns and scars caused by the firecracker. Vosmik replaced Averill for the All-Star Game, which in 1935 was played at Cleveland Stadium.

There had been weeks of speculation, especially in the Cleveland media, about the security of Walter Johnson’s job as manager. He dismissed popular players Willie Kamm and Glenn Myatt from the team because he felt that they were no longer useful. The Indians (37-26-1) were 2½ games behind New York (40-24) on June 30. They went 2-13-1 from July 1 to July 18. Obviously, Averill’s injury did not help the situation. “I’m 100 percent for Walter and I think the whole team is for him,” said Averill, “The boys have found Walter is on the level and has plenty of guts.”21  

Despite Averill’s stance, Johnson was fired on August 5 and replaced by Steve O’Neill, a former Indians catcher and a coach on Johnson’s staff.

In 1935 Averill did not bat over .300 for the first time in his career. He rebounded the next season in a big way, posting a .451 batting average in the month of July. His season average was .374 and climbed to over .380 in August. Averill was leading the AL in hitting going into September, but Chicago’s Luke Appling batted .477 in September to surpass Averill, .388 to .378, for the season. Averill led the league in hits with 232.

While Averill was hitting line drives around AL ballparks, a teenager from Van Meter, Iowa, joined the Indians. Bob Feller was 17 years old when he started his first game for Cleveland, against the St. Louis Browns on August 23, 1936. The right-handed fireballer threw a complete-game six-hitter against the Browns. He struck out 15 in the 4-1 win. Feller became, and still is, the face of the Cleveland franchise. 

Another game Averill is known for, perhaps infamously, is the All-Star Game on July 7, 1937, at Washington’s Griffith Stadium. The American League had taken a 2-0 lead on Lou Gehrig’s two-run home run off Dizzy Dean. Averill stepped to the plate and sent a liner back to the mound. “Diz threw that big curve,” said Averill. “The last thing I remember is seeing it break toward the outside of the plate. I was already into my swing. I connected and saw the ball hit him in the toe and bounced right into the second baseman’s glove. 

“That was the third out. Not many people remember that. We passed as Diz was on his way to the dugout. He said, ‘Hey, you didn’t have to hit me with it.’ I laughed. Heck, I wasn’t trying to pull the ball at him, I was just trying to hit the thing.”22 

Dean’s left toe was broken, his plant foot when he pitched. He was not the same pitcher for the rest of his career.

Off the field, a highlight of 1937 was when Averill appeared on the cover of Wheaties cereal boxes. There was a tradition by General Mills to choose an athlete, either national or regional, to be in the advertisement on a box of the popular cereal. In Averill’s case, he often started his day with a bowl of Wheaties.23     

Cleveland manager O’Neill failed to move the needle in a positive direction and was fired after the 1937 season. He was replaced by Oscar Vitt. They were like night and day: O’Neill was a friendly, outgoing sort while Vitt was a taciturn, disciplinary type of manager. Club owner Bradley also gave Vitt the power to make trades, undermining general manager Cy Slapnicka and causing tension between the two. Vitt also didn’t make many friends when he stated that he “had only two major leaguers, Feller and Harder.”24  

Averill began the 1938 season on a hot streak. After his average climbed to .397 on May 5, he began to have back pain in Philadelphia. He played through the pain. However, his average started to drop. A groin injury in early September kept him on the bench. Averill hit .330 in 1938, which for most players would have been a very successful season.

Cleveland dealt Averill to the Detroit Tigers on June 14, 1939, for left-handed pitcher Harry Eisenstat and cash. Averill was inserted as the Tigers’ starting left fielder. He batted a career-low with the Tigers, hitting .262 with 10 home runs and 58 RBIs. Detroit finished in fifth place with an 81-73 record, 26½ games behind the red-hot Yankees with a record of 106-45, who went on to sweep the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series.

The 1940 AL pennant race came down to Detroit and Cleveland. The Tigers held a two-game lead over the Indians heading into the season’s final three games at Cleveland Stadium. The Tigers won the first game, clinching the pennant.

Cincinnati defeated Detroit in the World Series in seven games. Averill went 0-for-3 in three pinch-hitting appearances. He made the final out of the Series, a 2-1 Reds win.

Averill was released by Detroit and signed with the Boston Braves for the 1941 season. With just two singles in 17 at-bats, he was released after eight games. Averill then returned to the Pacific Coast League, joining the Seattle Rainiers. Also on the Rainiers was Earl Torgeson, also of Snohomish. After the season, Averill retired from professional baseball. In his 13-year career, he hit 238 home runs, 401 doubles, and 128 triples. Averill batted .318 (2,019-for-6,353) and drove in 1,l64 runs.

In retirement, Averill worked in a greenhouse he owned with his brother, Forest. For 20 years, he also owned and operated the Averill Motel in Snohomish. Averill spent time keeping tabs on his son, Earl Douglas Averill, too. Sometimes mistakenly referred to as Earl Jr., the younger Earl carved out a modest baseball career for himself. Primarily a catcher, with some time in the outfield, Earl Douglas played seven seasons with Cleveland (1956, 1958), the Chicago Cubs (1959-1960), the Chicago White Sox (1960), the Los Angeles Angels (1961-1962), and the Philadelphia Phillies (1963). He had a lifetime batting average of .242 with 44 home runs and 159 RBIs.

On February 3, 1975, the elder Earl Averill was elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously by the Veterans Committee. Also elected were Billy Herman, Bucky Harris, Judy Johnson, and Ralph Kiner. Averill was outspoken about how long it took for his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He was also candid about players who he believed merited inclusion but had not been elected, urging that the voting rules be changed.25

“It’s been a long time coming, but better late than never,” said Averill. “It is wonderful to make it while you are still alive. I’m going on 73. In fact, I told my sons that if I didn’t make it while I was still alive, that they turn it down if I made it afterward.”26

“My ambition is reached. I really longed for this. And, you know, a lot of good ballplayers never make it. I understand that it was a unanimous vote. That kind of makes up for the long wait.”27

Not everyone agreed with the election of Averill. Jack Lang of the New York Daily News wrote, “The moment he’s inducted, Averill pops off that it took baseball too long. Funny thing, but all the while he was waiting to get in, he expressed no resentment. If we are going to have these old geezers popping off after they’ve received the tributes, maybe they don’t deserve them to begin with.”28 

On June 8, 1975, the Cleveland Indians retired Averill’s uniform number 3, joining Feller (19) and Boudreau (5).

In 1983 the All-Star Game was held at Comiskey Park to commemorate its 50th anniversary. The living All-Stars who played in the first game in 1933 were invited to Chicago to take part in the festivities.

About six weeks later, on August 16, Averill died from respiratory problems brought on by pneumonia. He was survived by his wife, Gladys Loette; four sons; numerous grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. “He had a real good time in Chicago, but when he got back he was really down,” said his son Earl. “Of the 33 All-Stars in 1933, only 13 were left. Now with Dad’s death, there are only 12.”29      

Center fielder Doc Cramer, a contemporary of Averill’s , said “Earl Averill was a great hitter and a fine outfielder all around. … Whatever you write about Earl won’t be enough.”30   

Photo credit

Earl Averill, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Notes          

1 Cleveland Guardians 2024 Media Guide, 272. 

2 Ancestry.com marriage records, Howard Earl Averill, accessed June 8, 2024.

3 A.C. De Cola, “Earl Is Pal to His Sons,” Cleveland Press, July 2, 1936: 21.

4 Vince O’Keefe, “‘Hard Rock’ Earl Averill dies,” Seattle Times, August 17, 1983: E1.

5 It must be noted that the Pacific Coast League played 190-game schedules. 

6 Abe Kemp, “Earl Averill’s Bat Impresses Pirate Leader,” San Francisco Examiner, March 23, 1928: 1.

7 Gordon Cobbledick, “Hometown Fans’ Cash Started Averill on Career to Fame,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 26, 1936: 4.

8 Abe Kemp, “Young Star Outfielder Will Go Up to Big Top,” San Francisco Examiner, November 20, 1928: P-3.

9 Bob Dolgan, “A Man of Talent, Consistency, Class,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 7, 1996: D-6.

10 Irving Vaughan, “Vaughan Sees Tribe Improved This Year,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 19, 1929: 26.

11 Luke Stuart of the St. Louis Browns hit an inside-the-park home run at Washington’s Griffith Stadium on August 8, 1921.

12 Earl Averill, “The Biggest Thrill of My Career,” Cleveland News, undated, 1930. Player’s Hall of Fame clippings file.

13 Hy Zimmerman, “Gab Session With the Earl of Snohomish,” The Sporting News, December 25, 1965: 5.

14 “Gab Session With the Earl of Snohomish.”

15 Doug Simpson, “The Earl of Snohomish,” Baseball Research Journal,1982. https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-earl-of-snohomish/. Accessed June 15, 2024.

16 Penny Sopris-Kegerreis, “Cast a Vote for the ‘Rock’ of Snohomish,” Monroe (Washington) Monitor and Valley News, January 27, 1999: 8. 

17 Ed Bang, “Scribbled by Scribes,” The Sporting News, December 6, 1934: 4.

18 “Scribbled by Scribes.”

19 “A Man of Talent, Consistency, Class,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 7, 1996: D-1.

20 Bob Broeg, “Averill Shy, Except at the Plate,” The Sporting News, March 8, 1975: 8.

21 Henry W. Thomas, Walter Johnson: Baseball’s Big Train (Washington DC: Phenom Press, 1995), 326.

22 Don Duncan, “Earl Averill Recalls Infamous ’37 Game,” Seattle Times, July 15, 1979: J3.

23 “Cast a Vote for the ‘Rock’ of Snohomish.”

24 William H. Johnson, Hal Trosky: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2017), 80.

25 Transcript of Earl Averill Hall of Fame Induction Speech, Cooperstown, New York, August 18, 1975, in player’s Hall of Fame clippings file.  

26 Hy Zimmerman, “The Earl of Snohomish Feels Like a King,” Seattle Times, February 3, 1975: B1. 

27 “The Earl of Snohomish Feels Like a King.”

28 Jack Lang, “Reds Respectful of Mets Pitching,” player’s Hall of Fame clippings file.

29 “His Son Recalls Earl Averill,” player’s Hall of Fame clippings file.

30 Simpson, “The Earl of Snohomish.”