Twenty-six years later, that same boy pitched in the Major Leagues for the New York Yankees. In a February 2010 interview, he was asked what brought his father to the United States, and he replied, “The man who owned the brickyard in Port Costa, he was from my home town and he invited a bunch of Italians over to come to America and have a job.”[fn]Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1939.[/fn]

In 1923 the family moved to San Francisco. Rinaldo had lost his mother two months after his sixth birthday to what he understands was double pneumonia. While living in San Francisco as a youngster, Rinaldo added the middle name Joseph—not Giuseppe; Joseph was a confirmation name. He thought he picked up his nickname around this time. “I was all by myself. My father was working and I was only six years old. I lived across the street from a playground and I used to go over there and play marbles and fool around and get in fights. Guys would chase me. We had a bunch of thistle back there that wasn’t cleared and I’d run into the thistle and they wouldn’t chase me. They’d say, ‘You’re a rugged little bugger.’ I also played rugby and I was a Rugger there.”[fn]Interview by Ed Attanasio on November 21, 2006. All quotations from Ardizoia are from this 2006 oral history unless otherwise noted.[/fn]

In 1931, the Catholic Youth Organization began a baseball team and Ardizoia played for St. Theresa’s Church CYO. Next came play in American Legion ball and at the High School of Commerce. He had favored football as a youngster, and was a third baseman when he first started playing baseball. It was only in his junior year at Commerce that he took up pitching. He threw two no-hitters in high school, and in one of them opposing pitcher Art Gigli also threw a no-hitter. The game had to be called off because it ran too long, neither team ever getting a base hit.

The day he graduated from high school in 1937, the seventeen-year-old signed a contract with the Mission Reds of the Pacific Coast League (the team represented San Francisco’s Mission district). Actually, he had signed while he was still in high school, six months before his graduation. Offered a scholarship to Stanford University, he had to turn it down because he had already turned professional.[fn]Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1939.[/fn]

Ardizoia’s father was working as a warehouseman in 1937, earning $25 a week. His son now was making $150 a month. “That’s when he quit,” Rugger said of his father. “He said, like an old Italian, ‘I supported you for seventeen years, now you support me, OK?’ … Money was pretty good and so when I turned twenty-one, I bought this house. … I’ve been in this house here sixty-five years.” On January 11, 1942, Ardizoia married a fellow Commerce student, Mary Castagnola, a twenty-one-year-old native of San Diego.

Ardizoia threw 24 2/3 innings in nine games with Mission, and had a remarkable first game. “We were in San Diego and they had [Jimmy] Reese and Ted Williams and a whole bunch of those old guys and Johnny Babich started and I relieved in the second inning and I pitched the next five innings of one-hit ball. That was my first game in professional ball. After that, look out!”

He fondly recalled those early days: “I had all these old guys around me and I was just a young guy and they all teased me and all that. We got along real good, though. That’s one thing about the old days. There was [sic] no individuals. They were a team. … In those days, you pitched. You didn’t count pitches. You didn’t count innings. You just got it on. You got the guy out. I went as high as eighteen innings complete.”

More than anyone else, some of the catchers he worked with taught the five-foot-eleven, 180-pound right-hander how to pitch. “I had a fastball. I had an overhand curve, a three-quarter curve, and a sidearmed curve—three different types—and some little sinker ball. Then later on when I started with Oakland I picked up a slider.”

Ardizoia posted a 5.84 ERA in 1937 but didn’t record a decision. It was in 1938, pitching for the Bellingham (Washington) Chinooks in the Western International League, that he first got in a full season of work, 224 innings, with a 12-13 record and a 3.05 earned-run average. During the offseason, he pitched in the San Francisco Winter League. He credited manager Ken Penner of Bellingham with teaching him how to hide his pitches better.

In 1939 and 1940 Ardizoia pitched for the Hollywood Stars of the PCL. He first became associated with the New York Yankees in December 1939. The New York World-Telegram reported that Yankees had acquired Ardizoia in exchange for pitchers Hiram Bithorn and Ivy Andrews. Ardizoia, described as the best pitching prospect in the Pacific Coast League, had finished the season 14-9 with a 3.98 ERA.

It was intended from the start that Rugger would spend 1940 with Hollywood. He won 14 and lost 20 that year, and his 145 strikeouts were fifth highest in the league. In August 1940 the Yankees officially purchased his contract and in the spring of 1941 he trained with the Major League club.

After spring training, the Yankees sent him to the Newark Bears of the International League, but early in the season a problem cropped up. The International League included two clubs from Canada, Montreal and Toronto. Ardizoia was 0-1 with Newark before the Bears general manager realized Ardizoia was not a U. S. citizen. A trip to Ellis Island affirmed that he was legal in the United States, but Canada wouldn’t let him into the country. They were at war with Italy, and that made Rugger an enemy alien. “So I got sent to Kansas City. In those days, you had to wait two years and go before a judge and all that stuff. In the meantime, I got trapped in World War II and even though I wasn’t a citizen, I accepted the induction (into the U.S. Army),” he said. Before being drafted, however, he got into twenty-seven games for the Kansas City Blues of the American Association, going 12-9. Back with the Blues in 1942, he won six and lost twelve.

Rugger served in the army air force from May 1943 until he was discharged in November 1945. After eight months at McClellan Field, near Sacramento, he was transferred to Honolulu on June 1, 1944. Rugger joined the 7th Air Force’s baseball team there, compiling, he recalled, a 12-0 record. In Hawaii he became a tow target operator, flying over a firing range towing a target with a cable that was from 250 to 2,500 feet long. Baseball may have saved him his life, he remembered with a bit of understatement: “One night that I was supposed to fly, I was relieved because we had a ballgame. The plane crashed. I was lucky.”

Ardizoia joined a team that took him to some of the islands in the Pacific—Tinian, Saipan, and Iwo Jima. Playing baseball on volcanic and coral islands that had recently seen vicious fighting wasn’t always the easiest of duty. There were still worries that a Japanese soldier would emerge from concealment and open fire. “There were so many zigzags there [in the tunnels], they didn’t know if they got them all. They were hiding in the hills. We’d play every day or two. In the meantime, we had KP and cleanup jobs and stuff like that,” Ardizoia recalled.[fn]Rugger Ardizoia interview, December 10, 2008.[/fn]

When Corporal Ardizoia was discharged from the service at Camp Peale, California, he spoke up and said, “Hey, I want to become a citizen.” The officer was a little stunned. “Aren’t you a citizen? What the heck are you doing in the Army?” “I volunteered because this is my country.”  He was told, “OK, stick around for a couple of days.”

“I said, ‘No way.’ My son was eighteen months old and I hadn’t seen my wife for three years. So I came home and then went down to the Federal Building and went before the judge. He had me raise my right hand and he says, ‘Do you solemnly (swear) to defend the United States . . . wait a minute, you just came out of the Army?’ I said, ‘Yessir.’ He says, ‘You‘re a citizen.’”[fn]Ibid.[/fn]

In 1946 it was back to baseball, this time with the Oakland Oaks in the PCL. Rugger had an excellent year on an Oaks team that won 111 games for manager Casey Stengel. Rugger was 15-7 with a 2.83 ERA. The three seasons he lost during the war hadn’t hindered him. His only home run in pro ball came in 1947, against Seattle.

In 1947, Ardizoia went to spring training with the Yankees again. He stuck with the big-league team for a while and finally had his opportunity to play in a Major League game. It was the last day of April. The Yanks had just arrived in St. Louis for a game against the Browns. When Ardizoia was brought on to pitch the bottom of the seventh, St. Louis had a 13–4 lead. He got through the seventh, but former Iwo Jima teammate Walt Judnich hit a homer in the eighth, one of two runs Rugger gave up.

As Ardizoia said in the 2006 interview, “The guy that hit the home run off me was one of my boyhood idols, Walter Judnich. I more or less slid it in for him because we were so far behind anyway.” Johnny Lindell pinch-hit for Rugger in the ninth. It was Ardizoia’s only Major League appearance, but by doing so, he became one of only seven natives of Italy to play in the Major Leagues.

After another week of throwing batting practice, Rugger was sold to Hollywood on May 8 and played the rest of the season for the Stars, going 11-10. His time in the majors was over; the Yankees won the World Series that year but Ardizoia never received either a ring or a World Series share.

In 1948 Rugger was with Hollywood again. In January 1949 he was traded to the Seattle Rainiers. He began the 1950 season with the Rainiers, but got into only two games, spending most of the year with the Dallas Stars in the Texas League, where he went 10-10. He pitched a second season for Dallas in 1951, and was 8-3 with a 2.88 earned run average.

After that season he retired from the game. He said he had a bone chip in his throwing arm and wanted to spend more time with his two children in San Francisco. Ardizoia finished baseball with just that one brief Major League appearance, with the 1947 Yankees. In the minors, he pitched for twelve seasons and won 123 games against 115 defeats, with a 3.63 ERA.

Ardizoia had worked during the off-seasons for Owl Drug Company, a retail chain. Owl had a baseball team and he played winter ball for it in the Bay area, but also put in eight-hour days. He worked for Owl until it went out of business, and then took up work as a salesman for Galland Linen and then National Linen Service. He worked at selling rental linen for about thirty years. Baseball helped. “A lot of accounts, people knew that I played ball and in those days they still remembered.”

Rugger’s wife, Mary, died in April 1983. The couple had two children, both born in San Francisco: Bill, in June 1944, and Janet, in April 1947. Janet died in April 2010.

The Yankees kept in touch, sending Ardizoia their alumni mailings, Christmas and birthday cards, and a big bouquet of flowers on his 85th birthday. After the 2009 World Series win, they sent him a medallion celebrating their 27th world championship. In 2009 a journalist in Italy wrote a story about him. Ardizoia helped start and remained a member of the San Francisco Old Timer’s Baseball Association, a group mostly of semipro players, but open to anyone who played baseball.

Ardizoia remained active until the end of his life, working for a number of years with the Pacifica Beach Coalition and participating in their April 2015 Earth Day of Action and EcoFest event. In June, he attended a Giants game and presented a check for $1,000 to a graduating high school baseball player. He suffered a stroke on July 11 and died of complications eight days later, on the 19th, at his home in San Francisco.

This biography is included in the book “Bridging Two Dynasties: The 1947 New York Yankees” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013), edited by Lyle Spatz. For more information, or to purchase the book from University of Nebraska Press, click here.

Sources

Oral history done by Ed Attanasio on November 21, 2006 was transcribed by Tom Hetrick in February 2007.

Interviews by Bill Nowlin on December 10, 2008 and February 6, 2010. Correspondence from Rugger Ardizoia on February 17, 2010.

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed the online SABR Encyclopedia, Retrosheet.org, and Baseball-Reference.com.

A baseball journeyman, Reno Bertoia nevertheless held a number of distinctions. He was one of baseball’s original bonus babies. Of the seven major leaguers born in Italy, he had the longest career, ten seasons. (One of the seven, Alex Liddi, was still active in 2012.) In Bertoia’s big-league debut, with his hometown Detroit Tigers, the 18-year-old infielder batted against Satchel Paige (he struck out). He also happened to live next door to one of the other six Italian-born players. And after baseball, he had a long career as a high-school teacher.

Reno Peter Bertoia was born to Libero and Rina Bertoia in St. Vito Udine, Italy, on January 8, 1935. It was 22 months before Reno actually saw his father. Libero had left Italy before his son’s birth to seek employment in Canada. He settled in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit, and worked as a laborer for the Ford Motor Company. Reno had a younger sister, Julie.

As a boy of ten in 1945, Reno delivered the Windsor Star, which carried front page headlines throughout the season about the eventual world champion Detroit Tigers. He recollected in 2010 “That’s where I got the idea that I would like to do that myself.” 1

In Windsor a next-door neighbor of the Bertoia’s was Hank Biasatti, who was also born in Italy. He played briefly for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1949. Reno told the writer in an interview 4½ months before he died in April 2011. “He was my role model and I wanted to be like him. … He would go away to play ball and then he would come back and give me a glove. I never owned a glove myself until I signed with the Tigers.”2

Bertoia started playing in sandlot and amateur baseball leagues in Windsor and Detroit at the age of 14. Besides the inspiration he got from Biasatti, he credited Father Ronald Cullen, a teacher and coach at Assumption High School in Windsor. “If anybody would be responsible for me making the big leagues, it would be him,” Bertoia said. “He was my coach, my mentor.”3 Father Cullen also coached him in amateur baseball. Then, at 16 he was the starting shortstop for Trumbull Chevrolet, a team in an advanced league that won the National Amateur Baseball Federation championship that year and which he said graduated five players to the major leagues, including Bob Bruce, a pitcher who became his teammate on the Tigers.4 Also, in 1952 he played for the city champion Windsor Sterlings team.

At Assumption High School Bertoia played basketball and football, besides baseball. In 1953, as an 18-year-old, he was voted the Best Baseball Prospect in Detroit. That year he was selected to play in the Hearst Newspapers Junior Baseball Classic at the Polo Grounds in New York City with Tigers general manager Charley Gehringer as a coach for his team.

After graduating from Assumption in 1953, Bertoia accepted a baseball scholarship to the University of Michigan. Because freshmen could not play varsity sports then, his playing was restricted to the freshman team. That summer he was heavily pursued by the Tigers, and the New York Giants and the Chicago Cubs also showed interest. The persistent Tigers prevailed. “They were trying to get me to sign,” Bertoia said. “I was working out with ’em for about a month, and I had no intention of signing ’cause I wanted to go back to school.”5 But the Tigers were persuasive and on August 31, 1953, they signed Bertoia to a bonus contract. He received $10,000 for himself, $1,000 for his mother to travel to Italy, and a promise by the Tigers to pay his future college tuition. (In addition, when he subsequently traveled with the team to New York, manager Fred Hutchinson bought him two suits.)

The 1953 season was the first year of the bonus rule, which was adopted to discourage teams from spending large amounts of money on unproven talent. Under the rule as first adopted, players who were paid or promised $4,000 or more had to remain with the major-league team for the first two years. In his later years Bertoia was critical of the rule. In 1988 he told writer Marty Appel, “It was such a poor rule for baseball, forcing bonus players to stay in the majors. I was so shy at 18, just not ready for it all.”6 In 1992 Bertoia said, “I think emotionally, sitting on the bench as a kid and not playing and wondering whether you belong there, then being put into situations where you’re not comfortable, that was tough on a young kid.”7

After signing his contract, Bertoia sat on the bench for three weeks. He made his debut on September 22, in a game the sixth-place Tigers promoted to boost their lagging attendance. It was the last home game of the year, against the St. Louis Browns, and the oldest pitcher in the league, Satchel Paige, would pitch against the youngest, Tigers bonus baby Bob Miller; fellow bonus baby Al Kaline would also play; Bob Swift would return from nearly a year of retirement to catch his thousandth game. The 47-year-old Paige won the game, his final big-league victory. The 18-year-old Miller was tagged for the loss, and was struck in the head by a line drive in the fifth inning and forced to leave the game.

As for Bertoia, his big-league baptism was not a pleasant one. A lifelong shortstop, he was the starting second baseman. In top of the first, on a putout at second, he was spiked by the runner, Ed Mickelson, and threw wildly to first for an error. In spite of his injury, which later required three stitches, he batted in the bottom of the inning and struck out on three pitches. At the start of the second inning he was replaced in the field by Johnny Pesky. The twenty thousand plus crowd thought that Reno had been replaced because of the throwing error and the strikeout. They booed heavily. It was soon announced over the PA system that he had been spiked. Watching all of this from the grandstand was Bertoia’s mother, who never attended another game. In 2010 Bertoia took a dim view of all that went on: “I don’t think that it was fair to do that to a young kid … to not have some grooming before you played a game of that nature.” 8

Also notable in that first season was the assignment of fellow bonus babies Bertoia and Al Kaline as roommates. They roomed together for five seasons. Reno recalled that “Kaline was a skinny kid. …They couldn’t believe what they signed. … He was outstanding. When he played right field and you’d see the ball was going to right center field, and you saw him running then you knew he was going to get it … outstanding, just outstanding. I tell people I went on to have a checkered career and he went on to the Hall of Fame.”9

After the season Bertoia enrolled in Assumption College in Windsor and coached junior-varsity basketball at his alma mater, Assumption High School. In 1954 spring training he, Kaline, and Miller did well, with Bertoia hitting .417. Manager Fred Hutchinson declared, “Our bonus boys have reached the point where they won’t embarrass us. I feel free to use them in practically any situation in the regular season.”10 But despite his manager’s optimistic comments, Bertoia was a little-used substitute during the season. He played in 54 games, often as a pinch-runner, and had only 42 plate appearances. His first major-league hit, in his 13th at-bat, was a home run off Baltimore’s Bob Chakales on July 11 that landed in the left-field upper deck of Briggs Stadium. He later would tell a reporter “I knew it was gone the instant it left my bat. If I can hit the ball that far once, I can do it again and again.”11 Bertoia finished the season with just six hits and a.162 batting average.

Before spring training in 1955, the 20-year-old Bertoia said, “I don’t intend to spend all season on the bench. The Tigers are in the midst of a youth movement and I expect to be part of it. … I know I can hit big-league pitching if I get a chance to play regularly.”12 But again he had a limited role. He played in fewer games (38), but had more plate appearances (77) than the previous season. He had only 14 hits and one home run, finishing with a. 206 average.

The next spring Bertoia appeared destined for minor-league seasoning. His two-year bonus service had expired. At the start of spring training he was assigned to the minor-league unit and played in several exhibition games with the Charleston Senators, the Tigers’ Triple-A team. He was back with the Tigers when the team’s second-base situation remained unresolved. Though he went only 3-for-13 in his first four exhibition games with the Tigers, manager Bucky Harris said, “Certainly he is the best we have on hand, and I’m staying with him.”13 But in May Bertoia was batting only .167 and was spiked in the thumb. The Tigers acquired Jim Brideweser in a trade with the Chicago White Sox and installed him at second base. Bertoia was sent down to Charleston. There he played second base, third base, and shortstop. Finally, playing regularly as a professional, he had a very respectable season. In 125 games he hit .289 with 12 home runs, 26 doubles, and 67 RBIs. Bertoia was recalled to the Tigers after Charleston finished its season.

Before the 1957 season the Tigers acquired Jim Finigan from the Kansas City Athletics and targeted him for third base. Al Kaline promoted his roommate, Bertoia, for third as well. He told the press, “Aren’t you overlooking Reno? … Don’t you know he’s ready to go and might be right there at third when the season opens?”14 Bertoia also remarked, “I believe I have a good enough record to get a trial anyway.” 15 Finigan opened the season at third but was hitless in first three games, all of which the Tigers lost. New manager Jack Tighe inserted Bertoia into the lineup. The team won its next two games as Bertoia went 3-for-7 at the plate. He continued to start and hit safely in his first seven games. On May 14 Bertoia hit his first home run of the season and scored the other run in a 2-0 win over the Red Sox. On May 17 he was batting a league-leading .398, with a nine-game hitting streak. Bertoia soon became the top vote-getter for third base in the All-Star Game. Local and national news writers suddenly became very interested in the 22-year-old Bertoia. One newspaper referred to him as “the surprising spring phee-nom of the major leagues.”16

Bertoia attributed some of his success to being more relaxed through the use of tranquilizers. He told Time magazine, “I swallow one little white tranquilizer pill a half an hour before each game. Occasionally, if things get a little tense, I’ll top off my bottle and take another.”17 Hall of Famer Mel Ott, the Tigers broadcaster, had suggested to the team trainer, Jack Homel, that something had to be done to make Bertoia less tense. In today’s society, where anti-anxiety medications are openly used, this would be a non-issue. However, things were different in 1957. Bertoia was hounded by sportswriters and was described as using “happiness pills.”18 Eventually the Tigers team physician, Dr. Luther R. Leader, told the Detroit Free Press, “The drug now has served its purpose and (will) be terminated shortly.”19 In 2010 Bertoia looked back somewhat unfavorably on this incident and how the Tigers handled it. “At their suggestion I take these things. … The trainer broke the story … and then they hang me out to dry.” 20 Actually, both the trainer, Homel, and manager Tighe did defend Bertoia to the press. In June Tighe angrily told The Sporting News “All those ridiculous stories about happiness pills have hurt the kid. They just won’t let Bertoia alone.”21

Soon after the story broke, Bertoia’s batting average began to decline. On May 21, with a .352 average, he was held out of the lineup with a sore shoulder. He was in and out of the lineup with the injury, appearing in only four of the next 20 games. Bertoia returned to the starting lineup on June 11. On June 20 he was still the leading American League vote-getter at third base for the All-Star Game. The next day he went 0-for-4 and his batting average dipped below .300. After that Bertoia was held out of the lineup for six games. He also fell back in the All-Star balloting and failed to make the team. In a Tigers victory at Comisky Park on August 10 Reno raised his average to .280 with a home run, a single, and four RBIs. Bertoia finished the season with a .275 batting average and four home runs. He appeared in what was then a career high of 97 games with 325 plate appearances.

Despite his 1957 travails, the Tigers were still high on Bertoia as a rapidly emerging player. General manager John McHale told The Sporting News in December, “Our coaching staff en masse thinks Bertoia will be a great player because of his size, speed, sure hands, and his ability to hit the long ball.”22 Other teams were interested in Bertoia as well and his name came up frequently in trade talks. Likewise, Bertoia spoke optimistically to the press. “I played well enough last summer to know I belong in the major leagues,” he said. “Nobody has to worry about my confidence from now on.”23

True to their word, the Tigers opened the 1958 season with the now 23-year-old Bertoia at third base. He was the only Canadian in the Opening Day lineup of any major-league team. He and Kaline were the only two remaining bonus babies of the eight the Tigers had signed under the rule that required two years on the big-league roster. On May 7 Bertoia hit his first major-league grand slam, off the Washington Senators’ Camilo Pascual. After four weeks he was tied for the team lead with 13 RBIs. A month into the season he had played regularly and was batting a respectable .271. He continued to play regularly through June 5, but by then his average had slipped to .235. The next day Bertoia was out of the lineup after the Tigers, becoming the next-to-last major-league team to integrate, brought up Ozzie Virgil and inserted him at third base, replacing Bertoia. Though the Tigers said Virgil’s call-up was based on “merit alone,”24 there were rumors that the local black community was threatening to boycott Tigers games. In a twist of fate, three years later, when Bertoia was playing for the Kansas City A’s, the Tigers brought him back to Detroit in a trade for Virgil, but in 1958 Virgil was an instant hit and displaced Bertoia in the starting lineup for the next 44 games.

Bertoia played sparingly the rest of the season. After Virgil’s hitting tapered off, the Tigers moved Billy Martin to third base for much of the remaining season. In a game against the Chicago White Sox on August 10, Bertoia was moved to third base to replace Martin, who had been injured in a collision at home plate. The game had two rain delays and lasted more than seven hours. In the bottom of the 12th Bertoia executed a perfect squeeze-play bunt to drivein the winning run. On September 17 he hit two home runs in a 5-2 home victory over the Yankees, but that game is best remembered for Mickey Mantle’s home run off Jim Bunning that cleared the right-field roof and was estimated to have traveled 500 feet. Bertoia finished the season having appeared in 86 games with 273 plate appearances and a.233 batting average.

Beyond baseball, Bertoia also achieved a personal milestone in 1958. After five years of studying remotely at spring training and on the road, in June he earned his bachelor’s degree from Assumption College.

Unlike prior offseasons, the Tigers no longer coveted Bertoia as an emerging talent on the verge of better things. Despite the fact that at 23 he was the youngest player on the team and had never had more than 325 plate appearances in a season, the Tigers had made up their mind. They were seeking more offensive reliability at third base. Bertoia’s name was mentioned in potential trades with other teams. On December 6, 1958, he was traded to the Washington Senators with outfielder Jim Delsing and infielder Ron Samford for third baseman Eddie Yost, infielder Rocky Bridges, and outfielder Neil Chrisley. For Bertoia, being traded to a team out of town was somewhat of a relief. Looking back in 2010, he said that every time he played in Detroit his father would come to the game. “You never wanted to let anybody down. I didn’t like that. I was not comfortable.”25

Now Bertoia was again a promising prospect, this time for the Senators. During spring training, manager Cookie Lavagetto proclaimed, “We have more young blood and speed. … I feel Bertoia is going to be a big thing for our ballclub.”26 Once again Bertoia got off to a fast start. On Opening Day, starting at second base, he led off for Washington in the bottom of the first with a single and scored. He later hit a home run in what became a 9-2 victory for the Senators. In the second game of the season, which was the Red Sox home opener in Boston, he hit another home run. Bertoia’s hot streak continued. After 11 games he was eighth in the American League in batting with a .370 average and tied for third in home runs with three. On April 30 Bertoia made his first Detroit appearance in a Senators uniform. Washington swept the three-game series. Bertoia went 7-for-16 with two RBIs. A month into the season he was at .305 with four homers. The Senators, a perennial second-division club, were two games above .500 and just three games out of first place.

The 1959 season was also the first full year in the big leagues as a starting player for another bonus baby, Harmon Killebrew. The third sacker and future Hall of Famer was also off to a good start in the first month with eight home runs and 18 RBIs. “He would hit line shots that would just rise like missiles,” Bertoia recalled years later.27

Things changed quickly for the Senators and Bertoia after the first month. His hitting declined and by the end of June his average was .250. The team had slipped to sixth place, six games below .500. Bertoia no longer played regularly. He finished the year with 308 at-bats, a .237 batting average, eight home runs, and 29 RBIs. The Senators finished last for the third straight year.

In November Bertoia married 20-year-old Rosalie LaFontaine of LaSalle, Ontario. They had met at a dance a few years earlier. They were married by Bertoia’s former coach and high-school instructor, Father Cullen.

Shortly before the 1960 season opened the Senators acquired Billy Gardner from the Orioles. He became the starting second baseman and Bertoia sat on the bench for the first six games. He made his first appearance on April 24, as a pinch-hitter against Boston, hitting a two-run single that tied the game in what was ultimately an 11-10 victory for the Senators. On April 26, against Baltimore, Bertoia replaced the injured Harmon Killebrew at third base, and after that he played regularly for the rest of the season. Killebrew suffered a series of injuries in the first half of the season. When he returned to the lineup he was moved to first base, and Bertoia stayed at third. He experienced what he felt was his best season in the majors. He hit .265 and had career highs in games (121), at-bats (460), hits (122), triples (7), doubles (17), and RBIs (45). He had a memorable series against the Tigers in Detroit. In 1988 Bertoia told sportswriter Marty Appel, “On Saturday night of the series, I made a bad play at third, and after that inning, I was pinch-hit for. I was very embarrassed by that. The next day we had a doubleheader and I had the winning hit in both games. After the game, my dad came downstairs and he was crying. He told me he had prayed for me the night after the error. I’ll never forget that experience.”28 This recollection closely matches the records of a series with the Tigers in June of that year; Bertoia went 4-for-8 in the twin bill with four RBIs but did not have a game-winning hit in either game. Another personal highlight for Bertoia was the birth of his first child, Carl, in August.

At the end of the season the future looked promising for the Senators. For the first time in four seasons they had moved out of last place in 1960, finishing fifth. The team was around.500 for much of the season before winding up eight games under .500. The Senators’ core group of promising younger players included Bertoia, Killebrew, Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos, Jim Katt, Earl Battey, Bob Allison, and Zollio Versalles. The franchise was also leaving Washington. Owner Calvin Griffith, in the face of poor fan support and an aging stadium, announced he would take the team to Minneapolis-St. Paul, where they would play in 1961 as the Minnesota Twins. On October 2 the Senators played their last home game in Washington, losing to Baltimore, 2-1, before only 4,738 fans.

It appeared that Bertoia had finally found a home and was an emerging player on an up-and-coming team. But a different fate was in store for the 26-year-old. In spring training his manager, Cookie Lavagetto, had said, “Reno came a long way last year and he’s going to keep on improving. … I’ve put him in charge of our infield and want him to call all the plays from third base.”29 On Opening Day in New York, in the Twins’ debut, Bertoia was at third base and hit a home run off Ralph Terry in the Twins’ 6-0 victory. In the home opener in Minneapolis, Reno got the first Twins major league hit in Metropolitan Stadium with a leadoff single in the third. But in contrast to his fast starts in prior seasons, Bertoia got off to a very slow start for the Twins. “I put a lot of pressure on myself,” he said in 1992. “In those days, if you had two good years you stayed for five and I couldn’t get started.” 30 On June 1, batting .212 with two home runs, he became the first Twin to be traded. He was sent to the Kansas City Athletics with pitcher Paul Giel and a player to be named for outfielder Bill Tuttle and a player to be named. (On June 10 the Twins sent cash to the Athleticsand the Athletics returned Giel to Minnesota to complete the trade.) Bertoia said later that he had “looked forward to playing” for A’s manager Joe Gordon,31 but Gordon was fired shortly after Reno joined the team and was replaced by Hank Bauer. Though Bertoia smacked a pinch-hit double in his first at-bat for Kansas City, on August 2, batting .242 for the A’s, he was traded back to the Tigers with pitcher Gerry Staley for pitcher Bill Fischer and Ozzie Virgil. Virgil, the player who had replaced him at third base in Detroit in 1958, was at the time hitting.133 for the Tigers. Detroit was in a heated battle for first place with the Yankees, whom they trailed by 2½ games on the 2nd. The Tigers needed help at third base because Steve Boros had broken his collarbone. Bertoia was inserted into the starting lineup and played in eight straight games. He went just 4-for-25 at bat and was soon on the bench On September 1, the Tigers began a three-game series at Yankee Stadium trailing New York by 1½ games. The Tigers lost all three games and then five more afterward on the road to fall out of contention. Despite 101 victories in the 162-game season, Detroit finished in second place eight games back. Bertoia played sparingly in the final month of the season and for the year as a Tiger he hit.217. His combined 1961 average with all three teams was .226.

During the 1961-62 offseason, Bertoia’s second child, Ruth Lynne, was born. In January manager Bob Scheffing mentioned Bertoia as a permanent member of the infield squad,32 but he played in only five early-season games as a pinch-runner or defensive replacement. On April 28, at only 27 years of age, he appeared in what turned out to be his last major-league game, as an eighth-inning defensive replacement at second base. Shortly thereafter, he was optioned to the Tigers’ Triple-A team at Denver. With Denver he hit well, .357 in 29 games. Later in the season the Tigers sent him to Syracuse, where he played in 55 games and batted.225. In 1963 he went to spring training with the Tigers but wound back up in Syracuse as a player and coach. He batted.324 and still hoped to get back to the big leagues, but the Tigers’ focus was on developing younger talent. Bertoia recalled, “I called (Tigers general manager) Rick Ferrell and said, ‘Rick if I am not back in the big leagues by August, I’m going home.’ “33 True to his word, Bertoia left the team in early August to pursue a teaching position in Windsor.

At 29, Bertoia still did not have baseball completely out of his system. The next year, 1964, with the help of Tigers GM Jim Campbell (who had succeeded Ferrell), he signed a one-year deal with the Hanshin Tigers of the Japanese Central League for $17,500 plus travel arrangements. His stay in Japan was an abbreviated one. After less than two months he returned home. He was disappointed with both his own play and some of the arrangements for his family, in particular his pregnant wife, Rosalie.

Bertoia had been teaching in the offseason and after his retirement from baseball quickly transitioned into his second career. He worked for 30 years with the Windsor Catholic School Board as a social-studies teacher. One of his students, Joe Siddall, went on to play parts of four seasons in the major leagues with Montreal and Detroit. He was a part time scout for the Tigers and then the Toronto Blue Jays. He was inducted into the Windsor/Essex Sports Hall of Fame in 1982, the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988, and the University of Windsor Alumni Sports Hall of Fame in 1988.

In 2005 Bertoia was the focal point of a novel, Reno, by Marty Gervais, a retired Windsor Star columnist. In the book a 12-year-old boy with polio idolizes his hero, Reno Bertoia, who is contending for the batting championship. In 2009 Bertoia traveled to Italy, where he threw out the first ball at an Italian Baseball League game in Parma.

Bertoia died in a Windsor hospital on April 15, 2011, after a brief battle with lymphoma at the age of 76. He was survived by his wife, Joan Daly (he and Rosalie had divorced); three children from his marriage to Rosalie, Carl, Ruth, and Gina; three stepchildren; and two grandchildren. His first major-league roommate, Al Kaline, in a statement issued after Bertoia’s death, said, “Reno was a special person, and one of the nicest people to be around.” 34

Sources

Marty Appel, Yesterday’s Heroes: Revisiting The Old-Time Baseball Stars (New York: William Morrow and Company Inc., 1988), 37-39.

Brent Kelley, Baseball’s Biggest Blunder: The Bonus Rule of 1953-1957 (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1997), 31-34.

Tommy Devine, “Bertoia’s ‘Happy Day’ May End Soon,” Detroit Free Press. May 17, 1957.

Joe Falls, “Here Today; Gone Tomorrow,” Detroit Free Press. August 5, 1961.

Joe Falls, “Look Who’s in ‘Fireplug’ Role for Twins – Reno!” Detroit Free Press. March 12, 1961.

Sam Greene, “Bertoia Draws Fans Sympathy in First Game,” Detroit News, September 23, 1953, 73.

Walter L. Jones, “Looks Like ‘Another Long Season’ in the Second Division for Senators,” Nevada State Journal (Reno), March 11, 1955, 10.

Brent Kelley, “Reno Bertoia: One Bonus Baby Who Made It, “Sports Collectors Digest, April 3, 1992.

Hal Middlesworth, “Bertoia Tosses Bat Into Battle for Third Base Job on Bengals,” The Sporting News, January 2, 1957, 21.

Hal Middlesworth, “Harris Seeing Spots Before Eyes, Instead of New Tiger Stripes,” The Sporting News, April 18, 1956, 20.

Hal Middlesworth, “Reno ‘In Solid’ At Second Base,” Detroit Free Press. April 11, 1956.

Watson Spoelstra, “Bengal Build-Up for Bertoia Bills Reno at Hot Sack,” The Sporting News, December 11, 1957, 24.

Watson Spoelstra, “Bengals Break In Third Bonus Baby,” The Sporting News, July 21, 1954, 18.

Watson Spoelstra, “Bengals Tag Brideweser for Keystone,” The Sporting News, May 23, 1956, 15.

Watson Spoelstra, “Bunning Now in Running as Fanning King,” The Sporting News, June 12, 1957, 18.

Watson Spoelstra, “Scheffing Strikes Optimistic Note Over Tiger Curving Corps,” The Sporting News, January 17, 1962, 27.

Watson Spoelstra, “Tigers to Sink or Swim With April Lineup,” The Sporting News, July 31, 1957, 21.

Jack Tighe, “Manager’s Outlook: Tiger Manager Happier With Acquisition of Martin,” Nevada State Journal (Reno), December 24, 1957.

“Baseball, Feature Writers Gang Up On Unheralded Young Reno Bertoia,” Jefferson City (Missouri) Sunday News and Tribune, May 26, 1957, 19.

“Bertoia May Mean Payoff For Tigers,” Corpus Christi (Texas) Times, April 11, 1956, 5-B.

“Bonus Kids Not Liabilities But Assets, Declares Hutch,” The Sporting News, April 14, 1954, 14.

“Out of the Bottle,” Time, May 27, 1957.

“Reno Bertoia Is Hopeful,” Traverse City (Michigan) Record Eagle, February 15, 1955, 12.

“Third 18-Year-Old Bonus Player is Signed by Detroit,” The Sporting News, September 9, 1953, 18.

“3 Tigers Leading in All-Star Voting, Jefferson City (Missouri) Daily Capital News, June 21, 1957, 7.

“Tiger Trainer Belittles Furor Over Bertoia’s Tranquilizers, The Sporting News, May 29, 1957, 10.

baseball-reference.com

biography.jrank.org/pages/2436/Virgil-Ozzie.html

detroit.cbslocal.com/2011/04/15/former-detroit-tiger-reno-bertoia-dies/

mister-baseball.com/interview-italian-major-leaguer-reno-bertoia/

walkervilletimes.com/bertoai.htm

windsor-communities.com/italian-sports-athlets12.php

stiffs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2044&p=20421

Baseball Hall of Fame Library, player file for Reno Bertoia

Jerry Nechal, interview with Reno Bertoia, November 30, 2010

Notes

Julio Giacomo Bonetti was born on July 14, 1911 in Vado Ligure, Genoa, Italy in the northwestern portion of the country. His father, Paolo Bonetti, a shoemaker, left Italy in October 1912 to find employment in the United States. Julio with his mother Rosa Barile Bonetti and his older brother Joseph arrived in the United States on August 12, 1914. They immediately made their way to San Francisco to meet Paolo, who had settled in the San Francisco suburb of San Mateo. The Bonettis also had a daughter, Linda, born in San Mateo in 1918. Paolo supported the family as a fruit picker and later as a carpenter.

The family moved in the 1920s to San Francisco, where Bonetti attended local public schools. He enrolled in college for two years and worked for a map company. Bonetti, a righthanded sinkerball pitcher, played amateur and semi-pro ball in and around the San Francisco area. He joined his first professional club in 1933, the San Francisco Missions of the Pacific Coast League, at age 21. In 1934 and ’35 he pitched for Rock Island in the Class-A Western League. The latter year he also pitched for Des Moines in the same league for a combined 13-11 record. Back with Des Moines in 1936, he posted a 14-13 record.

That earned him an invitation to join the St. Louis Browns in spring training in 1937. In his first appearance on March 20 in Texas, the New York Times reported that he “baffled the Minneapolis batters with his sinker ball.” The Sporting News noted in 1939 that Bonetti had an “ordinary fastball, but good sinker…makes batters top ball and hit on ground.” He made the Browns club in 1937, becoming the second Italian-born player in major league history, the first being Lou Polli.

In sixteen starts he posted a meager 4-11 record and was demoted to San Antonio of the Texas League in mid-August. He notched a 1-4 record before returning to the Browns a month later. Bonetti rejoined the Browns for spring training in 1938. He pitched in seventeen games in relief before being sent down to Toledo of the American Association at the end of June. Bonetti had failed to develop another strong pitch to go with his sinkerball and was wild; he struck out 50 batters in the majors but walked 77. The Browns picked up Bonetti’s option on September 3, 1938, but sold him outright to Los Angeles of the Pacific Coast League in January 1939.

He had his breakout year with Los Angeles, posting a 20-5 record with a 3.25 ERA. On August 10 he pitched a two-hitter versus Oakland; in the process he threw only 66 pitches, which was believed to be organized baseball’s record at the time. He also knocked in the only run that day. Los Angeles’ parent club, the Chicago Cubs, purchased his contract eight days later, but allowed the Angels to keep him for the rest of the season. Bonetti joined Chicago for spring training in 1940 though. He impressed in early workouts but only appeared in one game for the club during the season, a 1 1/3 inning relief stint on April 22. He was sold back to Los Angeles on April 26. A sportswriter described him as “gloomy” because he didn’t think the Cubs had given him a fair trial.

Bonetti won fourteen games for the Angels in 1940 and set a PCL record, later broken, for pitching 64 consecutive innings without a walk. With Los Angeles in 1941, he won seven times in the first half of the season. On July 2 National Association president William Bramham placed Bonetti on the ineligible list, effectively banning him. It was the result of a two-month investigation by Bramham’s office, Los Angeles district attorneys and a private investigator hired by the Angels. Bramham stated that in early May Bonetti was seen talking with and accepting money from Albert J. Reshaw, a reputed bookmaker and racehorse owner. Later that day Bonetti pitched against Hollywood during a 10-3 loss. Reshaw was also overheard offering bets on Hollywood with 10 to 8 odds. Bonetti started the game but was relieved with the Angels trailing 4-3.

Bonetti denied being asked to throw the game and further declared that he wouldn’t do so. Regardless, Bramham expelled him, reasoning, “There is no charge that he did throw a game, but the conduct of the player in this matter, his repeated false statements when he was asked to tell the truth, his association with the gambling element and his confession that he permitted himself to be used as a medium to place bets on horses between two gamblers is sufficient to require his disassociation from professional baseball and he is placed upon its ineligible list.”

Bonetti applied for reinstatement at the National Association meeting in Cincinnati on September 5, 1941, but was denied. Unable to work within the game, he toiled as a carpenter like his father and also worked as an athletic instructor and involved himself in church activities. On August 8, 1942, he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the 15^th Medical Regiment in Texas. He was the regiment’s star pitcher.

On June 17, 1952, Julio Bonetti died at his home in Belmont, California, after a heart attack. He was forty years old. He left a widow, Betty, and two children. Bonetti was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California.

Sources

Abilene Reporter-News

Ancestry.com

Christian Science Monitor

Los Angeles Times

New York Times

Sabrwebs.com

Sporting News

Washington Post

Waterloo Daily Courier, Iowa

Cuba was the focus of Cambria’s major contribution to baseball history. He signed well over 400 young Cuban ballplayers to professional contracts from the mid-1930s until he died in 1962. He was a celebrity on the island – the major link between the baseball-hungry country and the major leagues. For much of his career, he was virtually the only link. Cambria and Griffith began signing Cuban talent as early as 1932 and firmly established themselves in the country by the middle of the decade. A few years after that, Cambria relocated to the island at least on a part-time basis, spending much of the year in Havana scouting players and following up on tips from the “bird-dog” scouts he planted throughout the nation.

Joseph Carl Cambria was born in Messina, Italy, on July 5, 1890, perhaps 1889. His first name was Carlo before it was Americanized. In 1890, his father, John (Giovanni) Cambria, a shoemaker, left Messina and settled in Boston. Joseph and his two older brothers, Charles (Pasquale) and John (Giovanni), immigrated to the United States in 1893, landing in New York on August 2. Their mother may have died in Italy between 1890 and ’93; she didn’t make the 1893 voyage, and the senior John is listed as a widower in the 1900 U.S. Census.

Joseph attended public schools in Boston and became a naturalized citizen on March 14, 1916, while living in Lowell, a manufacturing city about 40 miles from Boston. Like many in the area, Cambria was a big baseball fan. He played amateur and semipro ball in Boston, Roxbury, Lowell, Medford, other towns, and into Rhode Island. He joined his first professional club, Newport of the independent Rhode Island State League, in July 1909, replacing a center fielder named Martin who had broken his leg. Cambria, a short right-hander, made his pro debut on the 11th. The Newport Daily News commented, “Cambria, a dark, pleasant-looking player from Medford way, was secured for the outfield.” In a game on August 1, the Daily News reported, “There was (a) two or three-bagger of (Louis J.) Lepine’s which Cambria caught with his bare right hand in the eighth, shutting off a run and bringing the spectators to their feet.” Cambria received praise by the paper throughout the season for his splendid fielding in center.

Cambria returned to Newport in May 1910 “considerably heavier than he was last year.” He played with the club the entire season. In 1911 he joined Berlin, Ontario, in the Class D Canadian League, manning center field for the pennant-winning Green Sox. In 102 games, he batted a so-so .245. In 1912, Cambria patrolled center again and also played a little second base for the club. On May 27, he placed four hits in five at-bats off four different pitchers. However, after 38 games, Cambria broke his leg, and his playing career came to an end. He was hitting .231 at the time.

Cambria returned home, finding jobs in both Boston and Lowell. Around 1917, he married Boston native Charlotte Kane, five years his senior. The couple never had children. After military service during World War I, Cambria and his wife relocated to Baltimore. He found employment managing a supply house and later purchased the Bugle Coat and Apron Company, a laundering business, on North Chester Street in Baltimore. The couple ran the business together until they sold it in 1938. Joe dove into professional baseball club ownership in the early 1930s, and Charlotte took over much of the management of the laundry business.

The Bugle Company entered a baseball club of the same name in the Baltimore Amateur League to kick off the 1928 season. The Bugles did well in the league and Cambria made it a semipro outfit in August, taking on stiffer competition from surrounding states and local teams like the Baltimore Black Sox, an African American club. Cambria played a little for the Bugle squad. The team lasted through 1932. In 1928 and ’29, Allan Russell, a ten-year major leaguer, pitched for the club. In 1930, Walter Beall, who spent five years in the majors, did as well. Starting in 1930, Cambria sponsored several teams that barnstormed through the area after the pro season.

To accommodate his clubs, Cambria purchased and revamped a ballpark at Federal Street and Edison Highway in Baltimore in the mid-1920s, renaming it Bugle Field. In 1929, he enlarged the grandstand to accommodate his growing ambitions. He leased the park for and promoted boxing and wrestling matches. Football games were also played on the grounds.

In December 1929, Cambria purchased his first professional club, the Hagerstown Hubs of the four-team, Class D Blue Ridge League. He picked up the franchise for the cost of its indebtedness. His goal as an entrepreneur was to make money by selling off talent. The Baltimore Sun wrote at the time of the purchase, “It was with the idea of developing material for major and minor leagues that Cambria came into this city. … It is by the sale of players he hopes to earn his profits.” He immediately brought in seasoned baseball executive John “Poke” Whalen to scout and sign players and develop connections throughout the game. Cambria kept to the same business plan throughout his ownership career: keep costs low; pay little for talent; sell talent when the opportunity arose; build the franchise at the gate as best as possible; sell out or relocate if things got too bad.

Cambria was at a disadvantage in the Blue Ridge League; he owned the only unaffiliated franchise. The other league owners could rely, at least partly, on assistance from a major-league club. Despite the handicap, Cambria made money. Hagerstown finished in third place in 1930 with Cambria managing part of the year. To spark interest in Baltimore, the Hubs trained at Bugle Field. Also, Cambria quickly aligned himself with the Washington Senators, developing a tight lifelong relationship with Clark Griffith, owner of the Senators. Even before the 1930 season began, Hagerstown sold its first players to Washington. Cambria owned quite a few ballclubs over the next decade and a half, and each maintained a working relationship with the Senators. Griffith even co-owned some of them.

Over the winter of 1930-31, Cambria sparred with the Maryland legislature trying to strike down the Blue Laws that prevented Sunday baseball. He loudly declared, “Without Sunday ball, I don’t see how the Hagerstown club can exist in the league.” For his propensity for talking and pushing into league and other matters, he earned the derogatory nickname Jabbering Joe. The team moved into the Class C Middle Atlantic League in 1931. Failing to obtain legalized Sunday ball, Cambria moved the franchise to Parkersburg, West Virginia, on June 28 and again to Youngstown, Ohio, on July 12. Cambria managed the team on the field the entire season. The club boasted some of the best hitting in the league, led by Babe Phelps, Sam Thomas, and Bill Pritchard, but landed 23½ games behind the champion Charleston Senators. The Cumberland Evening Times in Maryland summed up his season: “Cambria sported the worst ball club in the league, a coterie of misfits that proved duck soup for the other clubs of the league.” The paper implied that he sold off his best talent for cash. In April 1932, Cambria switched the Youngstown club to the Class B Central League. The team finished fourth and he sold the franchise.

In 1932, Cambria purchased the Baltimore Black Sox from longtime owner George Rossiter, a local saloon owner. He revamped Bugle Field for the team, obtaining nicer seats from the crumbling Maryland Park, and extended the grandstands to accommodate more covered seating. He built a clubhouse with showers, added a press box, and installed lighting equipment by early summer. The promotion-minded owner purchased a pair of ponies to walk the streets of Baltimore displaying advertising for the club. Cambria had high hopes for the team, backed by a local black population of 142,000, the fourth highest in the country. The Black Sox and Bugles worked out together before the season.

The Black Sox competed in Cum Posey’s East-West League and barnstormed extensively, as all black clubs did to make ends meet. However, the ends didn’t meet in Baltimore. In fact, the Black Sox spent nearly the entire second half of the season on the road after the league disbanded. The team was run on the “co-plan”; players were guaranteed only their transportation expenses, and had to split the gate with management to earn cash. Cambria tore up all the players’ contracts to institute the new system. This made it easier for the men to jump teams, which they started to do with frequency at the end of the year. The next year, 1933, was a rougher year still financially. To start, the Black Sox’ previous investors sued Cambria for the Black Sox name and won. The squad was simply called the Sox until a settlement was reached near the end of the year. Also, a Negro Leagues player and owner, Ben Taylor inserted a second nine in Baltimore, the Stars. Competition for talent and attendance was stiff.

The Black Sox competed briefly in Gus Greenlee’s new Negro National League in 1933, amassing a poor 13-18 record after being accepted into the fold in May. When Cambria applied for readmission to the league in 1934, several of his star players announced their intention to leave the club. Ultimately Cambria couldn’t come to terms with the players and Greenlee rejected his application for readmittance. The players were declared free agents and Cambria disbanded the Black Sox.

In February 1933, he had purchased Albany of the International League from the Chicago Cubs for $7,500. He operated the franchise through 1936. True to form, Cambria sold as many players as he could. Off the bat, he sold Babe Phelps, Tommy Thompson, and Ray Prim to major-league clubs. Some estimates placed his take at nearly $40,000. For developing and selling talent, Cambria earned another moniker, Salesman Joe. With the sales, he made money in 1933, not an easy task for a minor-league club during the Depression. He also solidified his relation with Clark Griffith, establishing another working agreement with Washington.

During the pennant run in 1933, the Senators lost money. The costs of acquiring players were sapping all profits. Griffith figured that he had to find a better way to field a major-league team. He consequently developed a close working relationship with Cambria. As a result, acquisition costs dropped to about $100,000 in 1936, and all the way down to $49,500 by 1944. The Senators placed second in the American League in 1943 and 1945 despite spending relatively little to fill their roster.

Cambria supplied the Senators with talent for two decades. When Griffith needed a ballplayer, he called Cambria and a player was soon headed to Washington. The Griffith/Cambria relationship was unique in sports history. Cambria lived frugally, though he always had investments on the side. His loyalty to Griffith was such that he turned down significantly higher offers for Mickey Vernon and George Case, among others, and relinquished them to the Senators for considerably less cash. Such a relationship didn’t exist anywhere else in sports. For example, other major-league executives were willing to pay $10,000 for the speedy Case but Cambria sold him to Griffith for $1,000 and a promise to make up the difference if Case made good. In fact, most of the players came to Griffith in this manner. His outlays were few and secured by the fact that the ballplayer had to prove himself before money was forked over. Cambria took part in this relationship willingly; he was committed to the betterment of Griffith and the Senators. In essence, he believed that he served a higher purpose, and as such, financial benefits were secondary.

In return the Senators handled much of Cambria’s administrative concerns and provided valued advice. Griffith also helped with the initial costs and continued expenses and administration of the minor-league teams that Cambria owned. More than once, Griffith interceded between Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Cambria to smooth over issues and minimize fines and other penalties. Landis, a foe of the farm system, could be overbearing; a wheeler-dealer like Cambria needed a man like Griffith running interference for him. In all, Cambria did well financially. He bought talent cheaply, mostly high schoolers or young semipro players. If a young man showed a glimmer of hope, Cambria sold him to Griffith or another club if the Senators passed. He also made money buying and selling clubs.

A few interesting matters took place during Cambria’s time with Albany. In 1934, he established a sort of training school for ballplayers. Young men would meet at Hawkins Stadium in Albany when the home team was on the road to work out and train. In 1935, he made national headlines for signing Alabama Pitts fresh from Sing Sing Prison. (Pitts had a relatively undistinguished minor-league career.) In 1936, Cambria entered a team in the Eastern Hockey League based in Washington. After Albany’s 1936 season, he offered the manager’s job to Babe Ruth. Ruth rejected the offer, believing he deserved to manage a major-league team.

More importantly around that time, Cambria dived into the facet of the game that would become his trademark, developing Cuban talent. Part of the story rests with Griffith. As manager of the Cincinnati Reds in 1911, he had brought the first two Cuban players to the majors, Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans. Cambria also saw firsthand the value of good Cuban players; moreover, he heard stories about talented athletes on the island. The Havana Red Sox had visited Baltimore during 1929 and ’30, playing the Bugles frequently. The Havana team won well over 100 games in 1929 alone. Cambria also heard stories about Cubans from the Negro League players of the Baltimore Black Sox and opponents. American promoter Alex Pompez and others had been showcasing Cuban talent for decades.

Griffith and Cambria started signing Cuban players in 1932, purchasing Ysmael “Mulo” Morales from Pompez. Morales joined Albany the following season. Bobby Estalella joined Albany in 1934 and made the parent club’s roster the following year. Cambria’s all-star exhibition squad in Baltimore in 1934 also contained several Cubans. In 1936, Cambria brought eight Cubans to Albany’s training camp. One, Tomas de la Cruz, was also picked up from Pompez. Cambria, though, started to make his own trips to the island to gain connections and scout players. In December 1936, he sold the Albany team to the New York Giants for $50,000 plus more than $18,000 in debts. The Giants shifted the franchise to Jersey City.

In 1935, Cambria purchased the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, team of the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League. Over the next winter, the ballpark flooded, damaging the facilities, and he moved the team to York, Pennsylvania. On July 2, 1936, the team moved again, to Trenton, New Jersey, all the while staying in the same league. In 1938, Trenton moved into the Class A Eastern League and the club relocated again in 1939, to Springfield, Massachusetts. Cambria kept the club until he was forced to divest when Commissioner Landis ruled after the 1940 season that a major-league scout couldn’t own a minor-league club. Cambria sold to his brother John, who was president of the General Thread Mills Company of Boston. The sale exposed an interesting relationship. John Cambria, in fact, had helped his brother finance many baseball ventures. Over the years, he was part-owner in numerous clubs. Even after the Landis ruling, Joe secretly kept a relationship with the Springfield franchise through his brother. Washington also maintained a working relationship with the club. In 1944 Cambria transferred the club to Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

From 1937 to 1940, Cambria owned the Salisbury, Maryland, club of the Class D Eastern Shore League. Pitcher Jorge Comellas, a Cuban, made a particularly strong showing. Cambria moved him from Trenton to Salisbury in 1937. He went 22-1 with 21 consecutive victories. The club won the pennant in 1937 and 1938. On September 5, 1940, the players called a strike, canceling the games that day. They demanded their back pay before they would take the field again. With the financial troubles and Landis’s ruling, Cambria relinquished the club after the season.

Cambria owned the St. Augustine franchise in the Florida State League in 1938. In 1939 and 1940, he ran the Greenville, North Carolina, club of the South Atlantic League. In May 1940, he took over Newport, Tennessee of the Appalachian League. Cambria had to divest his interest in these clubs before the 1941 season because of the Landis ruling. No longer able to take an overt and active role in minor-league operations, Cambria single-mindedly focused on his role as the Washington Senators’ main scout. In truth, it could be argued that his interest in minor-league clubs since the early 1930s was merely an extension of his responsibilities to the Senators.

For years Cambria was Clark Griffith’s chief source of labor, the only full-time scout for much of the time. (Joe Engel worked full time as a Senators scout at times.) By 1938, Cambria was working more or less full time for the Senators. For sheer numbers, he was perhaps the most productive in seeking and landing talent of all scouts in history. By that time, he was spending much of his time living in Havana. Cambria’s wife had been sickly and an invalid since the mid-1930s. He divided his time between Cuba, his other baseball interests, and his Baltimore home until her death in September 1958. He virtually relocated to Havana in the early 1940s.

Besides his Cuban mother lode, Cambria signed many Americans. Among those he signed who made the majors were Allen Benson, George Case, Webbo Clarke, Joe Cleary, Gil Coan, Frank Compos, Reese Diggs, Cal Ermer, Lou Grasmick, Bill Hart, Joe Haynes, Joe Krakauskas, Ed Leip, Mickey Livingston, Ed Lyons, Paul Masterson, Walt Masterson, Hugh Mulcahy, George Myatt, Russ Peters, Babe Phelps, Jake Powell, Ray Prim, Hal Quick, Pete Runnels, Sandy Ullrich, Mickey Vernon, Johnny Welaj, Taft Wright, Early Wynn, and Eddie Yost. Cambria never paid much for talent, including his American finds. He once stated, “You could pay more for a hat than I paid for Vernon, Yost, Case, and Masterson.” He went even further: “I never gave anybody a nickel bonus. I don’t believe in making a boy a financial success before he starts.” Cambria signed most players for his clubs and the Senators out of high school for little or no bonus. He scouted and signed many of them from semipro clubs and the low minors, including independent clubs. He’d brag about landing a player for the price of a meal or even an ice cream cone. This fit in nicely with the slim farm budget the Senators had under Clark Griffith. Perhaps Cambria could have wrangled a few more all-stars with the budget allotted after the club moved to Minnesota – nearly $1,000,000 in 1962 alone.

Sometimes Cambria had ties to so many players that he couldn’t keep track of them all. In October 1940, one of his part-time bird dogs called him to a game in Havre de Grace, Maryland, a trip of 150 miles from where he was, to check out a prospect named Merton Fennimore. Cambria arrived and the bird dog pointed out the young ballplayer. Cambria immediately recognized him as Eddie Feinberg, a player he already owned rights to. Feinberg had disappeared the previous year after being farmed out by Greenville.

Cambria’s lasting fame in baseball circles stems from his mining of Cuban talent. Wrote the Hartford Courant, “They poke a lot of fun at Uncle Joe. They say he chases his prospects up trees and lassos them, or smokes them out of their caves; that every time a young fellow in Cuba hits the ball out of the infield he hears about it.” A sportswriter in Cuba, Jess Losada of Carteles, acidly referred to him as the Christopher Columbus of baseball, denoting his thirst for and taking of the island’s treasures.

Latin American ballplayers Cambria signed who made the majors include Luis Aloma, Ossie Alvarez, Vincente Amor, Julio Becquer, Alex Carrasquel, Jorge Comellas, Sandy Consuegra, Yo-Yo Davalillo, Juan Delis, Bobby Estalella, Angel Fleitas, Mike Fornieles, Ramon Garcia, Preston Gomez, Vince Gonzalez, Mike Guerra, Evelio Hernandez, Connie Marrero, Marty Martinez, Rogelio Martinez, Willie Miranda, Rene Monteagudo, Julio Moreno, Ramon “Cholly” Naranjo, Tony Oliva, Oliverio “Baby” Ortiz, Roberto Ortiz, Reggie Otero, Camilo Pascual, Carlos Pascual, Carlos Paula, Pedro Ramos, Armando Roche, Freddy Rodriquez, Raul Sanchez, Luis Suarez, Gil Torres, Roy Valdes, Jose Valdivielso, Zoilo Versalles, Adrian Zabala, and Jose Zardon. In all, Cambria probably signed well over 400 Cuban prospects. He typically signed between 10 and 20 a year. Cambria’s influence was felt throughout Latin America. Alex Carrasquel was the first ballplayer from Venezuela in Organized Baseball. Likewise, Cambria sent the first Nicaraguan to a major-league camp, Gilberto Hooker in 1956 with Washington.

Cuba indeed proved a windfall for the Senators. For example, Camilo Pascual was signed for just $175. Cambria’s esteemed status in Cuba was such that Pascual turned down a $4,000 offer from the Dodgers to sign with Washington. The scout typically offered the young Cuban players $75 a month and then put them on a plane headed for Key West. They’d catch a bus to their final destination. The Cuban presence was, in essence, the core of Senators during the World War II years, helping to revive the club. Since Cubans were exempt from the military draft in the United States, Griffith invited as many as possible to spring training. With the influx of talent the Senators jumped to second place in 1943 and 1945 with a meager budget.

Cambria became a fixture in Havana. He made his headquarters and took a room at the American Club. He realized that sooner or later the island’s talent funneled into Havana. Hence, he developed a wide array of bird dogs who fanned out through the countryside and stationed himself in Havana, patrolling the fields at Gran Stadium every day or watching games at local schools or wherever young men congregated. He became a fixture on the island, affectionately known as Papa Joe. Everyone knew the “fat little Italian” who walked around in the baggy white linen suit with an untucked shirt with fake pearl buttons and a Panama hat. A cigar was ever-present in his mouth. He always carried a supply of his own brand, Papa Joe Cambria cigars, to hand out. He cut an impressive figure traveling to big events in a limousine. Interestingly, Cambria never thoroughly learned Spanish, typically traveling with an interpreter. Though he most likely understood the language, he didn’t speak it. He mixed his Italian with a few Spanish words to help him get by, a rudimentary, pidgin form of communication. He relied heavily on local sportsmen like Merito Acosta and Cheo Ramos to handle intricate affairs. He was also tied to Gran Stadium president Bobby Maduro.

Cambria just didn’t keep an apartment in Havana; he invested in the community, owning rental properties, an apartment building and a string of saloons. One small restaurant was attached to Gran Stadium, set behind the center-field scoreboard. He also co-owned the Havana Cubans of the Florida International League. He became a celebrity in Cuba, the man who represented the Washington Senators, the predominant link between Cuba and the major leagues. Since the island was baseball-crazy, Cambria was an important figure indeed. He was a personal friend of President Fulgencio Batista and formed an even stronger bond with Fidel Castro, whose revolution overthrew Batista.

Castro was a baseball fan from his youth. He’d hang around the ballpark to watch the ballplayers, particularly impressed with the Negro Leaguers who headed to Cuba every year. As a kid, he did odd jobs for the ballplayers and developed relationships with them. Cambria scouted Castro as a pitcher at the University of Havana, noting that he had a decent curve but not much of a fastball. During the government’s transition after the revolution, Castro guaranteed Cambria’s safety and insisted that everyone show him respect. At times Castro’s forces even sent men to guard the baseball man. After the United States severed relations with Cuba, Cambria remained influential in easing baseball-related matters between the countries, particularly in obtaining US visas and Cuban exit permits for the players. He was actually one of the few Americans permitted to reside in Cuba after the revolution.

To some, Cambria represented the raping of one of the country’s honored resources, talented ballplayers. At first the Senators’ signings were a boon to the Cuban League, instilling pride in local talent and sparking interest in the league. Soon, though, it was noticed that Cambria was sucking up much of the country’s talent and shipping them to the US. Furthermore, he wasn’t just doing so in Havana; he branched out and secured young amateur talent closer to their homes throughout the nation. He signed a lot of teenagers. By 1944 the impact was being felt; the amateur leagues were in decline. With so many young men inked to professional contracts, the amateur leagues’ base of talent was shrinking considerably.

Cuban sportswriter Jess Losada began a campaign against the American imperialism, hence his remark about Christopher Columbus. Bob Considine of Collier’s magazine chimed in to attack Cambria from the American perspective. Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American was also critical of Cambria’s efforts. He accused the Washington scout of overlooking talented ballplayers with dark skin in favor of perhaps weaker lighter-skinned athletes. Not without cause, some in Cuba resented Cambria and his tactics. He signed players cheap and, as noted, he signed a lot of them. They were often required to sign blank contracts, to be filled out and assigned at Cambria’s whim – sometimes at a much later time. Naturally, these mass signings depleted the amateur ranks and hurt the local game. A signing ballplayer risked his amateur eligibility at home. Many were sent to the United States to play in the pro leagues. This not only stripped the island of talent but, considering that most of the Senators’ farm teams were in the South, these young men ran into American racism. Nevertheless, Cambria was held in high regard by most. In 1948, he was named commissioner of nonprofessional baseball in Cuba. (At times Griffith and Cambria sent players back to Cuba in a productive manner. Over the winter of 1939-40, they sent a few men for extra practice and seasoning in the Cuban League, an early effort by a major-league club to hone talent in a winter league.)

Cuba had a lot of talent, and Cambria wished to showcase it in America. In 1946, amid the postwar minor-league explosion, he and Bobby Maduro founded the Havana Cubans and helped form the Florida International League as a home for the club. Cambria was named secretary-treasurer of the team. Clark Griffith soon bought into the club and formed a working agreement. This was a natural extension of Cambria’s efforts – another place to park all the Cuban talent he was signing. He also supplied an extensive list of Cubans to various Texas teams and leagues from 1948 through much of the 1950s. Washington farm clubs like Williamsport featured many Cuban players; in 1945, for example, the club had 12 Cubans on the roster.

In August 1947, Cambria was called before National Association president George Trautman to account for his financial dealings in Cuba. Three Cubans on the Dodgers’ farm club in Montreal had claimed that they could make more money playing on the Class C Havana team than Branch Rickey was paying at Triple-A Montreal. Rickey reported this and Cambria was nailed for paying his players under the table. His books showed a $9,000 entry for scouting expenses that was deemed a fund for paying players above the salary limit. He was fined $500. It wasn’t the first time Cambria was fined for his tactics. Commissioner Landis penalized the scout $1,000 in December 1939 for signing a young pitcher to a blank contract with a fictitious date and without designating an assigning team. In each instance, Clark Griffith ran interference with the commissioner’s office. As Cambria exclaimed in 1950 when he ran into additional trouble, “I leave it all up to Clark Griffith. He’ll take care of everything.”

To help counter Cambria’s influence, sportswriter Losada invited the Cincinnati Reds to the island to set up shop. Cambria no longer had the island to himself. The Reds fielded a Triple-A team called the Havana Sugar Kings in the International League from 1954 to 1960. Much of the roster was filled with local talent, including longtime major-league pitchers Orlando Pena and Mike Cuellar and infielders Leo Cardenas and Cookie Rojas.

Clark Griffith died in 1955. Cambria stayed with the Senators organization and relocated with the club to Minnesota. He maintained a house in Baltimore where his invalid wife resided but still spent a great deal of time in Cuba. For example, at the time she died in 1958, he was in Havana. Cambria himself continued to work until becoming ill in 1961. He frequently lamented about his fondness for Griffith and his loyalty to the organization, and often relayed his wishes to be buried in a Senators uniform. In fact, at a press conference in Minnesota, Twins owner Calvin Griffith joked that Cambria would now have to be buried in a Twins jersey. At the time, Cambria played along with the joke. When Calvin left the room, Cambria turned to the reporters and reiterated, “I haven’t changed my mind. I still want to go out in a Washington uniform. Washington was Mr. Griffith’s club.”

By March 1962, Cambria was very ill. He was flown from Havana to Minneapolis for treatment. Cambria died at Barnabas Hospital in Minneapolis on September 24, 1962. At the time of his passing at age 72 he had scouted in Cuba for over 25 years.

Note

There are indications in early immigration and Census records that Cambria was born in 1889 rather than 1890. Immigration records on August 2, 1893, list him as 4 years old and the 1900 U.S. Census shows a birth date of “July 1889.”

Photo credit

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Sources

Special thanks to Ray Nemec for an exchange of information on Joe Cambria and his career.

Ancestry.com.

Appleton Post-Crescent, Wisconsin, 1961.

Baltimore Afro-American, 1930-34, 1943.

Baltimore Sun, 1928-58.

Baseball-reference.com.

Big Springs Daily Herald, Texas, 1956.

Bjarkman, Peter C. Diamonds Around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.

Bready, James H. Baseball in Baltimore: The First 100 Years. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Burgos, Adrian Jr. Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Charleston Gazette, West Virginia, 1931-36, 1948, 1956.

Chicago Defender, 1934.

Chicago Tribune, 1961.

Christian Science Monitor, 1961.

Cumberland Evening Times, Maryland, 1929-37.

Daily Sitka Sentinel, Alaska, 1956.

Dunkirk Evening Observer, New York, 1933.

Echevarria, Roberto Gonzalez. The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Fort Pierce News-Tribune, Florida, 1953.

Frederick News-Post, Maryland, 1930-31.

Greeley Daily Tribune, Colorado, 1939.

Hagerstown Daily Mail, Maryland, 1930-44

Hartford Courant, 1936-47.

Holway, John. The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History. Fern Park, FL: Hastings House Publishers, 2001.

Johnson, Lloyd, and Miles Wolff, eds. The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Second Edition. Durham, NC: Baseball America, Inc., 1997.

Kingsport Times, Tennessee, 1940.

Lowell Sun, Massachusetts, 1938, 1944, 1952.

Lubbock Morning Avalanche, Texas, 1935.

Middletown Times Herald, New York, 1936.

Monessen Daily Independent, Pennsylvania, 1931.

Nebraska Lincoln Star, 1934.

Newport Daily News, Rhode Island, 1909-10.

New York Times, 1944.

North Adams Transcript, Massachusetts, 1939.

Ogden Standard Examiner, Utah, 1936-39.

Oleksak, Michael M., and Mary Adams Oleksak. Latin Americans and the Grand Old Game. Grand Rapids, MI: Masters Press, 1991.

Pittsburgh Courier, 1933-34.

Ruck, Rob. The Tropic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican Republic. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

SABR Encyclopedia.

Snyder, Brad. Beyond the Shadow of the Senator: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2003.

Sporting Life, 1912.

Steadman, John F., “Papa Joe’s Still Finding ’Em,” Baseball Digest, September 1962.

Syracuse Herald, 1936.

Syracuse Herald Journal, 1940.

The Sporting News, 1932-62.

Troy Times-Record, 1943-44.

Washington Post, 1936-58.

Williamsport Gazette and Bulletin, Pennsylvania, 1937, 1944-45.

Zanesville Herald-Journal, Ohio, 1938.

He overcame these physical, external, and self-imposed challenges through perseverance, an all-consuming passion for baseball, and good timing. Pieretti’s legacy lives on in San Francisco with a devoted group of baseball enthusiasts.

North Beach Baseball Roots

Marino Paul Pieretti was born on September 20, 1920, in the small village of Marlia, in the Tuscany region of Italy.1 He was the second child of Virgilio and Armanda (Bandoni). Like many immigrant families of that era, their plan was for Virgilio to find work and save some money, and then Armanda and the children would make the voyage across the Atlantic. Virgilio arrived in New York City in July 1920, two months before Marino’s birth. He made his way to San Francisco and found work as a carpenter in construction. In August 1921, Armanda, along with Marino and his older brother Augustino, arrived in the U.S.

The family eventually settled in the North Beach District of San Francisco, a prominent Italian enclave termed “Little Italy.”2 Growing up, Marino was attracted to many sports, but his passion was baseball. San Francisco had a thriving baseball community during this era, especially among Italian American immigrants.3

Virgilio was displeased with Marino’s interest in baseball; he had hoped for him to be a professional musician. One day after paying for accordion lessons, Armanda discovered Marino was skipping his lessons that day to play baseball. She marched to the ball field where Marino was playing, dragged him out of the batter’s box, and took him to the lesson.4

The neighborhood had already produced stars such as Frankie Crosetti, Joe DiMaggio, and Tony Lazzeri, all of whom had attended Pieretti’s high school, Galileo, renowned for its baseball team.5 “We’d go out and play from 9 in the morning to 6 at night,” said his friend and future major-leaguer Dino Restelli. “We played three or four games. And Marino played every game. He pitched in one, played third base in another, and shortstop the next game. He never got tired of playing.”6

Overcoming the Odds

Despite Pieretti’s obsession with baseball, he had one attribute that baseball people at all levels judged not suitable for a pitcher: a small stature. Listed at 5-foot-7 and 153 pounds, the right-hander was deemed too short for a pitcher, even by Galileo High School, whose baseball coach repeatedly cut him from the team.7 Never lacking confidence, Pieretti next set his sights on the local minor-league teams. Because of his size, he endured repeated rejections in 1938-1941 by the San Francisco Seals and Oakland Oaks of the Class AA Pacific Coast League.8 Oakland reportedly told him after a tryout, “Go home, kid, we don’t need a batboy.”9

Rejections were mere stepping stones for Pieretti, whose relentless drive to play professional baseball never wavered. He continued devoting himself to the sport, flourishing while playing year-round in San Francisco’s numerous sandlot and semipro leagues.10 In 1938, he tossed three no-hitters and won 18 straight for the Sunshine Cleaners team.11 However, his constant pitching took its toll, and his arm troubles began as he suffered a dislocated elbow.12

Pieretti later remarked about his relationship with baseball, “I love baseball like nobody’s business. When I go to bed, I lie awake thinking about it. I dream about it. And when I wake up the next morning, I can eat baseball for breakfast.”13

After years of relentless effort, his perseverance paid off in early 1941 when a local scout for Cincinnati, Mickey Shader, was impressed with his abilities and enthusiasm. Shader was also the president of the Tucson Cowboys, a Reds affiliate in the Class C Arizona-Texas League. He told Pieretti that Cincinnati would never sign a pitcher of his height but would recommend him to another team in the league, the unaffiliated El Paso Texans.14

Path to the Majors

El Paso took Shader’s recommendation and signed Pieretti in April 1941. Later, Pieretti said, “My salary at El Paso was $65 a month, I sent home $40 of it. I told my mother I was getting $100. Honest, I was afraid that if she’d learned what I was actually getting, she would have made me come home.”15

Pieretti occasionally brought some of his San Francisco sandlot experience to El Paso’s Dudley Field. During a June game, an 8-4 loss to the Bisbee Bees, upset over the umpire’s calls, Pieretti, “stalked from the mound to the plate, stooped and cleaned it off with his bare hand.” Despite his outburst, he was not ejected from the game.16

During the season, Pieretti was hit by a pitch and suffered a severe concussion and skull fracture.17 As a result, he endured migraines that nagged him throughout his career and resulted in him later being classified by the military as 4-F – “not qualified for military service.”18

In 60 games, Pieretti was 16-18 with an ERA of 4.86, below the league’s 5.16 average.19 He was rewarded by being named to the league’s All-Star team.20 Though Pieretti would later describe 1941 as “so-so”, it was successful enough to attract the attention of other clubs.21 In December, he married Flora Maeso, and they would have four children.

In January 1942, Pieretti made a two-level jump and was sold to the Fort Worth Cats of the Class A-1 Texas League. Though obsessed with reaching the major leagues, Pieretti clashed over contract terms with Fort Worth’s manager and head of business operations, the notoriously “hard-nosed” Rogers Hornsby.22 Unable to agree, he held out the entire 1942 season. For someone as driven as Pieretti, his decision to sit out the year is both astonishing and revealing.

Holding out in 1942 only seemed to fuel his desire, as he played non-stop, often multiple games a day, in San Francisco’s semipro and sandlot leagues.23 Because of the war, the Texas League, like many minor leagues, suspended operations in 1943.24 As a result, Pieretti was reinstated as a free agent. If not for the war, his holdout may have been more damaging to his career. Instead, it provided him with the opportunity to find work in a higher-level league.

Heading into the 1943 season, Pieretti drew interest from unaffiliated Oakland and Portland of the PCL.25 He eventually garnered an invitation to the Portland training camp.26 Their manager, Merv Shea, was impressed, saying, “Marino hasn’t blinding speed, but his fast one has plenty of authority.”27 During spring training, he picked up the nickname that stuck with him throughout his life – “Chick.” The name originated when a doctor was required to remove a chicken bone lodged in his throat.28

Pieretti started slowly, and Portland considered releasing him, but their management was impressed with his “winning spirit, enthusiasm, and constant hustling” and kept him on the roster.29 As the 1943 season progressed, Pieretti improved, posting an 8-11 record in 37 games and 135 innings, with a 3.07 ERA. Encouraged by his progress, Portland re-signed him for another year. During the offseasons, he took on various jobs, including working in a slaughterhouse killing cattle with a sledgehammer; Pieretti claimed the work improved his fastball.30 

With a year of experience at AA, Pieretti came out strong in 1944, attracting attention from major-league clubs.31 By August 20, he had secured his 20th win.32 He finished the season with a flourish, a three-hit shutout versus Oakland. According to the Oakland Tribune, Pieretti “did everything one man can do. He … drove in two runs, stole a base, fielded his position perfectly and was hustling harder at the end than at the beginning.”33

He finished his career-making season with a 26-13 record and 2.46 ERA in 48 games and 322 innings. Pieretti led the affiliated minors in wins, and his ERA was 10th among PCL pitchers with more than 45 innings. With his rapid improvement and 4-F draft status, Pieretti no longer had trouble getting noticed. In November, the Washington Nationals selected him with the second pick in the Rule 5 Draft.34

Gritty Start in the Majors

Pieretti had accomplished his lifelong goal of playing in the major leagues through determination, year-round play, and fortuitous timing. Despite his passion for the game, Pieretti was never afraid to risk his career for what he considered fair pay. Just as he had done in Fort Worth and would do again in the future, he battled through contract negotiations with the Nationals’ frugal owner, Clark Griffith, and eventually signed in late February 1945.35

Washington finished last in the AL in 1944, and coming into 1945, most experts predicted another last-place finish.36 Like all teams, Washington was depleted by the military draft, as they relied upon numerous inexperienced and past-their-prime players. With World War II ongoing, many questioned the MLB’s level of play.37 H.G. Salsinger of the Detroit News declared, “Even the most charitable and amiable of men must admit that the quality of major league baseball in the current season is the poorest in more than 50 years.” Later analysis of wartime baseball challenged the prevailing opinions about the lack of talent, recognizing the impact on rosters while refuting that the level of competition was as diminished as often assumed.

The 24-year-old Pieretti had a strong debut. He went 12 innings, and despite giving up 14 hits and three walks, allowed only two earned runs in a 4-3 win over the Athletics.38 His complete-game victory in his big-league debut is tied for the majors’ second-longest.39 Pieretti, at the time, was just the third Italian-born player to reach the majors, following Lou Polli and Julio Bonetti.

His next start was another notable “bend but don’t break” outing. Pieretti went 12 2/3 innings, giving up 10 hits and 11 walks (two intentional) in a 2-1 loss to the Yankees.40 He is one of three starting pitchers in MLB history to give up at least 10 hits and 11 walks and allow two earned runs or fewer.41 The Associated Press commented that he was, “a throw-back to the old school of rough-and-ready baseball.”42

Thanks to a strong pitching staff, Washington had a surprising year and was in the hunt until the end. In the 1945 season finale, the Nationals needed a win to remain in contention for the pennant. Pieretti picked up the clutch win over the Athletics when he pitched a complete game and allowed only two earned runs in a 4-3 victory.43 Washington’s victory put them one game behind first-place Detroit. However, Detroit took two of their final three to win the pennant.44

Pieretti delivered his best season in the majors, posting a 14–13 record with a 3.32 ERA and 3.47 fielding-independent pitching (FIP) mark.45 In 27 starts and 17 relief appearances, he logged 233 1/3 innings, ranking second in games and 10th in innings among AL pitchers. As evidence of Pieretti’s career-long struggle with control, he was sixth in walks issued, and his BB/9 of 3.5 was 41st, but it was the best in his MLB career.46

He made The Sporting News’ major-league all-star freshman team, which it termed the strongest since 1941.47 According to long-time sportswriter Vincent X. Flaherty, “Old-timers say Marino has more speed, for his size, than any guy in history.”48 Another sportswriter commented that his defining traits were, “aggressiveness, determination, and hustle, the will to fight on after being knocked down by bigger opponents.”49

The end of the war brought wholesale changes to Washington in 1946. On the club’s 40-man roster, 23 players had been in the armed forces in 1945. This influx of talent affected Pieretti’s role, limiting him to 30 appearances, two starts, and 62 innings pitched. He had the worst ERA (5.95), FIP (5.85), and BB/9 (5.8) of his career.

Whether out of comfort or a macho sense of challenging hitters, Pieretti still relied heavily on his fastball.50 Throughout his career, overreliance on the fastball hampered his effectiveness. DiMaggio would later say about him, “If Chic(k) had ever had a curveball, he would have (won) 20 games every year.”51

His 1947 season ended in late August, when doctors discovered a chip in his elbow.52 Yet Pieretti improved upon 1946, finishing his shortened year at 2-4, with a 4.21 ERA and 4.14 FIP in 23 games.

Pieretti saw little action in the early part of 1948 owing to ineffectiveness. On June 9, he was traded by the Nationals to the White Sox for Earl Harrist. Washington manager Joe Kuhel said, “I think Pieretti might be helped by the change. … I believe he has a lot of courage – he showed that when he helped us so much in 1945 – and I think the change of scenery will do him good.”53

Years later, Pieretti would bitterly comment about Washington, “They thought I was a wartime pitcher, a stop-gap until the big boys came from service. And when the big fellows did come home, nobody bothered to see if I could beat more than 4-Fs.”54

Kuhel was prophetic, and Pieretti’s pitching improved with Chicago. His new manager, Ted Lyons, gave him the opportunity to work primarily as a starter. The White Sox wasted no time utilizing Pieretti. He won his first outing, fittingly against his former team. Combined, in 1948, he was 8-12 with a 5.47 ERA in 131 innings, but his FIP of 4.27 highlighted the defensive shortcomings and bad luck he experienced on seventh- and eighth-place teams. Pieretti continued to struggle with arm troubles and underwent an operation on his elbow shortly after the season ended.55

In 1949, he started the White Sox’s home opener and delivered his best outing of the year, pitching seven innings and allowing two earned runs in a 4-2 victory over the St. Louis Browns. At this point in his career, he was more effective in a relief role.56 Overall, his results mirrored those of 1948: 4–6 with a 5.51 ERA and 4.60 FIP.

The White Sox signed Pieretti to another contract in January 1950, then released him in April.57 Cleveland selected him off waivers, as their manager, Lou Boudreau, wanted to use him strictly as a relief pitcher.58 On June 20, a memorable moment occurred when he gave up the 2,000th hit of DiMaggio’s career. When the ball was returned from the outfield, in honor of his long-time paisano from North Beach, Pieretti took it, walked over to DiMaggio, flipped it to him, and shook his hand.59

His only start of 1950 came in the last game of the season in Detroit before 49,000 fans. He went six innings, giving up four runs, as the Indians came from behind for the victory. Pieretti ended the year 0-1 with a 4.18 ERA and 4.57 FIP in 47 1/3 innings.

A Tireless Baseball Journey

With a stacked pitching staff, Cleveland sold the 31-year-old’s rights to Portland in January 1951. Back in the minors, he had a solid year, going 18-13 with a 3.30 ERA for the Beavers. The most notable event of 1951 may have come in the offseason when he was a bartender and received a minor knife wound in a fight with a customer regarding payment. Pieretti said a package of cigarettes helped prevent more serious injuries.60

Throughout his career, Pieretti’s insatiable appetite for baseball extended to near-continuous offseason pitching in semipro leagues in the Bay Area. Augmenting his local winter routine, in early 1952, he played in the Puerto Rican Winter League. A San Francisco Examiner columnist remarked that Pieretti’s “devotion to the game is a constant source of amazement to veteran baseball writers who have followed his career.”

Pieretti commented on why he pitched so much in the offseason: “I’ve gotta keep using my arm or the muscles harden and tighten up. I don’t confine my activity to the diamond. I play table tennis, basketball, even pinball machines. Anything to keep my muscles loose. I’d pitch every day if I could.”61

After Pieretti went 16-18 with a 3.42 ERA in 1952, Portland traded him to the unaffiliated Sacramento Solons of the PCL.62 Pieretti had solid seasons in 1953 and 1954 for Sacramento. In July 1954, while pinch-hitting, he was ejected after a called second strike, and despite his fiery nature and reputation as a “bench jockey,” it was his only ejection in professional baseball.63

His strong showing in 1955 caught the attention of the White Sox, who were scouting him late in the year, but they did not make a move.64 In his best year in the minors since 1944, he was 19-15 with a 3.01 ERA for the Solons. In late 1955, he pitched in the Cuban Winter League, where his success attracted the interest of Phillies manager Mayo Smith. Pieretti’s work in Cuba paid off, and he signed with Philadelphia in December.65 However, he struggled in training camp with a pulled muscle, and the Phillies cut him before the 1956 season.66

Pieretti returned to Sacramento, but they quickly moved on from him. He was part of a large deal with the Chicago Cubs and was assigned to the Los Angeles Angels of the PCL.67 Pieretti went 7-9 with a 4.90 ERA for the 107-61 Angels. Amid the turmoil of the Angels’ last year in Los Angeles, the team released him in April 1957.68 Later that month, he was signed by the Des Moines Demons, a Cubs affiliate in the Class A Western League. His elbow problems continued to bother him, and he was released in June.69

In 1958, the 37-year-old Pieretti returned to Class C baseball, where his journey had begun 17 years earlier. He joined the Modesto Reds of the California League as a player-coach.70 In July, his career came to an end when the Yankees affiliate released him in a cost-cutting move.71 Pieretti admitted, “With conditions as they are now in the minor leagues, I’ve got to face the fact that I’ve had it in baseball.” Always the optimist, he added,” But my arm is still strong and I feel I could do a good job of relief pitching, even in the majors.”72

By the Numbers

Pieretti’s six-year big-league career resulted in a 30-38 record, 4.53 ERA, and 4.20 FIP. Despite an unorthodox 17-season professional career, he finished with an ironically balanced 175-175 record and a 3.78 ERA across 3,013 1/3 innings in 617 games.73 Considering his heavy offseason workload in semipro and winter leagues, it is reasonable to estimate that he threw more than 5,000 innings altogether.74

Applying analytics to gauge his effectiveness reveals some unexpected findings. His Wins Above Replacement (WAR) numbers differ dramatically between Baseball Reference’s “bWAR” and FanGraphs’ “fWAR.” While bWAR focuses on runs allowed (earned and unearned), fWAR utilizes FIP as the primary driver of the calculation. The charts below summarize Pieretti’s key statistics by season, along with his rankings benchmarked against other AL pitchers:75

Table 1: Marino Pieretti: Career Pitching Statistics (1945-1950)76

For 1945–1950, his bWAR was the lowest of the 304 pitchers in the AL, and he allowed the most runs. Even in his rookie season, despite 14 wins, his bWAR was in the bottom 12% of AL pitchers.

fWAR ranks him in the 77th percentile over his career, driven by: (1) FIP: His 4.20 career mark is in the 55th percentile for AL pitchers;77 (2) Innings Pitched: Pieretti was in the top 12% for innings from 1945-1950;78 (3) Poor Team Defense: Evident by the higher fWAR on the struggling 1947-1949 teams. 79

The contrast between bWAR and fWAR illustrates the complexity of evaluating Pieretti’s pitching record. For a supposed “wartime” pitcher, he was a workhorse, defying the perception of being a “roster-filler.” Yet, his struggles with run prevention weaken arguments about his performance. Each WAR metric has its merits for capturing a pitcher’s effectiveness, but the most accurate assessment for Pieretti likely falls somewhere in between.

“Friends Of Marino Pieretti”

After his career ended in 1958, Pieretti initially returned to managing his San Francisco bar.80 Later, he worked as a sales manager for Associated Freight Lines and was Vice President of Sales for Arrow Trucking Company.81 Partly fulfilling his father’s wish, Pieretti was frequently an accordionist at local Italian weddings.82 To keep his arm in shape, he was at times the batting practice pitcher for the San Francisco Giants and Seals, and he relished taking part in charity ballgames.83

A common denominator of his post-playing days was his involvement in coaching. He managed youth, college, Peninsula Winter Rookie League, and semipro teams.84 Pieretti would comment about coaching, “The thing I enjoyed, was taking those kids, putting them in a park and teaching them fundamentals, discipline, seeing them develop.” Pieretti Field at Crocker-Amazon Park in San Francisco was named in his honor “for his devotion, desire, and deep love of baseball.” 85

Pieretti’s health deteriorated in the mid-1970s, stricken with what he called the “The Big Three” – cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.86 As his health worsened, so did his mental state. In 1977, some long-time friends and former players paid a visit to his house and insisted they go out to a favorite restaurant for lunch.87 It lifted Pieretti’s spirit so much they made it a monthly routine and kept inviting more folks from the local baseball community. The group, which included former major leaguers to “sandlotters,” was known as the “Friends of Marino Pieretti.”88 Over time, the luncheons grew so big they had to move out of restaurants into banquet halls.

His health improved as the cancer went into remission. But then he was in a car accident that broke five ribs, and he came down with an infection.89 Pieretti never recovered from this setback, and he died on January 30, 1981, in San Francisco.90 Fittingly, Pieretti is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California, just south of San Francisco. He is joined there by many of San Francisco’s most famous baseball players, including Crosetti, DiMaggio, and Lefty O’Doul.

The “Friends” gatherings continued after Pieretti’s death, including visits from DiMaggio.91 All money raised by the group is donated to local youth baseball organizations.92 A rite of the club is awarding, based on members’ service, green satin athletic jackets emblazoned with the group’s name. The members wear the jackets to the luncheons and, poignantly, to the members’ funerals. 93

Pieretti’s overall pitching record in professional baseball was the epitome of average, but his life and career were anything but “average.” As of 2025, Pieretti is one of only eight big-league players born in Italy.94 Yet, like his size, his birthplace does not define his career and legacy. Driven by a mix of stubbornness, self-confidence, and love of the game, he persevered through obstacles that would have made most players give up baseball. Pieretti’s enduring impact and San Francisco’s deep-rooted love of baseball are evident in the continued vibrancy of the “Friends of Marino Pieretti” group these many years after his passing.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Donna Sylvestri, Marino Pieretti’s daughter, for her interview, and Mark Macrae of the Pacific Coast League Historical Society for sharing insights on Pieretti and the “Friends of Marino Pieretti” group. Also, thank you to the Baseball Hall of Fame for their help in providing Pieretti’s clipping file and assisting with additional research questions.

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Mike Eisenbath and checked for accuract by members of SABR’s fact-checking team.

Photo credits: Courtesy of Tim Castelli.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baldassaro, Lawrence, Beyond DiMaggio, (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2011); Dobin, Dick, The Grand Minor League, (Emeryville, CA: Woodford Press, 1999); Shuttleworth, Red, San Francisco Sandlot Baseball 1957-1966, (Stratford, WA: Bunchgrass Press Project, 2023); Spalding, John, Pacific Coast League Stars, (Manhattan, KS: Ag Press, 1994); White, Gaylon, The Bilko Athletic Club (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014); and Freundlich, Larry, ed., Reaching for the Stars, (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003).

The author also consulted information from Pieretti’s clipping file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, The Sporting News Contract Card, and Ancestry.com for birth and immigration information.

Notes

1 Pieretti’s birth year was often misstated as 1921, such as on his Sporting News Player Contract Card. The error may have originated from confusion with the year he immigrated to the US. Pieretti’s birth and immigration information gathered from: https://www.ancestry.com/search/?name=marino_pieretti&birth=1920&name_x=ps.

2 Arianna Dicicco, “A Brief History of Italians in San Francisco,” America Domani, February 9, 2023, https://americadomani.com/a-brief-history-of-italians-in-san-francisco/.

3 Exhibit Guide from “Italian Americans at Bat: From Sandlots to the Major Leagues,” Museo Italo Americano, https://sfmuseo.org/italian-americans-at-bat-catalog/: 3.

4 Vincent Flaherty, “Conking Cattle with Sledge-Hammer Produced Pieretti’s Pitching Power,” The Sporting News, August 9, 1945: 5.

5 Galileo High School, Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Galileo_High_School.

6 Gaylon White, The Bilko Athletic Club (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014): 200.

7 John Keller, “Win, Lose or Draw,” Washington Evening Star, March 29, 1945: 16.

8 National Baseball Hall of Fame Clipping File for Marino Pieretti: Handwritten, undated letter from Pieretti describing his early career. The author inquired about the letter’s provenance, but the Hall of Fame had no background information to share.

9 Bucky Walter, “When a benefactor got cuffed around,” San Francisco Examiner, January 28, 1980: 54.

10 The term “sandlot baseball” originated in San Francisco. Baseball in Northern California, the SABR 28 Convention Journal: 60; “Second No-Hit Game,” San Francisco Examiner, May 9, 1938: 20.

11 James Nealon, “Playgrounds Build Baseball Bleachers,” San Francisco Examiner, July 11, 1938: 20.

12 Bob Brachman, “Beating ‘Round the Bushers,” San Francisco Examiner, March 6, 1939: 22.

13 Flaherty, “Conking Cattle with Sledge-Hammer Produced Pieretti’s Pitching Power.”

14 Clifford Bloodgood, “A Little Beaver Who Was Caught in the Draft,” Baseball Magazine, November 1945: 405.

15 Bucky Walter, “As Others See It,” Sacramento Union, April 14, 1953: 6.

16 WT Bentley, “Faccio Holds E.P. Hitters in Check,” El Paso Times, June 10, 1941: 8.

17 White, The Bilko Athletic Club: 202; Shirley Povich, “This Morning with Shirley Povich,” Washington Post, July 17, 1945: 8.

18 “Dozen Players Due to Report for ‘44 Play,” Portland Oregonian, January 23, 1944: 35.

19 Calculated based on information from Baseball Reference and the 1942 Sporting News Record Book. Baseball Reference information is incomplete regarding AZ-TX league games pitched and league ERA. The Sporting News Record Book excludes 19 pitchers with less than 5 games.

20 “West Whips East, 3-1, In A-T All-Star Game,” El Paso Times, June 26, 1941: 9.

21 Hall of Fame Clipping File for Marino Pieretti.

22 Bob Ingram, “Baseball or Burlesque?” El Paso Herald-Post, February 14, 1942: 8.

23 Flaherty, “Conking Cattle with Sledge-Hammer Produced Pieretti’s Pitching Power.”

24 According to Baseball Reference, there were 41 minor leagues in 1941; 31 in 1942; 10 in 1943; 10 in 1944, and 12 in 1945.

25 “Sherrys to Meet Golden Glow Nine,” Oakland Post Enquirer, March 20, 1943: 9.

26 “Semipro Notes,” San Francisco Examiner, March 31, 1943: 32.

27 L.H. Gregory, “Pint Size Blocked Sale of Pieretti, ‘$50,000 Hurler’ Drafted by Nats,” The Sporting News, March 15, 1945: 8.

28 John Spalding, Pacific Coast League Stars (Manhattan, KS: Ag Press, 1994): 117.

29 Gregory, “Pint Size Blocked Sale of Pieretti, ‘$50,000 Hurler’ Drafted by Nats.”

30 Flaherty, “Conking Cattle with Sledge-Hammer Produced Pieretti’s Pitching Power.”

31 L.H. Gregory, “Greg’s Gossip,” Portland Oregonian, July 23, 1944: 39.

32 L.H. Gregory, “Pieretti Gets No. 20; Helser Notches 18th,” Portland Oregonian, August 21, 1944: 15.

33 Emmons Byrne, “Pieretti in 5-to-0 Win Over Salvo”, Oakland Tribune, September 15, 1944: 19.

34 “Pieretti, Seats Lost in Draft,” Oakland Tribune, November 1, 1944: 18. L.H. Gregory, “Greg’s Gossip,” Portland Oregonian, October 12, 1944: 12.

35 Additional holdouts by Pieretti were: Washington 1946, Portland 1952, and Sacramento 1953 – 1955.

36 Walter Haight, “Griffs’ Fight Year’s Surprise,” The Sporting News, May 3, 1945: 9.

37 Clay Davenport, “WWII Difficulty: How Much Does Wartime Affect Quality of Play?” Baseball Prospectus, April 21, 2003: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/1817/wwii-difficulty-how-much-does-wartime-affect-quality-of-play/.

38 Buck O’Neill, “Pieretti Winner in Major Debut with 14-Hit Feat,” Washington Times Herald, April 20, 1945: 32.

39 The longest debut is Pete Hennig on April 17, 1914, 13 innings in a 4-3 victory with two ER. Doc Newton on April 26, 1901, went 12 innings in debut in an 8-7 victory with five ER. Source: https://stathead.com/tiny/X0kf1.

40 Buck O’Neill, “Pieretti Heroic in Loss; Etten’s Hitting Decides,” Washington Times Herald, April 29, 1945: 25. Note: Baseball Reference shows no intentional walks for Pieretti in the game, but the Times Herald story mentions two intentional walks.

41 The other pitchers were Bob Feller on August 7, 1941 gave up two earned runs on 13 hits and 11 walks (4 intentional) in 13 innings, in 4-3 loss and Rudy May who on September 17, 1973 gave up two earned runs on 10 hits and 11 walks (five intentional) in 12 ⅔ innings in a 3-2 loss. Source: https://stathead.com/tiny/vzaQU.

42 “Senators Seek Rookie Duel,” New York Daily News, June 10, 1945: 71.

43 John Keller, “Griff Officially Protests Loss of First Game to A’s Yesterday,” Washington Evening Star, September 24, 1945: 8.

44 Fredric Frommer, “The Misfits of Summer,” Washingtonian.com, April 30, 2017: https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/30/how-the-washington-senators-almost-won-world-series-world-war-ii/.

45 FIP is similar to Earned Run Average but only uses walks, strikeouts, and home runs. It measures “if the pitcher were to have experienced league average results on balls in play” per https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Fielding_Independent_Pitching.

46 57 pitchers qualified with 154 or more innings for the year. Source:  https://stathead.com/tiny/Zfiss

47 Frederick Lieb, “Strongest All-Freshman Team Since ‘41 Named,” The Sporting News, November 1, 1945: 7.

48 Flaherty, “Conking Cattle with Sledge-Hammer Produced Pieretti’s Pitching Power.”

49 Bloodgood, “A Little Beaver Who Was Caught in the Draft.”

50 Donna Sylvestri, Marino Pieretti’s daughter, in an interview with the author on June 10, 2024, mentioned that remarks about her father’s height did not bother him, because he carried a “macho” attitude.

51 Le Pacini, “The Best Medicine of All,” San Francisco Examiner, May 6, 1979: 473.

52 “Season Ends for Pieretti,” The Sporting News, September 3, 1947: 11.

53 “Harrist-Pieretti Deal to Help Both Clubs, in Kuhel’s Opinion,” Washington Evening Star, June 9, 1948: 17.

54 Joe Reichler, “Pieretti Trys (sic) for Phillies,” (Venice, California) Evening Vanguard, March 29, 1956: 16.

55 “Major League Flashes,” The Sporting News, October 6, 1948: 23.

56 As a starter in 9 games, he was 2–5 with an ERA of 7.93, while in 74 innings over 30 games in relief, he went 2–1 with a 4.26 ERA.

57 Irving Vaughn, “White Sox Sign Marino Pieretti, Philley, Majeski,” Chicago Tribune, January 24, 1950: 29.

58 Harry Jones, “Pieretti Comes Here on Waivers,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 19, 1950: 28.

59 Joe Trimble, “Yanks Paste Indians, 8-2; DiMag Gets 2,000th Hit,” New York Daily News, June 21, 1950: 407.

60 Carl Reich, “On the Sandlots,” San Francisco Examiner, October 16, 1951: 25.

61 Curley Grieve, “Marino Pieretti Nearer Home,” San Francisco Examiner, December 11, 1952:  44.

62 Solons was a term for ancient Greek Senators, in recognition of Sacramento being the capital of California.

63 “Pacific Coast League,” The Sporting News, August 11, 1954: 26; Red Shuttleworth, San Francisco Sandlot Baseball 1957-1966 (Stratford, WA: Bunchgrass Press Project, 2023): Player Profiles.

64 Bill Conlin, “Get Ready, Men! Chick Will be Hard to Handle,” Sacramento Union, September 14, 1955: 6.

65 Art Morrow, “Mayo Picked Chick on Trip to Caribbean,” The Sporting News, December 14, 1955: 21.

66 Hank Hollingworth, “Sports Merry-go-Round,” Long Beach (California) Press-Telegram, April 4, 1956: 25.

67 Hank Hollingworth “Sports Merry-go-Round,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, April 27, 1956: 16.

68 White, The Bilko Athletic Club: 243.

69 Tony Cordaro, “Talk of Split Western Season—Topeka Reason,” Des Moines Tribune, June 4, 1957: 18.

70 “Modesto Hires Pieretti as Pitcher-Coach,” Sacramento Bee, February 20, 1958: 33.

71 “California League,” The Sporting News, August 13, 1958: 43.

72 White, The Bilko Athletic Club: 203.

73 Baseball Reference did not include games Pieretti pitched in 1941 with El Paso. The 1942 Sporting News Record Book shows he pitched in 60 games, which was added to the BB-Ref games total of 557. Wins, losses, earned runs, and innings from 1941 were included in Baseball Reference.

74 Estimate of additional innings: Semipro – 150 innings annually in 1938-1940 & 1942; 75 innings annually in 1941, 1943-1958; Caribbean Leagues – 50 innings annually in 1952, 1953. Totals approximately 2,000 additional innings.

75 bWAR uses league-specific replacement levels. Comparing Pieretti only to AL pitchers ensures a more accurate and applicable evaluation. Though fWAR is normalized across MLB, since Pieretti was never in the NL, his ranking within the AL is the most relevant for comparison since it reflects the competition he faced. More information on bWAR: https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained.shtml and fWAR: https://library.fangraphs.com/war/differences-fwar-rwar/.

76 The table’s statistics are from Baseball Reference, except for FIP and fWAR, which are sourced from FanGraphs.

77 FIP is the primary driver of fWAR, which assumes a pitcher has league-average defensive support.

78 Innings pitched more positively impacts fWAR than bWAR. Due to bWAR being based on actual runs allowed, it does not scale with innings pitched, and pitchers are not inherently rewarded for throwing more innings. Since FIP is scaled per inning, a pitcher who throws more innings at the same FIP level will accumulate more fWAR.

79 Poor team defense negatively impacts bWAR, but not fWAR. Because bWAR is focused on earned plus unearned runs allowed, poor team defense will negatively impact metric. fWAR assumes a league-average defense, mitigating a poor defense’s impact on metric.

80 “Pieretti is Released to Help Trim Club Expense,” Modesto (California) Bee, July 31, 1958: 6.

81 Curley Grieve, “The Perfesser Fools ‘Em All–He’s Still Having Fun,” San Francisco Examiner, May 18, 1963: 43. “People in Business”, San Francisco Chronicle, July 29, 1975: 45.

82 Baseball Reference Bullpen, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Marino_Pieretti.

83 “Giants ‘Unsung’ Pitcher Enjoys Batting Practice,” Oakland Tribune, June 2, 1965: 41.  Donna Sylvestri, Marino Pieretti’s daughter, in an interview with the author on June 10, 2024, stated his enjoyment of participating in charity baseball games.

84 Bucky Walter, “The Evening Muse,” San Francisco Examiner, November 28, 1979: 58.  Bill Jones, “Peninsula Opens Third Campaign with Eight Clubs,” The Sporting News, September 27, 1961: 26; Prescott Sullivan, “Full-time Booster,” San Francisco Examiner, December 6, 1971: 56.

85 White, The Bilko Athletic Club: 203

86 White, The Bilko Athletic Club: 204

87 Carl Nolte, “Old ballplayers lift a glass to Marino Pieretti,” SFGate, January 30, 2011: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nativeson/article/Old-ballplayers-lift-a-glass-to-Marino-Pieretti-2461407.php.

88 Exhibit Guide from “Italian Americans at Bat: From Sandlots to the Major Leagues,” Museo Italo Americano, https://sfmuseo.org/italian-americans-at-bat-catalog/: 15.

89 Mark Macrae, President of Pacific Coast League Historical Society, interview with author on May 9, 2024.

90 “Ex-Solon Hurler Dies,” Sacramento Bee, January 31, 1981: 48.

91 White, The Bilko Athletic Club: 205.

92 Horace Hinshaw, “Loving Baseball for 81 Years,” Pacifica (California) Tribune, November 25 2009: 20, https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=PTP20091125&e=——-en–20–1–txt-txIN——–

93 Daughter Donna Sylvestri mentioned the impact of seeing the members in their jackets at funerals.

94 The eight Italian-born players, in chronological order: Lou Polli, Julio Bonetti, Pieretti, Rinaldo “Rugger” Ardizoia, Hank Biasatti, Reno Bertoia, Alex Liddi, and Samuel Aldegheri.

Eventually breaking free from the Yankees, Polli joined the St. Louis Browns in 1932, then spent another dozen years in the minors before hooking on with the New York Giants in 1944. Although he never won a game in the big leagues, Crip did pitch three no-hitters at the highest level in the minors, including one in his very last game in organized ball in 1945. When he died in December 2000, he was the oldest living former major-league baseball player.

Many published sources list Polli’s birthplace as Barre, Vermont, but he actually wasn’t born in Vermont. In fact, he wasn’t even born in the United States. The youngest of seven children, Louis Americo Polli was born on July 9, 1901, in Baveno, a little town on Lake Maggiore in the Italian Alps, near Italy’s border with Switzerland. His unusual middle name–which is quite common in Barre for sons of Italian immigrants–hints at the circumstances under which the Pollis came to Barre and the pride they took in their new citizenship.

At the turn of the century, Vermont quarries actively recruited skilled stonecutters from northern Italy, making them one of the few groups whose immigration was aggressively solicited. They were reputedly the best stonecutters in the world, descended from the men whose skills built Rome and supplied raw stone to Michelangelo. Louis’ father, Battista, was one of that breed. He had already emigrated to Barre at the time of Louis’ birth, and the rest of the family joined him when Louis was only seven months old. The Pollis settled in a house at 44 Circle Street, where one of Lou’s nephews lives to this day.

Barre was well-known for its radical politics during the era when Lou was growing up there. Some of the Italian granite workers joined labor unions and became active in the Socialist Party; they were even powerful enough to elect a Socialist mayor. The Pollis, however, were apolitical, and the only connection to the Socialists Lou recalls is attending plays and dances at the Socialist Hall on Granite Street. He remembered adults throwing their coats in a pile on the floor of the Hall and children falling asleep on top of them.

As a child Lou frequently tagged along behind his brothers. By the time he was 13 he was competing in baseball against much older boys. Polli later recalled his first big break: “The team from Barre used to take a wagon to play its games and the kids all used to run behind the wagon all the way to Williamstown,” he recalled. “Then one day the second baseman got sick, so they asked me to play. That meant I got to ride in the wagon on the way back, and didn’t I feel like a big deal.”

Lou attended Barre’s Spaulding High School, but in those days the Spaulding baseball team lacked a coach–for away games Polli was placed in charge and given money to buy dinner for the team. Before long he transferred to a prep school with strong athletic teams, Goddard Seminary, which was located where Barre Auditorium is now. At Goddard Lou suffered a football injury that briefly put him on crutches, and his classmates branded him “Crip,” short for “Cripple.” Even though he fully recovered from the injury, he retained that nickname his entire life, and it was the name by which most people knew him.

Polli lettered in football and basketball at Goddard, but his best sport was baseball. During his senior year he attracted national attention by striking out 28 batters in a ten-inning game against Cushing Academy on June 3, 1921, for which he was featured in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. During one five-game span that year Crip struck out 105 batters. Letters from colleges poured in, but he hid them from his parents. Crip had no interest in pursuing his education–all he wanted to do was play baseball.

The summer after his graduation from Goddard Lou met Mary Catherine Smith after a baseball game at Gaysley Park in nearby Graniteville. A year later they married. The wedding was controversial by 1922 standards–it may have been the first between members of Barre’s large Scottish and Italian communities –but it lasted nearly 70 years, till death did them part.

Back in 1922 Lou and Mary moved into a small house behind Mary’s parents’ home in Lower Graniteville, only a mile or so from the world-famous Rock of Ages Quarry. For the next several years, as the couple started a family, Lou worked during the week as a rigger in the quarry. He became well-known for climbing 150 feet to the tops of the derricks used to lift the mammoth blocks of granite.

On weekends Polli pitched for the Barre-Montpelier team in the outlaw Green Mountain League in 1923-24, distinguishing himself as the top pitcher of a league that included former major-league stars like Jeff Tesreau and Ray Fisher. Then in 1925-26 he pitched on Saturdays and Sundays in the Boston Twilight League, earning up to $100 a game.

On April 15, 1920, two armed robbers shot and killed the paymaster and an armed guard for a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts, absconding with $15,000. Anarchist Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted of the murders, and the ensuing national clamor over their executions called attention to the radical political views of some Italian-Americans.

Historians have speculated that prejudice might have played a part in causing Lou Polli’s late start in organized baseball. After all, Barre was infamous for its Socialist mayor and its labor struggles in the early years of the century, resulting in the assassination of an anarchist leader. Could Polli have been branded simply by residence?

Asked to speak of this many years later, the 97-year-old Polli thought those theories were nonsense. At the time in question he had a wife and two kids to support, and he said he was able to earn more money working at the quarry and playing semi-pro ball on weekends than he ever could have earned in the minors. Moreover, he actually did play organized baseball, albeit only for a brief time in 1922 (he won three out of four decisions for Montreal of the short-lived Eastern Canada League).

In any event, Crip finally got what he considers to be his real start in organized baseball with Harrisburg of the New York-Penn League in 1927. He had been discovered the previous summer by Ben Houser, his manager with the team from Old Town, Maine, in the Boston Twilight League. Houser was also a part-time scout for the New York Yankees. Impressed by Polli’s diverse repertoire of pitches–he threw a curve, a sinker, a knuckleball and a screwball to go along with a fastball estimated at above 90 mph–Houser recommended Polli to Nashua of the Class-B New England League. Even though Lou was only 1-2 for Nashua, the Yankees signed him after the season ended.

In his first full minor-league season, Polli led the New York-Penn League in wins with 18 and strikeouts with 109 while notching a sparkling 2.25 ERA. In 1928 the Yankees promoted him to the top level of the minors with St. Paul of the American Association, where he was a mediocre 13-15 with a 3.53 ERA. In his second season with St. Paul, Polli’s 22 wins and 288 innings topped the league. Based on that performance, the Yankees invited Polli to his first big-league spring-training camp in 1930.

It was a memorable experience: “There were 26 pitchers trying out for one job,” Polli said. “It came down to me and Lefty Gomez.” A future Hall-of-Famer, Gomez was coming off an 18-11 season with San Francisco in 1929. “He was seven years younger,” Polli continued, “so you knew damn well who would get the job.” Still, Crip retained marvelous memories of his 31-day preseason barnstorming tour with the Bronx Bombers, riding the rails on The Yankee Express and playing exhibition games all over the south.

Those Yankees were arguably the greatest team in baseball history, and Polli got to know many players who wound up in the Hall of Fame. His bridge partner, for example, was none other than Bill Dickey–and his frequent opponents were Lou and Eleanor Gehrig. “I roomed with Tony Lazzeri for a time,” Polli said. “Earle Combs, too. But Lazzeri! He snored so hard that he kept me awake half the night. I’d go over and punch him in the arm to get him to stop. He did, but then he’d start up again and I’d lose more sleep.”

But the teammate Polli was asked about most frequently is, of course, Babe Ruth: “He was full of hell, that guy, but I liked him. He was always nice to me. We’d shoot pool and I played a lot of golf with him. We used to play at those Tom Thumb courses for a quarter a hole. He couldn’t putt worth a damn. I took a lot of quarters from him.”

Polli was assigned to Louisville in 1930 after just missing out on making the Yankees. That was the first summer he brought his family to live with him during the season, and daughter Margaret remembered the culture shock she experienced in Kentucky, as well as the sweltering heat of the Louisville summer and how players and their families gathered in a basement after games and passed around a bucket of ice-cold beer (despite Prohibition) to cool off.

Even though Louisville won the American Association pennant, Polli suffered through a miserable 8-13 season, including a career-worst 5.82 ERA. To make things worse, he was sued after moving out of the first house he lived in that summer and ended up having to pay rent on two houses. Then, to cap off a really horrible year, the Yankees released him.

Perhaps Polli’s release by the Yankees was fortuitous. “Our catcher, Bill Dickey, later told me that the Yankee brass held me back because they didn’t want me pitching for another big-league team,” Crip said. Now he had a chance to catch on with another organization–and he did after rebounding from his poor 1930 season with a 21-15 record for the Milwaukee Brewers in 1931.

Crip’s chance came with the St. Louis Browns. In his major-league debut on April 18, 1932, he pitched one inning of a 14-7 loss to Detroit, giving up a run on two hits and a walk. The next day he pitched again in a mop-up role as the Tigers won 8-0. After those two appearances he pitched sparingly. Remaining with St. Louis for the entire season, Polli appeared in a total of just five games, pitching only seven innings of relief.

Although the Browns were a perennial second-division club–Polli says they had about six real major leaguers and the rest should have been at Double A–they did have one star, Hall-of-Famer Goose Goslin. Polli described the Goose as a “great ball-player and a real nice, friendly man. He would talk to anyone for hours. He was great with the kids, always signing a ball and handing it back to them.” Then there was Bump Hadley, a pitcher who led the AL in walks with 171 and losses with 21: “Not too consistent a pitcher. He’d win a game or two and then lose seven, eight in a row. He said he wondered why they kept him.”

At his own request Polli returned to Milwaukee in 1933, and he and his family spent three more happy years in that baseball-crazy city. His most memorable day in a Brewer uniform came on September 7, 1935. The opposing pitcher that day was Lou Fette, a former teammate of Crip’s at St. Paul who became a 20-game winner as a Boston Braves rookie in 1937. Crip had told Fette that he would throw a no-hitter the next time he pitched against him, and that’s exactly what he did.

While traveling with the Milwaukee team, Crip sometimes roomed with Earl Webb, a Tennessee native who had hit an all-time major-league record 67 doubles for the Boston Red Sox in 1931. “He was a mountaineer from the hills,” Crip said. “He used to spend his time reading magazines of western stories and drinking whiskey. His family used to make their own.” Webb, however, was not the most unusual of Polli’s teammates; Crip claims to have played with one man who never wore shoes. “His feet were so tough that we gave him a hotfoot once and he didn’t even notice,” Polli said.

In 1936-37 Crip played for the Montreal Royals, the team for which he pitched his second no-hitter on July 19, 1937. Living in Montreal was ideal, close enough to Vermont that he could come home on off-days. Sometimes he brought a teammate with him; one visitor was Del Bissonette, the former Dodger. But like his boyhood idol, Ty Cobb, Polli could be tough to handle–and on at least one occasion his temper proved costly:

I had a pretty good year [with the Royals in 1937] and they had promised me a bonus. Then they wouldn’t pay me. So I went to the offices, which were up on the second floor, and argued with those three Frenchmen who ran the team. [One of the “Frenchmen” was Charles Trudeau, father of Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau.] I called them cheap Frenchmen, they said I’d never play for them again and they punished me by sending me to Chattanooga.

Polli spent the next five seasons in the south, bouncing from Chattanooga to Knoxville to Jacksonville. Then in 1944 the 43-year-old led the International League in ERA with a 1.84 mark for Jersey City, earning a second shot at the majors a dozen years after his first.

Used mostly in middle relief, Crip Polli pitched 36 innings in 19 games for the 1944 New York Giants, going 0-2 with a 4.54 ERA. He did rack up three saves, but that figure pale in comparison to teammate Ace Adams‘ NL-leading 13. Crip claims that Adams was the “pet” of player-manager Mel Ott, a Hall-of-Fame outfielder who was not much of a manager–at least not according to Crip.

Ott was so nervous that his spikes chewed up the ground wherever he stood. On one occasion he called in Polli with the bases loaded and nobody out without giving him a chance to warm up. Crip walked in a run, then struck out the side to end the inning–only to be bawled out by Ott for walking in the run. Ironically, the manager also may have cost Crip his best chance at a win that season. It was on May 27, in a game against the Cardinals, the eventual World Champions that year. Ott made a rare appearance at third base and booted a grounder hit by Pepper Martin. The error led to three unearned runs, turning a lead into a defeat charged to Polli.

Crip returned to Jersey City of the International League in 1945. There he ended his long career–with a flourish in a minor key. Polli’s oldest daughter, Mary, had been suffering for two years with tuberculosis, a dark cloud hanging over the family. Before his scheduled last start of the 1945 season, on September 3, the veteran pitcher learned the bad news: Mary’s condition had been diagnosed as terminal.

Many men would have begged off that day, especially as the opponents were the fabled Newark Bears, a Yankee farm club considered by many minor-league historians as one of the most powerful minor-league clubs in history. These Bears were on a rampage, with a 14-game win streak.

Lou Polli, part of his mind numbed with the awful news of his daughter’s fate, asked for the ball. Then he went out and pitched the game of his life. Though 44 years old and a battle-scarred veteran of 22 professional campaigns, Crip set down the Bears inning after inning–without a hit. When it was over he had his third minor-league no-hitter, having faced just 30 batters, three above the minimum. His teammates, perhaps sensing the emotion-laden situation, responded explosively, mauling the Newark club 11-0. The Bears’ 14-game victory streak was over.

Crip’s heroic performance made no difference to the inexorable march of his daughter’s fate. Mary Polli died on November 5, 1945, at the sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York, where Christy Mathewson had died two decades earlier.

Polli never pitched another game in professional baseball.

Following his daughter Mary’s death, Lou Polli went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to manage a semi-pro team for the summer of 1946, then returned to Graniteville in 1947 and became the first constable for Barre Town, Vermont, serving until 1970. Over the years he also became Town Agent and Collector of Taxes, and daughter Margaret remembers him staying up late at night computing tax bills in his head–he never used an adding machine. Polli remained in those offices until his retirement at age 80 in 1981, but even in “retirement” he went back to work at a friend’s service station on Washington Street.

After this return to Graniteville Polli managed the Lower Graniteville baseball team for several seasons until about 1950, mostly playing shortstop but occasionally pitching. “Even at that point in his career he was by far the best pitcher I ever saw,” said Russell Ross, one of his teammates. Polli then became involved in the area’s youth baseball programs. One of his favorite stories involved a group of Graniteville Little Leaguers that he managed:

I instructed one youngster, who was seated on the bench, to follow another boy in the batting order. The kid who was up hit a home run, and when he started running around the bases, the second kid trotted behind him. When they got back to the bench I asked the second kid, “What were you doing?” And he said, “You told me to follow him, so I did.” I nearly cracked up over that one, but I managed to hold back my laughter.

Crip excelled at almost everything he attempted, and a trophy-filled room at his house in Graniteville attested his prowess at bowling, golf, billiards and bridge (he was considered one of the best bridge players in Vermont). He also enjoyed fishing at his daughter’s camp on Harvey’s Lake in West Barnet.

Polli still lived in the same old house in Graniteville until 1996, when he moved in with his daughter Margaret in Barre. He was doing well until November 1997, when he slipped in the shower and fractured a hip. He spent his recuperation at Wood-ridge Nursing Home, which is affiliated with Central Vermont Hospital, reading the Burlington Free Press and the Montpelier Times-Argus each day, turning first to the sports pages to find out how his beloved Yankees did.

On December 19, 2000, Crip Polli died at the age of 99. At the time of his death, he was the oldest living ex-major league player.

Sources

A version of this biography originally appeared in Green Mountain Boys of Summer: Vermonters in the Major Leagues 1882-1993, edited by Tom Simon (New England Press, 2000).

In researching this article, the author made use of the subject’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, the Tom Shea Collection, the archives at the University of Vermont, and several local newspapers.