Antonelli was born on July 15, 1915 in Memphis, Tennessee, to John Antonelli, Sr. and Vivian (Solari) Antonelli. John Sr. ran the Faust Cafe and was a New York native whose parents had emigrated from Italy. Vivian was a Memphis native and daughter of a local grocer. John and Vivian subsequently had two daughters, Vivian, who died in infancy, and Genevieve, who went on to become a physical-education teacher.2

John Jr. was a right-handed batter who stood around 5 feet 10 inches and weighed 165 pounds. His talent was evident from an early age. As a pitcher and roving fielder at the Catholic High School in Memphis, he helped lead his team to four city titles in five years. During the summers he played American Legion ball, where his pitching talent was similarly instrumental in his teams’ successes in local and regional tournaments.3 After completing high school in 1934, Antonelli got his first taste of the life of a baseball vagabond in semipro ball in Louisiana.4 Shortly into his tenure, he injured his pitching arm. “I was really something,” Antonelli later recalled. “I was a pitcher and I tore a nerve in my arm. So I became an infielder-outfielder.”5

He returned to Memphis and in 1935 and signed with the local Chicks of the Southern Association when their third baseman went down with an injury.6 Asked by a reporter if he had gotten a bonus, Antonelli replied, “I don’t think anybody had ever heard of anything like that. Maybe I got a baseball.”7 Again, though, his tenure was short; after three games at Memphis he was released when the injured player returned; he managed only two hits in 11 at-bats. From there he found his way to Lexington (Tennessee) of the Kitty League, where he was asked to play shortstop as well as pilot the team — at the age of 19. Antonelli proved he was up to the task of managing older players, guiding his team to a first-half title while hitting .325 and playing nearly every position.8 The team was known in the press as “Antonelli’s Giants” (despite having no affiliation with the National League Giants.)9 The team’s second half was not as successful, ending with a 19-27 record for a last-place finish.

Antonelli returned to Lexington the following season but handed over the managerial reins to Rip Fanning. In July he was batting .369 and leading the voting for the league’s all-star team, when he was injured in an outfield collision with a teammate.10 Meanwhile, Fanning was having a rough go of it, with the team finishing fourth in the first half. Fanning was let go, and Antonelli replaced him upon returning from his injury.11 He piloted the club to a second-place finish in the second half, missing the title by two games. He also maintained his hitting prowess, finishing the year with a .363 average.

Antonelli’s performance sparked the interest of the St. Louis Cardinals, who bought his contract in 1937 to serve as player-manager of Union City, the Cardinals’ Kitty League entry.12 Antonelli played in 109 games, batting .298 and earning his second straight postseason all-star selection. He also led the club to a league-best 73-46 record. The next spring he was training with Union City alongside the Houston club, a Cardinals A1 affiliate. His play there caught the eye of Houston’s management, who worked out a deal to bring him on as a utility infielder in exchange for pitcher Ed Hurley and outfielder Walter Schuerbaum.13 Houston already had a player-manager, so John would have to temporarily put his managerial aspirations aside. He played in Houston for four seasons, putting up generally solid but unspectacular offensive numbers. He led the league in double plays in 1939 and his versatility made him popular with the fans, who rewarded him with two all-star selections plus one near-miss.

It was during his time in Houston that Antonelli married Amelia Gandi. They had a lot in common; Amelia was also a Memphis native and the child of Italian immigrants, including a father who ran a restaurant. Together they started a family, which included daughters Barbara and Joan. Their timing was fortuitous. With war already under way in Europe, the United States started a peacetime draft in 1940. However, men with families to support were largely exempt from induction. The draft was expanded after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the deferments for men supporting families remained for much of the war. With the pool of available ballplayers shrinking due to both the draft and voluntary enlistments, John’s value as a ballplayer went up. Not only was there less competition for each roster spot, but also any team signing him could rest assured that he wouldn’t be called away in the middle of the season for military duty.14

Antonelli’s draft status proved to be an advantage in early 1942, when St. Louis’s Double-A club in Columbus traded Morris “Buck” Jones, a single, draft-eligible outfielder, to Houston for Antonelli and first baseman Jack Angle, who was also married.15 John mainly played second and third base at Columbus, and in both 1942 and 1943 he played well enough to keep his job but not well enough to earn a promotion. In 1944, however, he raised his batting average and slugging percentage, earning himself an All-Star selection and a September call-up to St. Louis, where he saw limited playing time. He did not make the World Series roster.

Antonelli stuck with the Cards, making the team in the spring of 1945, but saw action only twice in the season’s first month. Then in May, St. Louis sent Antonelli and outfielder Glenn Crawford to the Philadelphia Phillies for outfielder Buster Adams. It was quite a change, moving from defending World Series champs to perennial cellar dwellers. The Phillies were so bad that in the spring of 1945 three minor leaguers refused to report when Philadelphia bought their contracts.16 For John, though, the Phillies offered regular playing time (125 games over five months), something he was unable to get in St. Louis. His main contributions were strong defense and versatility — he played every infield position. His best performance at the plate came on June 17. Playing both ends of a doubleheader in New York that day, Antonelli punched out six singles in ten at-bats and drove in three runs.

Antonelli joined the Phillies for spring training in Florida in 1946. However, camp was swelled with players returning from the war. With so many players to evaluate, Antonelli got little playing time. When the team broke camp to start the season, it became clear that the there was no place for him on the major-league roster. However, Bucky Harris, who managed the Phillies in 1943, was then the general manager of the International League club in Buffalo, and he was looking for a hard-hitting outfielder and an infielder. So the Phillies sold Antonelli and outfielder Coaker Triplett to Harris’s club in a five-figure cash deal.17

Antonelli’s major-league tenure — eight games in one season and 127 in another — was highly unusual. In fact, since 1900, only one other player has played at least 125 games in a season and recorded so few other appearances: Jim Doyle, who played seven games for Cincinnati in 1910 and 130 for the Cubs in 1911. Hughie Miller, who made it into a single game with the Phillies in 1911 and then 132 games with the 1914 St. Louis Terriers of the Federal League and another seven games with the same team in 1915, had a similar career profile, but no one else is really comparable.18

In Buffalo in 1946, Antonelli saw less playing time than in any other year in his career to that point. Three games into the next season, he was sent to Baltimore, where his playing time and production rebounded. That fall, Antonelli managed the US team in an Inter-American tournament at Caracas, Venezuela.19 He was moved to Double-A Oklahoma City in early 1948, but rather than return to the Texas League, he bought out his contract to return to his hometown Memphis Chicks (now affiliated with the Chicago White Sox.20 On July 9 of that year, Antonelli contributed a single and triple as the Chicks started a game against Nashville with nine straight hits. He ended the year batting. 329 with 32 doubles and 78 RBIs. The next season, though, his production again declined, due in part to injuries, and in November 1949 he was named player-manager of Hot Springs in the Class C Cotton States League. Unlike his first stint as player-manager, this time the 34-year-old Antonelli was the elder statesman, piloting a group of 20-somethings, none older than 26. He made it into only 20 games as a player, but managed his team to a 77-60 record and a postseason title.

As 1951 dawned, Antonelli was offered a chance to move up the ranks as a manager. At the same time, he was offered a full-time sales position with a wholesale liquor distributor. With a young family, John made the choice many players have made before and since, and chose the year-round job in his hometown. He told a reporter at the time: “It’s tough traveling in the lower minors. … I’ve lived more than six months away from home, excepting my two years with the Chicks.”21 Although he kept his hand in with some scouting for the White Sox and conversations with former teammates, Antonelli was largely out of baseball.

While most ballplayers’ stories end there, Antonelli still had a few chapters left to write. The Chicks folded in 1960, but baseball returned in 1968 when the New York Mets moved a Double-A team from Florida to become the Memphis Blues. Will Carruthers, Memphis’s general manager and Antonelli’s high-school baseball coach, was not happy with the team’s performance during that first season. As part of his effort to bring in new blood, he asked Antonelli to come back as a coach. John agreed, starting out coaching first base at home games.22 After his first game, Antonelli said, “It was the first time I had been in a baseball uniform in 19 years. Everything felt kind of funny. But after I got on the field, everything began to fall into place.”23 In the middle of the season, the team’s manager was fired and his replacement was unable to join the club immediately. John managed the Blues during this gap, leading them to a 6-2 record. Later that season his former Catholic High teammates and friends held a commemorative day in his honor prior to a game.

After the end of that 1969 season, the Mets approached John about returning to full-time managerial duties. His daughters had grown up and struck out on their own. But that was not the only factor in his decision. “Working with those kids as a coach really did it,” he told a reporter. “I really love to work with the young ball players.”24 When the Mets formally offered him the Blues’ managerial job for 1970, he accepted.

Antonelli managed in Memphis for three seasons and demonstrated that he still had the ability to get the best from his players, finishing with winning records in two of those seasons. As a manager he was known for his good rapport with his players. In one often-told anecdote, when the Mets called up outfielder Dave Schneck from Memphis, John packed Schneck’s bags and had them ready to go before he delivered the good news back at the team hotel.25 He was also community-minded, initiating the practice of soliciting donations to charity for each of the team’s victories. Even though Antonelli was generally soft-spoken, during games he was not afraid to put on a little show for the fans. “When he’d get to battling an umpire really good, we’d move the ball bag over so he could do his thing,” one of his former batboys told a reporter. “When he’d get thrown out, he’d come over and grab that bag and sling baseballs all over the field.”26

The Mets took notice of Antonelli’s skills. In 1971 they invited him to become an instructor in the Florida Instructional League. In November 1972 Hank Bauer, who had managed the Mets team at Triple-A Tidewater, resigned and the Mets promoted Antonelli to replace him. While his first season resulted in the now-familiar winning record, the 1974 Tides fell to a 57-82 mark. The next year the Mets moved Antonelli back to Double-A and their team in Jackson, Mississippi. There he led his charges to two nearly identical records (65-65 in 1975 and 69-66 in 1976). Then following the 1976 campaign, the Mets hired Bob Wellman, a successful manager from the Phillies system, to take over at Jackson. “I hate to leave Jackson,” John said at the time, “but at my age the day-to-day grind of managing was getting a little tough.”27 Antonelli was kept on as an infield instructor, a job he held until his health began to fail in 1989. He also served as a scout and minor-league coach during that period, with stops in Tidewater, Lynchburg, Little Falls, Columbia, and Kingsport. Soon after the 1990 season began, John died at his Memphis home.28

When he returned to baseball full time in 1970, Antonelli told a reporter, “Sure, I’d like to be a big-league manager. I don’t think I’m too old. I’ve got a lot of good years and this is my career now. I’d like to go all the way to the top.”29 John didn’t make it back to the majors, but plenty of players whose careers he helped would probably consider him tops.

Notes

1 John L. Antonelli the infielder is not to be confused with the pitcher Johnny A. Antonelli, who played more than a decade in the major leagues. Johnny’s biography is part of SABR’s BioProject: sabr.org/bioproj/person/e1774181.

2 Family information is generally based on US Census returns and Memphis City Directories.

3 David Bloom, “A Johnny Antonelli Day and a Lot of Days Past.” Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 12, 1969; Will Carruthers, “Johnny Antonelli Going Up Slowly — But Surely,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, February 12, 1940; Will Carruthers, “Antonelli Hangs Up Baseball Togs,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, February 19, 1951.

4 Will Carruthers, “ ‘Jinx’ Again Lays Heavy Hand on John Antonelli,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, July 27, 1936.

5 Woodrow Paige, Jr., “Antonelli Upped Average Without Swinging a Bat,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, February 15, 1970.

6 Carruthers (1936).

7 Bloom.

8 Carruthers (1936).

9 Richard Worth, Baseball Team Names: A Worldwide Dictionary, 1869-2011 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co, 2013), 161.

10 Carruthers (1936).

11 The Sporting News, August 20, 1936, 12.

12 Richard S. Cox, “Antonelli, Veteran Pilot at 22, New Manager at Union City,” The Sporting News, April 22, 1937, 6.

13 The Sporting News, April 7, 1938, 8.

14 For further discussion of draft deferments and professional baseball during the World War II era, see David Finoli, For the Good of the Country: World War II Baseball in the Major and Minor Leagues (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2002).

15 Bob Hooey, “Birds Give Up Bachelor for Two Married Men,” The Sporting News, February 26, 1942, 2.

16 Stan Baumgartner, “Mother Ailing, Caulfield Stays With Oakland,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 11, 1945. See also James D. Szalontai, Teenager on First, Geezer at Bat, 4-F on Deck: Major League Baseball in 1945 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2009) for a discussion of the state of the major leagues in 1945.

17 Art Morrow, “Phillies Sell Two, Show Direction of Baseball Winds,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 19, 1946; Cy Kritzer, “Bisons Name Kretlow to Pitch Int, Opener in His 1st Pro Start,” Buffalo Evening News April 17, 1946; Cy Kritzer, “Baseball Bisons Buy Triplett and Antonelli From Phillies,” Buffalo Evening News, April 18, 1946.

18 Author’s analysis of major-league appearance statistics since 1900.

19 “Revolution Greets U.S. Team,” The Sporting News, October 1, 1947, 37.

20 “Caught on the Fly,” The Sporting News, March 10, 1948, 28.

21 Carruthers (1951).

22 Bobby Hall, “Blues Spice the Home Dish — John Antonelli Will Coach,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, March 15, 1969, 21.

23 Bill E. Burk, “New Memphis Manager Ends Self-Exile,” The Sporting News, February 7, 1970, 46.

24 Paige.

25 Murray Chass, “Schneck’s Met Debut Like a Movie,” New York Times, July 16, 1972, S2.

26 Bobby Hall, “Friends Remember Antonelli’s Antics,” Commercial Appeal, April 20, 1990.

27 “New Job For Antonelli,” The Sporting News, October 30, 1976, 29.

28 Obituary, The Sporting News, June 4, 1990, 62.

29 Paige.

“Inside, I had the same competitive fire that Michael Jordan, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio had,” Basinski once told an interviewer. “I just didn’t look the part, and people didn’t like it.”2

But they loved the view when Eddie Basinski played baseball. Although he didn’t get much of a shot at the major leagues – he played in 203 games with the Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates in 1944-45 and part of 1947 – he was a minor-league legend good enough to make the Pacific Coast League Hall of Fame, an accolade he earned mainly because of his slick fielding, which was the result of his remarkably quick reflexes.

Apart from Basinski’s scholarly, if not dweebish, appearance, the other thing that stamped him as a baseball odd duck was that he came to the game as a trained – starting at age 5 – classical violinist who occupied a chair in the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra, earning him the nickname “The Fiddler.” As a college freshman, Basinski played in the last chair. By his junior year, he had challenged and outplayed 40 other violinists to become a concertmaster.

For all of his natural musical talent (he was also a near virtuoso on the piano), Basinski didn’t have much when it came to baseball. But he practiced baseball fundamentals as religiously as he practiced the violin, which was the main reason he ultimately carved out a 16-year professional career, most of it with the Portland Beavers, some of it with the Seattle Rainiers.

Edwin Frank Basinski was born on November 4, 1922, to Walter and Sophie Basinski, part of a large working-class Polish family in Buffalo, New York. He had two older brothers and four younger sisters, according to the 1940 US Census. His father, Walter, a former Navy man who plied his trade as a machinist, ran his house like a military encampment. At age 4, Basinski had scarlet fever, which caused his terrible eyesight – 20-800, according to Basinski.3

Walter believed that if Eddie was going to make anything of himself in life he needed an honest trade. Further, he considered baseball a frivolous waste of time that had no place in his son’s development. Eddie thought otherwise, but had to sneak out of the house just to play and risked a whipping if his father found out.

Through considerable cajoling, Basinski ultimately received his father’s permission to try out for his high-school baseball team, but failed to earn a spot because the school’s coach, Pop Yerke, couldn’t conceive of a skinny, bespectacled kid like Eddie playing ball.

So Basinski took to the Buffalo sandlots, playing and practicing with a small core of players that included future Hall of Famer Warren Spahn, one of Basinski’s closest childhood friends.

“The city park was next to the street I lived on,” Basinski told author Craig Allen Cleve, who wrote Hardball on the Home Front: Major League Replacement Players of World War II. “There were five aspiring baseball hopefuls who practiced every day there. We rotated our practices so that each player got 30 swings of batting practice. We were able to complete the rotation three times before it got dark.”4

If no one else showed at the park, Basinski still had his own training routine. He practiced baserunning and sliding and even stood a bat on end in front of the backstop, and then went into the outfield to practice making throws at the plate. “I had something going for me in baseball,” Basinski told Cleve. “I was quick on my feet. I could leap. I had long arms. I thought this is it for me. There isn’t any other way. For me, it was trying to find some way to gain some sort of recognition, so I wasn’t just one of those Polish punks over there from Kaiser town in Buffalo. None of us were going anywhere. Sports was the only avenue I had at that time.”5

Basinski didn’t play baseball at the University of Buffalo, either, because the school, although it had an excellent engineering program, had no baseball team. So Basinski lettered in tennis and cross-country and continued to practice baseball, hoping to play one day in one of Buffalo’s semipro AA leagues. In 1943 Basinski earned a degree in mechanical engineering and went to work for the Curtiss-Wright Company in Buffalo, one of the country’s leading aircraft manufacturers and a primary producer of US warplanes, including the P-40 Warhawk and the C-46 cargo plane.

Also in 1943, the 6-foot-1, 175-pound Basinski finally broke into Buffalo’s AA league, playing shortstop and batting cleanup, and people began to take notice of his superb fielding and timely hitting. Dick Fisher, who owned a Buffalo sporting-goods store and bird-dogged the city’s sandlots for major-league teams, lobbied on Basinski’s behalf. At the end of 1943, an all-star team composed of Buffalo’s best AA players, Basinski included, assembled to play similar teams in New York and Pennsylvania. One such outfit from Oil City, Pennsylvania, boasted a 19-game winning streak. Fisher persuaded Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey to send a scout to the Buffalo-Oil City game.

Buffalo hammered Oil City, 9-1, with Basinski delivering a two-run triple and pair of three-run homers, accounting for eight of his team’s nine runs. A perfect performance under perfect circumstances resulted in the Dodgers signing Basinski to a contract that included a $5,000 signing bonus. Basinski joined the Dodgers for two weeks in early 1944 so that the club could take a look at him and figure out at which minor-league level he ought to play. At the end of the two weeks, with the Dodgers at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, manager Leo Durocher called on Basinski to bat eighth and play second base. The date was May 20, 1944. Basinski had not played baseball in high school, college or the minor leagues, and had only one limited season in a Buffalo semipro league.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not called his jump from semipro ball to the majors “a 10 million to one shot.”6 In his second time up, Basinski looked at Reds left-hander Bob Katz’s first pitch and drilled the second one off the wall in left for a triple. After he nailed a runner at first by ten feet and handled seven chances, Durocher began calling him “Bazooka.”7

By the first of June, Basinski was hitting better than .300 and making both Durocher and Rickey look like the smartest men in the history of baseball. Whenever Basinski made a key play in the infield, announcer Red Barber would enthuse, “The violin is playing sweetly today!”

Basinski’s teammates ribbed him mercilessly about playing the violin, one reason that Basinski never brought his prized violin to the Dodgers’ Ebbets Field clubhouse. In fact, Durocher grew skeptical that he could actually play. So Basinski made Durocher a bet: He would play the violin in front of Leo and anybody else Leo wanted. If they like what they heard, Leo would pay Basinski $1,000. Durocher thought that over and accepted.

A few weeks later, Basinski showed up in the clubhouse and played selections from Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Victor Herbert. He also threw in a Strauss waltz. “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch. The kid can play,” marveled Durocher. “A lot of people think musicians are pantywaists,” Basinski said. “That’s a bunch of nonsense.”8

Unfortunately for Basinski, he couldn’t sustain his hot hitting and finished the season at Double-A Montreal, where he hit .244. He played 108 games for the Dodgers in 1945, hitting .262 as the team’s most frequently used shortstop (star Pee Wee Reese was serving in the military). Although there was no All-Star Game that season due to the war, the Associated Press named two unofficial teams after polling managers, and selected Basinski and the Cardinals’ Marty Marion as the two NL shortstops.

With Reese back on board in 1946, Basinski spent the year with St. Paul of the American Association, where he hit .252 in full-time play. Then Basinski went to Pittsburgh in a December 5, 1946, trade for pitcher Al Gerheauser. After Basinski hit only .199 in 56 games for the 1947 Pirates, his major-league career came to an end and his PCL career began at age 24 when the New York Yankees, who had acquired him from the Pirates, sent him to the Portland Beavers.

“When I got out here (Pacific Northwest) I was floored by the beauty,” Basinski told The Oregonian. “And the people were just great. Buffalo neighborhoods were divided among ethnic groups, and gangs guarded their turf. Somebody who didn’t belong there was beaten up. Back there you’d introduce yourself and … they’d immediately categorize you. That didn’t happen in Portland. It finally dawned on me, and I said, ‘Hey, this is America!’”9

The Yankees wanted Basinski after the 1947 season, but he instead arranged to stay in Portland. “I knew there was an awful lot of politics up there,” he recalled. “When I turned the Yankees down, it was probably a terrible mistake. They won a lot of pennants after that. I would have been part of those great teams and made all that money. A lot of players who are just average players are highlighted because they won pennants.”10

In Portland, Basinski became a second baseman, and spent just over ten seasons with the Beavers, hitting between .240 and .278 while annually ranking among the top defensive players in the league. In 1950 Basinski played in every inning of the 202-game Pacific Coast League schedule. He played in 557 consecutive games at one point. “I would have broken Hugh Luby’s consecutive-game streak at second base – 886 games – had not Walt Dropo deliberately cut me down on a tag at second base. He was out by thirty feet – embarrassed, I guess – and he cut me down with a three-inch gash on my left shin.”11

In 1950 the Oregonian newspaper named him the club’s most valuable player. He became a fan favorite – in 1955, in a newspaper poll to name Portland’s all-time team, Basinski got more votes than anybody else. That probably figured, given that Basinski often trotted out his violin and performed home-plate recitals on Sundays between games of doubleheaders. “One time I got a tremendous ovation, and had a good doubleheader, too,” he said.12

Basinski figured that he would end his career with the Beavers. But on April 25, 1957, the Beavers waived the 34-year-old in a cost-cutting move, leaving him available for any team willing to pay the waiver price. The Rainiers acted swiftly, largely to add to their infield depth and also because of Basinski’s ability as a clutch hitter. When Basinski left Portland, he had played in 557 consecutive games and couldn’t understand his release. “I was shocked when Portland waivered me out,” Basinski told The Oregonian. “I’ll never understand why the club let me go. I had the second-best spring training of my life.”13

Basinski’s most notable series for the Rainiers came when they faced the Beavers for the first time in an early-season seven-game series. Basinski went 7-for-14, while missing four of the seven contests with an eye injury. After appearing in seven games for the Beavers, Basinski played in 129 games for the 1957 Rainiers, who went 87-80 under Lefty O’Doul, in his last year of managing. He hit .271 with a .712 OPS and often helped rookie Maury Wills with infield fundamentals. “I had more fun and enjoyed baseball more with Lefty O’Doul. I had admired him all the years playing against him [O’Doul had managed several PCL teams during Basinski’s career], and he was very complimentary to me. He used to say, ‘That god-damn Basinski. If it wasn’t for him, we would have won a lot more games.’ His hit-and-run sign for me was playing the violin left-handed in the third-base coach’s line.”14

Basinski posted a good year for Seattle in 1958 when he hit .301 with 47 RBIs (Basinski hit the first double of the season, winning 13 car washes from a Rainiers sponsor), but the Rainiers, despite 19-year-old sensation Vada Pinson hitting .343 in 124 games, flailed under manager Connie Ryan, finishing 68-86, at one point losing 14 consecutive games, just three shy of Sacramento’s 1925 league record of 17.

Despite Basinski’s numbers, the Rainiers figured that he didn’t have much left and sold him to Vancouver. In fact, he didn’t have much left. Basinski played in just 43 games and hit .138 for the 1959 Mounties. “He was unathletic looking,” recalled Mounties radio announcer Jim Robson, “but the kind of guy you want on your team. He undoubtedly helped the young infielders develop.”15 One of those infielders was Brooks Robinson.

During his PCL career, Basinski compiled 1,544 hits, 109 homers, and 634 RBIs, all while batting .260. He led the PCL in games played in 1950 and in at-bats in 1951.

After his career ended, Basinski settled in Oregon with his wife and two sons. He became an accounts manager for Consolidated Freightways in Portland, where he worked for 31 years, retiring in 1991. He took up bowling and golf in retirement. He had the honor of being inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 1987, the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame in 1996, and the Pacific Coast League Hall of Fame in 2006. In 1984, he was named to the all-time PCL All-Star team. In 2014 the 91-year-old Basinski resided in Milwaukie, Oregon, a suburb of Portland.

“I don’t look like a big strong guy, but I was an iron man with Portland. My looks were always against my ability. I looked like a damn doctor or a preacher, and the glasses didn’t help. But man, I had the fire, and I wanted to be a perfectionist.”

“I settled in Portland, married there, had a couple of boys. I think that had a lot to do with turning down the Yankees. I’m sure it was a mistake as far as money, but I had the great love and devotion of Portland all those years.”16 Though he would occasionally be asked to play his violin for a baseball audience, he did so reluctantly. “I’m a perfectionist,” he admitted, “and if I can’t play well then I prefer not to do it.”17

This biography appeared in “Van Lingle Mungo: The Man, The Song, The Players” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin. A version of this article, written by Dave Eskenazi with help from Steve Rudman, first appeared at sportspressnw.com on March 5, 2013. Mark Armour expanded Dave’s article for the book.

Notes

August Samuel Bergamo was born on Valentine’s Day 1917 in Detroit. His parents, Joseph and Jennie (Dasaro) Bergamo, were both born in Italy and came to America at the turn of the 20th century. Like many of the millions of unskilled immigrants who poured into urban areas all over the rapidly developing country, Joseph found employment in construction and listed his job as “cement finisher” in a city directory at the time. The Bergamos lived in the Elmwood Park neighborhood, just east of the city center in Detroit, and raised at least six children born in the US.

By all accounts, Augie was an athletic youngster whose first introduction to baseball came on the sandlots that dotted his neighborhood. He attended Eastern High School (now named Martin Luther King High School), where he played basketball, earning honorable mention in the Detroit News during his senior year in1936. He was also a champion table-tennis player. After graduation, Bergamo took a job at a local roller-bearing company and played semipro baseball on the weekends. Standing just 5-feet-9 and weighing only 165 pounds, the left-handed Bergamo established a reputation as a clever pitcher. He later developed arm problems and switched to the outfield.

Bergamo seemed destined to spend his life in a factory, but he had an understanding boss, Norman Phillips, who recognized his passion for baseball. Phillips encouraged Bergamo to attend a tryout camp the St. Louis Cardinals conducted in Flint, about 70 miles north of Detroit. “There were about 800 kids there,” said Bergamo. “I was put under contract, and hustled to another elimination tryout camp in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.”1

The 21-year-old Bergamo began his professional career with the Paducah (Kentucky) Indians of the Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee (Kitty) League, one of the 13 Class D affiliates among the Cardinals’ 27 farm teams. The speedy left-hander batted a league-best .355 to earn a promotion to the Columbus (Georgia) Red Birds of the Class B South Atlantic (Sally) League in 1939. Described as a “wiry little star,” Bergamo batted .345 and led the circuit with 190 hits and 18 triples.2

After jumping two classes, Bergamo spent the next four seasons (1940-1943) with two of the Cardinals’ three top minor-league teams, the Rochester Red Wings of the International League and the Columbus (Ohio) Red Birds of the American Association. In his a season and a half with Rochester, Bergamo played for four different managers, including his future big-league skipper, Billy Southworth. In 1940 he was lauded for his “brilliant” defensive work in the outfield (he could play all three positions), and batted a robust .286 against more seasoned competition, many of whom had big-league experience.3 He smashed a home run on September 13 to help the Red Wings clinch the regular-season title.

In mid-1941, Bergamo was transferred to Columbus, where he was platooned in 1941 and 1942. Manager Burt Shotton piloted the Red Birds, arguably the most stacked team in the entire minor leagues, to the league title in 1941 and then to the Junior World Series title over the Montreal Royals of the IL. The following season, Bergamo improved his average from .266 to .303 while playing for manager Eddie Dyer. After a third-place regular-season finish, the Red Birds were on the brink of elimination in Game Seven of their first-round playoff series against Kansas City. In the bottom of the 13th inning of a game tied 3-3, Bergamo singled off the Blues’ ace, 21-game winner Butch Wensloff, to score Jim Gleeson for a dramatic, walk-off series-clinching upset.4 Columbus then beat the Toledo Mud Hens for the league championship and the IL’s Syracuse Chiefs to capture another Junior World Series title.

Bergamo finally cracked the starting lineup in 1943. The Red Birds had their third manager in three years, but the results were the same. They captured the league title (despite a third-place finish) and then beat the Chiefs again for their third consecutive Junior World Series title. Bergamo proved to be an effective slap hitter who had a knack for finding the outfield gaps. He batted. 324 (fifth best in the AA) and tied for the league lead with 35 doubles. He continued to prove his patience and discerning eye at the plate by drawing a league-best 109 bases on balls while striking out just 41 times in a career-high 626 plate appearances.

Major-league teams saw their rosters depleted in 1943 as players enlisted or were drafted en masse for the war effort at home and abroad. With their deep farm system, the Cardinals were in a perfect position to adjust to the new reality. In October 1943 they purchased Bergamo’s contract and added him to their 40-man roster. Described as an “outfield star” by the Associated Press,5 Bergamo was classified as 4-F (medically unfit to serve) and was viewed as an excellent replacement for outfielder Harry Walker, who was soon to be serving Uncle Sam.6

Bergamo reported to Cardinals spring training, held in Cairo, Illinois, due to wartime travel restrictions. The two-time reigning NL champions had won 106 and 105 games respectively in 1942 and 1943, and were widely considered the favorites again in 1944. An Associated Press report predicted that Bergamo would make an “emphatic bid for a regular playing berth” as camp opened.7 Notwithstanding the Cardinals’ veteran roster, Bergamo distinguished himself with his hustle and timely hitting, prompting The Sporting News to christen him the “outstanding rookie in camp.”8

Bergamo’s six-year wait to play in a big-league game ended on April 25 when he pinch-hit against the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field. He picked up his first hit in his next pinch-hit appearance, on May 4 against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field, connecting for a single off Max Butcher. Given the Cardinals’ depth in the outfield (Stan Musial, Johnny Hopp, and Danny Litwhiler), Bergamo played sparingly prior to the All-Star break, but batted a robust .324 (11-for-34) as a pinch-hitter and late-inning defensive replacement at all three outfield positions. “I was amazed by the power displayed when I saw him hit his first ball here,” said manager Southworth. “It’s all in his shoulders. Augie won’t be a home-run hitter, but he’ll hit plenty of line drives off the fences.”9

Bergamo proved his mettle over a nine-game span in late July when he effectively replaced an injured Litwhiler in left field. He pounded out 12 hits in 35 at-bats, scored nine times, whacked his only two home runs of the season, and drove in eight runs. His success led to 13 more starts in August (11 in left field and two in right). Despite a shaky end to the regular season (14-19), St. Louis cruised to its third consecutive pennant with a 105-49 record. Bergamo wielded a Rogers Hornsby model, 33-ounce Louisville Slugger bat and finished the season with an impressive .286 batting average (55-for-192). He “would probably have won a regular job in most outfields,” wrote The Sporting News, which named him to its All-Rookie team, joining Andy Pafko and 40-year-old Chuck Hostetler in the outfield.10

The “Trolley World Series” of 1944 pitted the St. Louis Cardinals against the St. Louis Browns with all games played at Sportsman’s Park, which both teams called home (but was owned by the Browns). In Game One, Bergamo walked in the bottom of the seventh inning pinch-hitting for second baseman Emil Verban, and then replaced Litwhiler in left field to start the eighth inning. With the Cardinals down 2-0 with no outs in the ninth inning, Bergamo advanced Marty Marion from second to third on a groundout. Marion later scored the Redbirds’ only run in the team’s surprising 2-1 loss. Bergamo started Game Two in left at batted leadoff. Though he went 0-for-5 in the Cardinals’ dramatic 11-inning, 3-2 victory, his sharp grounder to second base in the third inning drove in Verban and accounted for the team’s first run. His last appearance in the Series occurred when he drew a walk pinch-hitting for pitcher Freddy Schmidt in Game Three. In an unexpectedly competitive World Series, the Cardinals won the last three games to capture their second title in three years.

With the loss of Stan Musial to the military, Bergamo was the Opening Day starter in right field in 1945 and batted leadoff. He started 20 of the team’s first 21 games until he injured a tendon sliding into third base against the Boston Braves on May 16. The Cardinals reconfigured their outfield in his absence, eventually moving Hopp to right field. Relegated to the role of backup for the remainder of the season, Bergamo served as a valuable replacement when Hopp went down with an injury, and also made seven starts in left field and even one at first base. Bergamo enjoyed one of the most productive doubleheaders in Cardinals history on July 4 facing the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. In the first game, he went 3-for 5 with a triple, scored twice, and drove in one run in the Cardinals’ 8-4 victory. He supplied the fireworks in the nightcap by banging out five hits in six at-bats, scoring four times and driving in eight runs. “[Bergamo’s] display of pyrotechnics left a trace of destruction,” wrote The Sporting News.11 He belted two home runs, including his only grand slam, in that 19-2 thrashing of the Giants. Bergamo finished the season with a .316 batting average (96-for-304), 44 RBIs, and 43 walks. His .401 on-base percentage was the best on the club for players with at least 150 at-bats. The Cardinals won 95 games but finished runner-up to the pennant-winning Chicago Cubs.

Immediately after the season, the press and Cardinal fans speculated about what the Cardinals would do with their deep outfield with the expected return of Musial and Walker for the 1946 season. Bergamo was placed on waivers, but not one of the 16 big-league teams placed a claim. “Frankly I was surprised that no one put in a bid for Bergamo,” said Cardinals owner and president Sam Breadon. “With our crack outfielders returning, we had no room for Augie.”12 Upon news that he had been assigned to Columbus, Bergamo threatened to quit baseball, claiming he was unjustly demoted.13

Just 29 years old, Bergamo was not yet ready to give up on another shot at making the big leagues. He batted .302 and was named to the American Association all-star team for the Red Birds in 1946, but also battled nagging shoulder and leg injuries that ultimately affected his play in subsequent seasons. In the following three campaigns (1947-1949), Bergamo played for five different minor-league teams in four organizations, and saw his average dip and his playing time reduced. After spending the 1949 season in Double-A, he retired. Injuries derailed an abbreviated comeback in 1951. In his two-year big-league career, he batted .304 with a .400 on-base percentage over 174 games. He batted .301 during his 11 seasons in the minor leagues.

A Detroit lifer, Bergamo lived in the Motor City in the offseasons during his playing career. He settled down with his wife, Clara Frances “Fran” (Dunn) Bergamo, in nearby Grosse Pointe, and worked as a manufacturer’s representative for the Condamatic Company. Bergamo maintained a connection to baseball by participating in annual Major League Baseball golf tournaments in Florida through the mid-1960s. He also attended the Cardinals’ 20th-anniversary celebration of the 1944 World Series championship.

On August 19, 1974, Augie Bergamo died at the age of 57 at Bon Secour Hospital in Grosse Point. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer; he also suffered from diabetes.14 He was survived by his wife and daughter, Kimberly, and was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Detroit.

This biography originally appeared in “Van Lingle Mungo: The Man, The Song, The Players” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Sources

New York Times

The Sporting News

Ancestry.com

BaseballLibrary.com

Baseball-Reference.com

Retrosheet.org

Notes

In perhaps one of the best non-Yogi-Berra quotes in baseball history, this was Branch Rickey’s assessment of Frenchy Bordagaray, a colorful outfielder/third baseman who played for several teams in the 1930s and 1940s. He was free-spirited enough to fit in with both the Gas House Gang St. Louis Cardinals and the daffy Brooklyn Dodgers, and some of his shenanigans, especially those with Brooklyn manager Casey Stengel, are legendary. Some are even true.

Stanley George Bordagaray was born on January 3, 1910, in Coalinga, California, one of seven children born to Dominique and Louise Bordagaray, who were among the original settlers of the San Joaquin Valley. Dominique was a hotel owner and sheep rancher. Bordagaray’s family was of Basque descent. (In Europe the Basques inhabit an area of southern France and northern Spain.) Stanley and his six brothers were all nicknamed Frenchy.

Bordagaray played baseball and football and ran track at Coalinga High School. After high school he entered Fresno State College, where he continued playing baseball and football. He also played semipro ball while in school, and it was a semipro connection that led him to entering Organized Baseball.

Army Armstrong, a semipro teammate of Bordagaray’s, recommended to the Sacramento Senators of the Pacific Coast League in 1931 that they give him a tryout. Bordagaray impressed team management with his speed and was signed to a contract on July 30 of that year. In his first game he went 2-for-3 against the Oakland Oaks. Frenchy got into 70 games that season, batted .373 with five home runs, and cemented a spot for the following season.

Bordagaray played an exhausting 173 games for the Senators in 1932, batting .322 with 223 hits in 692 at-bats. Frenchy also gave new meaning to the term “horse-racing” when he actually ran a 100-yard race against a horse named Eat ’Em Raw at the California State Fair in Sacramento. Bordagaray ended up eating the horse’s dust, as the nag ran the distance in 8.75 seconds. Frenchy’s time was not reported.

Perhaps Sacramento management wasn’t happy with the race results, because they offered Bordagaray a pay cut for the 1933 season. In what became a regular rite, Frenchy demanded a pay increase and left spring training on March 14.

“The trouble with Bordagaray is that he thinks he is a Babe Ruth and wants to be paid accordingly,” said team owner Lew Moreing. “We can’t relish that stuff.”2

It seems that Moreing could, in fact, “relish that stuff” because Bordagaray was back the next day.3 He went on to have one of the best seasons of his baseball career, hitting .351 with a career-high 7 home runs in 117 games.

Bordagaray’s impressive numbers motivated the Chicago White Sox to purchase his contract for $15,000 before the 1934 season. He made an impressive major-league debut on Opening Day against the Detroit Tigers at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, getting a pinch hit and scoring a run in an 8-3 White Sox loss. He went on to appear in 29 games, including 17 as an outfielder, and batted.322 in 87 at-bats. (He was 8-for-12 as a pinch-hitter.) Still, the White Sox returned him to Sacramento on June 9. Accounts differ as to whether the White Sox weren’t pleased with Bordagaray’s play or simply decided they wanted their $15,000 back. Either way, he played 117 games for the Senators and despite getting off to a slow start, managed to hit .321.

That season Bordagaray performed the first feat of flakiness that made him a raconteur’s delight. In a game against the Portland Beavers, the General, as he was called in Sacramento, evidently forgot to go out with the rest of the troops to his position in right field. None of his teammates noticed until Portland center fielder Nino Bongiovanni hit a double to Frenchy’s vacated spot.

Nonetheless, the Brooklyn Dodgers were interested enough in Bordagaray to acquire him after the season in exchange for Johnny Frederick and Art Herring plus cash. Frenchy joined the Dodgers (whose manager was one Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel) for the 1935 season.

Babe Ruth brought a new era to baseball in the 1920s with his home runs. Stengel and Bordagaray revived an old era when they teamed up, except in this case it was vaudeville. No one would confuse this band of Dodgers with the Boys of Summer teams of the 1950s. The Dodgers of the 1920s and 1930s were a ragtag group. The franchise was mired in debt and playing in a deteriorating Ebbets Field. The team acquired the nickname “The Daffiness Boys” because of the oddball characters and strange plays that made the Dodgers entertaining, even if they weren’t successful.

Statistically, Bordagaray’s 1935 and 1936 seasons with the Dodgers were pretty good. In his first full campaign as a major leaguer, he hit .282 with one home run, 39 RBIs, and 69 runs scored. He was third in the league with 18 stolen bases. In 1936 he hit .315 with 4 home runs, 31 runs batted in, 63 runs scored, and 12 stolen bases in 125 games. But the numbers don’t convey the color that Frenchy brought to the team.

During one exhibition game, Bordagaray’s hat fell off while he was chasing a fly ball. Frenchy, being Frenchy, stopped to retrieve the hat, and then continued chasing the ball.

“Stengel stood in the dugout in the dugout with his arms hanging and his mouth open. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing,” said former Dodger Buddy Hassett. “When Frenchy got back to the dugout, Stengel asked him what he thought he was doing out there. ‘The cap wasn’t going anywhere, Bordagaray,’ said Stengel, ‘but the ball was.’ ‘I forgot,’ Frenchy said.”4

There was also the time Frenchy was standing on second base when he was suddenly picked off. Stengel went out to argue, to no avail, and when he went back to the dugout he asked Bordagaray what happened. Frenchy explained that he was tapping his toe on the bag and that the infielder caught him between taps.

Another story had Bordagaray tagged out on a play at the plate when he tried to score standing up instead of sliding. His explanation to Stengel was that he didn’t slide because he had some cigars in his back pocket that he didn’t want to ruin. Stengel fined Bordagaray $50 or $100, depending on who is telling the tale. The next day he hit a home run and slid into every bag on his trip around the bases.5

The pièce de résistance had to be the scandal Frenchy caused when he showed up at spring training in 1936 sporting a wispy mustache. After the 1935 season, Frenchy grew the mustache for a small, uncredited part in a film directed by John Ford, The Prisoner of Shark Island, and was still wearing it when spring training arrived. This was an era when players were clean-shaven, so the facial hair created a media sensation.

“The new mustache of the noted movie extra is a delicate affair of a distinctly Ronald Colman pattern,” wrote Tommy Holmes in the Brooklyn Eagle.6 “Stengel says it was the prettiest he ever saw, but Frenchy says that Casey is jealous and threatens to wear it from now on.”7

Bordagaray was ahead of his time when it came to self-promotion with the media, and he kept the ink-stained wretches busy writing articles about the mustache. He even arrived at camp one day sporting a monocle to go with the mustache; sort of an Adolphe Menjou meets Colonel Klink. This went on for a while until Stengel finally had enough.

“After I had it about two months, Casey called me into the clubhouse and said, ‘If anyone’s going to be a clown on this club, it’s going to be me,’” Bordagaray said.8

Whether Dodgers management was tired of the comedy act or just wanted to make changes, they fired Stengel after the season, and traded Bordagaray to St. Louis.

They may also have traded him simply because he didn’t have the baseball smarts that turn a player with his talent into a star. After Frenchy was gone, Holmes remarked that he wasn’t a great ballplayer despite talent, speed, charisma, and a good attitude.

“With all those qualities you’d think he’d be a really good ball player,” wrote Holmes. “And yet he makes you eat holes in your hat. The reason, it seems to me, is lack of big league instinct in such fundamentals as base running and fly catching.”9

The St. Louis Cardinals of 1937 were not the powerful Gas House Gang that won the World Series in 1934. They still had some of their stars, including Joe Medwick, Pepper Martin, and Dizzy Dean, but they were no longer a contender. Bordagaray got into 96 games that season, batting .293 with one home run and 37 RBIs. He played 50 games at third base and 28 in the outfield. The man whose father had hoped he would be a violinist also joined teammate Pepper Martin’s Mudcat Band as fiddle player and first washboard. The band toured the theater circuit for $50 a show. It was also popular at the Cardinals’ 1938 spring-training camp, with Frenchy, of course, wowing them in the aisles.

“Frenchy is the sensation,” said an article by the Associated Press. His washboard has a three-tone phone, bicycle bells, and even an electric light for special renditions.”10

The 1938 Cardinals finished under .500 for the first time in six years with a 71-80 record (plus five ties). On the surface, it would seem that Bordagaray’s contribution was ordinary, with a .282 batting average in 81 games, zero home runs and only 21 runs batted in. He did, however, excel in a very difficult role, that of pinch-hitter. He had 20 pinch hits, just two off the record then of 22 set in 1932 by Sam Leslie of the Giants. (As of 2014 the record holder was John Vander Wal of the Colorado Rockies, with 28 in 1995.) Bordagaray’s batting average of .465 as a pinch-hitter was at the time the second highest batting average ever for a pinch hitter, behind only the .467 attained by Smead Jolley of the White Sox in 1931 (As of 2014 Ed Kranepool of the 1974 New York Mets holds the single-season record,.486.)11

Being a good pinch-hitter apparently wasn’t enough for the Cardinals to keep Frenchy on the big-league roster. After the 1938 season, they wanted to send him down to their farm club in Rochester. He refused to report, so the team traded him to the Cincinnati Reds for outfielder Dusty Cooke. The trade worked in Bordagaray’s favor because he not only stayed in the big leagues, he also got his first chance to appear in the World Series.

It’s safe to say that Bordagaray’s contribution was not integral to the Reds’ winning the 1939 National League pennant. He batted only .197 in 122 at-bats with no home runs and 12 RBIs. He appeared as a pinch-runner in Games Two and Three of the World Series, and didn’t steal any bases or score any runs as the Reds were swept by the New York Yankees.

After the 1939 season, Bordagaray opened a nightclub in Cincinnati called Frenchy’s Barn, an event that found its way into the famous column of Walter Winchell: “Frenchy Bordagaray of the pennant-winning Cincinnati Reds team has opened a night club in that city. … Could it be, do you think, that the World Series beating by the N.Y. Yankees has affected his mind?”12

Perhaps Winchell had a point, because Frenchy’s 1939 statistics didn’t guarantee any job security, and he ended up going to the Yankees, along with Nino Bongiovanni, to complete a deal in which the Yankees sent Vince DiMaggio to the Reds in exchange for $40,000 and players to be named later.

A team that had just won four straight World Series wasn’t in great need of a .197 hitter, so the Bronx Bombers sent Frenchy to their Kansas City Blues farm club in the American Association. Frenchy tore up the league, pounding out 214 hits for a .358 average and a ticket to the Bronx for 1941.

The 1941 Yankees were a powerhouse team that won the American League pennant by 17 games. They had an outfield of Charlie Keller, Tommy Henrich, and Vince DiMaggio’s younger brother, so Bordagaray’s playing time was limited to just 16 starts in the outfield and 73 at-bats. He did manage to get a pinch-running appearance in Game Two of the World Series, which the Yankees lost. Perhaps somebody realized that Frenchy’s teams always lost in the World Series whenever he pinch-ran, so he stayed on the bench for the next three games, all won by the Yankees, and Frenchy had his one and only championship. Nonetheless, he didn’t enjoy playing with the Bronx Bombers. “(I) couldn’t have fun with them,” he said. “They were too serious. Snooty guys. Except Joe (DiMaggio). He’s the only one I got along with.”13

The Yankees, on the other hand, felt they could get along fine without Bordagaray, and sold him back to the Dodgers after he refused a demotion to Kansas City. Bordagaray spent the rest of his playing career in Flatbush. He played a total of 137 games in 1942 and 1943, batting a respectable .291, with no home runs and 24 RBIs. Wartime player shortages gave Bordagaray more playing time in 1944. He played in 130 games that year and batted .281 with 6 home runs and 51 RBIs, both highs for his major-league career. He also played more games at third base (98) than in any other season and made 15 errors there.

The 1945 season probably had Rickey’s opinion leaning toward “poorest great third baseman.” Frenchy played the hot corner as if it were the too-hot-to-handle corner, committing 19 errors in 166 chances for a woeful .886 fielding percentage. He batted .256 in 273 at-bats with 2 home runs and 49 RBIs. He played his last game on September 30, 1945. He was released before the start of the 1946 season.

By the end of his playing days, Bordagaray was still fun-loving, but was taking his career more seriously, both on the field and under it. He invested in a company that built cemeteries across the United States and made more money with the company than he did playing baseball. The Dodgers gave him a job as player-manager of the Trois-Rivieres Royals, their affiliate in the Class C Canadian-American League, in 1946. He justified the Dodgers’ faith in him by batting .363 and managing the team to the regular-season title with a 72-49 record as well as the league championship.

Bordagaray also played a small role in Branch Rickey’s effort to integrate major-league baseball. It is well known that Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier with the Montreal Royals of the International League in 1946, but Rickey had assigned African-American players to other levels as well. Pitchers John Wright and Roy Partlow had had trials in Montreal, but were sent down to Trois-Rivieres. Partlow went 10-1 and Wright was 12-8, and they both played significant roles in Trois-Rivieres’ drive to the championship.

“On the Three Rivers team, we had all nationalities: blacks, whites, Frenchmen, Jewish boys. We had the whole works,” Bordagaray noted. “The funny thing about it was I never thought of (Wright, who joined the team before Partlow) as black. I just thought of him as a ballplayer.”14

Frenchy’s success earned him a promotion to player-manager of the Greenville Spinners of the Class A South Atlantic League for 1947. It was there that a promising managerial career came to an end when he punched and spat on an umpire during a dispute in a July 15 game. He was suspended for 60 days and fined $50. The incident happened on the same day he was chosen Most Valuable Player for the 1946 season in the Canadian-American League. He never returned to Organized Baseball.

When told of the fine and suspension, he was quoted as saying, “I deserved something, but this is more than I expectorated.”15

After leaving baseball, Bordagaray, his wife, Victoria (whom he married in 1940), and their family moved to Kansas City, where he worked in the cemetery business until 1961. They then moved to Ventura, California, where Frenchy worked as sports supervisor for the Ventura Department of Sports and Recreation until 1988.

Looking back, Bordagaray acknowledged that he had fun as a ballplayer, but felt he could have played better. He once said in an interview that he never reached his peak because doctors failed to diagnose that he had hypoglycemia, a blood-sugar disorder that causes weakness.16

Bordagaray died in a Ventura nursing home on April 13, 2000, at the age of 90. He left his wife, four children, seven grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

This biography originally appeared in “Van Lingle Mungo: The Man, The Song, The Players” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Joanne Hulbert and J.G. Preston for providing materials for this article.

Sources

Honig, Donald, Baseball Between the Lines: Baseball in the Forties and Fifties As Told by the Men Who Played It (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993).

Spatz, Lyle, ed., The SABR Baseball List and Record Book (New York: Scribner, 2007).

Zubiri, Nancy, A Travel Guide to Basque America: Families, Feasts and Festivals (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998).

Altoona (Pennsylvania) Tribune

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Burlington (Iowa) Hawk-Eye

Fresno (California) Bee Republican

Greensboro (North Carolina) Daily News

Los Angeles Times

Middlesboro (Kentucky) Daily News

Reading (Pennsylvania) Times

Sports Illustrated

Baseball-reference.com

IMDB.com

Notes

Louis Boudreau Jr. was born on July 17, 1917, in Harvey, Illinois, to Louis Boudreau Sr., of French descent, and Birdie (nee Henry) Boudreau, of Jewish and German descent. Although his mother was Jewish, Lou and his older brother Albert were raised as Christians. His father was a machinist and a semipro baseball player.1

Lou’s father, a good third baseman for a semipro team in Kankakee, Illinois, instilled in Lou a gift for leadership, the drive to excel, and confidence in his ability. He would take young Lou Jr. out to the park and hit him 100 ground balls and count the errors he made. Lou’s parents were divorced when he was seven, and Lou split time with his parents thereafter. His mother married again, to a man who didn’t like sports and paid scant attention to Lou.

Lou went to Thornton Township High School, a school without a baseball team. Boudreau instead became a very good basketball player, an excellent passer and playmaker. At Thornton he met his wife-to-be, Della DeRuiter. They married in 1938.

In 1936, Boudreau entered the University of Illinois, where he majored in physical education and captained both the basketball and baseball teams. Boudreau led Illinois to the Big Ten basketball title in 1937, and was a 1938 All-American. Basketball took a huge toll on his ankles, eventually leading to arthritis. Lou had to tape them before every game of his baseball career. The ankles also earned him a 4-F classification during World War II.

As a college baseball player he averaged about .270 and .285. But all that practice with his dad fielding ground balls showed as he fielded his third base position excellently. The Cubs and Indians both pursued Boudreau and he also fielded offers to act in a movie and to play for $150 a game with Caesar’s All-Americans, a Hammond, Indiana, team in the National Basketball League, a forerunner of the NBA,. But Boudreau felt he owed his loyalty to Cleveland’s Cy Slapnicka, who had done his best to help him maintain his amateur status at Illinois.

The Indians assigned Boudreau in 1938 to a Class C club in the Western Association: he sat on the bench for a week and then was shipped to Cedar Rapids in the Class B Three-I League. After hitting .290 in 60 games, the third baseman was called up to the Indians. He sat on the bench observing Hal Trosky, Ken Keltner, Jeff Heath, Earl Averill, and a young pitcher named Bob Feller. Boudreau played first base and went to bat twice, grounding out and walking.

In 1939, Lou trained with the Indians in New Orleans. Manager Oscar Vitt advised Boudreau to move to the shortstop position, because young Ken Keltner looked to have a lock on third base. Ex-big leaguer Greg Mulleavy, the regular shortstop at Buffalo, was kind enough to take Boudreau under his wing and teach him the job. Lou batted .331 with 17 homers and 57 RBIs in 117 games , earning an August 7,recall to the parent club. Boudreau played 53 games at shortstop for the Indians in 1939, batting .258 with 19 runs batted in. Lou was now in the big leagues for good, but unfortunately lost his father that year. Lou Sr. never got to see his son play in the majors.

The 1940 season looked promising but would be tumultuous for the Cleveland Indians. Feller opened the season with a 1-0 no-hitter, and the Indians were in contention for the pennant all season long. But the season was marred by a rebellion of Cleveland ballplayers (not including Boudreau) who were unhappy with Vitt, who’d been known to bad-mouth his players with derogatory remarks. The 10 players, thereafter known as the “Crybabies.” complained to owner Alva Bradley in early June. Nothing was done and Vitt remained the manager for the rest of the season. The story hit the newspapers immediately, but the Indians continued to play well and went into Detroit on August 22 with a 5 ½ game lead over the second-place Tigers.

Boudreau kept his views to himself, but later wrote, “Had I been asked my opinion, I would have urged them to either wait till the end of the season, or to meet with Vitt himself and not with Bradley. But I wasn’t asked, I didn’t volunteer and the veterans did what they felt they had to do.”2 The Indians didn’t win the pennant that year, losing to Detroit by one game. Boudreau had a good season despite all the turmoil, batting .295, clouting nine homers, and driving in 101 runs. Defensively Lou led all shortstops in the American League.

In 1941, Lou was back at shortstop under popular manager Roger Peckinpaugh. Despite the switch, neither the Indians nor Boudreau fared as well as in 1940. Lou’s average fell to .257 with 10 homers and 56 runs batted in, though he led the league with 45 doubles.

After just a single season, Peckinpaugh was promoted to general manager and while a search was underway for a new manager, Lou sent a letter requesting an interview. On November 24, Lou presented his case. Initially, the vote was 11-1 against him, but George Martin, president of Sherwin Williams Paint Company, felt that a young man would be more desirable at this point than the tried and true. The directors finally agreed on Boudreau, backing him up with a staff of older and more experienced coaches: Burt Shotton, Oscar Melillo and George Susce.

Bradley introduced Lou to the press as the new manager, and one wag wrote, “Great! The Indians get a Baby Snooks for a manager and ruin the best shortstop in baseball.” The general feeling around the city was that Boudreau would not be able to handle both being a ballplayer and a manager, but the press was generally kind.

Soon after Boudreau’s hiring, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Two days later Bob Feller joined the Navy, and Boudreau, like his counterparts on the other teams, spent the next four years not knowing who their players were going to be. .

Not all of the Indians were happy with the new manager. During his first spring training, Boudreau had three players walk into his office (Ben Chapman, Gee Walker and Hal Trosky) to tell him they had asked for the job and could do a better job than he would. During some conferences on the mound, veteran pitchers would give Boudreau a variation of “Listen, college boy, you play shortstop and I’ll do the pitching.” Especially troublesome was Jim Bagby Jr., who Boudreau considered “the nastiest pitcher [I] ever played behind.” When Boudreau would boot a ball, he would hear razzing about going back to college to learn how to play shortstop.

Without Feller, the 1942 Indians went 75-79, 28 games behind the Yankees. Playing in 147 games, Boudreau batted .283, batting in 58 runs. Boudreau felt that the hardest part of his new job was having the sense of when to take a pitcher out. Though he was still learning, he proved able to manage the club and still play good ball at shortstop.

The 1943 club finished 82-71, still 15 ½ games out of first place at season’s end. Boudreau played in 152 games and batted .286 with 154 hits and 67 runs batted in. He led all league shortstops in fielding, and made his fourth All-Star team.

In 1944, the Indians slumped to 72-82, though Boudreau personally had a fine season, leading league batters at .327 and knocking in 67 runs. The next season he suffered a broken ankle and hit .306 in just 97 games, and the Indians finished 73-72. More importantly, the war ended in late summer, and Boudreau looked forward to the 1946 season and the return of real major-league ball.

With all the stars now returned to baseball in 1946, the fans turned out en masse. As usual Ted Williams was tearing up the league. The Indians went into Boston on July 14, for a doubleheader. In the opening game Boudreau went 5-for-5 with four doubles and a homer. Williams went 4-for-5 with three homers, all to right field. The Tribe lost the game, 11-10. Between games Boudreau came up with the famous Williams shift. When Williams came to bat with the bases empty, Boudreau yelled, “Yo,” and all the fielders shifted to the right side of the field. Williams laughed, got back in the box, and promptly grounded out to Boudreau, playing in the second baseman’s position. It wasn’t the first time a shift had been employed, but against a star of Ted Williams’ magnitude, it captured attention. 3

The Indians went 68-86 in 1946. Boudreau hit .293, with 151 hits, six homers, and 62 runs batted in. On June 21, 1946, Bill Veeck became the principal owner of the Cleveland Indians, and vowed to make changes. The Tribe improved to 80-74 in 1947, and Boudreau batted .307, banging out 165 hits with four homers, and 67 RBIs. The nucleus was there and Bill Veeck turned loose his bloodhounds, sniffing out trades that would turn things around. First they acquired second baseman Joe Gordon from the Yankees, along with third baseman Eddie Bockman. The Indians added Gene Bearden to the pitching staff and Hal Peck to the outfield.

The Indians made history in 1947 by signing the American League’s first black ballplayer, Larry Doby. Doby had been a second baseman for the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League. Boudreau tried to defuse any tensions about a black ballplayer coming on the roster by personally taking Doby around the clubhouse and introducing him. Some shook his hand while others refused, but Boudreau tried to make Doby’s joining the team as painless as possible.

Veeck thought the Indians needed a new manager. After that year’s World Series, Veeck proposed a deal with the St. Louis Browns that involved Boudreau. Lou also told Veeck that were he deposed as manager he would not play shortstop and would request a trade. These rumors did not sit well in Cleveland, and Veeck received more than 4,000 letters protesting any change. The Cleveland News ran a front-page ballot to elicit fans’ opinions, and 100,000 responses ran 10-1 for Lou Boudreau. Veeck yielded.

Boudreau and Veeck reconciled, and Lou was set as manager for the 1948 season.

Boudreau was upbeat about the 1948 season but knew he had to produce a winner or his tenure as manager would be up. The Indians remained in or near first place all season, locked in a tight three-team race with the Yankees and Red Sox. They added a new pitcher in July by the name of Satchel Paige, an aged but legendary hurler from the Negro Leagues. J. Taylor Spink, in The Sporting News, accused Veeck of signing Paige only as a publicity stunt. But Paige proved his worth, and eventually Spink apologized to Veeck. Boudreau used Paige sparingly as a starter and a reliever, and he had a 6-1 mark in the heat of the pennant race.

Boudreau experienced some hard times during the ‘48 campaign. Veeck had brought Hank Greenberg into the Indians organization to serve as Veeck’s right-hand man and confidant. This dismayed Boudreau, who at best never had Veeck’s ear, and now had to go through another channel before conferring with him. Greenberg and Veeck were always questioning Boudreau’s moves. Every morning during home stands Boudreau had to trudge up to Veeck’s office, where Veeck and Greenberg would fire questions at him. Even on the road he could not escape the telephone constantly ringing with questions from his two bosses.

Nothing was going to stop Boudreau from driving his team to the 1948 American League pennant, not even the plethora of injuries that befell him. During a hard collision at second base, Lou sustained a shoulder contusion, a bruised right knee, a sore thumb, and a sprained ankle. Managing from the dugout while icing down his injuries during a doubleheader against the Yanks, he watched the Indians fall behind, 6-1. The Indians bounced back and scored three runs to make it 6-4. The Indians then loaded the bases, and Lou called time. After selecting his bat he announced himself as a pinch hitter. Injuries or no injuries, he was going to take matters into his own hands. Boudreau ripped a single between the legs of Joe Page, tying the game. The Indians went on to sweep the doubleheader, 8-6 and 2-1.

As the season neared its end in 1948, Boudreau saw that some of his players were becoming a little too anxious. He feared that one or more of his players would say something in anger, sparking an incident that would upset the club. He asked reporters not to come into the clubhouse and they complied, showing the journalistic mores that existed at that time. Red Smith said that during the season “Boudreau managed like mad.”

At the conclusion of the 1948 schedule the Indians and the Red Sox were tied for first place. Some critics said that Boudreau could have avoided the need for a playoff game had he used Paige more, but instead a single-game playoff at Fenway Park determined the American League champion. Boudreau selected Gene Bearden start the game. Many question the choice of a left-hander in Boston with its looming left-field wall, but Boudreau felt that a knuckleball pitcher had a better chance against Boston’s powerhouse team. Feller called the decision “a stroke of genius and a shock to all of us.”

Boudreau took matters into his own hands and had a 4-for-4 performance that included two homers. When the final out was made and the Indians triumphed 8-3, Boudreau on his gimpy ankles rushed over to his wife. Bearden was on the shoulders of his mates, and, Bill Veeck, another casualty of World War II, hobbled out at top speed on his prosthetic leg to join the joyous mob. During his incredible season, Boudreau had slammed out 199 hits, belted 18 homers, and drove in 106 runs with a .355 average, all while guiding his team as manager. Boudreau was voted the Most Valuable Player in the American League in 1948.

The Indians capped off their 1948 season beating the Boston Braves and winning the World Series in six games. Boudreau batted .273 in the series with three runs batted in and fielded flawlessly. Lou Boudreau remains the only manager to win a World Series and win the Most Valuable Player Award in the same season.

Bill Veeck tore up Boudreau’s old contract and gave him a raise to $62,000 a year. Still, when the Indians failed to repeat in 1949, Boudreau knew his time was coming to an end. He felt that Hank Greenberg had a lot to do with his fate as manager. Boudreau didn’t mind Greenberg’s second guessing, but was upset that Greenberg never gave him reasons for disagreeing. Veeck was distant with Boudreau in 1949, never having much to say to him. Lou, playing all four infield positions, batted .284, with four homers and 60 RBIs.

Lou’s last season in Cleveland was 1950. Playing in only 81 games, he batted .269, with just one homer. Ellis Ryan took over as principal owner from Bill Veeck and put Greenberg in charge. As expected, on November 10, the Indians released Boudreau after 12 years as a player and nine as manager. The Red Sox acquired him in 1951 as a utility infielder. Playing in 82 games, he batted .267, with five homers and 47 runs batted in. After the 1951 season, the Red Sox named Boudreau manager. He played four games for the club in 1952, but was a bench-manager for the rest of his career.

Boudreau managed the Red Sox from 1952 through 1954, an event-filled period for the franchise. The team had spent a lot of money on amateur players in recent years, and Boudreau presided over the transition. Bobby Doerr had recently retired, Johnny Pesky and Vern Stephens were traded, and Ted Williams spent most of two seasons in the Marines In the spring of 1953 center fielder Dom DiMaggio suffered an eye injury and was replaced by Tommy Umphlett; when Umphlett got hot, DiMaggio stayed on the bench. DiMaggio was unhappy, but Lou felt that he had slowed down and was letting too many balls drop-in center field. DiMaggio retired and remained bitter at Boudreau for the rest of his life.

Boudreau also chose to move promising rookie Jimmie Piersall from the outfield to shortstop in 1952, a shift that Piersall later claimed led to bizarre behavioral problems and eventual nervous breakdown. When Piersall recovered, Boudreau kept him in the outfield, and Piersall played another 15 seasons. Though the Red Sox posted a surprising 84-69 record in 1953, their regression the next year (69-85) led to Boudreau’s dismissal.

After being fired by the Red Sox in 1954, Boudreau got a job as manager of the Kansas City Athletics, a bad club recently transplanted from Philadelphia. He lasted three years at Kansas City; the team finished sixth once and eighth twice during his tenure.

Boudreau was fired in August 1957. Not long after, Jack Brickhouse approached Lou about being the color man for the Chicago Cubs broadcast team. He auditioned and got the job. Lou was no Demosthenes, and he stumbled over difficult names of players, but his knowledge of the game and his uncanny ability to anticipate what would happen in certain situations was noted. For over two years Boudreau was the Cubs color man, but by 1960, Lou was back into the managing business for the team, while Charlie Grimm was shifted from skipper to the radio booth. A poor team, the Cubs finished in last place 35 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 1961, Lou was back in the broadcasting booth.

Della Boudreau stayed home and raised four children. Older son Louis joined the Marine Corps and was wounded in Vietnam. James was a fairly good left-handed pitcher who played in the minors but hurt his arm and gave up baseball. Lou’s daughter Sharyn married Tigers pitcher Denny McLain, who had numerous legal troubles during after his career, including two stints in prison. Older daughter Barbara married Paul Golazewski, a former quarterback at Illinois.

Lou was a part of the Cubs broadcast team for 30 years. When the station chose not to pick up his contract for the 1988 season, Lou was 71 years old, and finally retired, after having been a player, manager, and broadcaster for 50 years.

On July 27, 1970, Lou was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Bowie Kuhn, the Commissioner of Baseball, introduced Boudreau: “There are hitters in the Hall of Fame with higher batting averages, but I do not believe there is in the Hall of Fame a baseball man who brought more use of intellect and advocation of mind to the game than Lou Boudreau.”

Bob Feller, a close friend of Boudreau, said, “Boudreau was one of the most talented players in baseball in his time, in addition to being one of the classiest human beings you’d ever want to meet.” Feller added, “Even before he was manager, as a 21-year-old shortstop he was our on field leader. Boudreau drew people to him. He had the looks of a matinee idol.”

Lou Boudreau Jr. left his mark on baseball through his intelligence and innovativeness as a manager and by his sterling play at shortstop and his all-out competitiveness. He died in Frankfort, Illinois, on August 10, 2001, at age 84. Della had preceded him in death in 1999. Boudreau was survived by four children and 10 grandchildren. Lou Boudreau is interred in the Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Frankfort, Illinois.

Last revised: June 21, 2021 (zp)

Sources

Louis Boudreau and Russell Schneider, Covering All the Bases (Champaign, Illinois: Sagamore Publishing, 1993).

Gordon Cobbledick, “The Cleveland Indians” in Ed Fitzgerald, ed., The Book of Major league Baseball Clubs: The American League (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1952).

Robert Feller and Bill Gilbert, Now Pitching Bob Feller (New York: Citadel Press, 1990).

David Halberstam, Summer of ’49 (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1989).

Donald Honig, The American League: A Pictorial History (New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1983).

Peter S. Horvitz and Joachim Horvitz, The Big Book of Jewish Baseball (New York: S.P.I Books, 2001).

Franklin A. Lewis, The Cleveland Indians (New York: Putnam, 1949).

William Marshall, Baseball’s Pivotal Era, 1945-1951 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999).

Joseph Thomas Moore, Pride against Prejudice: The Biography of Larry Doby (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988).

Red Smith, On Baseball (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000).

Notes

Brecheen gathered most of his pitching experience in the local junior American Legion league where he supposedly won 65 games and lost just three times. Brecheen idolized Oklahoma native Carl Hubbell and hometown big leaguers Lloyd and Paul Waner, who generously supported baseball in Ada. The Tulsa Oilers of Class A Texas League invited 18-year-old Brecheen to try out with the club during spring training in 1933, but he was no match for seasoned players, many of whom had big-league experience.1 He returned to Ada, married his high-school sweetheart, Vera Caperton, in the fall, and was lucky to find a job in construction during the harsh times of the Depression. Brecheen also pitched in local semipro leagues and soon earned the attention of scouts despite his small 5-foot-10, 160-pound stature. According to St. Louis sportswriter Bob Broeg, Brecheen turned down a $175-a-month contract from the St. Louis Cardinals and a similar offer from the New York Yankees, claiming he could earn money as a semipro.2

Brecheen commenced his grueling eight-year odyssey in the minor leagues in 1935 as a fastball-curveball artist with poor control. With the help of former big-league pitcher and Ada businessman Homer Blankenship, he signed with the Galveston (Texas) Buccaneers of the Class A Texas League but was soon transferred to the Greenville (Mississippi) Buckshots of the Class C East Dixie League. After another shot with the Buccaneers in 1936, Brecheen was sent to the Bartelsville (Oklahoma) Bucs in the Class C Western Association and finished the season with a combined 6-22 record and 132 walks in 266 innings.

No one could have predicted Brecheen’s stunning success in 1937 with the Portsmouth (Virginia) Cubs (Class B Piedmont League). He had learned to throw a screwball a few years earlier from big leaguer and fellow Oklahoman Cy Blanton of the Pittsburgh Pirates but had been unable to get it over the plate. “I owe an awful lot to (Portsmouth catcher) Dick Luckey,” Brecheen said. “Until I met him, I was just trying to throw the ball past hitters, always trying for strikeouts. But he worked on my control and showed me what it mean to think a game.”3 With his catcher’s patience, Brecheen perfected his screwball so that it broke down and away from right-handed hitters and into left-handers (the opposite break of his curveball). He went 21-6 and walked only 69 in 249 innings. The St. Louis Cardinals, acting on the advice of Eddie Dyer, then the president of the Cardinals affiliate in the Piedmont League, drafted the wiry southpaw.

Brecheen joined an organization that he had once derided as a “chain gang” for its poor salaries and vast farm system.4 He spent two years with the Houston Buffaloes of the Class A Texas League, going 13-10 in 1935 and improving to 18-7 in 1936, including a stretch of four consecutive shutouts and 38 consecutive scoreless innings.5

No team in the big leagues had a farm system as stacked with pitchers as the Cardinals in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Brecheen was also aware that Cardinals boss Branch Rickey preferred big, hard-throwing pitchers, like Mort Cooper and Max Lanier. After a productive spring, Brecheen made the Cardinals’ Opening Day roster in 1940, but the southpaw’s euphoria did not last long. After tossing 3⅓ innings (surrendering one unearned run) in three brief relief appearances, he was optioned to the Columbus Red Birds of the American Association and didn’t make it back to big leagues until 1943 — the year after Rickey left the club. The years 1940-1942 played like a broken record for Brecheen. “Stymied” (according to The Sporting News) by the surfeit of Cardinals pitchers, Brecheen annually participated in spring training, then was optioned to Columbus, where he posted successive records of 16-9, 16-6, and 19-10.6

Brecheen was back in spring training with the reigning champion Cardinals in 1943 under vastly different circumstances. St. Louis had used its three options on Brecheen and thus was forced to keep him on the big-league club or sell him. The club’s decision was made easier by World War II, which had already begun playing havoc with the Cardinals’ roster; among other things, the team lost 21-game-winner Johnny Beazley to the military.

Manager Billy Southworth saw the 28-year-old Brecheen as an ideal swingman. In his season debut, Brecheen tossed three innings of scoreless relief against the Chicago Cubs to notch his first big-league win. He extended his string of innings without allowing an earned run to 20⅔ (dating back to 1940) before yielding a run in a tough 1-0 loss on May 31 to the Brooklyn Dodgers in his first start and complete game. Pushed into the starting rotation with the loss of Howie Pollet to the war and Ernie White to injury, Brecheen won four of seven starts in August and limited opponents to a sparkling 1.89 ERA over 57 innings. While the Cardinals cruised to their second consecutive pennant, Brecheen posted a 9-6 record and a career-low 2.26 ERA in 135⅓ innings for the NL’s best staff.

In the Cardinals’ World Series rematch with the New York Yankees, Brecheen pitched three times, all in relief. After scoreless stints of one inning and two-thirds of an inning in losses in Games One and Three, he relieved Lanier to start the eighth inning in Game Four, with the score tied, 1-1. He surrendered a double to the first batter he faced, pitcher Marius Russo, who later scored the deciding run on Frank Crosetti’s fly ball. The Yankees closed out the Series the next game.

Cardinals beat writer Roy Stockton began referring to rookie Brecheen as “The Cat” because of his quick, feline-like reflexes on the mound and excellent fielding.7 “Harry the Cat” became such a recognizable nickname that papers did not need to mention Brecheen’s surname. Brecheen led or co-led the NL with a 1.000 fielding percentage three times (1944, 1948, and 1950), and had four additional errorless seasons (1940, 1943, 1952, and 1953) in which he did not log enough innings to qualify for the crown. He committed only eight errors in more than 1,900 major-league innings.

Throughout Brecheen’s career, sportswriters had a field day describing his appearance and small size. With blue eyes, dark blond hair and a weatherbeaten face, Brecheen was a “wiry [and] slender” country boy who felt at home in a Cardinals dugout filled with country boys like Lanier, Al Brazle, and Marty Marion.8 Bob Broeg described Brecheen as a “hollow-cheeked, bandy-legged son of Oklahoma’s red-clay country.”9 One of the most poetic characterizations came from syndicated columnist Red Smith, who saw Brecheen as “a scrawny little scrap of meat, just a fragment of whale bone and rawhide.”10 But Brecheen would not shy away from hitters. “[He] would buzz anybody,” said teammate Chuck Diering. “He was a mean pitcher; a tough competitor.”11

Brecheen got off to a hot start in 1944, shutting out the Chicago Cubs in his season debut and winning 13 of his first 15 decisions through August. He had an unflappable presence on the mound and rarely showed any emotion. “Deadpanned and apparently nerveless,” wrote the United Press’s Stan Mockler, “Brecheen has a reputation for having ice water in his veins.”12 After the loss of All-Star Red Munger to the war at midseason, Brecheen (16-5) formed the league’s most formidable quartet of pitchers with Cooper (22-7), Lanier (17-12), and Ted Wilks (17-4); Brecheen’s 2.85 ERA in 189⅓ innings was the highest of the lot. En route to their third consecutive pennant, the Cardinals became the first National League team to record 100 or more victories in three consecutive seasons. As a child, Brecheen had suffered a broken ankle and had a spinal malformation that kept him out of the war with a 4-F classification.

In October the Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns squared off in the Trolley Series with all games played in Sportsman’s Park, which both teams called home, though the park was owned by the Browns. In an unexpectedly competitive World Series that the Cardinals won in six games, Brecheen tossed a complete-game victory in Game Four, winning 5-1. In trouble for most of the game, he yielded nine hits and walked four, but helped himself by recording three assists and one putout.

Brecheen started the 1945 campaign with two complete-game victories, but then came down with a sore elbow which bothered him for the rest of his career. Limited to just 43⅔ mostly ineffective innings by the All-Star break, Brecheen turned his season around in the second half. No longer capable of both starting and relieving because of elbow pain, Brecheen commenced one of the best stretches of his career, completing 11 of 13 starts (with just one relief appearance), winning 12 of 14 decisions, and carving out a microscopic 1.50 ERA in 113⅔ innings. Brecheen, early-season acquisition Red Barrett (21-9 with St. Louis) and rookie Ken Burkhart (18-8) kept the Redbirds in a tight race with the upstart Chicago Cubs, who eventually won the pennant. With a 15-4 record, Brecheen led the senior circuit with a .789 winning percentage and compiled the league’s third-best ERA (2.52).

Brecheen’s success resulted from exceptional control, a deceptive pitching motion, and his knee-buckling curve and screwball. Dizzy Dean was effusive in his praise of Brecheen: “For a little guy, Brecheen gets a lot on the ball. With the kind of control he’s got, he could thread a needle with the ball. He’s the nearest thing to Carl Hubbell. … Hub had a better screwball, but I don’t think he threw that fast.”13 Brecheen would have been a darling to sabermetricians had such advanced metrics existed. For seven straight seasons (1944-1950) he ranked among the top eight NL pitchers allowing the fewest hits and walks (WHIP) per nine innings and the top ten for strikeout-to-walk ratio. “There’s nobody I’ve seen with a finer pitching motion,” said Brooklyn Dodgers star Pete Reiser. “Brecheen hides the ball well and he has fine deception.”14 Not a hard-throwing or overpowering pitcher like contemporaries Ewell Blackwell of the Cincinnati Reds or Kirby Higbe of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Brecheen threw a “sneaky-quick” side-arm fastball that caught batters off guard.15 “Everybody says my screwball is my payoff pitch, but I really don’t use it that often,” Brecheen once revealed. “It just gives the batter one more delivery to worry about.”16

With the conclusion of World War II, the Cardinals anticipated that pitchers Johnny Beazley, Murry Dickson, Howie Krist, Munger, and Pollet would be back with team in 1946; consequently, rumors swirled that Brecheen would be traded before Opening Day. However, when Eddie Dyer replaced Billy Southworth as manager of the club in the offseason, Brecheen was reunited with a strong supporter. “I can’t say that I realized that Cat would become the great pitcher he has,” said Dyer, who had a soft spot in his heart for the hurler he brought to the organization.17 The Cardinals broke camp with what Sporting News publisher J.G. Taylor Spink called “the greatest bunch of hurlers ever assembled on one club.”18

The staff led in the NL in ERA for the fourth time in five years, but not all went according to plan. Lanier and Freddy Schmidt jumped to the outlaw Mexican League in late May, Munger’s return was delayed until late August, and Beazley and Burkhart were plagued by arm woes. Brecheen, battling his own chronic elbow pain, pitched consistently all season, often on five or six days’ rest, and finished with a deceptive 15-15 record. A hard-luck loser, Brecheen got three runs or fewer in 14 of those losses (20 runs total). He finished with the league’s fifth best ERA (2.49) and led the loop with five shutouts. Saving his best for last, he tossed a four-hitter to defeat the Chicago Cubs, 4-1, in the next to last game of the season, thereby guaranteeing the Cardinals a share of the pennant.

St. Louis lost the following day to set up a dramatic three-game playoff against the Dodgers. Brecheen came on in relief of road roommate and good friend Dickson with two outs in the ninth inning, protecting an 8-3 lead in Game Two. After surrendering an RBI single and issuing a walk, Brecheen struck out the last two batters to send the Cardinals to the World Series for the fourth time in five years.

Brecheen’s performance in the World Series against the Boston Red Sox was arguably his crowning achievement in the big leagues. In Game Two he hurled a dominating four-hit, 3-0 shutout to even the Series at one game apiece. He struck out four and knocked in the game’s first run with a single in the third inning. With the Cardinals facing elimination in Game Six, Brecheen limited Boston to just one run in a complete-game seven-hitter to earn the win, 4-1, and set up a winner-take-all Game Seven.

Though Brecheen was suffering from a cold, Dyer called on his diminutive lefty one last time. With no outs in the eighth inning and runners on second and third, Brecheen relieved Dickson, who was nursing a 3-1 lead. He set down two batters then yielded a two-run double to Dom DiMaggio that tied the game, 3-3. But then in the bottom of the eighth, in one of the most memorable plays in the annals of the World Series, Enos Slaughter scored from first on Harry Walker’s double with two outs to give the Cardinals a 4-3 lead.

Brecheen, with his customary wad of chaw in his mouth, gave up two singles to lead off the ninth, but then secured the final two outs with runners on the corners, giving St. Louis its third title in five years. “The Cat’s got a head, heart, and guts,” said Dyer after the game.19 With the dramatic victory, Brecheen became the first left-hander to win three games in one World Series, and the first pitcher of any kind to accomplish the feat since Stan Coveleski of the Cleveland Indians in 1920. Mickey Lolich (1968) and Randy Johnson (2001) are the only other left-handers among the 13 pitchers to win three games in one World Series. “Brecheen is a remarkable pitcher,” gushed The Sporting News. “He doesn’t throw hard and his curveball doesn’t break much. But what a gamester he is.”20

With the addition of a “tantalizing slider” to his pitching arsenal, the hero of the ’46 World Series opened the 1947 season with seven consecutive complete games, winning five of them.21 He was named to the first of two All-Star teams, joining Cardinals starters Marion (SS) and Slaughter (LF) and backups Stan Musial (1B), Whitey Kurowski (3B), and Munger. Brecheen pitched the fourth through sixth innings, yielding five hits and one run. Despite persistent elbow pain since early July, Brecheen won his first three starts after the Midsummer Classic to push his record to 12-5. He struggled the last two months to finish with a 16-11 record while the aging Cardinals fell to second place behind their archrivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers.

At the age of 33 and plagued by an elbow that puffed up like a balloon after every start, Brecheen needed some extra time between starts during the cold weather of the early weeks of the 1948 season. He responded to Dyer’s gift by opening the season with three consecutive shutouts, the third of which was his only career one-hitter, a 5-0 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. He ran his streak of scoreless innings to a personal-best 32 in his fourth consecutive complete-game victory, 8-3. “I can snap off a sharper curve [and] that gives me an effective counter for batters looking for a screwball,” said Brecheen, who added that he was pain-free for the first time in more than four years.22

The Cardinals were in an exciting pennant race with the Dodgers and Boston Braves, but lacked the pitching depth, long the hallmark of the great Cardinals teams, to overtake their competition. Brecheen won 11 of his last 14 decisions en route to a career year for a second-place club. His 20 wins and 21 complete games trailed only Johnny Sain, and the Cat led the NL in ERA (2.24) and shutouts (7) while surrendering only six home runs in a career-high 233⅓ innings. Surprisingly, Brecheen, who was never a big strikeout pitcher, led the NL with 149 punchouts, including two games with a career-high ten. (He had also struck out ten in a game in 1946). He was named to his second and final All-Star Game, joining starters Musial, Slaughter, and Red Schoendienst (2B), but did not pitch.

With the oldest pitching staff in the big leagues in 1949, the Cardinals mounted their last serious challenge for the pennant until 1964. Brecheen (14-11) and Brazle (14-8) were the grizzled veterans at 34 and 35 respectively; Munger (15-8) was 30 and Pollet (20-9) was the youngster at 28. The 34-year-old Brecheen won three of four starts between September 8 and 25 to maintain the Cardinals’ precarious 1½-game lead over the Dodgers and Phillies. But after emerging victorious so often in close games and races, the Cardinals saw their luck run out. They lost their next four games (including one by Brecheen) and needed a victory and a loss by the Dodgers in the last game of the season to set up another playoff with Brooklyn for the pennant. The Dodgers won. Brecheen made a career-high 31 starts and logged over 200 innings for the fourth consecutive and final time in his career.

As the effects of age and ongoing elbow problems took their toll, Brecheen saw increasing duty out of the bullpen during his last three years with the Cardinals (1950-1952). His workload steadily decreased from 163⅓ to 100⅓ innings. In 1950 he posted his first losing record (8-11) as the Cardinals fell into the second division for the first time since 1938.

Brecheen’s value to the Cardinals, however, could not be measured in wins and losses. Always a student of the game, he mentored prospects and veterans alike. “The Cat has a great knack of working with young pitchers and imparting his knowledge,” said Fred Saigh, who purchased the Cardinals from Sam Breadon after the 1947 season.23 In 1952 Eddie Stanky (the Cardinals’ third manager in three years) named Brecheen “pitcher-coach.”24 Considered washed up as a player, Brecheen surprised his skipper and teammates by winning five straight decisions in midsummer, including his 25th and final shutout (a masterful three-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds) as part of a streak of 24 scoreless innings.

Brecheen was involved in a contractual brouhaha after the 1952 season when he signed with the St. Louis Browns on October 30. The Cardinals, who had placed him on waivers at the end of the season, claimed that the Browns had tampered with Brecheen before his official release, and filed a formal complaint with the commissioner’s office, which was eventually dismissed. “[Browns manager Marty] Marion wanted me over here to pitch for him,” said Brecheen. “Eddie [Stanky] is going to concentrate on using his young pitchers next summer so there would be no place on his pitching staff.”25 It was a fortuitous move with long-term consequences. Though he went just 5-13 for a team that lost 100 games, Brecheen was arguably the Browns’ most effective pitcher, posting a staff-best 3.07 ERA in 117⅓ innings. He retired after the season to become the team’s pitching coach.

In his 12-year big-league career, Brecheen established his reputation as a big-game pitcher. “(He) was a real pressure guy,” said Joe Cronin of the Red Sox. “When he walked out onto the field, you knew a ‘take-charge’ guy was in the game.”26 In addition to his brilliance in the World Series, Brecheen compiled a 133-92 record and impressive 2.92 ERA in 1,907⅔ innings in the regular season. He won 114 games and logged 1,715 innings in eight minor-league seasons.

In 1954 the St. Louis Browns were sold and relocated to Baltimore, where they were renamed the Orioles in honor of the city’s team in the International League. While the Browns were arguably the worst team in American League history, the Orioles developed into a model franchise grounded on fundamentals and smart pitching. During Brecheen’s 14-year tenure as pitching coach, the Orioles’ staff ranked in the top four in ERA (the AL expanded from eight to ten teams in 1961) for ten consecutive years (1957-1966) and led the league four times. In an era defined by hard-throwing strikeout pitchers (especially the 1960s), Brecheen preferred fundamentally sound pitchers with good control. He mentored many young pitchers who eventually became All-Stars, including Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Steve Barber, Chuck Estrada, and Milt Pappas; and also helped seasoned veterans. He converted 36-year-old Hoyt Wilhelm into a starter in 1959 and the knuckleballer promptly led the league in ERA; under the Cat’s guidance, Robin Roberts, considered washed up in 1961, enjoyed a rebirth. In Baltimore’s four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1966 World Series, the Orioles yielded just two earned runs in 36 innings.

As he had every offseason throughout his life in baseball, Brecheen returned to Ada with his wife and son, Steve, in retirement. The couple enjoyed traveling throughout the Southwest. An avid hunter and fisherman, Brecheen never lost his passion and interest for baseball. He participated in occasional reunions and old-timer’s games for the Cardinals and Orioles and was a fixture at local sandlots mentoring youngsters. In 1997 he was inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.

In declining health in his later years, Harry Brecheen died at the age of 89 on January 17, 2004, at a nursing facility in Bethany, Oklahoma. He had been preceded in death by his wife of 63 years, and was buried at Rosedale Cemetery in Ada.

This biography originally appeared in “Van Lingle Mungo: The Man, The Song, The Players” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Sources

Newspapers

New York Times

The Sporting News

Online

Ancestry.com

BaseballLibrary.com

Baseball-Reference.com

Retrosheet.org

SABR.org

Other

Harry Brecheen player file, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York.

Notes

Roy Campanella was the sixth acknowledged Black player to appear in the major leagues in the twentieth century, debuting with the Brooklyn Dodgers a year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. Campanella went on to become the second Black player, after Robinson, to win a major-league Most Valuable Player award, and eventually became the second Black Hall of Famer, again following in Robinson’s footsteps. Campanella, however, holds the distinction of being the first Black player to capture two MVP awards, and at the time of his death in June 1993 he was the only Black player to own three MVP trophies.

Campanella spent his entire big-league career with the Dodgers, taking over as their regular catcher during the 1948 campaign and serving in that capacity through 1957, the franchise’s last season in Brooklyn. In those years the Dodgers won five National League pennants and a world championship. Prejudice and tragedy limited his major-league career to a mere 10 seasons, the color of his skin delaying his debut until he was 26 years old, and an automobile accident prematurely ending his playing days at the age of 35.

In fact, Campanella made the fewest major-league plate appearances of any Hall of Fame position player. Yet statistical guru Bill James rated him the third-best catcher of all time behind top-ranked Yogi Berra and runner-up Johnny Bench, ahead of such stalwarts as Mickey Cochrane, Carlton Fisk, Bill Dickey, and Gabby Hartnett.

Baseball-Reference.com lists Campanella’s height at 5-feet-9 and his playing weight at 190 pounds, which may have been close to the truth when he started out. The 1954 Baseball Almanac and the 1955 Who’s Who in Baseball list him at 205 pounds, which was still probably a generously low estimate considering that Campy himself pegged his weight at 215 to 220 pounds shortly before he signed with the Dodgers. Roger Kahn, author of The Boys of Summer, likened Campanella to a little sumo wrestler.1 Despite his roly-poly appearance, the squatty catcher was extremely muscular with massive arms and a bulky torso. At the plate he was a dead pull hitter with a distinct uppercut. He was graceful behind the dish, supplementing surprising agility with a cannon-like arm. He was considered an astute handler of pitchers, both White and Black – knowing when to provide encouragement and when to provide a good kick in the butt.  

Roy was also tough as nails. As a Negro Leaguer, he purportedly caught four games in one day – an early doubleheader in Cincinnati and a twi-nighter in Middletown, Ohio.2 And he claimed to have caught three doubleheaders in one day in winter ball.3 He endured repeated injuries to his fingers, hands, and legs – occupational hazards of working behind the bat – but in his last appearance he established a since-broken National League record for durability by catching at least 100 games in nine straight seasons, a remarkable achievement prior to the new generation of catcher’s mitts that allow receivers to protect their throwing hand by catching one-handed.   

The popular catcher was often described as gentle, unassuming, jovial, and full of life. He was a cheerleader, almost childlike in his enthusiasm. Although Campy and Jackie Robinson were teammates for nine years when there were only a handful of other Black major leaguers, they were not particularly close. In fact, there were even a few well-publicized feuds over the years. Robinson was sometimes frustrated with Campanella’s reluctance to help carry the banner for their race. “There’s a little Uncle Tom in Roy,” he once remarked.4

Despite their differences, however, Campy deeply respected Jackie and fully appreciated the sacrifices he’d made. “Jackie made things easy for us,” he said. “[Because of him] I’m just another guy playing baseball.”5 

Roy Campanella was born on November 19, 1921, in Philadelphia. He had no known middle name. At the time of Roy’s birth his family lived in the Germantown section of the city, but they moved to an integrated section in the northern part of the city known as Nicetown when Roy was 7 years old. He was the product of an interracial marriage, an African-American mother and a father of Sicilian descent – something of a novelty in those days. He attended Gillespie Junior High and Simon Gratz High School, although he left high school before graduating. Growing up, the light-complexioned youngster was tauntingly called “half-breed” by kids of both races, which helped him develop into a pretty good scrapper. In fact, he briefly fought as a Golden Gloves boxer. Roy, the baby of the family, had three older siblings. His brother, Lawrence, about 10 years older, wasn’t around very much when Roy was growing up. His sisters, Gladys and Doris, were both excellent female athletes.  

John Campanella, Roy’s father, made his living selling vegetables and fish out of a truck and later operated a grocery store while Roy’s mother, Ida, ran the household. Growing up in the middle of the Depression, Roy had to work as a youngster. He helped his father, sold newspapers, shined shoes, and had a milk route as a teenager.  

Through high school Roy attended integrated schools and played for integrated football, basketball, and baseball teams. Blacks were in the minority, but he was invariably chosen as the team captain, whatever the sport. Though he participated in other sports, baseball was his passion. He watched many a game at nearby Shibe Park from the top of an adjacent building. By the time he entered high school, he’d abandoned his early aspirations to be an architect and was determined to be a professional baseball player.  

Gradually word of his prowess on the diamond spread. While in high school, he was reportedly offered an opportunity to work out with the Phillies, but the club rescinded the invitation when they discovered he was Black.  

At the tender age of 15 in 1937, Campanella began his professional baseball career with a top-notch semipro team, the Bacharach Giants. Mama Campanella didn’t want her baby to play pro ball with grown men, but when they promised to pay him more for a weekend of catching than his father made in a week, a compromise was reached. Despite his youth, Campanella performed so impressively for the Bacharach Giants that the Washington Elite Giants of the Negro National League soon signed him to spell veteran receiver and manager Biz Mackey on weekends. Roy was an indifferent student to begin with, but after he spent his summer vacation barnstorming with the Elite Giants, schoolwork could no longer hold his attention.

After he turned 16, Roy quit school to play full time for the renamed Baltimore Elite Giants. In 1939 the precocious 17-year-old youngster took over the regular catching chores after Mackey was traded to the Newark Eagles in mid-season and helped lead the Giants to playoff victories over the Eagles and Homestead Grays. His hitting improved and he began showing more power in 1940, and was soon challenging the legendary Josh Gibson’s status as the best catcher in Negro baseball. While still a teenager, he caught the entire 1941 Negro League East-West All-Star Game for the East, winning MVP honors for his excellent defensive work.  

Campanella had married a Nicetown girl, Bernice Ray, in 1939 and they had two girls. With three dependents his draft status was 3-A when World War II broke out, so he was never called for active duty, although he was required to work in war-related industry for a time.   

During the 1942 Negro League season, Campanella jumped to the Monterrey Sultans of the Mexican League after a contract dispute with the Elite Giants. He remained in Mexico for the 1943 season before returning to Baltimore for the 1944 and 1945 campaigns. Though he regained his All-Star status, he deferred to Josh Gibson in the 1944 game, playing a few innings at third base. But he was back behind the plate for the 1945 Classic.

In October 1945 Campanella caught for a Black all-star team organized by Effa Manley against a squad of major leaguers managed by Charlie Dressen in a five-game exhibition series at Ebbets Field. Dressen, a Dodgers coach at the time, approached Campanella during the series to arrange a meeting with Dodgers general manager and part-owner Branch Rickey later that month. Campanella spent four hours listening to Rickey, whom he later described as “the talkingest man I ever did see,” and politely declined when Rickey asked if he was interested in playing in the Brooklyn organization.6 Campy thought he was being recruited for the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, a new Negro League outfit that Rickey was supposedly starting. A few days later, however, he ran into Jackie Robinson in a Harlem hotel. After Robinson confidentially told him he’d already signed with the Dodgers, Campy realized that Rickey had been talking about a career in Organized Baseball for him. Afraid that he’d blown his shot at the big leagues, he fired off a telegram to Rickey indicating his interest in playing for the Dodgers just before leaving on a barnstorming tour through South America.   

The 1946 spring-training season was already under way by the time Campanella returned from South America and reported to the Dodgers office in Brooklyn. The Dodgers didn’t quite know what to do with him or pitcher Don Newcombe, another Negro League star they’d signed. Robinson and former Homestead Grays hurler Johnny Wright were already slated for Montreal, and most of the organization’s other minor-league franchises were located in the South or the Midwest. They tried to send Campanella and Newcombe to Danville of the Class-B Illinois-Indiana-Iowa (Three I) League, but the circuit wouldn’t accept Black players. The Dodgers then checked with their Nashua, New Hampshire, farm club in the New England League, a lesser regarded Class-B circuit, where young general manager Buzzie Bavasi welcomed the opportunity to add two such talented Black players to their roster.

Like most of the first generation of Black players to cross the color line, Campanella took a steep pay cut to enter Organized Baseball and was forced to start at a level far below his ability. A top star in the Negro leagues, he found himself competing against a bunch of inexperienced kids, most of whom would never rise above Class-A ball. Furthermore, he would be making only $185 a month for six months in the minors rather than the $600 a month he’d been earning with the Baltimore Elite Giants.   

With Nashua in 1946, Campanella hit .290 and drove in 96 runs to win the New England League MVP award. Early in the season, Nashua manager Walter Alston, who doubled as the club’s first baseman, asked Campy to take over the team for him if he ever got tossed out of a game. His reasoning was that Roy was older than most of the players and they respected and liked him. Sure enough, in a June contest Alston was ejected in the sixth inning and Campy became the first Black man to manage in Organized Baseball. Moreover, his strategic move resulted in a comeback victory when he called on the hard-hitting Newcombe to pinch-hit and was rewarded with a clutch home run.  

Roy’s experience in Nashua also changed his parents’ life. Fences around the New England League were virtually unreachable, and a local poultry farmer offered 100 baby chicks for every Nashua home run. At the end of the season, Campy collected 1,400 chicks as reward for his 14 homers (a team-leading 13 in the regular season and one in the playoffs). He had them shipped to his father, who promptly began a farming business on the outskirts of Philadelphia.  

Campanella went to spring training with the Dodgers in Havana before the 1947 season. He was listed on the Montreal roster, along with Robinson, Newcombe, and Roy Partlow, a left-handed pitcher. Robinson, of course, was promoted to the Dodgers, Newcombe was sent back to Nashua, and Partlow was released, leaving Campanella the only Black player in the International League. That season, while Robinson was burning up the basepaths as the first Black player in the majors in the twentieth century, Campanella starred in the International League. Veteran catcher Paul Richards, managing the Buffalo Bisons called him “the best catcher in the business – major or minor leagues.”7 With his extensive Negro League experience and an excellent Triple-A season under his belt, the 26-year-old receiver was ready for major-league duty.  

Unfortunately, the Brooklyn Dodgers weren’t yet ready for him. Brooklyn’s regular catcher was Bruce Edwards, who in 1947 posted an excellent .295 batting mark, drove in 80 runs, and finished fourth in National League MVP balloting, the highest ranking of any Dodger. In addition, Edwards was a fine defensive backstop and was almost two years younger than Campy.

According to popular legend, Rickey wanted Campanella to break the racial barrier in the American Association, the Midwestern Triple-A circuit, before he became established with the Dodgers. Therefore, he attempted to conceal Campanella’s skills from the press by carrying him on the preseason roster as an outfield candidate – a position for which Campanella was clearly ill-suited. A less Machiavellian, but plausible, explanation might be that Rickey didn’t want to cause dissension or put too much pressure on Campanella by competing with the popular Edwards. Whatever the reason, the Dodgers brought Campanella to camp as an outfielder and even tried him out at third base.  

But Edwards had injured his arm in the offseason, and it failed to come around in the spring of 1948. Manager Leo Durocher, back in command of the Dodgers after a year’s suspension, fully appreciated Campanella’s talents and wanted to insert him behind the plate in place of the injured Edwards. But Rickey did not want to put the rookie catcher’s skills on display. The issue apparently became a source of friction between Durocher and Rickey.  

Though Campanella broke camp with the Dodgers, the plan was to send him down to their St. Paul American Association farm club when rosters had to be trimmed to 25 players on May 15. He made his big-league debut against the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds on Opening Day. Gil Hodges, who hadn’t made the move to first base yet, started behind the plate in place of Edwards, but went out for a pinch-hitter in the top of the seventh. In the bottom half of the inning, Campanella took over behind the plate with the Dodgers down 6-5. With ace reliever Hugh Casey on the mound, the Giants went scoreless for the final three innings while the Dodgers scored two runs to win the game. Campanella got to the plate in the top of the eighth inning and was promptly drilled by Giants reliever Ken Trinkle – the type of welcome that many more Black hitters would receive in the early days of baseball’s integration era.

Campanella made his second big-league appearance three days later, replacing Hodges to finish up a 10-2 Phillies blowout. Then on April 27, after a pair of losses, Durocher defied Rickey and started Campy at catcher in Boston. He went hitless but acquitted himself well behind the plate. Though Brooklyn lost, wildman Rex Barney held the Braves to three runs with Campanella calling the pitches. Rickey was reportedly incensed and ordered Durocher not to use Campanella behind the plate again. This time Durocher complied. Campy warmed the bench until he was farmed out to St. Paul on May 15.  

The American Association’s first Black player broke the league’s color barrier with a disastrous performance, going hitless and fanning twice in four at-bats, and making an error on a pickoff attempt. But he was soon terrorizing the opposition. In 35 games, Campy batted .325, slammed 13 homers, and drove in 39 runs, forcing the struggling Dodgers to recall him.

When Campanella joined the Dodgers’ lineup on July 2, 1948, the defending National League champions had lost five straight and were languishing in sixth place with a 27-34 record. From that point on they won 57 while losing 36, a .613 pace – better than the .595 overall winning percentage posted by the pennant-winning Braves. Even more remarkable was the fact that the Dodgers won 50 of the 73 games that Campanella started after his recall, an incredible .685 mark. His installation behind the plate was the last in a series of moves orchestrated by Durocher to turn the club around. Three days earlier Gil Hodges, who had acquitted himself well behind the plate filling in for the injured Edwards, was shifted to first base, allowing Jackie Robinson to move over to his natural second-base position. Unfortunately for Durocher, he didn’t stay around long enough to enjoy the results, as he left the Dodgers to take over the reins of the New York Giants a week after Campanella’s recall.

For his rookie year, Campanella batted .258 with 9 homers in 83 games and led National League catchers in percentage of runners caught stealing. He even garnered eight points in the MVP voting despite playing only half the season.

In 1949 Campanella hit .287 with 22 home runs and 82 runs batted in, cementing his hold on the Dodgers’ first-string catching job. During the campaign, Don Newcombe was called up from the minors, combining with Campanella to form the major leagues’ first Black battery. The pair had developed an excellent rapport at Nashua three years earlier and, under Roy’s expert handling, the volatile young flamethrower quickly became the ace of the staff. Both Campanella and Newcombe made the 1949 National League All-Star squad, joining Robinson and Cleveland’s Larry Doby in becoming baseball’s first Black All-Stars. Campanella replaced starting catcher Andy Seminick in the fourth inning and went the rest of the way, beginning a streak in which he would catch every All-Star inning for the National League until Smoky Burgess relieved him in the eighth inning of the 1954 contest. Campanella also displayed his toughness later in the 1949 season when, after a beaning by Bill Werle of the Pirates, he rejected the doctor’s recommendation to take a few days off and rejoined the lineup the next day.

Campanella upped his homer total to 31 in 1950 and batted .281, firmly establishing himself as the best catcher in the National League, if not all of major-league baseball. He caught all 14 innings in that summer’s All-Star Game. In September he suffered a compound fracture from a foul tip off his right thumb and missed starting 11 consecutive games behind the plate – the Dodgers dropping seven of them. Campy’s absence probably cost Brooklyn the pennant as they ended up losing to the Phillies on the last day of the season to finish two games off the pace.  

In spring training before the 1951 season, Campy took another foul tip on his right thumb that chipped the bone and forced him to play in pain all year. Later, a beaning by Turk Lown of the Cubs sent him to the hospital for five days with a concussion and he experienced dizziness for weeks thereafter. Nevertheless, he batted a career-high .325 with 33 homers and 108 runs batted in, and finished third in the league in doubles, slugging, and OPS. On the last day of the regular season, which ended in a tie between the Dodgers and the New York Giants, Campanella aggravated a leg injury he had received in a collision at home plate a few days earlier. He gamely struggled through the first game of the three-game playoff series, but realized he was hurting the team and sat out the last two contests. It’s widely believed that if Campanella had been behind the plate for the third game, he would have been able to nurse his pal Newcombe through the ninth inning – and Bobby Thomson would never have come to the plate to hit his historic pennant-winning home run. In MVP voting Campanella beat out Stan Musial of the Cardinals for the National League award. In the American League Yogi Berra of the Yankees captured his first MVP award. It was the first year in history that catchers won the annual award in both leagues.  

Campanella followed his brilliant 1951 campaign with a disappointing performance in 1952. After he had endured numerous minor injuries early in the season, a foul tip chipped a bone in his left elbow in July. He played with the injury for 10 days before his arm had to be placed in a cast for nearly two weeks. His season average fell to .269 and he hit only 22 home runs. In the Dodgers’ seven-game World Series loss to the Yankees, he managed only six singles.

In 1953 Campanella reported to spring training in great shape and stayed remarkably healthy through the season. And what a great season it was! He batted .312 and his 41 home runs and league-leading 142 RBIs established all-time highs for major-league catchers that stood until 1970. Campanella’s home-run total was the third-highest in the league and he ranked third in slugging and fourth in OPS as he led the Dodgers to their second straight National League pennant. But in the first game of the World Series, Allie Reynolds of the Yankees hit him on the hand with a pitch and he was unable to properly grip the bat through the club’s second straight Series defeat. His second National League MVP award, however, was a foregone conclusion.   

In spring training before the 1954 campaign, Campanella injured his left wrist and hand when he slid awkwardly trying to break up a double play. The bone on the heel of his hand was fractured and pieces that chipped off were impinging on the nerve. Surgery was recommended, but Campanella tried to play with the painful condition. He finally agreed to an operation in early   May. Initial estimates put the recovery time at eight to 10 weeks, but Campy returned to action in less than a month. Numbness in the hand bothered him all year, however, resulting in a dismal .207 batting average with 19 homers. Campanella’s value to the Dodgers, even at less than full strength, was demonstrated by the fact that the club posted a .623 winning percentage for the 106 games he started, compared with .542 without him. At season’s end, the Dodgers trailed the Giants by five games. Insult was added to injury when their crosstown rivals defeated the Cleveland Indians to capture the world-championship banner that had proved so elusive to the Dodgers. After the season Campanella submitted to further surgery on the hand to remove scar tissue and repair nerve damage.  

It was feared that Campanella’s hand injuries could mean the end of his career, or at least drastically curb his productivity. But the 33-year-old veteran made a miraculous comeback in 1955. At midseason he was leading the league in hitting when he was hit on the left kneecap by a foul tip that broke a bone spur loose from his patella. The knee was in a cast for more than two weeks and he missed his first All-Star Game since 1949, although he was picked for the team. Nevertheless, Campy was still challenging for the batting title late in the season, when the rigors of catching every day caused his hands to start bothering him again and his hitting fell off. He still finished with a .318 batting average, slammed 32 home runs, and knocked in 107 runs, despite sitting out more than 30 games. He again drove the Dodgers to the National League pennant, and led them to victory over the Yankees in the World Series. In National League MVP balloting he prevailed for a third time. In the American League, Yogi Berra also captured his third MVP trophy. Four years after Campy and Yogi became the first catchers to win MVP honors in the same season, they became the second and last duo to accomplish the feat (through the 2022 season).  

But thousands of games behind the bat had taken a toll, and Campanella’s 1956 season was ruined by more hand problems. His twice-operated-on glove hand, which had begun tormenting him again late the previous year, still ached. Then he broke his thumb when he slammed his right hand against the hitter’s bat while attempting a pickoff throw to first, an injury that bothered him all year. He ended the campaign with a .219 batting average, but still managed 20 homers as the Dodgers captured their last pennant in Brooklyn. In the World Series, another seven-game loss to the Yankees, he hit only .182 with no homers and seven strikeouts.

Campanella decided to undergo another operation after the 1956 campaign to relieve the pain in his left hand, but the Dodgers insisted that he go on their offseason exhibition tour of Japan first, which drastically cut into his recovery time. With his hands still troubling him in 1957, he missed more than 50 games and hit .242 while belting just 13 home runs, and failed to make the All-Star squad for the first time since his rookie year. Brooklyn fell to third place in the National League amid persistent rumors of a move to the West Coast. Shortly after the Dodgers’ last game, it was officially announced that the franchise would relocate to Los Angeles for the 1958 season.  

Campy loved playing in Brooklyn and like most of the Dodger veterans hated the prospect of moving. But his hands were feeling better than they had in years and he was starting to warm up to the idea of taking aim at the 295-foot left-field fence of the Los Angeles Coliseum, an oval-shaped football stadium that would serve as the club’s makeshift home field.   

But in January 1958, just before he was due to report for spring training, Campanella was permanently disabled in a traffic accident. He had successfully invested in a liquor store in central Harlem, called Roy Campanella Choice Wines and Liquors, earlier in his career and worked there in the offseason. He normally left for home in the early afternoon, but on that fateful day he’d stayed in town to plug a YMCA fund-raising drive on a local television show. The appearance was canceled, but he stayed to help close up the liquor store before leaving for his home in Glen Cove, on the North Shore of Long Island. The Chevy station wagon Campy normally drove was in the shop for repairs, and he was driving a much lighter rental car when he lost control of the vehicle on an icy street. He hit a telephone pole and the car flipped over, pinning him under the steering wheel. Roy’s neck was broken and his spinal cord was severely damaged, paralyzing him from the chest down.  

Roy Campanella, once the best catcher in the National League, if not all of major-league baseball, would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

The Dodgers continued to pay Campanella his salary while he was hospitalized for surgery and rehabilitation for almost a year after the accident. Though he never got a chance to play for the Dodgers in Los Angeles, a crowd of 93,103 fans, the largest in baseball history to that date, jammed the Los Angeles Coliseum on May 7, 1959, for a benefit exhibition game between the Yankees and Dodgers – a tribute to the former Brooklyn great.  

Campanella’s personal life began to unravel in the wake of his accident. His teenage marriage to Bernice Ray had quickly ended in divorce. With Roy away so much of the time, traveling the Negro League circuit or playing winter ball in the Caribbean, Bernice continued to live with her parents and the couple had gradually drifted apart. In 1945 Roy married Ruthe Willis, a fine athlete herself. They had two sons and a daughter together and Ruthe’s son from a previous marriage also lived with them.  

But Ruthe was unable to adjust to Roy’s physical disability. In 1960 he sued for a legal separation; a messy affair that kept the city’s tabloid press busy. In 1963 Ruthe suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 40 before a divorce was finalized. On May 5, 1964, Roy married Roxie Doles, who remained at his side for the remainder of his life.   

After enduring years of therapy, Campanella regained some use of his arms. He eventually was able to feed himself, shake hands, and even sign autographs with the aid of a device strapped to his arm, though he remained dependent on his wheelchair for mobility. Through it all he managed to maintain the positive, upbeat attitude that was his trademark and became a universal symbol of courage. In 1969, the same year he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, he received the Bronze Medallion from the City of New York, the highest honor the city confers upon civilians, awarded for exceptional citizenship and outstanding achievement. Three years later the Dodgers retired his uniform number 39 along with Robinson’s number 42 and Sandy Koufax’s 32.

Though Campanella stayed in New York, continuing to operate his liquor store and hosting a radio sports program called “Campy’s Corner,” he remained a part of the Dodgers family. He worked in public relations, helped with scouting, and served as a special instructor and adviser at the club’s Vero Beach spring-training facility. In 1978 he moved to Los Angeles and took a job as assistant to the Dodgers’ director of community relations, Don Newcombe, his former teammate and longtime friend.

On June 26, 1993, Campanella succumbed to a heart attack in Woodland Hills, California. He lived to be 71, far exceeding the normal life expectancy for someone in his condition. In 2006 he was honored with a US postage stamp bearing his image, and later that year the Dodgers announced the creation of the Roy Campanella Award, to be given annually to the Dodger who best exemplifies Campanella’s spirit and leadership.

Roy Campanella’s lifetime batting average for 10 major-league seasons was .276 and he hit 242 home runs while driving in 856 runs in 1,215 games. His 1953 totals of 41 homers and 142 RBIs stood as single-season highs for a catcher until Johnny Bench hit 45 homers and drove in 148 runs in 1970. Bench, however, played a 162-game schedule rather than the 154 contests played in 1953, and had 86 more at-bats than Campanella.

Campanella shone just as brightly on defense. Sportswriters often referred to him as “The Cat” because of his feline-like quickness blocking stray pitches or pouncing on bunts in front of home plate. He led National League catchers five times in percentage of runners caught stealing, and his career rate of 57 percent is the best all-time among catchers who appeared in more than 100 games.

But the most revealing statistic is the three Most Valuable Player awards Campanella earned in his all-too-brief career. When he was honored for the third time, in 1955, Stan Musial was the only other National Leaguer to have accomplished the feat, while Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx, and Yogi Berra were the only American Leaguers to have done so. Since then, only the names of Mickey Mantle, Mike Schmidt, Barry Bonds, Álex Rodríguez, and Albert Pujols have been added to the exclusive list.

Nonetheless, Campanella’s career is sprinkled with what-ifs. It’s fair to say that, even with the premature end to his career, Campy’s third place ranking on Bill James’s catchers list might have been higher if he hadn’t been denied the opportunity to play in the major leagues at an earlier age. It’s also probably realistic to assume that he wouldn’t have had to wait six years after gaining eligibility to be elected to the Hall of Fame.

If circumstances had been right, Campanella could have been the first Black player in the big leagues. Back in 1943, he had been invited to Forbes Field to work out for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but team president William Benswanger succumbed to peer pressure and canceled the tryout.  

And if not for the accident, Campanella might well have become the major league’s first Black manager. Before joining the Dodgers, he managed the Caracas club in the Venezuelan Winter League for a few seasons. In 1946 the 25-year-old skipper’s charges included Newcombe, Sam Jethroe, Harry Simpson, and Luis Aparicio, Sr., father of the Hall of Fame shortstop. Before his accident the Dodgers had already approached Campanella about a future coaching or managing in the minor leagues after his career ended.

In his autobiography It’s Good to Be Alive, Campanella reminisced about the happiest days of his life in Brooklyn: “That’s where I wanted to finish my playing career. I got my wish all right, but in a much different way.”8

Photo credits

SABR-Rucker Archive.

Sources

This article was adapted from the author’s book The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole: The Jackie Robinson Generation in the Major Leagues (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2004).

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and a number of other sources, including:

Campanella, Roy II, “Roy Campanella” in Cult Baseball Players, Danny Peary, ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 251-9.

Golenbock, Peter, Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New York: Putnam’s, 1984).

James, Bill, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).

Peterson, Robert W., Only the Ball Was White (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Carol Publishing, 1970).

The Sporting News, March 24, 1948, 22.

Clark, Dick, and Larry Lester, The Negro Leagues Book (SABR, 1994, statistical section)

Notes

1 Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 327.

2 Larry Moffi and Jonathan Kronstadt, Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947-1959 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1994), 28.

3 Kahn, 327.

4 Kahn, 327.

5 Moffi and Kronstadt, 27.

6 Roy Campanella, It’s Good to Be Alive (New York: Dell, 1959), 109.

7 Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 223.

8 Roy Campanella, 11.

Before signing with the Cubs, the left-hander had been a star pitcher and first baseman for Lane Tech High School’s 1933 city championship team and then had led his American Legion team to a national championship later that summer. “I always loved baseball,” said Cavarretta in a 2001 interview, “even in grade school.” (As a youngster he would earn free passes to Wrigley Field by helping clean up the park after a game ended; when that opportunity wasn’t available, he would sneak in.) “I started by playing 16-inch softball. That was a pretty big target and I wish I was hitting that when I played in the big leagues.”1 But the effects of the Great Depression quickly turned the teenager playing for the love of the game into a professional trying to earn a living.

Philip Joseph Cavarretta was born in Chicago on July 19, 1916, the third child of Joseph and Angela Cavarretta, immigrants from Palermo, Sicily. His older siblings were Michael and Sarah. “All we spoke at home was Italian,” said Cavarretta. “I learned English at school.” The family was hit hard by the Depression. “We had a tough time getting anything to eat,” he recalled. “My dad (who had lost his job as a school janitor) couldn’t get a job, my brother couldn’t get a job. Things were so tough I’d go down to the coalyards and pick up the droppings from the coal cars and take them home to put in the pot-bellied stove.”

When he told Percy Moore, his high school and American Legion coach, that he would have to drop out of school to help support the family, Moore arranged for his young star to have a tryout with the Cubs. The high school senior was not greeted with open arms when he showed up at Wrigley Field in the spring of 1934. “I went out there and I must have weighed all of about 150 pounds,” he said. “I’m walking around and, geez, all these players are looking at me and they thought I was a batboy. Someone came up and said, ‘Hey, kid, what are you doing here?’ and I said, ‘I’m here for a tryout.’ (Cubs pitcher) Pat Malone, he was a tough guy, he came up and said, ‘A tryout? You oughta go get something to eat and put some weight on, kid.’ I was scared to death.

“Finally, Charlie Grimm, the Cubs first baseman and manager, came over and said, ‘Go get yourself a bat, take a few swings and we’ll look at you.’ Anyway, I had a real good batting session. One I hit out of the park. They were saying, ‘Look at this guy, he’s whacking that pea pretty good. We’d better sign this kid.’ ”

The Cubs did sign the kid, for $125 a month. Cavarretta’s father had not always been fond of his son’s love of baseball, a game he considered a frivolous waste of time. But his objections disappeared when he saw what his son would be making as a professional ballplayer.

Initially Cavarretta was assigned to the Peoria Tractors in the Class B Central League. In his first professional game, on May 15, 1934, he hit for the cycle and drove in four runs. When that league folded after Cavarretta had appeared in 23 games, he was sent to the Reading Red Sox in the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League.

After hitting .310 in 108 games in the minors, Cavarretta was called up in mid-September while the Cubs were in Boston to play the Bees. After two hitless pinch-hitting appearances on the road, he made his first start in front of hometown fans at Wrigley Field on September 25. In the second inning, the 18-year-old rookie hit a homer off Reds pitcher Whitey Wistert for the only run in a 1-0 win. He then started at first base in the Cubs’ remaining four games, going 8-for-17.

Three games into the 1935 season, Grimm, who had been the Cubs’ first baseman for nine years, turned the job over to Cavarretta, who went on to start 145 games. On September 25 the one-year anniversary of his first big-league home run, he again hit a second-inning homer that provided the only run in a 1-0 win, this time over the second-place Cardinals. That victory, the 19th straight for the Cubs, clinched at least a tie for the pennant. In the Cubs’ six-game World Series loss to the Tigers, Cavarretta played every inning but managed only three singles in 24 at-bats.

Grimm would later claim credit for creating the nickname that would stick with Cavarretta the rest of his career. “When I first saw Cavarretta in the mid-‘30s, I started calling him ‘Philibuck,’” said Grimm. “It just came to me and was inspired, if you can call it that, by my reaction that here was a hard-nosed athlete. Phil liked it.”2 According to Len Merullo, the Cubs shortstop from 1942 to ’47, he and Cavarretta, his road roommate, shared a different nickname. “We were two Italian kids, about the same age and we got along great,” said Merullo. “Our teammates called us ‘The Grand Opera Twins.’”3

Cavarretta was again the starting first baseman in 1936, but in 1937 and ’38 he played primarily in the outfield, the Cubs having acquired veteran Rip Collins. In 1935 Cavarretta had led the NL in errors by a first baseman, and would again in 1943. Grimm later said, “We moved him off first a couple of times and put him in the outfield when we got such experienced first basemen as Rip Collins and Babe Dahlgren. But Phil gradually mastered the position.”4 The Cubs again won the pennant in 1938 but were swept in the World Series by the Yankees, in spite of Cavarretta’s .462 batting performance.

Injuries in 1939 and 1940 limited Cavarretta’s playing time to 22 and 65 games respectively. On May 8, 1939, he broke an ankle sliding into second base. He returned on July 25, but appeared in only seven more games. The following season Cavarretta broke the same ankle, again sliding into second, again against the Giants. According to The Sporting News, the injury occurred during the July 16 game, before Cavarretta drove in both runs in a 2-0 win. The next day Cavarretta scored the Cubs’ only run in a loss to the Dodgers. It was not until July 18 that x-rays revealed the injury.5

In 1944 Cavarretta, who was exempt from military service because of a perforated eardrum, earned the first of four consecutive All-Star selections. (In the 1944 game he set an All-Star Game record by reaching base five consecutive times, on a triple, single, and three walks.) Playing in all but two games that season, he batted .321, fifth in the NL, and tied Stan Musial for the league lead in hits with 197.

The next year Cavarretta reached the pinnacle of his career, leading the Cubs to their third pennant in 11 years with a league-best batting average (.355) and on-base percentage (.449) while driving in a career-high 97 runs. In the Cubs’ seven-game World Series loss to the Tigers he hit .423, with two doubles, one home run, seven runs scored, and five RBIs. Then, in November, he was voted the league’s Most Valuable Player by a wide margin. “It was the kind of a year you dream of,” said Cavarretta. “Everything has to go your way, your line drives have to drop, your broken-bat hits have to drop.”

The Cubs finished third in 1946 before descending into what would become a long stay in the second division. On July 21, 1951, two days after his 34th birthday, the 18-year veteran was named the player/manager of the seventh-place Cubs, replacing Frankie Frisch. The team went 27-47 under their new manager and finished in the cellar.

In 1952 Cavarretta became the first Italian American to manage a major-league club for a full season. That year the Cubs moved up to fifth place with a 77-77 record, their only non-losing record between 1947 and 1962. When I asked him, in 2001, if he was aware of this distinction, the 84-year-old Cavarretta said, “I feel honored. I didn’t know that. That’s great.”6

After the Cubs fell back to seventh place in 1953, Cavarretta’s tenure as manager came to an abrupt end the following spring. On March 29, 1954, within a few days of telling owner Phil Wrigley that the Cubs would probably finish in the second division, Cavarretta became the first manager ever fired during spring training. The dismissal was all the more bitter for him since it came after an exhibition game in Dallas, where at the time he made his home and owned a children’s amusement park.

Wrigley was quoted as saying, “I decided to remove Cav as manager when I learned that he picked everyone else but us to finish in the first division. I did not feel the picture was as bleak as he painted it.”7 However, nearly 50 years later Cavarretta remained convinced that it was the Cubs’ general manager, Wid Matthews, who persuaded Wrigley to dismiss him. “I guess my general manager got to Mr. Wrigley and he (Matthews) didn’t like what I said,” Cavarretta explained in 2001. “We didn’t get along together. I was just being honest with Mr. Wrigley, telling him the truth. Before the meeting was over, Mr. Wrigley said, ‘This is the first time in all the time I’ve owned the club that any manager has spoken to me on these grounds. I’m really glad that we talked.’ I felt pretty good.”

Soon after, Cavarretta was summoned by Matthews. “I figured we were going to go over the roster and see who we were going to keep and who we were going to release. Well,” said Cavarretta with a chuckle, “he released me. I couldn’t believe it.” Wrigley appointed Stan Hack, manager of the Cubs’ Pacific Coast League team in Los Angeles, to replace Cavarretta, then asked Cavarretta to replace Hack in Los Angeles. When Cavarretta declined, his 20-year career with the Cubs was over. His tenure as a Cubs player is surpassed in franchise history only by Cap Anson’s 22 years.

In a story about Stan Hack’s first day as Cavarretta’s replacement, the Chicago Tribune casually announced that “the Cubs yesterday officially retired Phil Cavarretta’s No. 44.”8 For reasons that remain unclear, there never was a formal ceremony to retire the number.9

In a column for mlb.com posted on December 24, 2010, former baseball executive Fred Claire suggested that the time had come for the Cubs to formally retire Cavarretta’s number. “Phil Cavarretta gave his heart and soul for 20 years to the Chicago Cubs,” he wrote. “It seems as though it’s time for the Cubs to give the Cavarretta family the honor it deserves by retiring No. 44. It might even be a nice omen for a team trying to get back to a World Series for the first time since a young man wearing No. 44 was playing first base.”10

Both Claire and Cubs historian Ed Hartig have noted that even though the number was never officially retired, thanks to longtime Cubs clubhouse man Yosh Kawano no Cubs player wore number 44 until the team signed Burt Hooton in 1971. Claire quoted former Cubs manager Joey Amalfitano as saying, “Yosh didn’t want the uniform used because he felt it should have been retired. It was kind of an unofficial retirement of a uniform in honor of Phil.”11

After being fired, the 37-year-old veteran moved across town to play for the White Sox, hitting .316 in 71 games. His playing career came to an end on May 9, 1955, when the White Sox released him after he had appeared in six games.

At 5-feet-11-inches tall and 175 pounds, Cavarretta was hardly the prototypical slugging corner infielder. In 6,754 at-bats he hit 95 home runs (one every 71 at-bats) with a .416 slugging percentage. But he was a solid contact hitter, with a lifetime average of .293 and a .372 on-base percentage. “I was a disciplined, patient hitter,” he said. His .355 batting average in 1945 remains as of 2014 the Cubs’ single-season record for a left-handed hitter, and he ranks in the top ten in franchise history in runs, hits, RBIs, extra-base hits, triples, and walks.

Van Lingle Mungo was the victim of Cavarretta’s sixth career home run on July 22, 1935, at Ebbets Field. Cavarretta’s solo shot in the bottom of the tenth tied the score at 13-13 (Mungo had come on in relief in the eighth inning), but the Dodgers scored in the top of the 11th to win, 14-13. According to Cavarretta’s son, Phil Jr., his father did not have fond memories of Mungo, who drilled him with a pitch in his first full season with the Cubs. “When he got back to the bench,” said Phil Jr., “he expressed his frustration with Mungo to pitcher Charlie Root. ‘Don’t let it bother you,’ said Root. ‘Nobody really likes the guy. I’ll get him for you later.’”12

With his boundless energy, constant hustle, and competitive fire, Cavarretta captured the hearts of Cubs fans. The Cubs’ 1941 yearbook described him as “slim, swarthy, easy-going off the field, but possessed of one of the most fiery competitive temperaments in baseball.” In a 1945 article in The Sporting News, Edgar Munzel wrote: “Phil definitely is a throw-back to the rugged hell-for-leather days. To him the opposition is the enemy and no quarter is asked and none given.” The article quoted Cavarretta as saying: “Hustling was just born in me, I guess. By hustling you look good, you make your ball club look good and you make the fans feel like they’re really getting their money’s worth.”13

It was during the 1938 World Series against the Yankees that Cavarretta got the chance to meet his boyhood hero, Lou Gehrig. “I got on base, I think it was the third game,” he recalled. “He’s holding me on first and I’m peeking at him, thinking, ‘My God, this is my man.’ He finally said, ‘I’ve been watching you and I like the way you play. You’re always hustling.’ Then he said one more thing, and I’ll never forget this as long as I live. He said, ‘Don’t change.’ The rest of my career I always remembered that because I always gave one hundred percent, I always hustled, regardless of the score.”

Andy Pafko, a Cubs outfielder from 1943 to 1951, had the locker adjacent to Cavarretta’s. “I was honored to be dressing next to the great Phil Cavarretta,” he said. “I admired his hustle. He was a real competitor, and one of the most popular players in Chicago.”14

Cavarretta was especially popular with Italian American fans. In 1935, the local Knights of Columbus sponsored Phil Cavarretta Day at Wrigley Field. He recalled that they presented him with “a nice automobile and a 16-gauge shotgun, which I still have.” Even his parents became fans. “Once I went to the Cubs they took a little interest ’cause I was bringing in some money,” he said. “I’d get paid on the first and the 15th, and I’d bring the check to my mom and dad.”

Cavarretta remained in the game for many years after his playing days ended, working as a scout, coach, and minor-league manager. Married since 1936 to Chicago native Lorayne Clares, he had five children to support.15 For 11 years between 1956 and 1971, he managed seven minor-league teams in five different leagues, from the Florida Instructional League to the Triple-A International League. He coached for the Detroit Tigers from 1961 to 1963 before scouting for them, and from 1973 to 1977 he was the minor-league hitting instructor for the New York Mets. He completed his career by serving as the Mets’ hitting coach in 1978 under manager Joe Torre.

After retiring from baseball, Cavarretta and his wife lived for many years in Clearwater, Florida, before moving to Georgia, first to Villa Rica, then to Lilburn. He remained a loyal Cubs fan the rest of his life. On May 15, 1999, the 82-year-old Cubs legend returned to Wrigley Field to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. In an interview at that time he said, “Every day I wait for the Cubs games to come on cable TV. I watch all the games and I sit there and root for the Cubs.”16

Phil Jr., who pitched in the minors in 1977-78, confirmed that his father loved the Cubs and watched the games. “But,” he said, “he’d get aggravated when guys wouldn’t play the game the way it’s supposed to be played.” He added that in retirement his father “played a little golf, did a little fishing. But mostly he spent time with the family. He was a good father, always there for you, always understanding.”17

In 2001 Cavarretta, then living in Villa Rica, reflected on what baseball meant to him. “I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for baseball,” he said. “It was a game that I was proud to be a part of, proud of so many things that I learned from the game itself and the people that were affiliated with the game.”

After battling leukemia for several years, Cavarretta succumbed to complications from a stroke on December 18, 2010, in Lilburn, Georgia, at the age of 94. His remains were cremated. He was survived by his wife of 73 years; daughters Diana, Patti, Cheryl, and Lori; son Phil Jr.; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Sources

Cava, Pete, ed., Tales From the Cubs Dugout (Champaign, Illinois: Sports Publishing, Inc., 2000).

Golenbock, Peter, Wrigleyville: A Magical History Tour of the Chicago Cubs (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996).

Hartig, Ed, “First Family: 1945 MVP Cavarretta Returns to Wrigley,” Vine Line, July 1999, 15.

Munzel, Edgar, “Run-’em-out Phil in 11-Year Cub Run,” Sporting News, May 31, 1945.

Chicago Cubs Yearbooks, 1941, ’42, ’51, ’53.

Chicago Tribune

New York Times

The Sporting News

Claire, Fred, “Time for Cubs to Finally Honor Cavarretta,” MLB.com, http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20101224&content_id=16367164&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

Interviews: Phil Cavarretta, Phil Cavarretta, Jr., Len Merullo, Andy Pafko.

Thanks to Cubs historian Ed Hartig for his assistance.

Notes

Crosetti was a consummate professional, a sure-handed fielder, and as one writer put it, “one of the most annoying .245 batters that baseball ever had.”2 Perhaps the Yankees’ success in his years with the team was no coincidence. “Crosetti is the sparkplug of the Yankees,” Rogers Hornsby once said. “Without him they wouldn’t have a chance. He is a great player and he is about the only one on the club who does any hollering.”3

Crow’s reputation as the Yankees’ “holler guy” gave secondary meaning to a moniker that superficially seemed like a shortened version of his last name. Players grew accustomed to hearing his high-pitched voice cawing from all corners of the field.

It may have come about incidentally. During a frustratingly sluggish stretch in 1932, manager Joe McCarthy told the rookie Crosetti that Lou Gehrig looked too lackadaisical at first base. “When you get the ball in infield practice,” McCarthy said, “fire it back hard at Gehrig. Holler at him. See if you can’t wake him up.”4

Obligingly, Crosetti obeyed. (“Although Gehrig was giving me dirty looks,” he recalled. “I remember him saying, ‘If I get ahold of you, I will break you in half!’ – which he easily could have done!”) Years later, McCarthy related that Gehrig was never the problem at all – it was Crosetti who had needed the extra motivation. Apparently it worked – his animated style on the field stuck.5

Off the field Crosetti had “the same approximate loquacity as the Sphinx,” as New York Times columnist Arthur Daley once described him,6 a trait he shared with the other two members of the Italian trio.

At least two oft-told stories illustrate this. In February 1936, Lazzeri and Crosetti took the rookie DiMaggio cross-country from San Francisco to St. Petersburg for spring training. The car was eerily silent for most of the three days of the trip. Crosetti and Lazzeri had taken turns behind the wheel, and toward the end of their trek, Lazzeri suggested, “Let the kid drive.” Only then did DiMaggio reveal he didn’t know how.7

Another story involved a St. Louis sportswriter who observed Lazzeri, Crosetti, and DiMaggio sitting together one day in the lobby of the Chase Hotel. Ninety minutes went by without a word until DiMaggio cleared his throat.

“What did you say?” asked Crosetti.

“Shut up,” said Lazzeri. “He didn’t say nothing.”8

The younger son of Domenico Crosetti, who emigrated from near Genoa, Italy, around the turn of the 20th century, and Rachele Monteverde Crosetti, a California native whose parents were from the same region, Frank Peter Joseph Crosetti was born in San Francisco on October 4, 1910.

Because he suffered from poor health as a toddler, the family relocated to the more rural Los Gatos, and Domenico Crosetti – who would hold a number of unskilled odd jobs, including orchardist, gardener, and scavenger – started a vegetable farm. Frank’s first baseball experiences were playing one-a-cat (a sort of hybrid of baseball and cricket) on that 12-acre plot. For a bat and ball, he and his brother, John, who was three years older, used a whittled-down board and the big end of a dried corncob.9 No member of his family had ever seen a baseball game.10

Rachele Crosetti did not object to her son playing ball, but – even into Frank’s professional days – she feared he would get hurt.11 The family matriarch ran a stern but loving household, which included early curfews and church every Sunday. But she was always waiting for the Crosetti boys after school with a sandwich and eggnog.12

“My mother was on the strict side,” Frank Crosetti wrote in 1997. “My brother and I probably resented it. But as we grew older we were thankful that she was. She was right, it kept us out of trouble, as it does not take much to go on the other side of the tracks.”13

It didn’t keep him in school, however. An unimpressive student, Crosetti, whose family moved to Santa Clara, then to the North Beach area of San Francisco, once skipped classes at Lowell High School for two weeks to watch the local Pacific Coast League team, the San Francisco Seals, play ball.14 At 16, he dropped out.

After playing semipro ball for the Butte Mining League in Montana, Crosetti played winter ball in San Francisco at the Seals’ Recreation Park, where Sam Fugazi, an unofficial Seals scout, invited him for a tryout with the professional club. The Seals appreciated Crosetti’s talent but deemed him too small to be a regular, so team executive secretary George Putnam had bottles of milk delivered to his house every morning, and Crosetti put on ten pounds.15 He wasted little time in grabbing his first headlines, hitting a grand slam off Joe Dawson of the Pittsburgh Pirates in a March 21, 1928, exhibition game against the reigning National League champions.

Crosetti batted a modest .248 in 96 games in 1928, mainly playing third base. The following year he was groomed to be a shortstop to replace Hal Rhyne, who had gone to the majors. Playing nearly the entire 180-plus-game schedule, Crosetti improved to .314 in 1929, and to .334 in 1930. In the latter season he hit 27 home runs, stole 18 bases, and led the league with 171 runs scored.

The slick-fielding leadoff hitter attracted the attention of major-league scouts, including Bill Essick of the New York Yankees. Convinced that he’d just seen the greatest shortstop in the game,16 Essick persuaded Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert to open his wallet. On August 23, 1930, Crosetti became the property of the Yankees for what eventually amounted to a handful of marginal players – Julie Wera, Bill Henderson, and Sam Gibson – and $75,000 in cash.17

Still barely 20 years old, Crosetti remained with the Seals in 1931 for more seasoning at $1,000 a month, one of the league’s highest salaries that season. He batted cleanup for the only time in his career and hit .343.

Crosetti was a “scared kid out of San Francisco”18 who could barely put a sentence together when he met his idol and soon-to-be teammate Babe Ruth on a barnstorming tour that offseason,19 but he headed to spring training in St. Petersburg in 1932 as the Yankees’ leading shortstop candidate.20 Manager Joe McCarthy drilled him hard – including subjecting him to a rigorous fielding drill in which coach Sunset Jimmy Burke would hit rapid-fire grounders just out of his reach21 – but Crosetti impressed the skipper as “one of the fastest infielders around [with] a fine, sure pair of hands.”22 Lou Gehrig liked him (“because I kept quiet and didn’t pop off”23), and double-play partner Lazzeri took him under his wing (“I looked up to him like a big brother”24).

Ultimately, McCarthy went with the veteran Lyn Lary at short and started Crosetti at third. Crosetti went 0-for-5 on Opening Day, April 12, against Philadelphia (his first big-league hit, a triple, came in the Yankees’ next game) and was benched after batting just .228 in his first 29 games. He won the shortstop job later that summer when Lary stopped hitting, but the inflated expectations stemming from his purchase price and playing in the New York City fishbowl probably dogged Crosetti a bit in those early years.

Crosetti generally balked at interviews, though when he did talk – particularly as he got older –he wasn’t shy about expressing opinions. As the last surviving member of the 1932 team, which decisively swept the Chicago Cubs in the World Series that year, he insisted that Babe Ruth had not “called his shot” in Game Three.

The Yankees may have considered trading Crosetti when Billy Werber outplayed him during 1933 spring training. Penciled in the lineup for the benefit of an interested Boston scout for a series of exhibitions as the team headed north, Crosetti turned on the spectacular, and the Yankees jacked up the price. The Red Sox took Werber for $40,000 less.25

And yet Crosetti endured relatively unimpressive seasons in 1933 and ’34, and was often in danger of losing his job to another infielder. Before the 1935 season he worked out with University of California-Berkeley track coach Brutus Hamilton to become bigger, faster, and stronger,26 and was assured by McCarthy he was the only shortstop candidate in the running.27

And he thrived – though his batting statistics were comparable to his previous season averages, he committed just 16 errors, after hovering around 40 in each of the prior two years, albeit in many fewer games.

Then on August 4, 1935, he blew out his left knee untying his shoes. Crosetti had strained it three weeks before in a collision with the White Sox’ Luke Appling, but when he pulled his leg up to get undressed in his Pullman berth that night, some cartilage tore loose and he doubled over in pain. The prognosis: season-ending knee surgery.

Team president Ed Barrow offered Crosetti an invitation to spring training the next year on a provisional $1 contract. But Crosetti not only disposed of any doubt surrounding the status of his knee – securing an $11,000 raise at the start of the season – but he put together the best offensive season of his career, batting .288 with 15 home runs, 78 RBIs, and 18 stolen bases. He was selected to the American League All-Star team.

The surgery had actually helped his batting stance. “I am turned around more,” Crosetti said. “And you will notice that I do not swing so hard. I do not fan so often. My timing is better.”28

Actually, he did strike out quite a bit – 83 times in 1936, second-most in the league, and he led the AL in strikeouts with 105 and 97 in 1937 and ’38, respectively – but he also proved why traditional statistical categories may not tell the whole story. Crosetti took tremendous pride, for instance, in consistently leading the league in hit-by-pitched-balls, which Yankees coach Art Fletcher taught him how to execute without getting seriously injured.

And even though no one kept track of on-base percentage in those days, in hindsight, his knack for getting himself aboard explains how a career .245 hitter remained successful in the leadoff spot for the Yankees’ four-straight World Series championship run from 1936 through 1939. Lifetime, Crosetti’s OBP was .341 – typically some 90 to 100 points higher than his season averages. His record of 757 plate appearances in 1938 was not eclipsed until 1962, after eight games were added to the major-league schedule.

Crosetti also mastered the hidden-ball trick, which he picked up while with the Seals from teammate-turned-umpire Babe Pinelli. The shape of the old glove, with the large hole above the wrist strap, allowed Crosetti to pretend to flip the ball to the pitcher, then quickly slip his left hand through the hole and pull the ball inside. The pitcher would fiddle with the rosin bag without returning to the rubber as Crosetti would politely ask the baserunner if he could clean the dirt from the base, tagging the startled man out as soon as he stepped off.29

Crosetti’s shining moment (and greatest thrill) as a player was the 1938 World Series, the Yankees’ second sweep of the Cubs. His defensive play, which included nailing a runner at the plate from the foul line in short left field, as well as coming “from nowhere” to turn a “certain single” up the middle into an out,30 saved three runs in the Yanks’ 3-1 victory in the opener. Crosetti’s home run off Dizzy Dean in Game Two with two outs in the eighth proved the deciding blast in the 6-3 victory. Ol’ Diz no longer had the same zip on his fastball, but he’d handcuffed the fearsome Yankees lineup on four hits – with the Cubs ahead, 3-2 – before Crosetti worked a ten-pitch at-bat into a two-run blast into the left-field seats.31 Add a two-run double and a two-run triple in Game Four, and Crosetti tallied six RBIs for the Series.

He’d been no slouch in the regular season, either, leading the league in stolen bases (27), hitting 35 doubles (ninth in the league), and setting a record for shortstops by turning 120 double plays.32 Much of his defensive success in 1938 could be attributed to the arrival of Joe Gordon at second base to replace a graying Lazzeri.

At that time Crosetti had been seeing Norma Devincenzi, whose family owned the apartment building in San Francisco where his brother, John, was a tenant. Crosetti asked her to come to Chicago for the World Series. When he subsequently had to have minor surgery in New York, she followed. He suggested that they get married, and on October 22, 1938, they quietly eloped at the Church of the Transfiguration in downtown Manhattan. Their union lasted until his death, 63 years later, along the way producing a daughter, Ellen, on October 4, 1941 (his 31st birthday), and a son, John, on October 5, 1943.33

Brimming with confidence from his marriage, his third straight championship, and another respectable year statistically, Crosetti staged a much-publicized holdout in the early days of spring training 1939, refusing to sign for less than $15,000. By mid-March, he’d caved for $14,000. In the rush to catch up in his conditioning, a process further delayed when he was hit in the leg by a thrown ball, Crosetti developed a sore arm and got off to a slow start. Eventually, he came around – and despite batting only .233, he scored 109 runs (the fourth straight season in triple digits) and was selected to the AL All-Star team (but didn’t play). He also caught the final out of the World Series, another sweep, this time of the Reds – though he went just 1-for-16 – as the Yankees took home their fourth consecutive championship.34 He received a nice raise, signing for $18,000 by mid-February.

Then, abruptly, the honeymoon ended. Despite Yankees president Ed Barrow’s new mandate that all players stay in shape during the offseason, Crosetti, determined to condition himself “slowly” so he wouldn’t develop another sore arm, passed up that advice.35 Yet again by mid-March, the sore arm returned. He couldn’t hit anything and bobbled balls on plays he would normally make. After the Yankees lost seven straight in May, McCarthy benched him for a week in favor of Bill Knickerbocker (who couldn’t hit or field much better). In August Crosetti was dropped to eighth in the batting order. The Yankees finished third and Crosetti hit .194.

Frank Graham of the New York Sun tried to excuse Crosetti’s offyear – Gordon had also been off all season, and Red Rolfe had been ill, so Crosetti “was trying to cover too much territory on legs that had been pounding the big-league trail for nine seasons.”36 But the talk now shifted to some kid named Phil Rizzuto who’d been tearing up the Yanks’ Kansas City farm club. Only timing – the looming possibility that young, unmarried players like Rizzuto might be sent off to war – probably saved Crosetti from being dealt to another club that offseason.37

Determined to keep his job, Crosetti had worked furiously to stay in shape, running up the steep hills of San Francisco. He experimented batting left-handed in spring training, hoping it would raise his average.38 And yet, while many of Crosetti’s loyal teammates initially gave the usurper Rizzuto the cold shoulder, Crosetti actively helped the diminutive youngster. He taught Rizzuto how to position himself on each pitch, and how to bluff a bunt. He let him in on the secrets of being hit by a pitch and how to pull off the hidden-ball trick. “He made me look good – and here I am trying to take his job away,” Rizzuto recalled years later.39

Rizzuto won the starting spot, but when he wasn’t hitting by May, the Crow was waiting in the wings to reclaim the position. Then, on June 16, Crosetti was spiked in the throwing hand by Cleveland’s Hal Trosky and had to miss some time, and Rizzuto took over again, for good. Crosetti found playing time later in the season at third base when Red Rolfe was hospitalized with chronic ulcerative colitis – but all told, his role was limited to 50 games. On the bench all five games of the Yankees’ World Series victory over the Dodgers, Crosetti did what he did best off the field – he played the holler guy again.

The now reportedly “aging” Crosetti (he was only 31, but maybe his thinning hairline had something to do with it) broke camp as a utility infielder in 1942. He worked some with young Jerry Priddy, Rizzuto’s minor-league partner up the middle who was being groomed for third base to replace the ailing Rolfe, but Priddy’s bat stayed cold, and Crosetti became the starting third baseman. He did a formidable enough job that some Yankees were indignant that he didn’t make the AL All-Star team. McCarthy, the AL manager, admitted that had he the choice, he would have chosen Crosetti over Cleveland third baseman Ken Keltner, but the Yankees already had nine representatives, and “we have no right to squawk over the omission of a tenth.”40

Rolfe displaced Crosetti when he returned later that summer. Crosetti did get into the third game of the World Series, which the Yankees lost to the Cardinals. Playing third base, he shoved umpire Bill Summers over what he considered a bad call. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis fined Crosetti a reported $250 and suspended him for the first 30 days of the 1943 season.

In February 1943 Crosetti’s father, Domenico, was struck by a car and killed. Barrow gave Crosetti permission to report to camp late, on April 10, to spend more time with his family. He didn’t report until the beginning of May, however, due to a dispute over whether the Yankees should pay him for the first month of the season.41 Barrow capitulated42 – with the war sapping teams of talent, Crosetti would be needed to help fill the void left when Rizzuto joined the Navy. A bout with the flu days before his suspension ended left Crosetti weak and out of shape, however, and rookies Snuffy Stirnweiss and Billy Johnson had the left side of the infield covered. Crosetti’s return on May 21 went by almost unnoticed.

Still, Barrow and McCarthy recognized Crosetti’s value on the bench, almost as a secret weapon. Despite continued interest from other teams over the years, Barrow refused to sell him. “I don’t care how much they offer,” Barrow said. “Nobody can buy Crosetti. He stays with the Yankees as long as I have anything to do with running them.”43 The feeling was mutual – for Crosetti, it was “the Yankees – or nothing.”44

When Stirnweiss stopped hitting, Crosetti was back at short – and the Yankees turned a slim league lead into double digits for another pennant and a successful World Series rematch with the Cardinals. Crosetti reached base in each of the five games (5-for-18 with two walks), started the winning rally in the sixth inning of Game One with a leadoff single to center, and made game-saving defensive plays in Games Four and Five.

Working in a shipyard in Stockton, California, in the offseason gave Crosetti an occupational draft deferment as a defense worker, but tied him to his job. All he could do was wait patiently, playing semipro ball once or twice a week. When the draft board eased restrictions on men over 30 in July 1944, Crosetti jumped on a train to rejoin the Yankees, who hoped his presence would lead them to another pennant.45 It didn’t, but it gave Crosetti leverage when negotiating his 1945 contract. Again a late holdout, Crosetti signed for $15,000 two weeks before Opening Day. He didn’t have the greatest season, but he was better than the alternative – Joe Buzas, who had iron hands.46

At 35, Crosetti was slowing down; the war was over, and Rizzuto and the rest of the major-league talent had returned. Crosetti batted.288 in 28 games off the bench in 1946. But his limited role was somewhat convenient, as the Yankees started traveling out west by airplane, and he was afraid to fly. (“It took me too long to accumulate what I have, and I am in no hurry to go where I can’t spen[d] it,” he said.47) He was granted permission to follow the team around by train.

Crosetti signed as a player-coach alongside new manager Bucky Harris for 1947 and got into three games, going hitless in his only at-bat. He went on the inactive list late that summer when the Yankees called up Jack Phillips and Allie Clark. He was making calls to the bullpen on Harris’s behalf when the Yankees beat the Dodgers in the World Series.

At his request, Crosetti reported to spring training in 1948 as a player, not as a coach, though even that spring he was helping teammates, such as perfecting pitcher Joe Page’s slider so that, as Page put it, it didn’t “tear my arm apart.”48 He played in 17 games, in the last of which, on October 3 in Boston, he appeared as a defensive replacement at second base.

After that season – and for the next two decades – Crosetti coached full time. He waved home more than 16,000 men from the third-base coaching box and helped a slew of infielders realize their big-league talent. He also taught pitcher Ryne Duren – a hard-throwing, bespectacled righty whose control was purportedly as bad as his vision – to intimidate batters by firing his first warm-up pitch high over his catcher’s head.

He was crafty in other ways, too. According to Rizzuto, “He could steal signs, and knew from the way the pitcher was holding the ball what he might be throwing, a curve or a fastball, and he’d be able to relay it to the batter.”49

Crosetti lived in a somewhat old-fashioned manner – rising with the sun at 6 A.M., the first one in the clubhouse and the last one out, retiring no later than 9:30 or 10 P.M. (unless there was a night game). Baseball was all that mattered.

Whitey Ford recalled that after one long night of debauchery during spring training he returned to the hotel in Palm Beach with Mickey Mantle and Hank Bauer at 6:30 on a Sunday morning – in time to run into Crosetti on his way to church. When Crosetti asked where they’d been, they sheepishly said they’d just come from Mass. “He looked at us and laughed and went to church,” Ford said. “Cro was a great guy. We didn’t have to worry about him squealing.”50

Yet when it came to behaving in a professional context, many saw Crosetti as being too tightly wound. He wouldn’t hesitate to call out players for making mistakes if he thought they were not giving their all. When Phil Linz’s infamous harmonica playing amid a losing streak started a fracas on the team bus in 1964, Crosetti had little sense of humor about it, calling it the worst thing he’d ever witnessed in all his years with the club.51

And he hardly hid his disdain for the media or anything involving spectacle – pitcher Jim Bouton, who skewered him in his baseball exposé Ball Four, wrote that Crosetti’s “twin fortes” were “saving baseballs … to the point of jumping into the stands after them, and chasing photographers off the field.”52 Wrote Dan Daniel of Crosetti’s reaction to seeing a pregame dog show on the field at Yankee Stadium: “His comments cannot be printed.”53

Even after the Yankees would win the World Series, Crosetti wouldn’t stick around to celebrate, preferring instead to jump into a car the next day and begin the drive back to Stockton to be with his family. In the offseason, he enjoyed fishing and hunting, biding his time until he could head to Florida for spring training.

When the Yankees needed a guide for young players first joining the team, they had Crosetti pen the 12-page pamphlet. It covered such topics as staying in peak physical condition, eating and sleeping well, hustling, keeping one’s temper, and obligations as a teammate and as a public figure – which included choosing one’s friends wisely and avoiding the temptations of drinking, carousing, gambling, and loose women. “It takes a man to say no, and it takes a man to realize 100% of his baseball is potential,” he wrote, leaving one to wonder a bit about the wording.

In 1966 Crosetti published a youth instructional book titled Frank Crosetti’s Secrets of Baserunning and Infield Play. It wasn’t high literature, but, unlike many other books written by professional athletes, the words were all his, and not those of a ghostwriter or “co-author.”54

Some called Crosetti the “perfect coach,” because he never had any ambition whatsoever to manage.55 He repeatedly spurned rumors that he was taking over for Casey Stengel (“I would not be manager of the Yankees if the job were offered to me.”56), and also turned down offers to manage other major- and minor-league clubs.57

“You have to worry about 25 guys and make speeches and give out interviews and that doesn’t appeal to me,” Crosetti said. “Besides, who manages forever? You have a bad year, or don’t win when the management thinks you should, and you’re gone. Then how do you know you can get another job?

“I’ve been perfectly happy right where I am … at third base. You don’t get a fat salary but you don’t have problems either.”58

As when he was a player, though, he refused to accept being short-changed. Crosetti was the ringleader in a 1962 suit filed on behalf of a couple of hundred contemporaries against the owners’ pension committee. The Major League Baseball Players’ Association, propelled by lucrative television and marketing deals, had met secretly the previous fall to raise the per-month pension rate to $250; players already retired more than ten years, however, like Crosetti, were frozen at $175. The players lost the suit and eventually settled for $750,000. Decades later, Crosetti was also one of a handful of old-time ballplayers who unsuccessfully brought what they hoped would be a class action against Major League Baseball for using their names and images in promotional materials.59

Not that Crosetti was ever in dire straits financially. His World Series checks alone totaled a reported $142,989.30 – a stunning amount in an era when season salaries were still in the low five figures. He had also made a small fortune off shrewd real-estate investments – something he began doing while with the Seals when a banker friend advised him to acquire all the local real estate he could find in Depression-era San Francisco.60

By 1968, though, the Yankees’ World Series bounty had dried up, and Crosetti longed to spend more time with his mother, children, and grandchildren on the West Coast. On October 4, his 58th birthday, he submitted a six-page handwritten letter of resignation.

“I was probably around too long anyway and people were getting tired of looking at me,” he wrote. “They say a change once in a while is good for everyone – gives you a new lease on life.”

He concluded: “This is not a good-bye – as I hate good-byes. Only a ‘I’ll see you later.’ Come spring, the Cro will be back – only in another uniform. The old saying of years gone by probably will hold true of me also, ‘Once a Yankee, always a Yankee!’”61

Specifics were unspoken in the letter, but Crosetti had all but signed to coach the expansion Seattle Pilots in 1969, thousands of miles closer to his home in Stockton, California. He grew fond of the Emerald City – despite there not being “enough traffic going around third base to suit me” for the victory-challenged Pilots62 – and had planned on eventually transitioning into a scouting role with the organization. But Seattle finished dead last, and general manager Marvin Milkes, after supposedly promising Crosetti that he’d be there for more than one season, didn’t renew his contract.63 Crosetti felt betrayed, but before Christmas he’d been recruited by the Minnesota Twins.

Crosetti was in the coach’s box along third as the Twins won the AL West division (and lost to Baltimore in the League Championship Series) in 1970. And he was there to shake hands with Harmon Killebrew for the slugger’s 500th home run in 1971. Crosetti rarely shook hands after a player hit a round-tripper – Mickey Mantle’s walk-off home run in the 1964 World Series and Roger Maris’ 60th and 61st homers in 1961 being three other notable exceptions.

But after two seasons, he’d truly had enough. He retired and coached high-school ball – leading St. Mary’s in Stockton to a 16-game undefeated season in 1972.

Although he never attended a Yankees Old Timers Day after he retired, Crosetti avidly followed the team from his home in Stockton and was a frequent visitor when the Yankees played Oakland each year, even appearing in the broadcast booth on occasion. Until a broken hip from a fall incapacitated him in January 2002, he went fishing regularly, and he rarely shied away from an opportunity to talk baseball or reminisce about his years in Pinstripes with those who would listen.

“He was Yankee all the way around,” his wife, Norma, said after he died at age 91 on February 11, 2002. “He had no other team.”64

The “old saying” had indeed held true.

This biography appeared in “Van Lingle Mungo: The Man, The Song, The Players” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin. An abbreviated version was first published in “Bridging Two Dynasties: The 1947 New York Yankees” (University of Nebraska Press, 2013), edited by Lyle Spatz.  

Sources

Special thanks to the Baseball Hall of Fame for providing me a copy of Crosetti’s player file, to Lawrence Baldassaro for sharing his research, and to Crosetti’s grandson Michael McCoy for tracking down relatives to answer questions about his grandparents’ history. All statistics, unless otherwise noted, are from baseball-reference.com.

Telephone interview by Ellen Biggs, Frank Crosetti’s daughter, with Thomas Bourke on November 20, 2011.

Notes

The 12th player among those in Dave Frishberg’s “Van Lingle Mungo” lyrics lineup is Roberto Estalella, and he is united by rhyme with Danny Gardella, the song’s sixth man.2 There may not have been anything intentional about it, but nonetheless, they encountered each other elsewhere in the arts as well as on the ballfield. Baseball fans are now more familiar with his namesake grandson Bobby Estalella, who debuted in major-league baseball in 1996, playing for the Phillies, Giants, Yankees, Rockies, Diamondbacks, and Blue Jays. Less is remembered about the original Roberto Estalella, who graced the infield and outer garden of the Washington Senators, the St. Louis Browns, and the Philadelphia Athletics between 1935 and 1949, with a brief hiatus spent in the Mexican League. But like many lesser-known players, he is the star of a monumental saga, and like many other players who have left indelible impressions and memories, he accumulated nicknames, attesting to his popularity with fans and reporters: “El Tarzán,” “Cuba’s Gift to the Washington Senators,” “The Hotcha Kid,” “Esty,” and “Cheese and Crackers.” Sportswriters routinely called him “Bob” and “Bobby.” Roberto Estalella’s story begins in 1933 with the Washington Senators, Clark Griffith, and baseball scout Joe Cambria.

Estalella explained that he learned how to bat and take a terrific cut at a ball by swinging a bat in the same arc as cutting sugar cane. He was born on April 25, 1911, in Cardenas, Cuba, where he played baseball on a company team comprising workers from the sugar fields, deep within a culture rich with baseball talent. Cuba had been known for decades as fertile territory for American baseball organizations seeking raw young players, but there were a few bothersome problems. There was the language barrier. Cuban players rarely knew even a little English and there was no organized effort to teach them once they arrived here. American scouts, Joe Cambria included, were not inclined to learn Spanish. And then there was the pigmentation issue.

“Everybody having a known trace of Negro blood in his veins – no matter how far back it was acquired – is classified as a Negro. No amount of white ancestry, except one hundred per cent, will permit entrance to the white race.” — Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, Vol. I, 1944

When Roberto Estalella debuted with the Washington Senators in 1935, his introduction included the remark that he was “born of Spanish parents in Havana,” and, adding a note of poverty-stricken innocence, that “he never wore a pair of shoes until he was 11 years old.”3 His arrival in the United States inspired a rags-to-mythical-riches tale guaranteed to delight fans.

He had played baseball in Cuba with the amateur and semipro teams Club Deportivo Cardenas and Central Hershey.4 Cambria, known as the “laundry man” for his side job of providing laundry services around Baltimore, an enterprise that employed some of his acquisitions in the offseason, heard about Estalella in 1933 from Albany outfielder Ismael Morales, Estalella’s teammate in Cuba’s winter league.5 “He hit good, he field all right, he good arm and he pretty fast. You better take a look at him queek before some other club pick heem up,” Morales advised Cambria.6 Estalella hit a “crucial late-inning home run” which won the season’s final game for Havana’s Leones in the 1932-33 winter season, bringing about a tie with the rival Alacranes.7 Estalella had hit .351 in the 1931-32 season and .317 in 1932-33.8 Almost every year from 1936-37 through 1953, he played winter ball in Cuba. Using Morales as the go-between, Cambria offered Estalella $150 a month, which was attractive money for an apprentice machinist earning $1.20 a day at a Cuban sugar refinery. Transportation and a meal allowance were sent to Estalella’s home in Cardenas.

“I [made] myself plenty [of] trouble,” Estalella said when he recalled that July day in 1934 when he arrived by boat from Havana at Key West with a ticket pinned to the lapel of his coat with the instruction: “Albany, New York. Please deliver to the baseball park.”9 The customs officer, realizing the young man could not speak any English at all, handed him a slip of paper and told him to keep it in his hand at all costs. At Jacksonville, Florida, he encountered difficulty finding something to eat. The food seemed familiar to him but he didn’t know how to ask for anything. He pointed at a bottle of milk and then noticed a man enjoying a slice of pie, so he thought that might do for him, too. Unfortunately it was peach pie. “I no like peaches, he recounted later. “But I was so hungry I eat all the pie – one hand, too, because I hold slip in other hand.”10

The train brought Estalella as far as Washington D.C., and not knowing what else to do in this bewildering situation in which he found himself, he espied the sign “Information,” and, figuring it was close enough to “Información,” he took a chance and indicated to the woman at the booth that he needed help. With rudimentary hand signals and drawings she made him understand that the bus he was to board would leave at 10:45. A porter was summoned to escort him to the bus. All that kindness of strangers succeeded in getting him to Albany, where he arrived 72 hours later, not having slept the entire time. Once there, Estalella showed that critical slip of paper in his hand to a policeman who put him in a taxi and sent him to the ballpark. Cambria had expected him to arrive in May, but instead Estalella appeared unexpectedly in midseason and consequently did not appear in a game until September 5, 1934. His story continued to be nothing less than classic baseball history.

Local cuisine continued to be a problem. The manager of the Albany club took Estalella out to breakfast and ordered up a plate of ham and eggs. Estalella, considering the dish acceptable, remembered the three words and over the next month ate nothing else for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This illustrated how Roberto Estalella acquired much of his English – picking up words casually and inserting them into his mental dictionary. His fractured English was a source of amusement among sportswriters, managers, and fellow players, and he was accused of hiding behind a feigned ignorance of the English language. And yet, when it came to needing someone to bridge the language gap, Estalella was called upon to intervene. Clark Griffith, president of the Washington Senators, the team that Estalella joined in 1935, said he regretted releasing Moe Berg in 1934, for in that day and age, learning even a little Spanish was never considered practical by managers or players except, perhaps, for Moe Berg.

“He’s just the man to talk to some of these foreigners,”11 Griffith lamented, pointing out that he had Roberto Ortiz, a Cuban pitcher who spoke no English; pitcher Rene Monteagudo, who spoke very little English; and Venezuelan Alejandro Carrasquel, whose name was so confounding to Griffith that he renamed him Al Alexander. And there was Joe Krakauskas, a Canadian of Lithuanian descent who did speak English – with an accent – but when overly excited, Griffith couldn’t understand at all what language he spoke. “The way things are going now, we sound like a row in the League of Nations.”12 With no formal English-language classes, players had to pick up whatever they could hear. Joe Cambria did not think players should learn English and believed the Latin recruits would get along better if they were not able to express any opinions or complaints or let on that they knew what was going on when the manager bawled them out.13

The story of Estalella’s arrival in America served to entertain readers, but the tale also portrayed a stereotypical ignorant immigrant, while overlooking the fact that it took Estalella a great deal of wit and creativity to travel alone from Cuba to Key West and all the way to New York and actually arrive at the intended destination.

Roberto Estalella’s professional career began in earnest in 1934 in Albany. Cambria, actually owned the Albany Senators of the International League, the minor-league team that served as the portal for raw talent intended for the Washington Senators. He moved on through the minor-league ranks to the Harrisburg team – also owned by Cambria – of the New York-Penn League in 1935, hitting .316 with a league-leading 18 home runs.14 August 9, 1935, was “Bobby Estalella Night” at Harrisburg’s Island Park, a tribute to how far he had come in winning the esteem of fans. By this time Estalella had been dubbed “Tarzan” for the yell he belted out every time he stepped up to the plate, described as akin to that heard in the popular Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller.

Reports conflicted about how much Estalella was improving. Local baseball fans supported him while Harrisburg Telegraph columnist Nobe Frank remained a skeptic: “Call it a hunch or whatever you will, I cannot see Bobby Estalella staying up there in the big leagues. Of course, the type of team that the Washington Senators have been sporting the past few years cannot exactly be classed as big league.”15

The subsequent backlash from fans was unrelenting, but Frank was still not convinced of Estalella’s impending greatness, and wanted him banished from Harrisburg. As he saw it: “Estalella has been spoiled by the fans’ hero worshipping adulation. He has come to think that everything he does is O.K., whether he swings three times and misses or loses one over the fence. He has that inherent flair for color and the bizarre. … He struts to that plate like Casey at the bat, and as many times does the same as Casey in the clutch, but he has the mistaken impression that as long as he swings heftily, though breezily, and gives the fans a treat, everything is O.K. for Bobby.”16

Mr Frank: Personally I think your article in the paper Monday night was terrible, and that you are more detrimental than anything we know by attempting to write an article of that sort. The only time the games have any pep whatsoever is when Bob is playing. — Signed: Two Lady fans that have never missed a game.17

On September 7, one month after Frank’s tirade, Estalella made his major-league debut at third base with the Washington Senators. He appeared in 15 games near the end of the 1935 season, hit .314 with two home runs, had a .485 on-base percentage, and immediately became the idol of the Washington fans. Years later, in 1949, Shirley Povich wrote that fans would call the ballpark to see if he was in the lineup before deciding whether they would come to the game.

Estalella later recalled an incident where he was suddenly introduced to Goose Goslin. “I play third base while I was with Washington, and one afternoon de player named Goosie Gooslin slid into the base and I tagged him out. He got mad and kicked at me and I kicked back. He get up and poosh me and I pooshum back. I couldn’t speak over 20 words in English and when the umpire came up and asked what was the matter, I couldn’t tell him. I got mad and just said quack, quack, quack.”18

Estalella returned to the Senators in 1936, making only 13 plate appearances. Manager Bucky Harris noticed that he was using a cheap, inferior glove, and once provided with a professional mitt, his fielding dramatically improved. Also improved, as Harris observed, was Estalella’s English-language proficiency. Yet, he still had to win over the Senators staff even when fans and other observers applauded his ability and charisma. While at batting practice at Fenway Park in April, 1936, Senators southpaw Earl Whitehill was tossing a few warm-up pitches. Not until Estalella stepped up to bat did he actually ramp it up and let loose with his best stuff. He threw all his best fastballs and curves at Bobby, seemingly determined to make him look bad, but Estalella dug in and, much to the amusement of the spectators, he hit three consecutive pitches over the left-field wall.

Estalella’s work at third base during that game at Fenway Park caught the attention of reporters and fans, but apparently not that of his manager or the team owner. The team continued to harbor doubts about his defense, so he was returned to Joe Cambria in Albany on condition that he get more playing time and a trial in the outfield. While there, he hit .331 with 14 home runs. He started the 1937 season with Chattanooga and maintained a .299 average before the Senators shifted him to the Charlotte club of the Piedmont League.

Estalella’s fielding was apparently a source of some amusement in D.C. at the time. Peter Bjarkman writes, “Washington fans of the late thirties had so much fun watching the gritty Estalella knock down enemy grounders with every part of his anatomy save his glove hand that they often phoned the park in advance to find out if the handsome swarthy Cuban was in the lineup before making the trek out to the usually sparsely populated Griffith Stadium grandstands.”19

From 1936 through 1938, Roberto Estalella wandered around minor-league baseball. He continued to be a fan favorite and he also built a reputation among baseball players he encountered along the way. His statistics continued to reflect a player with good potential, but always something would interfere with his return to the Senators. He was called a “notoriously slow starter at bat … a weak sister with the stick during the first month of the season.”20

“Estalella can powder a ball and can really toss an agate around but he just doesn’t seem to be major league timber,” wrote Al Clark, sports editor of the Harrisburg Telegraph, in April 1938. What one needed to fulfill that requirement is lost in the fog of Estalella’s minor-league statistics. What was it that he lacked in the eyes of coaches, managers, and club owners? Bucky Harris considered him a very bad fielder, and his arm was suspect, but he could hit,. Estalella would have made it on the roster if the decision had been left in the hands of the fans, who adored him. At the end of the 1938 season in Charlotte, his batting average was .378, better than his 1937 average of .349, and he had won the batting crown for the Hornets for the second year in a row, despite being out for part of the season with a broken jaw caused by a fungo bat thrown by a teammate.

Bats were not the only object Estalella had to beware of while playing with minor-league teams in the South. He was known to rocket line drives that traveled back toward the pitcher, some of whom refused to throw batting practice to him. One incident so angered a pitcher that he grabbed a ball and threw at Estalella’s head, dropping him to the ground. Such incidents became routine and pitchers in the Piedmont League had a field day knocking Bobby down for nearly two years and peppering him with epithets disparaging his ethnic origin. Despite the controversies, he was named by The Sporting News as the Most Valuable Player in the Piedmont League in 1938 by one point over Phil Rizzuto of the Norfolk Tars. “He’s learned a lot since I saw him last,” said Harris. “He isn’t a bad fielder at all and he’s fairly fast. Best of all, he’s got a great arm and plenty of power at bat.”21

Two impressive years in minor-league baseball earned Estalella a return trip to Washington, where other issues came up. Calvin Griffith had to keep him on the roster in 1939 or lose him because he was out of options. In order to make room for Estalella on the roster, Griffith traded Zeke Bonura to the Giants and sold Al Simmons to the Boston Bees, a move that shocked many. Griffith said he did so because Simmons had “used profane language in front of ladies at the park last year. I won’t stand for a player of mine cursing fans, and when Simmons did it, he washed himself up as far as my club was concerned.”22 Griffith also denied that he made the Bonura-Simmons moves because he could drop $25,000 in salaries to make room for the cheaper Estalella, who was paid $2,750 in 1939. Griffith was also accused of using the Cuban players on his roster for publicity purposes to hide a bad ballclub behind “circusy press notices.”23

The 1939 season appeared to be Estalella’s best chance of returning to the Senators roster, and the way looked clear for him to inherit the left-field position. He finished the season with the Senators with a “disappointing” .275 average in 82 games. Doubt and skepticism remained. “Estalella cowhides minor league pitching, but they say he doesn’t like the high hard one inside.”24 Bucky Harris still expressed concerns, for in early in spring training, he noticed that the star hitter of the Piedmont League seemed to be having difficulty hitting curveballs. Despite making progress and getting extra batting practice from the Senators pitching staff, he was sent back down to the minors, to Minneapolis in the American Association, because, Griffith explained, “the American Association will give Estalella the kind of minor league experience he needs. It’s lots faster than the Piedmont.”25

At Minneapolis in 1940, Estalella maintained a .341average and hit 32 home runs. In 1941 the St. Louis Browns, his next major-league experience, gave him the chance to compete for the right-field job. Tom Sheehan, who had managed the Minneapolis team where Estalella had played the previous year, was convinced the “Cuban thunderbolt” had solved his problems with curveballs.26 He received a raise to $3,500, but appeared in only 46 games, mainly as a pinch-hitter. His baseball career again stalled, as he was sent back down to the minors, this time to Toledo.

World history changed the course of Estalella’s career when the United States entered World War II. Once again Clark Griffith acquired him from the Browns, for $7,500 – and paid him a $3,500 salary – and was interested in adding him to the Senators roster, but it was not merely because of Estalella’s continued minor-league accomplishments that the Old Fox wanted him back. By March 1942, 13 Washington players had been drafted or had enlisted in the armed forces; the Cuban players were granted six-month visas and called “entertainers,” which exempted them from the draft. Estalella was also outhitting any other prospect available at the time, and Bucky Harris acknowledged that the time spent playing winter baseball in Havana had given him a big advantage.

The fans still loved Estalella, and his English language skills still fascinated: “Estalella, a squatty number built closer to the ground than a flat tire, wields one of the few big bats on the weak-hitting Washington squad. Bobby is the club’s ‘chatter guy.’ His scrambled Cuban-English has the crowds in the aisles. Here are a few samples of Bobby’s repertoire. ‘Hong rong’ is home run. ‘Tubeis’ means a double. ‘Mata el arbitro’ translates as kill the umpire and ‘keche’ is the Cuban for catcher.”27 Not everyone was amused. Harris complained that Joe Cambria was inflicting him with the painful duty of looking after a bunch of temperamental players. “Bah! Cuban ballplayers. Haven’t I enough troubles without Cambria bringing me some more of those rhumba dancers to look over.”28

The 1942 season turned out to be Estalella’s most productive year to that point in the majors, as he hit .277 with an on-base percentage of .400 in133 games, while playing mostly third base and left field. His baseball career took a major turn during the 1943 season, when he was traded to the Philadelphia Athletics, who sent Bob Johnson to the Senators after he and Connie Mack couldn’t agree on the bonus Johnson said he had coming to him. Although Mack lost an All-Star player, he was relieved of the $10,000 salary he was paying Johnson, and acquired Estalella, whom he paid $4,000.

Johnson’s and Estalella’s stats were not very different over the remainder of their careers, but Mack would eventually lament that after all was said and done it was not a good deal, and said he truly missed Johnson after he was gone. Johnson, with the Senators that year, appeared in 117 games. His batting average was .265, his OBP was .362, and he hit seven home runs. In 1943 Estalella also played in 117 games, batted.259 .352 OBP), and hit 11 home runs. He also brought his flamboyant personality to the ballpark and continued his knack for putting fans in the seats. He finished the 1943 season as the leading hitter on the Athletics. What was not to like? Estalella did spend a brief exile in the minors again. Despite the .259 average, Mack sent him to Indianapolis for Jo-Jo Moore, the veteran Giant outfielder, but Moore was inducted into the Army and Roberto was back up again.

It was not just language that set Roberto Estalella apart from his teammates. He was a different sort of player than what Americans were used to. Exuberant at the plate, irrepressible on the field, and relentlessly noisy in the clubhouse, he arrived in the US bringing with him a style of baseball that was lost in translation by the American managers, magnates, and teammates.

Roberto Estalella lamented that in the eight years that he been playing baseball, he had always been with clubs deep in the second division. When he joined the Philadelphia Athletics, Connie Mack heard about his lament and chuckled: “Don’t worry sonny,” he told him. “We’ll probably make you feel right at home. [You’ve] come to the right place to keep that record intact.”29

Estalella arrived at spring training in Frederick, Maryland, in 1944, just back from another winter playing ball in Havana, waving the new bat he predicted was going to “show zem somesing weeth thees thees year.”30 The majagua wood bat, from the tropical pariti tiliaceum tree, would surely improve his game and bring him luck. “Nine years and never weeth a contender,” Roberto said, his brown eyes flashing “Always eet was the second deevision – and sometimes even the third deevision. But thees year he’s deferent. I theenk we have thee chance for thee pennant. Meester Mack he says so and I think heem right.”31

Shortly after the 1944 season opened, the Detroit Tigers came to Shibe Park. The players of the two teams exploded into a punchless melee around the pitcher’s mound with the requisite pushing and shoving. Estalella was in the middle of it, making himself useful by picking up cast-off baseball caps, dusting them off and handing them back to the players. “Bending down, working off my stomach,” he explained, that the extra exercise was intended to decrease the weight that was affecting his batting average. He proudly reported that he had lost 30 pounds since 1943, when he weighed 210 pounds, and his batting average had increased in 1944 by as many points as pounds he lost.

By mid-May Connie Mack admitted that Estalella was not only hot, but also the “most improved” player in the major leagues. By then he was hitting .343 and his fielding had improved significantly. “It’s fruit that did it,” said Mack. “Fruit and changing his playing position. He never played center field before. The position is made for him.”32 There was no mention whether the majagua bat was a hit, but Bobby shed another 20 pounds.

Estalella was truly hot during the 1945 season. He finished with a .299 batting average and felt the ire of the Detroit Tigers, who held him personally responsible for their unfortunate finish the previous September, accused him of having a jinx bat33 and held him responsible for misjudging a fly ball that allowed the St. Louis Browns to overtake them in the standings and win the 1944 pennant. They also condemned him for hitting a line drive that fractured the leg of Tigers pitcher Al Benton, who had just returned from several years in the service. And then to add insult to injury, he also spoiled a one-hit shutout by Tigers pitcher Prince Henry Kauhane Oana by driving in the tying run with a ninth-inning double on a 3-and-2 pitch with two outs. The Athletics went on to win the game, 3-2, in 16 innings when once again Estalella doubled to bring home the winning run. The United Press reporter who wrote the story advised, “the Tigers best bet where the bothersome Cuban is concerned appears to be to buy the fellow.”34

With the end of World War II, the players who had spent years in the service contended that the GI Bill entitled them to return to the jobs they held before the war, and many of those players who were on teams during the war now found themselves back in the minors or out of a job. Players also came back from the war with a heightened awareness of dealing with the owners in regard to contract negotiations and pay. Then along came the Pasquel brothers of the Mexican League with mountains of money and promises of wealth and glory. At the start of spring training in 1946, Connie Mack, despite the rumors, still expected Estalella show up. Bobby told Mack he was examining a big wage offer from the Pasquel brothers. Mack waited. Roberto did not report.

Major League Baseball called the Mexican League the greatest threat since the Federal League.35 Estalella joined several popular players, among them Mickey Owen, Sal Maglie, Ace Adams, Max Lanier, and Danny Gardella – his eventual rhyme scheme partner in “Van Lingo Mungo.” Their adventures in Mexico were also recounted in the novel Vera Cruz Blues by Mark Winegardner.

Gordon Cobbledick of the Cleveland Plain Dealer condemned the “contract jumpers.” He wrote, “The Americans could afford to be complacent – though they were not conspicuously so – in the face of the desertion of such second-raters as Roberto Estalella, Alejandro Carrasquel and Danny Gardella, whose Latin antecedents fitted them naturally into the Mexican picture.”36 Estalella was the home-run leader of the Mexican League, slamming four homers in his first five games. His batting average in April 1946 was .471.

Eighteen players from the major leagues went to Mexico, and were punished for it with five-year suspensions handed out by a very unhappy Commissioner A.B. “Happy” Chandler. The hardships of playing in uncomfortable circumstances – along with the Pasquel brothers’ fright-inducing business practices and their army of gun-toting bodyguards – compelled the players to come straggling back. A few were welcomed by their former teams but many, including Roberto Estalella, looked elsewhere to play ball. In 1947 he returned to winter ball for Marianao, Cuba, and was the center fielder for Pasquel’s Los Tuneros de San Luis Potosí in Mexico during the summer. “Tarzan” Estalella continued to thrill fans with his signature flamboyant, vociferous presence at the plate and in center field.

In 1948 Estalella was the left fielder for the Havana team and played great baseball, but no one in the major leagues was paying much attention. Hoping that all had been forgiven, he tested Connie Mack’s mood. Mack commented that he would expect to “dispose of” Estalella if he applied for reinstatement.37 But Mack did not dispose of him immediately. Bobby returned to the Philadelphia A’s in 1949, near the end of the season, appearing in eight games, with 20 at-bats and five hits. He was paid $2,604. In November 1949 the Browns purchased Estalella from the Athletics and sent him to their San Antonio farm club of the Texas League. After appearing in a few games with the San Antonio Missions, Estalella was sold to the Havana team of the Class B Florida International League in June 1950, after being placed on the waiver list.

Estalella’s playing days over, he returned to Washington and worked as a butcher, but he was not far from baseball. In 1955 Senators manager Chuck Dressen hired him to teach English to the next generation of Cuban players on the team – Carlos Paula, Pedro Ramos, Juan Delis, and Camilo Pascual. He appeared at old-timer’s games and events that celebrated the veteran Cuban players. When Luis Tiant, Sr. was allowed to come to the United States in 1975 to see his son pitch in the World Series, he also wanted to visit his friends and fellow players from the old Cuban teams. His list included Roberto Estalella.

Major-league teams of the 1930s, mindful of baseball’s unwritten color-line, had been walking a thin line in order not to cause controversy and also not to rile other players who might abuse a new player with darker skin. If Clark Griffith was curious, he never outwardly appeared to be concerned. A few American-born players cast the usual epithets, and other Cuban players who knew Estalella considered him to be of mixed-race heritage and had little interest or concern about his skin color. Many baseball historians contend that Estalella slipped under the discriminatory barrier that kept many great players with darker skin from reaching the major leagues before Jackie Robinson.

Author and academic Roberto Gonzalez Echeverria writes that Estalella was “a very light mulatto …white enough to play in the American League and in Organized Baseball.”38 Throughout his career in major-league baseball, questions about his ancestry were a shadow behind the headlines. Many of his teammates and a few prominent sportswriters of the era considered him to be black. Shirley Povich wrote that there was blatant racism: “Estalella was the first of the Cubans in the American League in a couple of decades and it was a tribute to him that he did hit .400 one season while ducking dust-off pitches from guys who didn’t cotton to his particular pigmentation.” Decades later, when asked to comment about it, Estalella simply answered, “It was only an issue for the Americans.”39

Estalella handed down his love of baseball to his son, Victor, and grandson Robert, who was a catcher for six major-league teams over a career that spanned 1996-2004. “The reason I wear my stirrups so high is because my grandfather did. It’s to honor his memory,” The younger Estalella said in 1998. “Up until last year I always wore No. 26 because that was his number. Then I reached a point where I knew I’d have to get a number [27] for myself. But still, I respect everything about my grandfather’s career.”

Roberto Estalella died on January 6, 1991, in Hialeah, Florida. when his grandson was a junior in high school. Selected by the Philadelphia Phillies in the 23rd round of the 1992 draft, Bobby said, “… and I know he knows what I’m doing.”40

This biography originally appeared in “Van Lingle Mungo: The Man, The Song, The Players” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Sources

Other than those referenced in the endnotes, the author consulted the following sources:

Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma, Vol. I (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944)

Wallace, Steve, “Jazz, Baseball, Life and other Ephemera.” wallacebass.com, May 2, 2013.

Silary, Ted, philly.com, August 4, 1998

baseball-reference.com

baseballalmanac.com

Welch, Matt, “The Cuban Senators,” espn.com

Heuer, Robert, “Minnie,” chicagoreader.com

Graham Jr., Frank, “The Great Mexican War of 1946.” si.com

Notes