“his boom box of a voice” – Curt Smith
“that wonderful, unmistakable voice” – Dick Young
“the venerable Voice of Summer” – Sports Illustrated

He was the voice of the Yankees from 1939 through 1964 and became the most prominent sports broadcaster in America. His credits include twenty World Series, twenty-four All-Star Games, fourteen Rose Bowls, five Orange Bowls and two Sugar Bowls. During his prime years, it seemed that Allen was on the air for every major sports event; the presence of The Voice signified that the game was a major event.

He was born Melvin Israel in Birmingham, Alabama, on St. Valentine’s Day, 1913, the first of three children of Russian immigrants Julius and Anna (Leibowitz) Israel. (The family was living in Johns, Alabama, but the nearest hospital was in Birmingham.) Julius sold dry goods in several small Southern towns before settling his family in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Allen told broadcast historian Curt Smith he got his first exposure to baseball while sitting in an outhouse looking at pictures of bats and gloves in catalogs from Sears or Montgomery Ward. He saw his first Major League games when he visited an aunt in Detroit; Babe Ruth hit a home run in one of them.

Melvin advanced quickly through small-town schools and entered the University of Alabama at the age of fifteen. He tried out for football, but didn’t make the team; instead, he became an equipment manager.

He also served as public-address announcer for the Crimson Tide’s home games. When a Birmingham radio station asked coach Frank Thomas to recommend a play-by-play announcer, Thomas—apparently figuring play-by-play was just like PA announcing—named Melvin Israel. His radio career began on station WBRC in 1935. In addition to doing play-by-play for the Tide, Israel received both an undergraduate degree and a law degree from Alabama and passed the bar exam.

On vacation in New York in 1937, he auditioned for the CBS radio network. In later years he made it seem like a lark, as if he had just wandered in off the street. In fact, his Alabama football broadcasts had been noticed by Ted Husing, CBS’s top sports announcer, and by the entertainment newspaper Variety. Whether it was lark or design, he was offered a job at $45 a week.

Mel’s father was not pleased, thinking his son was wasting a good education. He was even less pleased when Melvin explained that CBS wanted to change his “Jewish” surname. Trying to placate his father, Mel took Julius’s middle name as his new last name. At CBS Allen announced variety shows starring Perry Como, Jo Stafford, and Harry James. He interrupted Kate Smith’s afternoon program with a news bulletin reporting the crash of the airship Hindenburg. He worked some college football games.

Allen particularly impressed his bosses with a long ad-lib description of the Vanderbilt Cup yacht race, broadcasting from an airplane overhead. That led to his first baseball assignment, as a color commentator on the 1938 World Series. (In those days there was no exclusive Series broadcast; all the major networks carried the games.)

When Allen arrived in New York, the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers were the last holdouts against radio. Since all the other teams were broadcasting some of their games, the fear that radio would hurt attendance had been buried. But at least one of the New York clubs was always at home, so the teams agreed to a blackout to avoid competing with each other. Opening Day games were broadcast, along with an occasional important series. Local stations re-created highlights of some afternoon games in the evenings, and the Yankees permitted a New York station to carry the night games of their farm team in nearby Newark, New Jersey.

In 1938 the pioneering executive Larry MacPhail became general manager at Brooklyn. He notified the other teams that the Dodgers were going on the air in 1939, and he brought Red Barber from Cincinnati to handle the broadcasts. The Yankees and Giants decided to broadcast their home games, since they never played at home on the same day. Arch McDonald, an established play-by-play man in Washington, was hired as the principal announcer for both teams.

Wheaties, baseball’s primary sponsor, chose Allen to replace McDonald on the Washington Senators’ broadcasts. But Washington owner Clark Griffith signed his former pitcher, the Hall of Famer Walter Johnson, to go behind the mike, so Allen never became the voice of the Senators.

McDonald’s assistant, Garnett Marks, didn’t last long. He wasn’t fired when he delivered a commercial for Ivory Soap, and the words came out “Ovary Soap.” But when he did it again, he was gone. Allen replaced him in June.

Arch McDonald didn’t last long, either. His down-home style—low-key, with long pauses between pitches—didn’t play in New York. After one season he returned to Washington.

In 1940 Allen began his reign as Voice of the Yankees. He continued doing only home games of the Yanks and Giants. Allen often told of an encounter with Lou Gehrig during that season, when Gehrig was dying of the disease that now bears his name. On a rare visit to the Stadium, the Yankee legend said, “Mel, I never got a chance to listen to your games before because I was playing every day. But I want you to know they’re the only thing that keeps me going.” Allen said he left the dugout in tears.

The Yankees and Giants couldn’t find a sponsor for their broadcasts in 1941, so the teams were off the air. Accordingly, Allen never got a chance to chronicle Joe DiMaggio’s fifty-six-game hitting streak, although he later recorded a re-creation of the end of the streak.

Allen entered the Army in 1943 and was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. According to the Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland, Sergeant Allen kept his hand in by calling a few Alabama football games while in the service.

When Allen was discharged early in 1946, both the Giants and Yankees wanted him, but the Yankees had an edge. MacPhail had taken over the Yankees by then, with co-owners Dan Topping and Del Webb. He announced another innovation: Yankees broadcasters would travel with the team. Until then, road games were re-created in a studio from a telegraphed play-by-play summary. Allen went with the Yankees. (Barber said MacPhail had offered him the Yankees’ job but he chose to stay in Brooklyn, where he was a civic institution.)

It was a marriage of The Voice and The Dynasty. Beginning in 1947, the Yanks played in fifteen of the next eighteen World Series. Broadcasters from the two league champions customarily handled network coverage of the Series, so Allen claimed the fall classic as his own stage.

His signature phrases entered the American language: A home run was “going, going, gone!” He punctuated any remarkable play with “How about that?” Although he is often credited with coining Joe DiMaggio’s nickname, the Yankee Clipper, David Halberstam says Arch McDonald deserves credit for that. Allen was the first to call DiMag Joltin’ Joe. He labeled Tommy Henrich Ol’ Reliable.

Allen’s style was exuberant; his rich voice conveyed excitement. He was constantly compared with Red Barber—inevitably, they became the first broadcasters honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978. Curt Smith described them this way: “The Ol’ Redhead was white wine, crepes suzette and bluegrass music; Mel, beer, hot dogs, and the United States Marine Band.” Jim Woods, who worked with both men, said, “One was a machine gun, the other a violin.” Nobody who heard them would have any difficulty discerning which was which.

In radio days a team’s principal broadcaster—usually hired by the sponsors—ruled the booth. He assigned innings to his assistants, decided who would read the commercials and parceled out pregame and postgame duties. Several of Allen’s assistants agreed with Curt Gowdy’s assessment: “It wasn’t very easy to work for him, but when it was all over, you were glad you did.” Gowdy and Jim Woods said they learned from his polish and professionalism but chafed under his high-handedness. As Woods put it, “Whatever Allen wanted, Allen got.”

Red Barber joined the Yankees’ broadcast team in 1954, after leaving Brooklyn over a dispute with owner Walter O’Malley. It was quite a comedown for a man who had commanded his own booth as principal broadcaster for twenty seasons. At first Barber worked only televised home games, handling pregame and postgame shows and two and one-half innings of play-by-play on TV.

Barber insisted in his autobiography that there was no friction between this pair of giant egos—”Mel accepted me as an equal”—but others said their relationship was cool. They were opposites: Barber was married, a homebody who disliked traveling, and a devout Christian; Allen, single, gregarious, a man-about-town, and a Jew. Barber’s career was going downhill; Allen was king of the hill. According to Jim Woods, who was dumped from the Yankees broadcasts in 1957 to make room for former shortstop Phil Rizzuto, Allen and Barber were united in their mutual loathing of the jock-in-the-booth. Allen and Barber resolved their differences enough that Allen, nearly eighty years old, traveled from New York to Florida in 1992 to attend Barber’s funeral.

Allen’s fame grew as television replaced radio as the primary mass entertainment. He switched to TV coverage of the World Series in 1951, the first time the Series was televised coast-to-coast.

Like most radio broadcasters who attempted that transition, Allen never fully mastered the new medium. Echoing a common complaint, Ben Gross of the New York Daily News wrote in 1954 that Mel “has frequently been castigated for talking too much during his baseball telecasts. Like so many others, he often seems unwilling to permit the camera to tell the story and, at times, attempts to gild the picture on the tube with excessive verbiage.”

Some accounts say Allen was the first to suggest the center-field camera shot that is now standard on baseball telecasts. Yankees General Manager George Weiss limited the use of the shot for fear that opposing teams, watching TV, would steal the catcher’s signs.

Since Allen was the Voice of the Yankees, he was accused of partisanship on the Series broadcasts. Allen acknowledged he was partisan, but also declared, “I never rooted.”

He was renowned, too, as a skillful pitchman for the sponsors. A home run was “a Ballantine blast,” after the beer sponsor, or “a White Owl wallop,” after the cigar sponsor. In addition to his work on network college-football broadcasts, Allen was the sports voice of Movietone newsreels and hosted boxing matches.

Allen moved his parents, brother, and sister to the New York area and continued living with his sister after their parents died. His brother, Larry, who also adopted the name Allen, became his statistician and assistant.

Allen was six-foot-one, slim, and dark-haired in his youth, but began balding at an early age. By the 1950s he usually wore a hat during his TV broadcasts. He never married, but was often seen in the company of beautiful Broadway showgirls. Red Barber wrote in The Broadcasters, “His job was his life … the wife and children he never had.”

“I never saw anyone love his work more than he did,” said Lindsey Nelson, a prominent football broadcaster of the 1950s and later the voice of the New York Mets.

In the fourth game of the 1963 World Series, the Dodgers were on their way to an unprecedented sweep of the Yankees. In midgame, Allen was suddenly unable to speak. He blamed a flareup of a “nasal condition,” but many commentators said he was struck speechless by the Yanks’ humiliation. Sportswriter Dick Young called it “psychosomatic laryngitis.”

As the 1964 season ended, Allen’s world came crashing down. The Yankees’ president, Dan Topping, summarily fired him. Rizzuto represented the team on World Series telecasts. Joe Garagiola replaced Allen on the 1965 broadcasts.

The Yankees never explained his dismissal, so the rumor mill percolated. “They said I was a lush or that I beat my relatives or that I’d had a breakdown or that I was taking so many medicines for my voice that I turned numb,” he told Curt Smith years later. None of the rumors appeared in print, so Allen never publicly denied them. He said Topping gave him no explanation, saying only, “It wasn’t anything you did, Mel, and it wasn’t CBS.” CBS had just bought the team; as soon as Allen was gone, the network brought in one of its executives to supervise the Yankee broadcasts. There would be no more principal broadcaster. Allen believed the Yankees’ primary sponsor, Ballantine Beer, wanted to shed his high salary.

Topping told Red Barber, “I’m tired of him popping off.” But Allen said, “If they had objected to my talking a lot, I’d have been fired long ago.” Larger issues were at play; Ballantine beer was losing market share and the Yankees, despite winning the 1964 pennant, had drawn fewer fans than the last-place Mets. CBS wanted to promote a new, friendlier image for the regal Bronx Bombers.

The true story of Allen’s sudden fall from the pinnacle remains a mystery. “He gave the Yankees his life,” Barber said, “and they broke his heart.” Adding insult to injury, NBC dropped him from its college football telecasts.

Only fifty-one years old, he wasn’t out of work for long. The Braves played their final season in Milwaukee in 1965, held hostage by a court order although they had already announced that they intended to move to Atlanta. An Atlanta TV station hired Mel to broadcast some of the team’s games to their soon-to-be home.

Allen and Atlanta seemed a natural match: the biggest of big league voices for the new big league city, and a Southerner, to boot. But he didn’t join the Braves in Atlanta. In 1968 he went to Cleveland to televise Indians’ games. During one dull evening in a losing season, he stunned his broadcast partner–and, no doubt, the audience–by reciting Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha.” He turned down an offer to broadcast the Athletics’ games when they moved to Oakland. Allen said his business interests, including a Canada Dry soft-drink dealership, kept him on the East Coast, but his sister, Esther Kaufman, told biographer Stephen Borelli he would not leave New York because that would be admitting defeat.

Allen made public appearances for Canada Dry, broadcast University of Miami football, and hosted local and network radio sports shows. One of his few baseball assignments was the 1966 Little League World Series for a Sacramento radio station. While other broadcasters routinely jumped from team to team, Allen vanished from big-time sports for eight years. “It was as if he had leprosy,” Sports Illustrated’s William Taafe wrote in a 1985 profile.

Allen returned to Yankee Stadium on June 8, 1969, to serve as master of ceremonies on Mickey Mantle Day. In 1976 WPIX, the Yankees’ flagship TV station, hired him to narrate a special program celebrating the opening of the refurbished Yankee Stadium.

By then CBS and Dan Topping were long gone; George Steinbrenner owned the franchise. When Steinbrenner was a young assistant football coach, he had sought Allen’s advice about getting into broadcasting and Allen spent forty-five minutes with him. Steinbrenner never forgot that kindness. On Opening Day in the new-old stadium, the Yankees recognized Allen’s place in their history. He stood on the field during pregame ceremonies alongside other symbols of the Yankee legacy: Bob Shawkey, who had thrown the first pitch in the Stadium in 1923; Pete Sheehy, the clubhouse manager since 1927; restaurant owner Toots Shor; and former Postmaster General James Farley, who was said to be “the longest-running season-ticket holder.”

The next year Allen was back on Yankee broadcasts, calling a few dozen games for the SportsChannel cable network. He continued in that role until 1985. Beginning in 1977, Allen said, “How about that?” to a new generation of fans across the country as narrator of Major League Baseball’s weekly highlight show, This Week in Baseball (known as TWIB). Joe Reichler, a former sportswriter working in the commissioner’s office, gave him the job. He was the program’s signature voice even after his death: TWIB created an animated figure, complete with microphone and fedora, to introduce each week’s show with his trademark greeting, “Hello, everybody. This is Mel Allen.”

In 1978 the Baseball Hall of Fame established the Ford C. Frick Award to honor broadcasters for “major contributions to baseball.” Allen and Barber were the first to be recognized. (Broadcasters are not considered members of the Hall of Fame; there is no “broadcasters’ wing,” either. The winners are honored in an exhibit near the Hall’s library.)

Marty Appel, a former Yankees publicist who was producing the team’s broadcasts on WPIX, brought Allen back one last time in 1990 so he could be the answer to a trivia question: the first man to broadcast a major league game in seven decades. His Yankee career stretched from Lou Gehrig to Don Mattingly.

Allen died on June 16, 1996, at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut. He had suffered from heart trouble for years. He was buried in Temple Beth El Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut. His gravestone reads: “Mel Allen Beloved son brother – uncle.” More than a thousand people attended a memorial service in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral sponsored by the Committee for Christian-Jewish Understanding. On July 25, 1998, a plaque commemorating his career was unveiled in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium.

Only two sports broadcasters have equaled Mel Allen’s fame: the pioneer radio announcer Graham McNamee and Howard Cosell, the man so many fans loved to hate. Like Allen, both dominated the big events of their time. In Allen’s time, more than half of the television sets in the United States would be tuned in to the World Series. There were just three national TV networks – ABC, CBS, and NBC – and no regional sports networks.

With fewer games on television and fewer sports competing for attention, the leading broadcasters – Allen on baseball, Lindsey Nelson on college football – were the voices and faces of American sports. As Allen acknowledged, his renown was partly an accident of time and place: in New York, when the Yankees were giants. His success was also a product of his unique, vibrant voice and the craftsmanship and showmanship that he achieved by hard work.

Later generations of broadcasters—Gowdy, Brent Musburger, and Joe Buck—enjoyed similar wide exposure on showcase events. None was ever called The Voice.

Sources

Appel, Marty. Now Pitching for the Yankees. Toronto: Sport Classic Books, 2001.

Barber, Red. The Broadcasters. New York: The Dial Press, 1970.

Barber, Red, and Robert Creamer. Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1968.

Borelli, Stephen. How About That! The Life of Mel Allen. Champaign, IL: Sports Publishing, 2005.

Gross, Ben. I Looked and I Listened. New York: Random House, 1954.

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

Halberstam, David J. Sports on New York Radio: A Play-by-Play History. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Masters Press, 1999.

Patterson, Ted. The Golden Voices of Baseball. Champaign, Illinois: Sports Publishing LLC, 2002.

Smith, Curt. The Storytellers. New York: Macmillan, 1995. 

_________. Voices of the Game. South Bend, Indiana: Diamond Communications, 1987.

(Author unknown), Mel Allen obituary, The Associated Press, June 16, 1996. Hoffman, Roy. “The Late Mel Allen: Alabama’s Voice of the Yankees.” Mobile Register, July 6, 2003. Smith, Curt, “Buck known for effortless style, class.”

Websites

www.espn.com, June 21, 2002.
www.americansportscasters.com
www.anecdotage.com

On the other hand, who would have thought that this journeyman ballplayer, who played a total of 31 major-league ballgames, would become a longtime color analyst on television?

If Roderick Bernet Allen’s baseball career had not extended beyond the 15 games he played for the 1984 world champion Detroit Tigers — he was awarded a World Series ring and full winner’s money share by the team — that would have been impressive enough. But there’s much more to Allen’s three decades in and around the game.

Allen, born on October 4, 1959, grew up in Santa Monica, California, and was drafted at the age of 17 in 1977 out of Santa Monica High School by the Chicago White Sox. In two weeks, he was on the way to Sarasota, Florida, for Rookie-level ball in the Gulf Coast League, young and scared until he got to know some of his teammates — and hit .307 for the short season. “You were pretty much on your own. It was a real eye opener. You grew up pretty quickly,” said Allen in a 2007 interview.

In 1978, Allen played outfield on a tremendous Appleton team in the Low-A Midwest League, a club that won 81 games, a league one-season record. Against the stronger competition, Allen batted .243, and was promoted in 1979 to Double-A Knoxville of the Southern League, where he hit .267 with 6 home runs. In 1980, he batted .355 in a short stint at Double-A Glens Falls of the Eastern League, and batted .260 at Triple-A Iowa in the American Association. In 1981, the White Sox kept Allen in Triple A, this time at Edmonton of the Pacific Coast League, where he hit.294, with 11 home runs and 52 RBIs. Then, after five seasons working his way up the White Sox organizational ladder, on December 11, 1981, he was dealt with Todd Cruz and Jim Essian to the Seattle Mariners for Tom Paciorek. Seattle sent him right back to the PCL at Salt Lake City, where he hit .323 with 15 homers and 75 RBIs in 1982.

Along the way, Allen played winter ball — in Puerto Rico, in Mexico, in the Dominican Republic. “Baseball was how I had to feed myself,” he told his interviewer in 2007.

In 1983, Allen played 81 games at Salt Lake City, hitting .324 with 12 home runs and 69 RBIs, and made it to the majors for 11 games, playing in the outfield and as a designated hitter for Seattle (2-for-12, one run scored). He became a free agent that winter, and signed with the Detroit Tigers. “I didn’t know much about the Tigers,” said Allen.

As Allen told it, “I was performing well” in minor-league spring training. “Word made its way to Sparky [Anderson, Detroit’s manager] that there was this kid tearing the cover off the ball.” He was asked to come over to the major league camp. “Once I got there, [Tigers coach] Billy Consolo read off the starting lineup. I was in the lineup!”

Allen expressed the belief that his spring-training performance led directly to a vital piece of the puzzle for the ’84 Tigers. Allen made the Tigers out of spring training; he maintains that “Glenn Wilson was considered to be a stud, but because of my hot start, they were willing to trade him.”

In fact, that trade was instrumental in the Tigers’ 1984 success, since it brought them that year’s American League Most Valuable Player and Cy Young winner. Wilson was traded, along with John Wockenfuss, to the Philadelphia Phillies for reliever Willie Hernandez and first baseman Dave Bergman. Hernandez, of course, went on to win the MVP and Cy Young Award that year, while Bergman was an important contributor to the team as well. So, Allen believed, his spring performance contributed meaningfully to the acquisition of key players for the Tigers’ successful ’84 World Series run.

Allen was with Detroit when the regular season began. He made his Tigers debut on April 5, 1984, when he started at designated hitter, going 1-for-3 (singling off Frank Viola in the fourth inning) and scoring a pair of runs as Detroit beat the Twins 7-3 in Minnesota. “I was there for the 35-5 start; I played in Jack Morris’s no-hitter,” he said. Allen was the starting DH in that game, in which Morris no-hit the White Sox that April 7 at Comiskey Park, the fourth game of the season. He struck out twice and grounded out before being lifted for a pinch-hitter. “But that season was one of pain, too,” Allen said; he was sent down to Triple-A Evansville after playing 15 games. His last game with the Tigers was on May 27, when he pinch-hit and singled off Paul Mirabella in the ninth inning of a 6-1 loss to the Mariners in Seattle. For his abbreviated big-league stay, Allen compiled a .296 average in 27 at-bats, with six runs scored, three RBIs, two walks, and a stolen base. Still, Allen took home a ring, plus a bonus. The Tigers “were nice enough to give me a share” of the World Series money.

On April 9, 1985, Allen was traded to the Baltimore Orioles for Luis Rosado. After a season with the Orioles’ Triple-A team at Rochester, he was granted free agency on October 15, but was re-signed by Baltimore on January 8, 1986. Then he was released by Baltimore on April 3. He played some summer ball in the Mexican League, but that did not work out. “I was a newlywed, and my wife stayed behind initially in Salt Lake City,” said Allen. Once his wife arrived in Mexico, they quickly decided to move back to Salt Lake City. Not long afterward, Allen received a call from Cleveland, signed with the Indians May 20, and found himself in Double-A ball in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1986, but moved up quickly to Triple A with the Indians’ Maine Guides team in the International League. The next year, the Indians moved their Triple-A team to Buffalo of the American Association and there Allen hit .302 with 17 home runs and 92 RBIs. In 1988, the Indians moved their Triple-A team again, to Colorado Springs of the Pacific Coast League, and there Allen hit .324 with personal highs of 23 home runs and 100 RBIs.

Allen’s time in the Indians’ organization included a five-game stint in the majors for Cleveland in 1988, He debuted for the Indians on September 10, when he pinch hit and flied out in the ninth inning of a 6-0 loss to the Red Sox in Boston. His last game for Cleveland — and his last major-league appearance — was on October 2 in Cleveland’s season finale, as they beat the Red Sox 6-5 at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. Allen entered the game as a pinch-hitter in the fifth inning, hitting a double off Bruce Hurst and eventually scoring a run. He stayed in the game as DH, and had one more at-bat, this time facing Tom Bolton and flying out to end the sixth inning in his last major league at-bat. Allen was released by the Tribe on November 28.

With Allen’s blessing, his contract was sold to the Hiroshima Carp in Japan. “I was finally able to make some money — I made good money in Japan,” he told his interviewer. However, the opportunity was not without its challenges. “My wife was pregnant with our first child together. I left her behind once again. I made more money than I ever made in my life. But it was a tough adjustment. Americans had to learn to check their ego at the airport. After three years with the same teammates, they still referred to me as `gaijin’ [foreigner] rather than use my name.” Still, Allen had success in Japan, spending three years there. He hit four home runs in four consecutive at-bats, setting a record, and hit two home runs for the Carp in the 1991 Japan Series.

Allen came back to the States, just as Cecil Fielder had done after his stint in Japan. Allen tried out with the Mariners in 1992, but did not make the team.

Between seasons, Allen had given private baseball lessons to young players. This led him to a decision to stay in the game as a coach. John Boles Jr., then the vice president of player development for the Marlins, told Allen he could play in Triple A for years or he could pursue coaching. Allen became a hitting instructor for Florida, and managed in the instructional league. Allen was with the Marlins organization from 1992 to 1995.

Allen’s family had moved to Arizona, and when the Arizona Diamondbacks were awarded a National League franchise, Allen expressed interest in joining the organization. He went to spring training as a hitting instructor, but as the team neared its first game, he took a fateful tour of the stadium’s construction site with the Diamondbacks’ director of broadcasting, Thom Brennaman.

Brennaman walked with Allen around the hole in the ground that was to become Bank One Ballpark (later named Chase Field). They talked baseball the whole time, and then Brennaman shocked Allen by asking him to consider becoming an on-air analyst. “Very few guys that are in my position, as a career minor leaguer, are doing major-league broadcasts. I’d never thought about it. But Brennaman did,” Allen said.

Brennaman arranged for Allen to work some Arizona Fall League games, and Allen did some on-air work with the Giants’ Triple-A club in Tucson as well. Allen also spent time with legendary broadcaster Joe Garagiola, whose son, Joe Jr., was the Diamondbacks’ general manager.

Allen spent five seasons with the Diamondbacks as an analyst for radio and television. He also worked as an analyst for the Fox network’s Saturday regional baseball telecasts and the 1997 National League Division Series between the Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros. He worked the Diamondbacks’ radio broadcasts for their 2001 postseason run: the Division Series victory over the St. Louis Cardinals, the Championship Series win over the Atlanta Braves, and the World Series victory over the New York Yankees.

Allen got his second World Series ring with the Diamondbacks. But he saw a dark cloud on the horizon. “I knew when Mark Grace was done playing, he was going to get my job. So I called [Tigers president Dave] Dombrowski.” Dombrowski had been his boss with the Marlins. Soon, Allen was headed to Detroit, and in 2003 he made his debut as color analyst for the Tigers’ FSN Detroit broadcasts, teaming with play-by-play announcer Mario Impemba.

When Allen arrived, the Tigers were struggling, to say the least. But it wasn’t the cold weather or the abysmal team that was the most difficult part of the transition. “The toughest was from a family point of view. I had a son in high school. Not only was the team horrific [a 43-119 season for the 2003 Tigers], but it was a tough adjustment as a man with a family,” Allen recalled. But he stuck it out.

Allen quickly became beloved by the Detroit faithful for his perceptive opinions and colorful, often humorous commentary. He famously picked the Tigers to win the American League Central crown in 2006 after watching Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya in spring training. The Twins squeaked by to win that title by one game, but the Tigers, claimants of the wild card, went to the World Series.

Allen developed a unique parlance, calling a fastball “cheese”; former Tigers outfielder Craig Monroe “Baby Boy”; Impemba “Padnuh.” “Country strong” hitters “elevated” pitches. Great pitches could be “nasty” or “filthy,” while Detroit starter Jeremy Bonderman’s slider earned the nickname “Mr. Snappy” from Allen. A broken bat “died a hero,” and an inside pitch “got in his [the batter’s] kitchen.”

Allen won two Michigan Emmys for his work. He provided studio and on-location analysis for the Fox network’s postgame coverage during the Tigers’ World Series run in 2006. And he served as an analyst for Fox Saturday Game of the Week regional telecasts for more than a decade.

In September 2018, Allen and Impemba were reportedly involved in a physical altercation off the air; both broadcasters were suspended for the remainder of the season and their contracts were not renewed by the Tigers. In 2022, Allen was hired to work as a television analyst for the Miami Marlins.

Rod married Adrian in 1985, and they had four children: sons Rod Jr. and Andrew, and daughters Rachel and Rhonda. Rod Jr. was a freshman All-American while at Arizona State, then played minor-league ball in the Yankees and White Sox organizations. Andrew played at Central Arizona College and Cal State Los Angeles; he was drafted by the Tigers in 2011 and and played parts of two seasons in the minor leagues.

Four decades in baseball. Playing in the Japan Series. Two World Series rings. High-profile broadcasting jobs. All for this kid from Santa Monica who had just 51 at-bats in the majors. Who woulda thunk it?

Sources

Block, Joe. “Major voice learned in minors.” Available from callofthegame.com. Accessed October 27. 2007.

Kirby, Tim. “Announcer Allen Gets Second Emmy.” Available from http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070619&content_id=2036320&vkey=news_det&fext=.jsp&c_id=det. Accessed July 11, 2008.

Parker, Rob. “Allen has the gift of foresight.” Detroit News, April 4, 2007.

http://detroit.tigers.mlb.com/team/broadcasters.jsp?c_id=det

http://www.baseball-reference.com/

http://www.thebaseballcube.com

Vosik, Rick. Interview with Rod Allen, December 26, 2007.

“How come fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?” and “What do they call a coffee break at the Lipton Tea Company?” were just two of the questions that Andersen wondered out loud.3 He wore costume masks on team flights and bus rides, and sometimes during batting practice. Andersen pitched professionally for 25 years, including parts of 17 major-league seasons (1975, 1977, 1979, 1981-1994) for six teams. The right-handed middle reliever enjoyed his greatest success with the Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros after turning 30, appearing in two World Series and three NLCS. After Houston swapped him straight up for future Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell at the 1990 trading deadline, he also saw action the ALCS with the Boston Red Sox. Following his playing days, Andersen had a long broadcasting career with the Phillies.

Larry Eugene Andersen was born on May 6, 1953, in Portland, Oregon. He recalled, “I was either born deaf in my right ear or maybe it happened when I was real young and had the German measles. They said all of the parts were there. They’re just not connected, which is what a lot of people have said about my brain.”4 Larry’s family was of Swedish ancestry.5 His father, Dale Andersen, was a West Coast Airlines pilot from Oregon who’d married Gae Lea Hammacher of Nebraska in 1949. Their other child, Linda, was born two years later.

“I always wanted to play ball, probably because I watched it all the time on TV and because my dad loved to play. He was never able to because he had to work through high school, so whenever he was off, we’d play together,” Larry recalled. As he progressed through Pee Wee baseball, Little League, Babe Ruth and American Legion competition, his father bragged about him to his fellow pilots. “My idols at the time, other than my father, were Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, Mickey Mantle,” Andersen said.6

On March 10, 1967, Dale Andersen and three others died when their Fairchild F-27 propjet flew into Stukel Mountain near Klamath Falls, Oregon, during a heavy snowstorm. Larry was 13. He still had his mother, and grew closer to his sister, but said, “For about five, six, seven years after he was killed, I kept waiting for him to come through the door… I was in limbo. I had no direction.”7 Sports – especially baseball – soothed some of his lostness. Andersen attended Triple-A Pacific Coast League games with his aunt, a devoted Portland (Oregon) Beavers fan.8

After moving to Bellevue, Washington, Andersen attended Interlake High School, which opened as he was starting 10th grade.9 In three years, he helped the Saints win three football championships, two in basketball and one in baseball – earning MVP honors in the latter sport’s 1971 City vs. State All-Star Game.10 The University of Oregon offered him a dual baseball/football scholarship, and the Cleveland Indians drafted him in the seventh round that June. “I was too skinny to get knocked around a bunch – 6-foot-3 and 177 pounds,” he noted.11 “My true love was being on a dirt hill, 60 feet, six inches from a competitor holding a wooden stick and trying to make me look bad.”12 The Indians’ $10,000 bonus offer through scout Loyd Christopher convinced Andersen to turn professional.

The Single-A California League was where Andersen debuted with the 1971 Reno (Nevada) Silver Sox. He won his only decision, but his ERA was 6.75 in seven appearances. In late July, he was sent down to the rookie-level Gulf Coast League, where he went 0-3 (3.00 ERA) in four outings.

Andersen returned to Reno in 1972 and 1973. Prior to one game in Bakersfield, Andersen and a teammate began setting off in the bullpen $30 worth of fireworks that they’d purchased. When manager Lou Klimchock signaled that they would each be fined $25, the players gave the remainder of their stash to two boys who set them off during the contest – causing the home team’s center fielder to flee the field in fear.13 Reno finished 38 games below .500 in 1972, and Andersen was 4-14 with a 6.53 ERA in 27 games (19 starts). In 1973, the Silver Sox improved to break-even status. Andersen lowered his ERA to 3.95 in 29 starts and tied for second on the club in victories with a 10-8 record. Future Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley led with 12.

Andersen advanced to the Double-A Texas League in 1974 and went 10-6 with a 3.83 ERA for the San Antonio Brewers. He won one of his 22 starts with a no-hitter against the Victoria Toros on June 1.14

In 1975, Andersen led a poor Oklahoma City 89ers club in the Triple-A American Association with a 10-11 record, 156 innings, and 10 complete games in his 23 starts. He was promoted to the majors at the conclusion of the season and fired one perfect inning in his debut on September 5, against the Detroit Tigers at Cleveland Stadium. “I faced Willie Horton, Bill Freehan and Aurelio Rodríguez: foul pop, fly to center and a K,” he recalled.15 Andersen relieved two more times and finished his first taste of the big leagues with a 4.76 ERA.

Andersen started 1976 with the Indians’ new Triple-A farm team, the Toledo (Ohio) Mud Hens of the International League. After going 0-2 with a 12.91 ERA in six outings, he was demoted to the Double-A Eastern League, where he regained his confidence with a 9-6 (2.71 ERA) mark for the Williamsport (Pennsylvania) Tomahawks. “I think they sent me down because my attitude was bad, and I really woke up when it happened,” he reflected a year later. “I realize now I had a ‘don’t give a damn’ attitude but I changed in a hurry… I knew it was then or never for me.”16

Still, the Indians left him off their 40-man roster that winter. Needing money, Andersen answered a newspaper ad from an organization called Vision Quest and spent part of his offseason living with juvenile offenders in a group home in Bisbee, Arizona. “The program helped me, too,” he said. “Because when you throw things like a positive attitude at the kids, it comes right back at you like you’re looking in a mirror.”17

Cleveland converted Andersen into a full-time relief pitcher when they sent him back to Toledo in 1977. “I don’t know why the Indians did that but I’m certainly glad they did,” he said later.18 Andersen continued to do the things that had earned him the “flake” label: warming up without a bullpen catcher or amazing teammates with his burping prowess, for example. “Once I did the song ‘Moon River’ in belches on a dare,” he said. “You have to quit worrying about the pressure. That’s where a lot of the flakiness comes from. I read once where Bill Lee said, ‘The whole world’s insane. So, if I’m insane, I’m normal.’ I guess that’s the way I feel, too.”19

Andersen’s pitching was better than ever in 1977. He was leading the IL with a 1.94 ERA, 45 appearances and nine saves when the Indians called him up again on August 1.20 “I have to credit a lot of my success this season to working with the kids,” he said. “When I go to the mound, there’s no question in my mind that I’ll do the job. I’m much more alert than I’ve ever been.”21 In 11 outings for Cleveland, Andersen was 0-1 with a 3.14 ERA. “Buddy Bell helped me a lot as did Pat Dobson,” he recalled.22

Before Andersen began his fourth straight season in Triple-A in 1978, the Indians changed their top farm team again – to the Portland Beavers franchise that he’d rooted for as a boy. In 57 appearances, he went 10-7 with 25 saves, then a PCL record.23 Next, after a strong winter campaign for the Cangrejeros de Santurce of the Puerto Rican League, he joined that circuit’s champion, the Criollos de Caguas, for the Caribbean Series.24 Andersen would pitch four winters in Puerto Rico, and two in Venezuela, before establishing himself in the majors.25

The Indians changed their Triple-A affiliate from Portland to the Tacoma (Washington) Tugs in 1979. Still in the PCL, Andersen started 12 of his 27 appearances, going 10-6. He also saw action in eight big-league contests, but he was hit hard, posting a 7.56 ERA. Perhaps the most lasting feature of his summer was inspired by Andersen’s visit with teammate Ron Pruitt to the home of Texas Rangers’ reliever Sparky Lyle, who owned a headpiece that made him resemble one of Saturday Night Live’s Coneheads. Soon, Pruitt was reprimanded for wearing a Conehead during the national anthem, while Andersen made one a signature prop for the rest of his career.26

On December 21, 1979, Andersen was traded to the World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates for outfielder Larry Littleton and pitcher John Burden. Reflecting on his nine years in the Indians organization, he said in 1991, “Cleveland at that time was a dismal, negative, terrible place to play. I’m not talking about the city. The stadium was rundown. It was ugly. It was like a puke yellow. And the organization left a lot to be desired. Other than that, it was perfect.”27

In 1980, Andersen was assigned to the Portland Beavers – then the Pirates’ Triple-A affiliate – for the second time. He enjoyed an outstanding season: 15 saves in 52 outings with a PCL-best 1.74 ERA. Over 93 innings, he struck out 65 batters and issued only 11 unintentional walks. He never appeared in the big leagues, however, and Pittsburgh sent him to the Seattle Mariners on October 29 to complete an earlier deal for pitcher Odell Jones.

In 1981, Andersen pitched exclusively in the majors for the first time. “When I got traded to Seattle, Richie Zisk taught me a lot about pitching as far as pitch selection,” he said.28 During the strike-shortened split season, Andersen’s 2.66 ERA was the best among Mariners’ regulars, and his 41 relief appearances ranked ninth in the American League.

“In Seattle, my best memory was the Mr. Jell-O caper,” Andersen recalled. On a September visit to Chicago, he bought 16 boxes of cherry Jello-O with teammates Zisk and Joe Simpson, obtained the keys to Mariners manager Rene Lachemann’s hotel suite, and mixed the gelatin dessert with ice in the toilets. “We also took every piece of furniture we could carry, including the mattress and box spring and crammed all we could into his bathroom. We took the mouthpiece out of his phone, unscrewed all the lights, unplugged his clock and toilet papered his room… The next day he threatened the team with FBI, fingerprints, lie detectors, etc.,” Andersen described. The culprits revealed themselves in a What’s My Line? type game at the team’s year end party.29

In 1982, AL hitters slugged .543 against Andersen, and he finished with a 5.99 ERA in 37 long relief outings. “When I started to struggle there was no one there to help me work things out,” he said. “All they said was I had to find my rhythm.”30 He spent the last three weeks of August with the Triple-A Salt Lake City Gulls rehabilitating a shoulder injury.31 In explaining to Andersen that he hadn’t made the team in spring training 1983, Lachemann told him, “You’re not good enough.”32

“I couldn’t be sure if I’d ever get back to the majors,” Andersen recalled. “When you’ve been bouncing around like I had, you never know when the end might be coming.”33 Seattle loaned him to the Phillies organization, where he was assigned to Philadelphia’s new Triple-A affiliate – the Portland Beavers. “My dream growing up was, I wanna pitch for the Portland Beavers. Well, it came true. And then it came true again. And then it came true again. And I’m like, OK, enough of that dream. Can I get back to dreaming about maybe getting into the big leagues now?”34

In his third stint with Portland, Andersen saved a league-leading 22 games while posting a 2.05 ERA over 52 appearances – all before July 29, when the Phillies purchased his contract and promoted him to the majors. “Playing with the Wheeze Kids was like being in baseball heaven. I mostly just walked around in awe of those guys,” said Andersen.35 (In contrast to Philadelphia’s youthful 1950 pennant-winning club – the “Whiz Kids” – the 1983 Phillies were nicknamed the “Wheeze Kids” because their veteran roster featured three aging stars from Cincinnati’s 1970s Big Red Machine: 39-year-old Joe Morgan, Tony Pérez (41) and Pete Rose (42).)

One of the masks in Andersen’s collection resembled Phillies manager Paul Owens, so his teammates encouraged him to don the skipper’s uniform and conduct a mock team meeting. “I was a little hesitant to do that because I was new here and didn’t want to upset anybody,” Andersen recalled. “But this is a really great bunch of guys, and I like to have fun out there.”36 In 17 appearances, Andersen went 1-0 (2.39) as Philadelphia rode a red-hot September to a division title and defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS. In two World Series outings against the Baltimore Orioles, he allowed one run in four innings, but the Phillies lost in five games. “I went from the cellar to the Series in less than a year,” Andersen reflected. “And a lot of it was because I wouldn’t let somebody convince me that I wasn’t good enough.”37

Philadelphia was a .500 team in 1984, but Andersen’s 2.38 ERA over 64 appearances included a string of 32 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings – a record for Phillies’ relievers.38 He was throwing more cut fastballs and curves to complement his slider, but Andersen attributed his success to increasing his pitching weight from 195 pounds to 210 through workouts with the club’s strength and flexibility instructor. Pitching coach Claude Osteen agreed, adding, “Another factor is that he’s not afraid to pitch inside. And the third thing is that he has been throwing a really good curveball… And the guy is just a great worker. He’ll always take the ball and he’s a super person to have on the club.”39

In 1985, the Phillies finished fifth with a 75-87 record, and Andersen’s ERA swelled to 4.32. Philadelphia acquired two right-handed relievers in offseason trades: future Cy Young Award winner Steve Bedrosian and veteran Tom Hume. Another righty bullpen arm, former All-Star Kent Tekulve, was already in the fold. Since Tekulve and Hume’s contracts guaranteed them a combined $1.7 million, when the Phillies started slowly in 1986, Andersen and his $260,000 salary were released after 10 appearances to make room for rookie Freddie Toliver on May 13.

Andersen had just turned 33. “I want to pitch in a ballpark that has high grass and is 400 feet down each foul line. Where the wind is always blowing hard in the batter’s face,” he joked. “Then, for starters, I’d want Ozzie Smith at shortstop and Keith Hernandez at first.”40 Instead, he joined the NL West-leading Houston Astros and posted a 2.78 ERA in 38 outings. After Houston won its division with a 96-66 record, Andersen hurled five scoreless innings in two NLCS contests against the New York Mets, but the Astros were eliminated in an epic, 16-inning Game Six, in which he worked the 11th, 12th, and 13th frames without allowing a hit.

The Astros had a losing season in 1987, but Andersen was 9-5 (3.45) in a team-high and personal-best 67 appearances. Prior to that season, he’d averaged 5.1 strikeouts per nine innings in the majors, but he improved his rate to 8.0 for the remainder of his career. “I learned the slider when I was in high school but never had the velocity to make it what it ended up to be,” he explained. “When Les Moss, the Astros pitching coach, got hold of me… he changed my mechanics, and it gave me about four or five miles-per-hour more. That’s when I became a much better pitcher.”41 Andersen kept his hand on top of the baseball to disguise the spin, giving the pitch a looping look before it broke late on the way to home plate.42

Andersen’s 53 appearances in 1988 led Houston’s right-handed relievers, and his ERA was 2.94.43 In 1989, he didn’t allow an earned run until his 16th outing – a span of 22 1/3 innings. Although he wasn’t invited to the All-Star Game, Andersen finished the first half with a 0.67 ERA, prompting teammate Jim Deshaies to say, “I think he is the best pitcher in baseball right now. The guy’s numbers are just unbelievable, but because he’s a set-up man and doesn’t have the wins or saves, he doesn’t get much recognition.”44

The 1989 Astros’ pitching staff was the oldest in major league history according to the Elias Sports Bureau.45 By season’s end, the 36-year-old Andersen had held opposing hitters to a .198 batting average and logged a 1.54 ERA over 60 outings. He continued to entertain with stunts like wearing buckteeth on team flights. “I was not grown up when I got into baseball at 18, and I don’t think I’ve matured at all since then,” he remarked that summer.46 His self-described motto was, “You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.”47

Andersen was reminded of his impending baseball mortality by the Equitable Old-Timers Game before an Astros contest in San Diego in 1990. The participants included the first batter he’d faced in the majors (Willie Horton), ex-Cleveland teammate Bill Melton, and his former roommate from winter ball, Tim Stoddard. “I’d prefer that they call this the ‘Middle-Timers’ Game instead of the Old-Timers,” said Andersen. “Oh well, I’ve aged more gracefully than most of those guys.”48 Indeed, when Andersen struck out Andre Dawson to finish off Houston’s 1-0 victory over the Cubs on August 29, he was 5-2 with a 1.95 ERA in 50 appearances and six saves. The next day, the fifth-place Astros swapped him to the AL East-leading Boston Red Sox for a Double-A third baseman who wound up with a plaque in Cooperstown, Bagwell. “Not many people can say they got traded one-for-one with somebody as good as he is,” remarked Andersen in 2001. “Who knew he was gonna put on 30-40 pounds and become a tremendous run producer?”49

The Red Sox clinched their division on the final day of the regular season, with Andersen pitching in 15 of the last 30 games and posting a 1.23 ERA. When Boston was swept by the Oakland Athletics in the ALCS, however, his ERA was 6.00 in three outings, including a blown save and loss in the series opener. “I just got plain tired in Boston,” he said. “I’ll never make excuses. That’s just the plain fact of life.”50

Andersen became a free agent and signed a two-year, $4.35 million deal to join the San Diego Padres on December 21.51 “It’s definitely the best Christmas I’ve had in my life. I’m floating on clouds right now,” he said. “I’ve been through it all. I’ve struggled, and I’ve been persistent and the last few years I’ve been consistent. I feel like I’ve earned what I’ve got.”52

On Opening Day, Andersen finished off a victory over the Giants – the first of his major league career high 13 saves with a 2.30 ERA in 1991. Initially, the only thing bothering him seemed to the Padres’ ban on beer in the home clubhouse. “Having a beer after the game is just as much a part of it as wearing a hat out in the field,” he said. “It’s been that way for 110 years. And I do think it promotes camaraderie.”53 In the year that he turned 38, however, Andersen was limited to 38 appearances by a herniated disc at the base of his neck that rendered him chronically stiff, forced him to the disabled list twice, and had him contemplating surgery.54

Andersen made it to the mound even less frequently for the Padres in 1992 – a total of 35 innings over 34 appearances. He became a free agent again and agreed to an incentive-laden deal to return to the Phillies organization: $350,000 to sign, another $350,000 if he made the major league roster, and $375,000 if he appeared in at least 55 games.55 “Hopefully, I can have fun again,” he said. “Because I sure haven’t had any the last two years in San Diego.”56

As it happened, “by far the greatest thrill of my baseball career” was Andersen’s description of fitting in with the 1993 Phillies.57 “The whole team is insane, and there are some guys on this team who are more insane than I am. And that’s scary,” he told one reporter.58 Philadelphia seized the NL East lead for keeps during the first week of the season and won its first pennant in a decade as Andersen went 3-2 with a 2.92 ERA in 64 appearances as the club’s top right-handed reliever. “We loved to party but loved to play baseball even more,” Andersen recalled. “We were gruff, scrappy and played our ass off, both on and off the field. That is why this city loved us so much… I doubt there’ll ever be another team quite like that one.”59

In Philadelphia’s NLCS victory over the Braves, Andersen struck out Ron Gant and Jeff Blauser to save a 4-3, Game Five victory in Atlanta, but he was otherwise largely ineffective in the postseason as the Phillies fell to the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series. Although GM Lee Thomas said, “Larry did the job we brought him here to do and we were pleased,” the team had no intention of offering the 40-year-old pitcher salary arbitration. Still, Andersen said, “What I’d like to do is come back to the Phillies and finish my career in Philadelphia.”60

Andersen returned to the Phillies in 1994 and went 1-2 with a 4.41 ERA in his final 29 major-league appearances. As he’d done for the last decade, he’d continued to pick a kid in the stands to play catch with during batting practice. “It was five minutes of my time, and I’m thinking the kid would rather play catch with Darren Daulton or Mitch Williams, or Lenny Dykstra, or John Kruk, but it wasn’t that they were having a catch with Larry Andersen, they were having a catch with a big-league player,” he said. “For the brief time I had my dad, it’s what he instilled in me. Treat people the way they want to be treated.”61 Andersen finished his 17-season career with 40-39 record, 3.15 ERA and 49 saves in 699 games, all but one out of the bullpen.

Andersen spent 1995 and 1996 as a coach for the Reading (Pennsylvania) Phillies in the Double-A Eastern League, and also relieved five times in the former season. After a promised interview for Philadelphia’s pitching coach position didn’t materialize, he considered an opportunity to broadcast Astros games, before ultimately agreeing to shepherd the pitchers with the Phillies’ Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons affiliate in 1997.62 After Richie Ashburn died suddenly that September, Andersen replaced the Hall of Famer as a Phillies color analyst the following year, teaming with Ford C. Frick Award winner Harry Kalas.

When Larry Bowa became the Phillies’ new manager following the 2000 season, he explored Andersen’s interest in becoming his pitching coach. They both laughed when Andersen replied, “Why would I leave the booth to come down on the field and just get fired with you in three years?”63 As it happened, Bowa lasted four while Andersen – after 24 seasons – is the Phillies longest-tenured announcer as of 2021. He called games on both television and radio initially, before moving exclusively to radio in 2007. Andersen is noted for his conversational style and keen wit, asking questions like, “Why do fans sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ when they’re already there?” and “What do you call a home run when the visiting team hits it?”64

In 2018, Andersen reduced his workload to call only Phillies’ home games. He underwent surgery for prostate cancer that December. As of 2021, he resides in Philadelphia with his wife Kristi, whom he married – attended by the Phillie Phanatic – in 2012. He is the father of three children – daughters Angela and Tania, and son Chase – from previous relationships.

“People put athletes on a pedestal. I always felt it was my job to step down and not allow anyone to make me better than anyone else,” Andersen said. “I’m just an average guy who was blessed with some talent that afforded me a chance to play this game that pays well and happens to give you a lot of recognition.”65

Last revised: January 20, 2022

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Keith Thursby and fact-checked by Kevin Larkin.

Sources

In addition to sources cited in the notes, the author consulted www.ancestry.com, www.baseball-reference.com and www.retrosheet.org.

Notes

1 Don Patterson, “Providing Comedy, Relief,” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1991: SDC1.

2 Neil Hohlfeld, “Andersen’s ERA No Joke,” The Sporting News, July 3, 1989: 15.

3 “Socrates, Plato and . . . Larry,” Los Angeles Times, June 12, 1988: 2.

4 Joseph Santoliquito, “For Phillies’ Larry Andersen, the Road to Radio Wasn’t Always Smooth,” Philly Voice, July 12, 2016, https://www.phillyvoice.com/phillies-larry-andersen-road-radio-wasnt-always-smooth/ (last accessed September 6, 2021).

5 Larry Andersen, Publicity Questionnaire for William J. Weiss, July 15, 1971.

6 Ray Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen,” November 28, 2001, https://www.astrosdaily.com/players/interviews/Andersen_Larry.html (last accessed September 6, 2021).

7 Santoliquito, “For Phillies’ Larry Andersen, the Road to Radio Wasn’t Always Smooth.”

8 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

9 Nancy Wilson of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group Heart was one year behind Andersen at Interlake. Former MLB All-Star John Olerud graduated from the same school in 1986.

10 Andersen, Publicity Questionnaire for William J. Weiss.

11 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

12 Larry Shenk, “My Baseball Heaven,” July 29, 2020, https://philliesinsider.mlblogs.com/my-baseball-heaven-1ddd6633a092 (last accessed October 28, 2021).

13 John Bergener, “Flake Andersen Relieves Teammates and Juveniles,” The Sporting News, July 8, 1977: 35.

14 Larry Andersen, 1975 Oklahoma City 89ers baseball card.

15 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

16 Russell Schneider, “New Attitude Earned Indians Spurts for Andersen,” The Sporting News, August 20, 1977: 18.

17 Schneider, “New Attitude Earned Indians Spurts for Andersen.”

18 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

19 Bergener, “Flake Andersen Relieves Teammates and Juveniles,”

20 Schneider, “New Attitude Earned Indians Spurts for Andersen.”

21 Bergener, “Flake Andersen Relieves Teammates and Juveniles,”

22 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

23 “Pacific Coast League,” The Sporting News, May 5, 1979: 40.

24 Thomas E. Van Hyning, The Santurce Crabbers: Sixty Seasons of Puerto Rican Winter League Baseball, (McFarland & Company, Jefferson, North Carolina: 2015): 133.

25 Shenk, “My Baseball Heaven.”

26 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

27 Patterson, “Providing Comedy, Relief.”

28 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

29 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

30 Peter Pascarelli, “Phils Finally Find Caddie for Holland,” The Sporting News, August 6, 1984: 21.

31 Larry Andersen, 1983 Donruss baseball card.

32 Patterson, “Providing Comedy, Relief.”

33 Pascarelli, “Phils Finally Find Caddie for Holland.”

34 “Larry Andersen and Bo Wulf with Glen Macnow and Ray Didinger,” April 19, 2020, https://www.audacy.com/media/audio-channel/larry-andersen-and-bo-wulf-with-glen-macnow-and-ray-didinger-4-19-2020 (last accessed November 1, 2021).

35 “Larry Andersen and Bo Wulf with Glen Macnow and Ray Didinger.”

36 Pascarelli, “Phils Finally Find Caddie for Holland.”

37 Patterson, “Providing Comedy, Relief.”

38 “Phillies Broadcasters,” https://www.mlb.com/phillies/team/broadcasters (last accessed November 5, 2021).

39 Pascarelli, “Phils Finally Find Caddie for Holland.”

40 Bill Conlin, “Reliever Relieved: Phils Release Andersen,” Philadelphia Daily News, May 14, 1985: 83.

41 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

42 Patterson, “Providing Comedy, Relief.”

43 Lefty Juan Agosto pitched in 75 games for the 1988 Astros.

44 Neil Hohlfeld, “Astros Ride Pen to Peak,” The Sporting News, June 26, 1989: 16.

45 Stan Isle, “One for the Book,” The Sporting News, May 29, 1989: 7.

46 Hohlfeld, “Andersen’s ERA No Joke.”

47 Shenk, “My Baseball Heaven.”

48 Neil Hohlfeld, “Andersen ‘Ages Gracefully’,” The Sporting News, August 20, 1990: 11.

49 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

50 Patterson, “Providing Comedy, Relief.”

51 Barry Bloom, “Fly on the Wall,” The Sporting News, September 2, 1991: 19.

52 “Andersen Enjoys Best Christmas,” The Sporting News, January 7, 1991: 39.

53 Barry Bloom, “Fly on the Wall,” The Sporting News, May 6, 1991: 22.

54 Bloom, “Fly on the Wall,” (September 2, 1991).

55 Bill Brown, “Fly on the Wall,” The Sporting News, December 28, 1992: 38.

56 Bob Nightengale, “Fly on the Wall,” The Sporting News, January 4, 1993: 51.

57 Shenk, “My Baseball Heaven.”

58 Bill Glauber, “The Wild 1’s,” Baltimore Sun, June 3, 1993: 1D.

59 Shenk, “My Baseball Heaven.”

60 Bill Brown, “Bullpen Questions,” The Sporting News, November 1, 1993: 24.

61 Santoliquito, “For Phillies’ Larry Andersen, the Road to Radio Wasn’t Always Smooth.”

62 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

63 Kerby, “An Interview with Larry Andersen.”

64 Don Bostrom, “Phillies Name Larry Andersen as New Addition to Broadcasts,” Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), January 23, 1998, https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1998-01-23-3189464-story.html (last accessed November 6, 2021).

65 Bostrom, “Phillies Name Larry Andersen as New Addition to Broadcasts.”

Appier won 169 games in his career against 137 losses with a 3.74 ERA, a notably strong mark for a pitcher who spent the latter half of his career competing in the “Steroids Era.” “Ape,” as he was nicknamed, pitched for four major–league clubs. He spent the vast majority of his career with the Kansas City Royals (1989–1999, 2003–2004). As of 2018 he was the franchise’s career leader in strikeouts (1,458) and fourth in wins for the Royals (115). Appier spent his other major–league stints with the Oakland Athletics (1999–2000), New York Mets (2001), and Anaheim Angels (2002–2003) before returning to the Royals to wind up his career. He was selected for the 1995 All–Star Game, finished third in AL Rookie of the Year voting in 1990, and third in AL Cy Young Award voting in 1993. In 2002 Appier earned a World Series ring as a member of the Anaheim Angels. In 2011, he was inducted into the Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame.1

Robert Kevin Appier was born on December 6, 1967, in Lancaster, California, in Los Angeles County. He was one of three siblings and was raised by his mother, Betty Appier, who worked as an accountant.2 Appier starred for the Antelope Valley High School baseball team, a perennial LA County baseball power that had previously produced 1966 number–one draft pick Steve Chilcott and former Brewers, Tigers, and Angels pitcher Jim Slaton (1971–1986). By the end of his high–school career, Appier had grown into the 6–foot–2, 180–pound frame that he carried for the rest of his career.3 He accepted a scholarship to play at collegiate power Fresno State but left the Bulldog program after just three appearances in 1986 and spent the 1987 baseball season with the Antelope Valley College Marauders. “He’s a once–in–a–lifetime coach’s dream,” Antelope Valley College coach Ted Henkel told the Los Angeles Times. Henkel worked closely with Appier, helping him beef up his fastball into the 90s. After Appier posted an 11–6 record with a 2.65 ERA for the Marauders, Kansas City selected him in the first round of the 1987 draft and he signed with the Royals shortly thereafter.4

Appier progressed quickly through the Royals organization. In 1987, he posted a 3.04 ERA for the Eugene Emeralds of the Single–A Northwest League. He split 1988 between the Class–A Baseball City Royals of the Florida State League and Double–A Memphis Chicks of the Southern League. Appier won a combined 12 games against 9 losses and posted a 2.64 ERA. He spent most of 1989 with the Omaha Royals of the Triple–A American Association, where he went 8–8 with a 3.95 ERA. Appier had a brief stint with the Royals in June and July 1989 but struggled to a 1–4 record with an ERA of 9.14 in six appearances.5

After a brief stay in Omaha in 1990, the Royals called Appier up and eased the 22–year–old back into major–league action. In late April and May, Appier worked primarily as a reliever. By early June, Appier had moved into the Royals’ highly talented starting rotation which included two–time Cy Young Award winner Bret Saberhagen, Mark Gubicza, Tom Gordon, and Storm Davis. Appier proved to be a bright spot in an otherwise disappointing 1990 season for the Royals, who finished sixth in the AL West after being the runners–up to Oakland the previous season. The rookie right–hander ended up having the standout season among Kansas City’s rotation, posting a 12–8 mark and a staff–best 2.76 ERA. He finished third in Rookie of the Year voting behind Yankees slugger Kevin Maas and Indians catcher Sandy Alomar Jr., the unanimous selection of the Baseball Writers Association of America. The Sporting News named Appier its 1990 Rookie Pitcher of the Year.

Appier avoided a sophomore slump, posting a 13–10 record with a 3.42 ERA with three shutouts in 1991. While the Hal McRae–managed Royals faded into oblivion in 1992, finishing tied for fifth and winning just 72 games, the third–year pitcher asserted himself as the ace of the mound staff. With the departure of Bret Saberhagen in a trade to the New York Mets, Appier took the lead in Kansas City’s suddenly–slim starting pitching staff. He made the first of his six consecutive Opening Day starts for the Royals. For the season he went 15–8 and posted a 2.46 ERA, second best in the AL behind Boston’s Roger Clemens. In July Appier earned the AL Pitcher of the Month Award, finishing the month 4–0 with a 1.55 ERA in six starts. Despite the strong pitching performance, Appier was once again left off the AL All–Star team roster, a victim of his team’s poor performance.

In 1993 Appier asserted his claim to recognition as one of the AL’s best pitchers. Pitching a career–high 238⅔ innings, he posted a career best 18–8 record and an AL leading 2.56 ERA. He finished a career–best third in AL Cy Young Award voting behind winner Jack McDowell and distant runner–up Randy Johnson.

Appier fell from the heights of 1993 during the strike–shortened 1994 season, struggling to stay above .500 as his ERA jumped more than a run to 3.83. As a franchise, the Royals had returned to form, boasting a 64–51 mark, good for third place in the new, highly competitive AL Central Division. David Cone, who went 16–5 with a 2.94 ERA, was the ace of Hal McRae’s rotation in 1994 but was traded to Toronto for three prospects by the cash–strapped Royals before the start of the 1995 season.

Appier bounced back in 1995, retaking his position as Kansas City’s ace. He won 11 of his first 13 decisions. The 27–year–old earned his only All–Star Game selection that season and pitched two perfect innings in relief of Randy Johnson. After his fantastic start to the  season, Appier faded in the second half. His record fell to 15–10 and his ERA ballooned to 3.89.6

As offense ballooned during the latter half of the 1990s, Appier remained a strong, if somewhat less spectacular starter, on Bob Boone’s noncontending Royals teams of 1996 and 1997. The right–hander’s ERA hovered in the mid–3’s both seasons (3.62 in 1996 and 3.40 in 1997), though his won–lost records differed considerably (14–11 in 1996 and 9–13 in 1997). Appier put significant mileage on his arm both seasons, throwing a combined 447 innings. Before the 1996 season, Appier entered salary arbitration with the Royals, winning a salary increase to just over $5 million per season, a jump of more than $663,000 from the season before.7

In 1998 Appier faced his first significant injury as a pitcher, suffering a torn labrum in spring training that cost him virtually the entire season. He made just three September appearances. He also battled through a difficult first half of the 1999 season, compiling a 9–9 record with a then career–worst 4.87 ERA through the end of July. At the trading deadline, the rebuilding Royals shipped their longtime ace to the suddenly contending Oakland A’s for pitchers Jeff D’Amico, Blake Stein, and Brad Rigby. Appier continued to win games but his ERA ballooned further against steroids–era hitting. He finished the year 16–14 with an ERA of 5.17. The A’s finished the season eight games behind the AL West Champion Texas Rangers and seven games behind the Red Sox for the wild card.

In 2000, Appier, 32, played a prominent role in the “Moneyball” A’s ascent to the franchise’s first division title since 1992. He went 15–11 while posting an ERA of 4.52. He provided veteran leadership on a young staff that included Tim Hudson, who had his breakout season in 2000, and Barry Zito, who was on the cusp of greatness. Appier made his first–ever playoff appearances in the Division Series against the New York Yankees. He pitched in two games in the hard–fought series that was won by New York, three games to two. In Game Two, Appier surrendered three runs in 6⅓ innings in a 4–0 home loss. Appier gave up one run in four innings of relief in the deciding fifth game.

On December 11, 2000, the Mets signed Appier to a four–year, $42 million contract, bringing the veteran right–hander onto the staff of the defending NL champions. Appier posted an 11–10 record in 2001 with a 3.57 ERA in 206⅔ innings pitched. The addition of Appier did not prove to be the final piece in the Mets’ World Series–winning puzzle. The club struggled to an 82–80 mark in 2001, finishing third in the NL East. After the season, the Mets traded Appier to the Anaheim Angels for former AL MVP Moe Vaughn.8

Appier proved a stalwart on the Angels’ young staff, posting a 14–12 mark and a 3.92 ERA for the 99–win wild–card–winning club. Though Appier struggled during the 2002 postseason, surrendering 15 earned runs in 21⅔ innings of work, the Angels upset the Yankees, Twins, and Giants en route to the franchise’s first World Series victory.

In 2003 Appier struggled along with the Angels in their World Series hangover season. A series of nagging injuries, most notably a torn flexor tendon in his right elbow, hampered him throughout the season. He went 7–7 with an ERA of 5.63 for the 77–win Anaheim team, and was released on July 30. A week later Appier returned to the Royals. He made just four starts for Kansas City before having season–ending surgery. He missed most of 2004 recovering from elbow surgery, making just two starts that season. Appier struggled for the next two years (2005–2006) to make a major–league comeback, first with the Royals and then with the Seattle Mariners. In 2006 he retired as a Royal, more than two years after his final major–league appearance.9

Appier was a right–handed hitter who rarely batted. In a career spent primarily in the AL, Appier had 90 career plate appearances, 67 of which came during his season with the New York Mets. He posted a .096 career batting average.

In retirement, Appier moved full time to his soybean farm in Paola, Kansas, about 45 miles south of Kansas City. He and his wife, Laurie, have three children: Garrett, Britney, and Evelyn. Garrett Appier is a three–time Division II national champion in the shot–put for Pittsburg State University in Kansas.10

Notes

1 Dick Kaegel, “Appier to Take Place Among Royals Greats,” Royals.com, June 24, 2011. Accessed on July 2, 2018: wap.mlb.com/kc/news/article/2011062420940432/?locale=en_US; “NY is Appier of Eye,” New York Daily News, December 12, 2000. Accessed on July 2, 2018: nydailynews.com/archives/sports/n–y–appier–eye–article–1.885307.

2 Gene Morris, “Appier Inducted into Royals Hall of Fame,” Miami County (Kansas) Republic, June 30, 2011. Accessed on July 2, 2018: republic–online.com/news/appier–inducted–into–royals–hall–of–fame/article_78a46445–9d5b–5ede–a39b–4f9ee9e50495.html; “Kevin Appier,” Biographical Dictionary of American Sports, 2000. Accessed on July 2, 2018: books.google.com/books?id=AUFUw01sIWYC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=betty+appier&source=bl&ots=fASRBhF0my&sig=mrtEkP4e–HOuuUNkeKSLJj1lT7c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiso4iN8YXcAhXGrVkKHdMyD9kQ6AEIMzAC#v=onepage&q=betty%20appier&f=false.

3 “Antelope Valley High,” The Baseball Cube, 2013. Accessed on July 2, 2018: thebaseballcube.com/hs/profile.asp?ID=1070.

4 Theresa Munoz, “Ape’s World: Kansas City Pitcher’s Unorthodox Formula for Success Results in Winning Equation,” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1992. Accessed on July 2, 2018: articles.latimes.com/1992–07–16/sports/sp–3738_1_kansas–city–royals/2.

5 Ibid.

6 Tim Kurkjian, “A Royal Start,” Sports Illustrated, May 15, 1995: 81; Mike DiGiovanna, “NL Wins Battle of Homeric Proportions,” Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1995. Accessed on July 2, 2018: articles.latimes.com/1995–07–12/sports/sp–31290_1_homer–in–all–star–game.

7 “Royals’ Appier Tops $5 Million,” New York Times, February 3, 1996: 33.

8 Ben Walker, “Kevin Appier Signs with the Mets,” ABC News, December 11, 2000. Accessed on July 2, 2018: abcnews.go.com/Sports/story?id=100096&page=1.

9 Gregg Bell, “After Two Year Absence, Appier Looking for Way Back,” Lawrence (Kansas) Journal–World, April 21, 2006. Accessed on July 2, 2018: 2.ljworld.com/news/2006/apr/21/after_twoyear_absence_appier_looking_way_back/.

10 Dick Kaegel, “Appier to Take Place Among Royals Greats.”; Adam Burns, “Appier Returns from Injury After Contemplating Retirement,” Joplin (Missouri) Globe, January 24, 2018. Accessed on July 2, 2018: joplinglobe.com/sports/local_sports/appier–returns–from–injury–after–contemplating–retirement/article_d46acf4d–605c–5b07–8083–6c0b19f36f81.html.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

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

baseball-reference.com.

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

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

Notes

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

2 Stephenson.

3 Stephenson.

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

5 Stephenson.

6 Archibald, 25.

7 Archibald, 32.

8 Archibald, 29, 30.

9 Archibald, 33, 34.

10 Archibald, 38, 39.

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

12 Archibald, 42.

13 Archibald, 46.

14 Archibald, 49.

15 Archibald, 64-65.

16 Archibald, 87.

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

18 Roberts, 252.

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

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

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

22 Roberts, 252.

23 Stephenson.

24 Philadelphia Daily News, December 9, 1986.

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

26 Zimniuch, 57.

27 Zimniuch, 53.

28 Zimniuch, 61.

29 Stephenson.

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

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

32 Zimniuch, 99.

Gerald Lee Augustine was born to Donald and Elerene Augustine on July 24, 1952, at old St. Mary’s hospital in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  The family lived in nearby Kewaunee. He was part of a big family, with brothers and sisters Dale, David, Susan, Joe, Mark, and Randy, as well as half-brothers Donald and Orville, the latter two half-brothers were instrumental in Jerry becoming a left-hander. Donald, who was right-handed, and Orville, who was left-handed, debated on how Jerry should throw. Orville settled the debate by giving Jerry a left-hander’s glove.

At Kewaunee High School Gerald starred in baseball, football, and basketball. His high-school classmates included Jack Novak, who played in the NFL, and Dale Koehler, who played basketball at the University of Wisconsin.

Augustine played baseball at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. While in La Crosse he and his high-school sweetheart, Nancy Flaherty, were married and had their first child, Tammy. They later added Todd, Ted, Matthew, and Melanie to their family.

Augustine helped the UWL Eagles win back-to-back conference championships in 1972 and 1973. He was selected to the All-Wisconsin State University Conference first team. As a starter, he posted 14 wins with 186 strikeouts. Many years later he looked back fondly on his college days: “As you go through life, you go through different areas. When I look back at La Crosse, I was given the opportunity to not only grow as a baseball player, but to grow as a person and get my education. La Crosse is very special to me because of that.”1 Augustine also praised his baseball coach, saying, “Bill Terry was the right coach for me. It was Bill’s way of handling people that really made me grow up as a person. I don’t think I would be able to go on and play and achieve the things the way I did without that. He helped me become a better baseball player and a better person.”2 Augustine graduated with a degree in physical education and health, and later he taught during the offseason.

Augustine was drafted by the Brewers in the 15th round of the June 1974 free-agent draft and was signed for what he described as “a small bonus” by Brewers scout Emil Belich, who also signed Paul Molitor and Jim Gantner.3

The Brewers sent Augustine to Danville (Illinois) of the Class A Midwest League, where he started 12 games, completed 6, and posted a 7-4 record with a 2.56 ERA. Danville, was the winner of the second half of the league’s split season, then won the league championship in the playoffs. During the playoffs Augustine pitched a two-hitter against Quad Cities, striking out 14 in the 1-0 win. He had a no-hitter going until the eighth inning.

Augustine reported to the Brewers’ 1975 spring-training camp at Sun City, Arizona, on March 3 and in the first hour of the camp he injured his knee so severely during pitcher’s fielding practice covering first base that he needed surgery. He was out of action until June 28, when he joined the Sacramento Solons, the Brewers’ Triple-A affiliate in the Pacific Coast League. After pitching in short stints, Augustine moved into the starting rotation in July.4 

The Solons played their games at Hughes Stadium, a football field located on the campus of Sacramento City College. The park favored hitters, with a left-field dimension of 251 feet, with a screen erected. In 15 games (11 starts) Augustine posted a 4-3 record with a 4.78 ERA and three complete games. When the major-league roster limits were raised to 40 on September 1, Augustine joined the Brewers and made his major-league debut on September 9 against Baltimore, coming into the game in the eighth inning with two out in relief of Larry Anderson. The first batter he faced, Mark Belanger, doubled. Ken Singleton singled to center field, driving in Belanger. Augustine ended the inning on a fly out by Paul Blair.

After a three-inning, no-hit performance against the New York Yankees the next day, Augustine got his first start on September 16, against the Yankees at County Stadium. He wasn’t informed that he would be the starter until the morning of the game when the Brewers were boarding a bus at Boston’s Logan Airport for the flight to Milwaukee. “Ken McBride (the Brewers pitching coach) told me about it,” Augustine said after the game. “I got nervous, of course, but I was determined to do well.”5 Augustine picked up his first major-league victory, 5-2, going 8⅓ innings and giving up two runs on nine hits. Brewers catcher Darrell Porter was impressed with Augustine’s performance, saying, “He’s aggressive and he is a competitor.”6 Augustine, obviously, was very happy, “It’s everybody’s dream come true.”7

Because of the short notice, none of Augustine’s family could attend the game, including his wife and their three-year-old daughter, Tammy, who had a cold. Augustine wasn’t upset, explaining, “My wife and I have a thing going. It’s a superstition. Every time she watched me pitch for the first time I didn’t do well. This was my first start in the majors, so it was best she didn’t watch me, but there’ll be other times.”8

Augustine pitched his first complete game on September 27 against the Tigers, a seven-hit, 5-2 victory. Brewers manager Del Crandall was impressed, commenting, “He’s got to figure in this club’s plans. He’s had very little experience, but he takes it to ’em. He’s not a nibbler. His ball is very alive, he works hard and he has good aptitude. Kenny McBride has worked with him on his curveball, and it has really come along.”9 Reflecting on his one month with the Brewers, Augustine said, “It’s been really exciting. I really enjoyed it. Something super.”10

During the offseason Augustine pitched winter ball in the Dominican Republic.

Augustine began the 1976 season in the bullpen. He didn’t make his first start until June 10. After five straight losses he was 2-7 on July 16. But between July 20 and September 3 he went 6-2 with a 2.18 ERA.

On July 24, Augustine’s 24th birthday, he pitched his first major-league shutout, a four-hit, eight-strikeout, 5-0 win over the Orioles.

In his next starting assignment, against the Tigers on July 28 at County Stadium, Augustine lost a heartbreaker. His 21-scoreless-innings streak ended when Pedro Garcia hit a sacrifice fly scoring Alex Johnson in the top of ninth, giving the Tigers a 1-0 win. After the game, manager Alex Grammas said of Augustine, “I think he’s reached the point where he’s much more relaxed. Just from looking at him before the game tonight, I got the feeling that he had arrived. I think he knows what he has to do, and he pitched one hell of a game tonight. Damn, he pitched a good game.”11

Augustine got revenge against Detroit at Tiger Stadium on September 3 with a complete-game, five-hit, 11-2 win over Mark Fidrych.

Augustine ended the season with a 9-12 record with a 3.30 earned-run average, his major-league best. He was named to the Topps American League Rookie All-Star Team, took second to Mark Fidrych as The Sporting News Rookie Pitcher of the Year in the American League, and was voted the Brewers’ Rookie of the Year by the Wisconsin Baseball Writers’ Association. After the season he signed a two-year contract, worked in the Brewers ticket office, and took a real-estate course.

In 1977 Augustine started 33 games and led the 68-94 Brewers in victories with 12, defeats (18), and complete games (10), and pitched a career-high 209 innings, second best on the team to Jim Slaton. He pitched seven complete games in May, his best month, compiling a 4-3 record with a 3.10 ERA. Two of the three losses in May were tough ones. On May 11, Augustine lost a 4-3 five-hitter against Cleveland with three of the runs unearned, and on May 24, he lost at Baltimore, 2-1, a game in which he pitched another five-hitter. After Mike Hegan was released, Augustine was elected the Brewers’ player representative and assumed his duties after the All-Star Game.

Augustine set a personal high in 1978 with 13 wins. He lost 12 games, ranked third on the team with 188⅓ innings pitched, and had nine complete games. His finest stretch as a starter was in June when he allowed three runs in 32⅓ innings in victories over the Blue Jays, Mariners, Indians, and Yankees. His 4-1/2.48 ERA earned him the Brewer Pitcher of the Month Award for June.

On August 28 Augustine pitched a two-hit, 10-1 victory over the Tigers. He also pitched two three-hitters and two five-hitters during the season. He was 3-1 against the World Series champion Yankees.

A game against the Blue Jays on September 7 was his final start of the 1978 season. He was sent to the bullpen and rookie Mark Bomback, a call-up from Spokane, took his spot in the starting rotation. Brewers manager George Bamberger said the switch to the bullpen was not a demotion. “From here on in, the bullpen will play an important part for us,” Bamberger said. “Augie gives us two left-handers (along with Bob McClure) in the bullpen.”12 In his last four relief appearances, he didn’t allow a run in 4⅓ innings. Bamberger was pleased with Augustine’s performance out of the bullpen as a short man, saying after the season, “I liked the way he handled himself. He took charge. Maybe that’s the right situation for him next season.”13

In 1979 Augustine pitched out of the bullpen except for two starts. He appeared in 43 games and posted a 9-6 record with a 3.47 ERA, with five saves. (He was 1-1 in his starts.) He had a 5-1 record at County Stadium. In his longest relief appearance, on September 25, he worked eight innings in a 7-6 win over the Mariners. Between May 9 and July 23, during a span of 20 appearances, he didn’t allow a home run. He finished the season on a high note, posting a 5-1 record, with a 0.92 ERA from August 15 to September 25. He was named the Brewers’ Rolaids Relief Pitcher of the Year.

In midseason Augustine spoke about his new role: “I kind of miss being a starter and yet, I’ve been having just as much fun out of the bullpen. I’m able to pitch in more games. That’s what I really enjoy about the bullpen. The toughest thing when you’re in the bullpen is that you have to be mentally ready every day.”14

Augustine pitched in 39 games for the Brewers in 1980, posting a 4-3 record with two saves and a 4.52 ERA. His only start came on May 9, when he lost to the Orioles, 5-2.

Augustine was excused the last two weeks of the season to go to the Arizona Instructional League and work on his delivery with George Bamberger. Bamberger had resigned as the Brewers manager on September 7, 1980, and was hired as a special consultant to Harry Dalton, who sent him to Arizona.  The Brewers wanted to see if it would be helpful if Augustine shortened his stride and kept his body back. Of this experience, Augustine said, “I think it had a positive influence on me. When you change your delivery almost completely the way I did, it’s quite a change.”15

In the strike-shortened 1981 season, Augustine appeared in 27 games, posting a 2-2 record in 61⅓ innings with two saves. He started two games, one on April 30 when he substituted for Pete Vuckovich, who was out with tightness in his right shoulder, and defeated the Angels, 12-1. Augustine pitched seven innings, allowing just two hits. In his other start, on May 25, Augustine went just two innings and lost to the Tigers, 12-3. August was an especially good month. He had eight appearances, earning a win and a save.

In 1982 Augustine pitched in 20 games and had a 1-3 record. June was a good month as he went 1-0 with a 1.08 ERA. On June 20, he pitched 4⅓ scoreless innings against Detroit, allowing only one hit and getting the victory in relief of Jim Slaton. He threw his first complete game in four years on July 19, against the Twins, allowing two earned runs in a 6-4 loss. After the Brewers acquired Don Sutton from the Astros on August 30 in a trade to help them make the playoffs, Augustine was designated assignment.

It was difficult not being on the roster for the 1982 postseason. Twenty-five years later, Augustine said, “I was replaced on the roster by Don Sutton, not a bad guy to be replaced with.”16 Still, it was a difficult adjustment for Augustine. “At the time I didn’t handle it very well. I really struggled with it. It was a real tough time for me personally. I had some good, long talks with Jamie (Easterly).Teddy Simmons took me aside and had a really good perspective. He said, ‘You know, Augie, if you weren’t here, we would not be here.’ You learn from those things and put it in perspective. It did take 25 guys, and with us, probably 30 guys.”17

Even though not on the roster, Augustine was given permission to suit up and sit next to manager Harvey Kuenn in the dugout. He loved the experience. “I really learned a lot about baseball because I sat there next to Harvey,” he said in 2007. “I listened to everything they did. Harvey would turn to me every now and then and say, ‘Augie, what do you think here?’ He made you feel like you were part of it, no matter what was going on.”18

Even before the 1983 regular season began, the Brewers had issues with their starting pitching. An arthogram of Pete Vuckovich taken in March revealed a tear in his rotator cuff sending him to the disabled list. After Dwight Bernard was released, Augustine was expected to fill the gap as the Brewers’ fifth starter. The Brewers started the season with three complete games by Sutton, Mike Caldwell, and Augustine. Augustine pitched 8⅓ innings of scoreless ball against the Angels until Bobby Grich hit a three-run homer as the Brewers won 5-3. It was the first time the Brewers had three complete games in a row since August 1980, and the first time they had ever opened the season with three complete games.

In his next start, against the Blue Jays on April 14, Augustine had to leave the game when he strained knee ligaments fielding a bunt by Willie Upshaw. He was out for two weeks, and in his next start against the White Sox, on April 27, Carlton Fisk hit a line drive off Augustine’s forearm. The injury was so severe that Augustine went on the disabled list until May 20. Augustine joked about the incident: “I always said that the Lord would tell me when it’s time to retire. This time he told me to become a better defensive pitcher.”19

Pitching coach Pat Dobson commented on the injury: “He can’t catch a break. He gets over one injury and he gets another. He was really starting to get his feet on the ground. He pitched well both times out. Now he’ll have to wait and start all over again. That’s tough.”20 Augustine started seven games and then went to the bullpen for the remainder of the season.

Augustine pitched in four games for the Brewers in 1984, the last one on April 11, working 3⅔ innings against the Angels, allowing no earned runs. When the Brewers took Rick Waits off the disabled list, Augustine was designated for assignment. He was sent to Vancouver (Pacific Coast League). On June 6 versus Salt Lake City, he allowed one hit in 7⅓ innings. He posted a 3-8 record with a 4.55 ERA. At the end of the season he declared himself a free agent but was not picked up by any team.

In 1985 Augustine pitched for the Rochester Red Wings, the Orioles’ Triple-A team, and had a 0.92 ERA through early June. He pitched 17⅓ innings before allowing an earned run. He picked up his fifth victory of the season on August 6, throwing 3⅓ scoreless innings in relief against Columbus. He posted a 6-3 record and had six saves and a 3.96 ERA.

After appearing in five games for Rochester and 34 for Columbus posting a 3-6 record, with six saves and a 4.14 ERA, Augustine retired from baseball in 1986. It was obviously a tough decision. Augustine commented in 2007, “I don’t know if I’d say it was hard going back to the minors. I was actually throwing the ball better at the end than I did with Milwaukee. I was throwing harder, I had a better breaking ball, and I adopted a changeup that I could throw for strikes. If I had gone back the next year, I think I could have made it back. But we had twins and I made a family decision. I just missed my family too much. I had five kids, and it was time to spend time with them.”21

After deciding against a teaching career, in November 1986 Augustine opened an insurance agency in West Allis, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, which as of 2019 was still in business. He implemented lessons learned from playing professional baseball: “When managers come to the mound to talk to a pitcher, every eye in the stadium is on that conversation. Your words need to be direct and to the point. The same is true when I talk to clients. I learned to be direct and always be honest. It helped me learn as a player, and it has helped me succeed in business.” Did it help that he was a former major leaguer? “Name recognition was important when I started, and it remains important today. If people do not recall my name from my days with the Brewers, they’ll be reminded the moment they walk through the door.”22

In 1995 Augustine was named the baseball coach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In 12 seasons the team posted a 347-297-1 record and made three NCAA tournaments. In the 1999 tournament, UWM defeated top-ranked Rice.

The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse inducted Augustine into its Wall of Fame in 1984, and the Milwaukee Brewers put him on their Wall of Honor in 2014.

In 2009 he began working as a Brewers’ Live Color Analyst for Fox Sports Wisconsin for the pre- and postgame shows and filled in as a radio broadcaster in 2014.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author had a personal conversation with Jerry Augustine, and accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, Newspapers.com, Paper of Record, the 2018 Milwaukee Brewers Media Guide, and SABR.org.

Notes

1 Alex Vandenhouten, “Former Brewer Jerry Augustine: La Crosse Is a Baseball Town,” La Crosse Tribune, March 2, 2017.

2 Jeff Brown, “La Crosse Instrumental in Jerry Augustine’s Formative Years — On and Off the Field,” La Crosse Tribune, March 1, 2017.

3 Lou Chapman, “Brewers Happy Over List to Portside,” The Sporting News, September 18, 1976: 15.

4 Lou Chapman, “Yankees Tee Off on New Brewers,” Milwaukee Sentinel, September 11, 1975: 2, 1.

5 Lou Chapman, “Brewers Find Rookie Hero,” Milwaukee Sentinel, September 17, 1975: 2, 1.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Mike Gonring, “A Promotional Dream — State Pitcher Wins,” Milwaukee Journal, September 28, 19752, 1.

10 Ibid.

11 Mike Gonring, “Even a 1-0 Defeat Fails to Ruffle New Augustine,” Milwaukee Journal, July 29, 1976: 2, 12.

12 “Augustine Is Back in Bullpen,” Milwaukee Sentinel, September 9, 1978: 2, 6.

13 Mike Gonring, “Can Augustine Cure Brewer Bullpen Woe?” The Sporting News, November 4, 1978: 47.

14 Mike Gonring, “Ex-Starter Augustine Brewers’ New Stopper,” The Sporting News, June 30, 1979: 18.

15 Tom Flaherty, “Augustine Has a Super Tutor,” The Sporting News, November 15, 1980: 50.

16 Tom Haudricourt, “Where Have You Gone, ’82 Brewers?” KCI Sports, 2007: 9.

17 Haudricourt: 80.

18 Ibid.

19 Peter Gammons, “A.L. Beat,” The Sporting News, May 23, 1983: 25.

20 Tom Flaherty, “Hard Luck Hounds Hurler Augustine,” The Sporting News, May 16, 1983: 24.

21 Haudricourt.

22 Dan Aznoff, “Ex-Players Turn Discipline Into Pay Dirt with 2nd Careers,” Property Casualty 360, July 30, 2003

But on March 23, 1993, Baerga stepped outside the white lines to become a leader of the club off the field. The day before, the Indians were given a day off by manager Mike Hargrove. Their spring training was held in Winter Haven, Florida. The players took advantage of the free day. Some groups took their families to Disney World, others went to Universal Studios. Others stayed closer to the spring-training complex.

Tim Crews came over to the Indians via free agency from Los Angeles to Cleveland. He owned a ranch close to Winter Haven, and invited the team to his home for a picnic. Steve Olin and Bob Ojeda took Crews up on his offer. Toward the end of the day, Crews, Ojeda, and Olin climbed into Crews’ 18-foot bass boat, and circled around Little Lake Nellie. Indians trainer Fernando Montes observed the trio from where the boat departed. A neighbor’s dock, which extended more than 50 yards, sat on the far side of the lake. As Crews accelerated, the front of the boat rose up, blocking their vision. As soon as the boat planed out, it was now the under the dock. It was too late. The accident occurred in three feet of water. “We heard this loud thump and a crash,” said Montes. “And it was silence, utter silence. I knew without any hesitation that Steve Olin had passed.”1 Crews was also dead and Ojeda was badly injured.

The next day, Cleveland’s vice president of public relations, Bob DiBiasio, was looking for a player who would talk to the media about the boating tragedy. “Everybody on the team was in tears,” said DiBiasio. “Nobody wanted to step forward and discuss what happened.”2 Carlos Baerga stepped forward, volunteering to be the team spokesman. “I was brokenhearted,” he said, “but I had a responsibility to the two good people we had lost. They were part of my life. I told God, ‘Give me words, because I know it’s going to be hard for me.’”3

Carlos Obed Baerga was born on November 4, 1968, in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He was the oldest of four children born to José and Baldry Baerga. José worked in the credit office of Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper, El Nuevo Dia. José managed Carlos’s little league teams. At 8, Carlos was holding his own against boys 10 to 12 years old. When he reached 14, Baerga was mixing it up on the diamond with adult amateurs in their 20s and 30s in the Puerto Rican Double A League. When Baerga reached 16, he was playing in the winter leagues against major leaguers.

“I remember my father saying, ‘Don’t come back home if you don’t have your uniform dirty,’ Baerga once recalled. “Ever since, I have put it in my mind to play hard. He always pushed me. My father always watches me, he’s always behind me.”4

Longtime Indians bullpen coach Luis Isaac (1987-2008) watched Baerga grow in his native Puerto Rico. “I knew right away he’d be a big-league player,” said Isaac. “Even when he was little, he was the type of kid who wanted to play two games a day. He’d be telling the other kids on the field what to do. He always played with that kind of intensity.”5

José worked with his son on becoming a switch-hitter so that he could play every day no matter who the pitcher was. Carlos, a natural left-handed hitter, worked hard to sharpen his skill from the right side of the plate. “I’ve still got to practice it every day,” he said in 1995. “But it has helped me. I see a guy like Randy Johnson pitching and I can’t imagine having to face him left-handed. The same goes for David Cone and facing him right-handed.”6

Word of Baerga’s ability spread around the island, and soon professional scouts arrived to get a look at the 14-year-old. Luis Rosa, a scout for the San Diego Padres, got Baerga to sign for a $65,000 bonus in 1985, when he turned 17 years old. (Rosa had a keen eye for talent. At the time Baerga signed, 32 of Rosa’s players had made their way to the big leagues.

Although Baerga seemed destined for big-league stardom, there was one problem. The Padres already had a second baseman in-waiting, Roberto Alomar. Baerga started his playing career at Class-A Charleston in the South Atlantic League. “They asked me to take him with me and when (rookie level) Spokane opened up (in mid-June) he’d go there,” said Charleston manager Pat Kelly.7 Baerga, who did not speak English that well, would ask Kelly, “Coach, why me no play?” Kelly would explain to Baerga that he had to play his more experienced players. Baerga would nod, as if he understood, but he returned the next day, asking the same question. This went on for about a week. “Finally, I put him in as a pinch-hitter, and he got a hit, of course,” said Kelly. “So I started him the next day, and he went like 4-for-4, and they were all (line drives). So he stayed with us the whole year.”8

Baerga showed that he could handle the bat on the minor-league level. He was still somewhat raw, but he was still just a teenager in his first three years in the minors. Because Alomar was the second baseman of the future for the Padres, it became evident that a new position would have to be found for Baerga, even though he felt the most comfortable at second base.

When Baerga reported to Double-A Wichita in 1988, he was switched to shortstop. In 1989 he was promoted to Triple-A Las Vegas and was placed at third base. Although he made 32 errors while manning the hot corner for Las Vegas, Baerga was in the lineup to hit. He hit .275 with 28 doubles, 10 homers, and 74 RBIs. He was somewhat of a free swinger, and his strikeouts easily tripled his walks.

The Cleveland Indians were shopping outfielder Joe Carter at the 1989 winter meetings. Carter’s contract was up in 1990, and the Indians knew they would not be able to re-sign him. Carter made no secret of his desire to leave the Indians, preferably to a contender, and a lucrative contract would also be nice.

The Indians found a suitor in the Padres. The teams dickered over whom the Padres would send the Indians’ way for the star slugger. The Indians insisted that Baerga be included in the deal. The Padres viewed Baerga as their third baseman of the future. But the Indians’ persistence won out, and they received Baerga, catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. (Roberto’s brother), and outfielder Chris James for Carter. “I managed against Carlos in the Pacific Coast League in 1989,” said Mike Hargrove. “On my report at the end of the year, I recommended that we should try to acquire him. So did my coaches, Rich Dauer and Rick Adair.”9

The Indians hired John McNamara to manage in 1990. Cleveland was putting together a solid nucleus of young talent, and it began with Baerga and Alomar. The two newcomers were blended with Albert Belle, Cory Snyder, Jerry Browne, and Brook Jacoby. Tom Candiotti, Greg Swindell, and Buddy Black anchored the starting rotation.

Alomar was a star right away. He was named the starting catcher on the 1990 AL All-Star team, won the Gold Glove, and was voted Rookie of the Year. Baerga would have to wait a bit for his time to come. Browne was entrenched at second base and Jacoby manned third. The Indians had signed Keith Hernandez to play first base. But Hernandez suffered through various injuries and played in only 42 games. His injuries offered the break that benefited Baerga; Jacoby moved to first base and Baerga became the new third baseman. “From the time he got to Cleveland, Carlos was the heart and soul of the Indians,” said batting coach José Morales. “We sent him down to Triple A for two weeks in his rookie year, and team spirit just sank. When he came back, it was like a kid returning to his family. He brings an energy, a unity to the team.”10

Baerga hit .266 his rookie season. On September 20 at Yankee Stadium, the 5-foot-11, 165-pound infielder went 4-for-5 with three doubles (a career high) and a triple with three runs scored and three RBIs. The barrage came the day after his first child, a daughter, was born. “Baerga is a hitting machine and maybe his wife should have a baby every night,” said McNamara.11 Although the Indians finished with a 77-85 record, they found themselves in fourth place in the AL East. It was something to build on for the young Tribe.

Indeed, Baerga’s enthusiasm for the game was unbridled and was contagious. He was a fan favorite for his all-out hustle. But in his second season, the Indians proved unable to build on the success from 1990. McNamara was fired (Hargrove replaced him) and the team topped 100 losses.

But the pieces were beginning to come together. Charles Nagy became the leader of the pitching staff. Kenny Lofton was acquired from Houston to solidify center field and bat leadoff. Paul Sorrento was acquired from Minnesota to provide a left-handed bat and he was an above-average first baseman. The Indians worked to sign Belle, Alomar, Nagy, Belle, Lofton, and Baerga to long-term deals, selling them on the talent of the core team.

Baerga made their investment pay off. In back-to-back seasons (1992 and ’93) he hit more than 20 home runs, drove in more than 100 runs, and batted over .300. He was the first second baseman to achieve these numbers in consecutive seasons since Rogers Hornsby turned the trick in 1921 and 1922.

Baerga entered the record books on April 8, 1993. He hit two home runs in the seventh inning against the New York Yankees, one from each side of the plate. He connected off Steve Howe for a two run-shot, then hit a solo home run off Steve Farr. The Indians scored nine runs in the inning on their way to a 15-5 victory. “It’s exciting,” said Baerga. “They told me I set a record when I got back to the dugout after the second homer, but I didn’t believe them. When I got to the clubhouse after the game, Bobby DiBiasio, our public-relations man, told me I’d set a record.”12 Baerga’s record night did not surprise Hargrove. “The beauty about him is that there’s no way to pitch him. He hits to all fields,” the manager said.13

Baerga made the All-Star Game for the first time in 1992 and repeated in 1993. The Indians finished with identical 76-86 records in both seasons.

In 1994 the Indians said goodbye to Cleveland Stadium and relocated to the new Jacobs Field, across downtown. The baseball-only venue was a boon for the Tribe. The Indians had brought in veteran leadership in the offseason, signing Eddie Murray and Dennis Martinez. They traded for shortstop Omar Vizquel. Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome arrived through the farm system. The results were favorable. The Indians were one game behind Chicago in the new AL Central when the season ended on August 12 because of the players strike. Although the development was a big disappointment to Tribe fans, baseball fever had indeed returned to the North Coast.

The strike wiped out the 1994 postseason and bled over into the 1995 season. Baerga finished the 1994 season with 19 home runs, 80 RBIs, and a .314 batting average.

After play resumed in late April of 1995, Cleveland broke through its 41-year stretch of not appearing in a postseason game. The Indians won 100 games and Baerga, batting third in the potent Cleveland lineup, was third on the team with 90 RBIs. He batted .314. Cleveland swept Boston in the ALDS and topped Seattle in six games in the ALCS. The Indians met the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. The old adage that good pitching will defeat good hitting proved accurate, as the Braves captured the world championship in six games.

Baerga hit .400 in the ALCS and drove in four runs in both the ALCS and the World Series. He knocked in the first two runs in the Indians’ 5-2 victory in Game Two of the ALDS and three runs in their 7-6, 11-inning Game Three win in the World Series. All told, he hit .292 in the 1995 postseason.

The one constant in Baerga’s career to this point was his desire to play winter ball in his native Puerto Rico. He was lauded by Puerto Rican fans for his work in the community as well as his work on the diamond. He often held clinics and his enthusiasm for the game was infectious. “They won’t even let you take batting practice,” Baerga said, referring to the young fans. “They come right onto the field for autographs.”14

Baerga was also a fan favorite in Cleveland. His all-out effort between the lines and his effervescent personality off it endeared him to hard-working, blue-collar town. Thus the backlash the Indians front office received when they traded Baerga on July 29, 1996, was not unexpected. The Indians swapped Baerga and utility infielder Alvaro Espinoza to the New York Mets in a trade-deadline swap for infielders Jeff Kent and José Vizcaino. Baerga’s numbers were on the downside (10 home runs, 55 RBIs, .267 batting average) through 100 games. The Indians cited Baerga’s weight gain. (He was said to have been 20 to 25 pounds overweight in spring training.) His work ethic and priorities were also questioned by the Indians brass. Baerga suffered a slight fracture in his right ankle and played in only about 10 games in the winter league. He used the winter league to stay in shape, hence the weight gain. He was also battling a badly sprained left wrist and a strained groin.

“When you get close to the trading deadline, you never know what’s going to happen,” said New York GM Joe McIlvaine. “To be honest, when they dropped Baerga’s name, I was a little surprised. I thought, ‘Here’s a chance to get a good, quality player.’ And we did it. I don’t think a year ago we could’ve acquired Carlos Baerga.”15

The presence of second baseman Edgardo Alfonzo on the Mets created a question of where Baerga would be stationed. As it turned out, an abdominal strain limited Baerga to 26 Mets games, mostly at first base, and a.193 batting average.

Bobby Valentine took over for Dallas Green as the Mets manager with a month to go in the 1996 season. Over the next two seasons, Baerga recaptured his second-base spot. Alfonzo was moved to third. Manager Valentine, who at times could be as subtle as a sledgehammer, would comment about Baerga’s approach to hitting as “an embarrassment.”16 Baerga felt the pressure to produce, feeling that he needed to prove his worth every day. But he did not have a strong lineup like the one in Cleveland to back him up. His batting average was .274 over the 1997 and 1998 seasons, but his power numbers were dismal. The ball was not jumping off his bat as it once had.

One longtime major-league executive explained Baerga’s decline this way: “Carlos is a God-given good hitter, and sometimes a player like that takes a lot for granted, doesn’t stay on top of his physical conditioning and mental preparation. And there’s no doubt in my mind that is what happened to him. I mean, he’s always had a thick body, but last year, well, he just got plain heavy. I think it’s all related (to his weight and conditioning). I was really surprised the Mets took him. No … I was shocked.”17

The Mets did not pick up Baerga’s option year in 1999. The rest of his career was a composite of being signed, being waived, and riding the bench. St. Louis signed him for the 1999 season, but waived him at the end of spring training. Cincinnati signed Baerga, but sent him to Triple-A Indianapolis before the season, and released him after two months. In a bit of déjà vu, San Diego signed Baerga, and then traded him back to the Indians for the balance of the 1999 season.

Baerga signed on with Tampa Bay for 2000, but his contract was voided before the season began. He signed with Seattle for 2001, but was released before the start of the season. He bided his time in independent leagues and for Samsung in the Korean League. Baerga eventually made his way back to the big leagues as a role player with Boston (2002), Arizona (2003-2004), and Washington (2005). After the 2005 season Baerga retired with a lifetime batting average of .291, 1,583 hits, 134 home runs, and 774 RBIs.

Baerga worked for ESPN as a Spanish-language broadcaster. He also helped coach the Puerto Rican National Baseball team. He also became the owner of the Bayamon Cowboys in the Puerto Rican Winter League.

Baerga married the former Miriam Cruz. They had two children, Karla and Carlos. In 2013 Baerga was inducted along with former Indians GM John Hart into the Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame. As of 2016 he was an ambassador for the Indians, making community appearances and spreading good will.

In 2016 Baerga threw out the first pitch in Game Two of the World Series at Progressive Field. He was, of course, cheered enthusiastically as he threw a perfect pitch to home plate.

Last revised: June 1, 2018

This biography appeared in “Puerto Rico and Baseball: 60 Biographies” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Edwin Fernández. It also appears in “1995 Cleveland Indians: The Sleeping Giant Awakes” (SABR, 2019), edited by Joseph Wancho.

Notes   

1 ESPN, Outside the Lines, “Indians Boating Tragedy,” March 18, 2003. espn.com/page2/tvlistings/show155_transcript.html.

2 Frank Lidz, “Slick With the Stick,” Sports Illustrated, April 5, 1994: 66.

3 Ibid.

4 Rick Lawes, “Baerga Has Big Talent,” USA Today Baseball Weekly, January 13-26, 1993: 4.

5 Paul Hoynes, “Rock Solid: Carlos Baerga Is Part of the Foundation on Which the Indians Built a Winning Club,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 3, 1995: 8-D.

6 Ibid.

7 Lawes.

8 Ibid.

9 Hoynes, July 3, 1995: 9-D.

10 Lidz.

11 Russell Schneider, “Tribe Rolls to Victory,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 21, 1990: 1-E.

12 Paul Hoynes, “Baerga’s Blasts Rip Yankees: Two-HR Inning Sets Mark,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 9, 1993: 1C.

13 Ibid.

14 Lidz, 64.

15 Ray McNulty, “Net Heist Brings Baerga,” New York Post, July 30, 1996.

16 Buster Olney, “Benching Doesn’t Sit Well With Baerga,” New York Times, April 23, 1997: B11.

17 Michael P. Geffner, “The Sound and the Fury,” The Sporting News, May 5, 1997: 18.

Walter Lanier “Red” Barber—Red for the color of his hair—was born in Columbus, Mississippi, on February 17, 1908. Seventy years later he was one of the first two broadcasters honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame, along with his rival and sometime partner Mel Allen. Curt Smith, who chronicled the history of baseball broadcasting in two books, wrote in The Storytellers, “The Ol’ Redhead was white wine, crepes Suzette and bluegrass music; Mel, beer, hot dogs and the United States Marine Band.” 

Red’s father, William Lanier Barber, was a locomotive engineer from Brown’s Creek, North Carolina. His mother, Selena Martin, was an English teacher and school principal from an old Mississippi family. She insisted that her children practice what she taught. “My mother gave me an ear for language. . . . She gave me my interest in religion, too,” he wrote. “My father didn’t have the education my mother did, but he was a wonderful raconteur, a natural storyteller. He’d sit out on the front porch and tell stories by the hour.” The Barbers later had a second son, William Martin, and a daughter, Effie Virginia. 

The Barbers moved to Sanford, Florida, near Orlando, when Walter was ten years old. He was a high school football halfback and kicker at five feet eight and 165 pounds. He graduated first in his class and was rewarded with a $20 gold piece. His first ambition was to be an end-man (the lead comedian) in a minstrel show, and he performed in blackface during high school and college. While he was working his way through the University of Florida as a waiter and boarding-house manager, one of his housemates, Ralph Fulghum, asked him to read a research paper on the university radio station. As Red put it, “Then came the great turning point of my life. I know that Satan took Christ up on a mountain and showed him the world and said, ‘If you bow down to me I’ll give it all to you.’ Christ wasn’t tempted, but I was. Fulghum tempted me out of all proportion. He said, ‘If you come out and read this paper I’ll buy you dinner tonight.’” Barber made his radio debut reading a paper on “Certain Aspects of Bovine Obstetrics.”

That led to a job with the station, WRUF, and to his first sports assignment: Florida’s opening football game in 1930. He called his debut “undoubtedly the worst broadcast ever perpetrated on an innocent and unsuspecting radio audience.” He was so bad that he was pulled off the air and other announcers tried their hands at the next two games. During those weeks, Barber began attending football practice and picking the brains of an assistant coach. He learned how to prepare for a broadcast. He talked his boss into giving him another chance, and the sportscaster’s career began.

Barber encountered the other passion of his life in Gainesville: Lylah Murray Scarborough, a nurse who treated him when he was taken into the infirmary one night after an accident. They were married in 1931. On September 17, 1937, Red and Lylah’s daughter, Sarah, was born. Sarah, their only child, later became a professor of English.

Ambitious for a better job, Red took time off from WRUF and rode buses to Atlanta, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Chicago for auditions, but stations were not hiring during the Depression. In 1934 the Cincinnati Reds’ new general manager, Larry MacPhail, persuaded owner Powel Crosley Jr. to put the team’s games on the air. An executive at WLW, a station owned by Crosley, remembered the young man from Florida, and hired him as the club’s first play-by-play announcer at $25 a week, less than he was paid in Gainesville. On Opening Day he broadcast the first major-league game he had ever seen. “That was the most joyous day of my life, next to my wedding day,” he remembered.

In 1935 Red called the first of thirteen World Series, over the Mutual network. What he remembered most vividly was the pregame briefing by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Judge Landis summoned the announcers from all the networks (there were no exclusive rights deals then) and in his customary Sermon-on-the-Mount style, lectured them, “Don’t editorialize. Report.” Landis’s admonition was prompted by Ted Husing’s 1934 Series broadcasts, when Husing criticized the umpires. Husing was banned from the Series forever after.

Many of Barber’s successors in the booth have called him the first reporter to broadcast baseball. “I’ve heard tapes of Red Barber in the 1930s and ’40s,” Bob Costas told the Los Angeles Times, “where he tells you there’s a line single to left-center and he tells you how many times it bounced before the center fielder picked it up. You needed that then. Today, even the very good announcers will very rarely describe a guy’s stance or the peculiarities of a guy’s windup, because they’ve been subconsciously influenced by television even though they’re on the radio.” 

Allan Barra, in the online magazine Salon, described listening to tapes of Barber’s broadcasts: “There were no complex statistics, no hype, and, of course, no visuals. Just poetry. When the wind was blowing the flag. A description of how the fielders were set. An anecdote or two about each player. With nothing to work with but words, Barber painted a picture of the game that kick-started my own imagination in a way that technology never could.”

Barber’s best-known innovation for broadcasters was a simple device to remind him to repeat the score frequently for listeners who had just tuned in: He kept a three-minute egg timer, an hourglass, on his desk in the booth. Every time the sand ran down, he repeated the score and flipped his timer over. Dozens if not hundreds of later announcers adopted this prop.

An important part of the early play-by-play man’s job was the re-creation of out-of-town games. Broadcasters didn’t begin traveling with teams until after World War II. The announcer in a studio hundreds of miles from the ballpark used Western Union’s telegraphic pitch-by-pitch accounts to simulate a live broadcast. Most broadcasters tried to make the re-creation seem as realistic as possible: using sound effects of recorded crowd noise, cranking up the volume for an exciting play; two pieces of wood banged together to simulate the crack of the bat; recorded organ music. “My reaction was just the opposite. I wanted the audience to know at all times that I was doing a re-creation,” Barber said in a 1985 appearance on KCMO radio in Kansas City, Missouri. He used no sound effects and placed his microphone close to the telegraph key, so listeners heard the beeps of Morse code.

“You did that broadcast from a series of mental pictures,” Barber said. “I made it my business to mentally photograph every player—how he looked, how big he was. . . . I memorized the idiosyncrasies, the habits. . . . I memorized how each pitcher pitched. So as I stood in the studio I saw the game.”

When Larry MacPhail left Cincinnati for Brooklyn in 1939, he took Barber with him to the nation’s media capital. Red brought the down-home idiom of his Southern roots to the borough whose residents were ridiculed for speaking of “dem” and “dose.” Many people who lived in Brooklyn in the 1940s have insisted that they could walk down any street in the borough and never miss a pitch, because Barber’s voice was wafting out of every window and every passing car. During World War II, he became a civic institution as chairman of Brooklyn’s Red Cross blood drive and host of radio War Bonds sales. 

New York offered Barber unmatched opportunities. According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he called the first National Football League championship game to be broadcast nationwide, in 1940, when the Chicago Bears buried the Washington Redskins, 73-0. He regularly broadcast football games of the professional Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, as well as Princeton University. He also hosted entertainment programs with bandleaders Sammy Kaye and Woody Herman and singers Lena Horne and Mario Lanza. For nine years after World War II, he was the director of sports for CBS, where he first heard Fordham University student Vince Scully.

During the war, Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey was signing as many promising young players as his scouts could find, laying the groundwork for a decade of success. He was also laying the groundwork for an even more important move. Months before he signed Jackie Robinson, Rickey confided his plan to Barber. Red said he was the first one outside Rickey’s family to hear that Rickey intended to break organized baseball’s sixty-year-old color line: “I believe he told me about it so far in advance so that I could have time to wrestle with the problem, live with it, solve it.”

Barber never admitted any racist feelings. In his history of Robinson’s rookie year, 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball, he declared, “I was not a racist.” He wrote in his autobiography, “The Negroes who came and went through our lives were always treated with the utmost respect and with a great deal of warmth and a great deal of affection.” At the same time, he acknowledged, “[T]here was a line drawn, and that was that.” Southerners of Barber’s generation never encountered a black person in a situation of social or economic equality until they reached middle age. That was that.

After Rickey’s revelation, Barber told Lylah, “I’m going to quit.” She suggested they have a martini and sleep on it. His wife’s cooler head prevailed, but Barber said, “It really tortured me.” Eventually he concluded, “[A]ll I had to do when he came was treat him as a fellow man, treat him as a ballplayer, broadcast the ball.” In his 1991 interview with Bob Costas, Barber recalled, “I don’t think I ever said he was a Negro. I didn’t have to. Everybody knew who he was.” He also owned up to his self-interest: “Economics has a way of being the hidden persuader. I valued the job at Brooklyn.”

The rookie Robinson led the Dodgers to the 1947 World Series. That classic included two of Barber’s most famous games. In Game Four, Yankees right-hander Bill Bevens took a no-hitter into the ninth inning, while walking ten. Brooklyn pinch-hitter Cookie Lavagetto came to bat with the Dodgers trailing by one run and two runners on base: “Two men out, last of the ninth. The pitch. Swung on. There’s a drive hit out toward the right-field corner. Henrich going back. He can’t get it. It’s off the wall for a base hit. Here comes the tying run— and—here’s—the winning run.” 

On National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” on April 23, 1982, Barb er told host Bob Edwards, “When all of the excitement was over for a little bit, I just sort of caught my breath and without thinking about it, Bob, I said, ‘Well, I’ll be a suck-egg mule.’ ”

Edwards asked why he said that. Barber replied, “When you’re doing something such as you and I are doing, live radio without any preparation, no script, you are just concentrating on your work and something just comes out. . . . When you realize that things suddenly come out of your subconscious or your unconscious when you’re talking to an open microphone, sometimes it frightens you. 

In the sixth game, Brooklyn had a three-run lead when Joe DiMaggio came to bat. In Barber’s words: “Here’s the pitch. Swung on, belted. It’s a long one deep to the left center. Back goes Gionfriddo. Back, back, back, back, back, back. He makes a one-handed catch against the bullpen. Oh, doctor. [Pause for crowd noise.] He went exactly against the railing in front of the bullpen and reached up with one hand and took a home run away from DiMaggio.” Barber said those calls demonstrated an important rule for a play-by-play broadcaster: On a long drive, watch the outfielder; he’ll be the first to know whether it’s catchable. Thus, “Back goes Gionfriddo.” “Henrich going back. He can’t get it.”

More than thirty years later, a young broadcaster named Chris Berman on the upstart cable network ESPN adopted “back, back, back,” he said, as a tribute to Barber.

Barber was celebrated for his vivid imagery, all the more memorable because he brought the country sayings of his Southern upbringing to urban Brooklyn. Cincinnati public radio station WVXU assembled this Red Barber sampler:

The game “is just as tight as a brand-new pair of shoes on a rainy day.”
“They’ll tear up the pea patch before the day is over.”
“The bases are FOB — they’re full of Brooklyns”—he acknowledged he made up after seeing the term, which meant “free on board” in the shipping industry, and turning it over in his mind. His most enduring coinage was “sitting in the catbird seat.” In Barber’s lexicon, that meant a batter with a three-ball, no-strike count or a team with a comfortable lead. 

Ernie Harwell, who broke into big-league broadcasting under Barber in 1948 and lasted for fifty-five seasons, told WVXU, “The ironic thing was, he was a very cultured man, and on the air he sounded like some guy from the backwoods, you know . . . And he really wasn’t. He loved the opera and he loved the classics and all that kind of stuff. He lived on Park Avenue in New York.”

Vin Scully, who inherited Red’s mantle as “Voice of the Dodgers,” joined the broadcasts in 1950 as a twenty-two-year-old. “His work ethics were so strong that he imbued me with that spirit,” Scully told WVXU. “Get to the ballpark early. Check, check, recheck. Talk to players, managers constantly. And that rubbed off on me.”

In 1950 attorney Walter O’Malley bought Rickey’s 25 percent interest in the Dodgers and took control of the franchise. Red’s relationship with the new owner was touchy. “O’Malley wanted to cut me down to size,” he wrote in his autobiography. “He is a devious man, about the most devious man I ever met.” Barber broadcast his thirteenth World Series in 1952, again sharing the NBC radio and television microphones with Mel Allen. It would be his last.

Ever since the Gillette Company bought exclusive rights to the Series in 1939, Barber had chafed at the company’s cavalier treatment of announcers. By 1953 Gillette paid the broadcasters just $200 a game “for the biggest sports event on coast-to-coast television,” he fumed. Barber declined to broadcast the ’53 Series when the company refused to negotiate his fee. When Red told O’Malley what had happened, O’Malley’s reply—“That’s your problem”—ended Barber’s relationship with the Dodgers. His contract for the Brooklyn broadcasts had expired, and the sponsors had made no move to renew it.

A few days after he left the Dodgers, Red was hired by the Yankees. The new job was quite a comedown. For twenty years in Cincinnati and Brooklyn, he had been the principal broadcaster, handing out assignments to his assistants. He decided how many innings they would call, who would do which commercials, who would handle pregame and postgame shows. 

The Yankees’ principal broadcaster, Mel Allen, was the most famous sports announcer in the country. Red was hired to handle pregame and postgame shows on televised home games and to work a few innings of play-by-play. He traveled with the team only occasionally. “Mel accepted me as an equal,” he insisted.” . . . he could not have been nicer to me either then or all through the years we worked together”

Red was forced to adjust, grudgingly, to fundamental changes in the broadcasting industry. In 1939 he had broadcast the first major-league game on television over NBC’s experimental station W2XBS, when only a few dozen homes had TV sets. In the 1950s television became the dominant medium. Like many other radio veterans, Barber never accepted television. He endured it. He explained why in Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat: “On TV it’s the director’s show, and the broadcaster is an instrument of his, like a camera. On radio, it’s my show, where my knowledge and experience and taste and judgment decide what goes and what doesn’t. On radio, you’re an artist. On TV, you’re a servant.”

Barber deplored the invasion of the broadcast booth by retired ballplayers—he dismissed them as “former-great-star-expert(s).” By 1965, after the Yankees fired Allen for “popping off,” Barber was sharing the booth with three of those “experts:” ex-shortstop Phil Rizzuto, ex-second baseman Jerry Coleman, and Joe Garagiola, a onetime backup catcher who had parlayed a quick wit and a trove of real and invented anecdotes about his boyhood pal Yogi Berra into a broadcasting career. Garagiola committed what Barber considered the unforgivable sin: “He cut in on me in the middle of sentences . . . He ran over fellows.”

CBS had bought the Yankees, and network executive Michael Burke took over as the team’s president in September 1966. He curtly informed Barber, “We have decided not to seek to renew your contract.” Barber thought he knew why. On a chilly, rainy day near the end of the 1966 season when baseball’s marquee franchise fell to last place, the Yankees played a home game before 413 fans. Barber wrote in The Broadcasters, “This was the smallest crowd, by far, in the history of the massive ballpark built by Babe Ruth, Ed Barrow, and Colonel Jake Ruppert.” He asked the television director for a shot of the empty seats. The director refused, and Barber was told that the order came from the CBS executive who supervised Yankee broadcasts. But Barber was still a reporter. As he recalled it, he said, “I don’t know what the paid attendance is today—but whatever it is, it is the smallest crowd in the history of Yankee Stadium . . . and this smallest crowd is the story, not the ballgame.”

According to the University of Florida’s Smathers Library, where Red’s papers are housed, he broadcast play-by-play on thirteen World Series, four baseball All-Star Games, five Army-Navy games, one Sugar Bowl, two Rose Bowls, eight Orange Bowls, and four National Football League championship games. That career was over. 

At age fifty-eight Barber began what he called his retirement at his home in Key Biscayne, Florida, near Miami. But it was an active retirement. He wrote a syndicated newspaper column and four books, and did sportscasts for Miami radio and TV stations. Cable television impresario Ted Turner hired Barber and Mel Allen to call the 1978 Little League World Series, one of the most bizarre anachronisms in broadcasting history.

That same year, he and Allen—forever linked—became the first broadcasters honored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame. They received the Ford C. Frick Award for “major contributions to baseball,” an award named for the commissioner Barber despised. 

Red would take one more star turn on a national stage, introducing himself to a generation of listeners who knew only the Los Angeles Dodgers and who, if they followed baseball at all, followed it primarily on television. In 1981 he joined National Public Radio’s Morning Edition as a regular commentator, appearing for four minutes every Friday at 7:35 a.m. Eastern time.

The host of Morning Edition, Bob Edwards, lovingly captured those years in Fridays With Red published after Barber’s death. The Barbers had left the fast-growing Miami area for the smaller city of Tallahassee, where Lylah had attended Florida State College for Women, the predecessor of Florida State University. Tallahassee station WFSU-FM ran an audio line to their home, and Red broadcast from a desk in his office. Nominally the spot was a sports commentary. In reality, it was a free-form conversation about just about anything, often including his flower garden and the adventures of his cats. He talked about opera, quoted Victor Hugo and Kahlil Gibran, and delivered condensed versions of some of the sermons he had preached as a lay reader in the Episcopal Church. 

To the buttoned-down Edwards—who had every word of his broadcasts scripted, even “I’m Bob Edwards”—it was both a nightmare and a delight. Red insisted that his segment be live. He made it unpredictable. A producer would call him on Thursday to discuss topics for the next morning’s broadcast. By Friday, Red had often changed his mind and took off in a totally unexpected direction. Edwards described himself as Barber’s straight man. Because Red talked about his camellias so often, Edwards’s wife planted one in their back yard. Red wanted to know what variety it was. Edwards replied, “Pink.”

“Red’s spot on ‘Morning Edition’ was the most popular feature of any program on public radio,” Edwards wrote.” . . . And for many listeners, Red was a reminder of a father, a grandfather, or a favorite uncle they had—or wished they had.” Barber was as much a perfectionist as ever: Edwards said he could hear the click of Red’s stopwatch at the beginning and end of his allotted four minutes. His career had come full circle: from noncommercial station WRUF in 1930 to noncommercial National Public Radio more than fifty years later. In his first NPR broadcast he said, “I’m a child of radio.”

In the 1980s Lylah developed Alzheimer’s disease, and much of the rest of Red’s life was devoted to caring for her. “By the time I met him in the early ‘80s, he was so frail it seemed a gust of wind might take him away,” Edwards wrote. Barber had suffered various physical ailments since the 1940s, going deaf in his left ear and surviving a heart attack and surgery for ulcers that removed much of his stomach. On October 8, 1992, he begged off the next day’s broadcast, blaming a sore throat. On that Friday he drove himself and Lylah to a hospital. He underwent emergency surgery for an intestinal blockage and fell into a coma. 

Red Barber died at eighty-four on October 22, 1992, at the Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Center. The New York Times reported that the cause of death was pneumonia and other complications from surgery. His ashes were buried in his yard, beneath five camellias. In his Morning Edition tribute, Bob Edwards said, “One of the great voices of America will speak to us no more, and the camellias will never smell as sweet.” Red would not have liked that; camellias have no scent.

In Sanford, Florida, where Red grew up, a municipal park bears his name. In Tallahassee, where he lived his last years, Florida State University’s Center for Public Broadcasting sits at 1600 Red Barber Plaza. His alma mater, the University of Florida, annually awards the Red Barber Radio Scholarship—$700 to a junior or senior majoring in telecommunications, with a preference to students planning to pursue careers in sports broadcasting. In Los Angeles Red’s heir, Vin Scully, continued into the twenty-first century as the voice of the Dodgers.

Sources

Barber, Red. The Broadcasters. New York: The Dial Press, 1970.

Barber, Red, with Robert Creamer. Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1968.

Barber, Red, Show Me the Way to Go Home. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1971.

Barber, Red, Walk in the Spirit. New York: The Dial Press, 1969.

Barber, Red. 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball.Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1982.

Barber, Lylah, Lylah. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1985.

Edwards, Bob. Fridays With Red.New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Smith, Curt. The Storytellers . New York: Macmillan, 1995.

Smith, Curt. Voices of the Game. South Bend, IN: Diamond Communications Inc., 1987.

Thurber, James, “The Catbird Seat,” The New Yorker, (n.d.) 1942, reprinted in The Thurber Carnival, New York: Modern Library, 1945

Salon, November 7, 2000.

Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2002.

From the Catbird Seat: Red Barber, a 1993 radio documentary written and produced by Greg Rhodes for public station WVXU in Cincinnati. It included excerpts from his play-by-play broadcasts and his later interviews.

Born on December 19, 1924, Rex Edward Barney was the youngest of four children of Marie and Eugene Spencer Barney. It was a typical winter night in Omaha, Nebraska—twenty degrees below zero. “My father could not get the old Model T Ford started, so he called somebody to help him rush my mother to the hospital,” Barney wrote in his 1993 autobiography. “She told me I was born in the elevator on the way up to the delivery room.”

Rex’s father worked on the Union Pacific Railroad for forty-five years and eventually became a general foreman. He left home on Sunday night and rode the rails throughout the week before returning on Friday evening. When Rex was born, his sisters, Beatrice and Bernice, were thirteen and eleven, respectively, and his brother, Ted, was nine.

Barney was a star basketball and baseball player at Creighton Prep, a Catholic school for boys in Omaha. He excelled most on the basketball court, leading the team to a pair of state titles and earning all-state recognition. As a high school pitcher, Barney was an angular six-feet-three, 185-pound right-hander who struck out batters by the bushel. He was wild, but that is not unusual at that level. Creighton Prep won the state baseball tournament in two of Rex’s four years.

Barney credited much of his early success to a man he called “one of Nebraska’s greatest high school coaches,” Skip Palrang, who coached every sport at Creighton Prep, managed the city’s American Legion team, and later became athletic director at Boys Town.

Palrang’s formidable presence prepared Rex for his years with the volatile Leo Durocher, first playing for him when he was the Brooklyn manager, and later playing against him when Durocher became the manager of the New York Giants.

The Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees, and Brooklyn Dodgers all sent scouts to look at Barney when he was just a sophomore at Creighton Prep. He also began to receive scholarship offers for baseball and basketball from several colleges, most notably Nebraska, Stanford, and Notre Dame. 

In the spring of 1943, after Barney’s draft board informed him that he soon would be inducted into the Army, Rex opted to sign a contract with the Dodgers. The signing bonus was $2,500—but all but $500 of that amount was contingent on Barney’s returning from the service and proving he was capable of resuming his baseball career. 

Barney enjoyed a meteoric rise through the Dodgers farm system that spring and summer. He reported to Durham, North Carolina, of the Class B Piedmont League in May, and made his debut in relief on June 4 against the Norfolk Tars. His first professional pitch whizzed about five feet above the head of batter Jack Phillips and tore through the chicken-wire screen in front of the field-level press box and conked the local sports editor on the head.

No wonder that sports editor reported, “(Barney’s) pitching was of the compass type—he threw in the general direction of the plate.” Still, the scribe acknowledged, “The lad has plenty of steam and may develop into a pitcher.”

The Dodgers thought so, too. Early on, Durham manager Bruno Betzel took Barney and infielder Gene Mauch aside and told them, “You’re the only two guys on this club with a chance to go up.” Pitching with a dreadful last-place team, Barney won four games and lost six, but his earned run average was a solid 3.00. He struck out seventy-one batters and walked fifty-one in eighty-one innings.

In late July 1943 both Barney and Mauch were promoted to the Dodgers’ top farm club, the Montreal Royals of the International League. Rex appeared in just four games with the Royals and dropped his only decision, but his 2.45 ERA and eighteen strikeouts in twenty-two innings impressed Branch Rickey and the other Dodgers brass. Rex was elevated to Brooklyn for the final five weeks of the season.

As Barney wrote: “The Brooklyn Dodgers, Ebbets Field, and baseball was the greatest triple play God ever executed on this planet. If a player didn’t fall in love with Ebbets Field, there had to be something wrong with him. And those fans—their enthusiasm for their beloved Bums was overwhelming. Today they call it chemistry; I prefer to think of it as a love affair. That’s what made it such a tragedy when the team left Brooklyn.”

The first major-league pitch he threw struck Cubs leadoff hitter Eddie Stanky squarely in the middle of his back. But although he was still nearly four months short of his nineteenth birthday, Rex proved he belonged in the wartime National League, winning two of his four decisions. Barney entered the Army in September 1943 and served at Fort Riley, Kansas, where he played baseball. He and thousands of other apprehensive GIs spent two weeks aboard a troopship, a converted Italian luxury liner, en route from New York to Le Havre, France. Their twelve-ship convoy spent much of the voyage dodging Nazi U-boats; four ships didn’t make it. 

Assigned to the Fourth and Sixth Armored Divisions of the Third Army, Barney saw action in France and Germany, took German shrapnel in a leg and his back, and was awarded two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. His most memorable encounter, though, was with the fiery American general George C. Patton. 

Barney was the commander of a lead tank, roaming the advance positions to draw enemy fire from sunup to sundown. On this day, there was a commotion in the rear, and a Jeep flying four stars pulled abreast. “I recognized him immediately,” Barney told Dick Young of the New York Daily News. “He was my idol. He was sitting behind a 50-caliber machine gun.”

They saluted, and Patton said, “Sergeant, where is the front?”

“General,” Barney responded, “the front of this tank is the front.”

“That’s too goddamn close for me! Carry on,” Patton said, and the Jeep turned around and headed in the opposite direction.

After his discharge Barney rejoined the Dodgers in the spring of 1946. Although the club surprised pundits by challenging the powerful St. Louis Cardinals and tying the Redbirds for the pennant (losing two games to none in the playoff), Rex endured a disappointing year, winning twice and losing five games. Still, the Barney fastball offered considerable promise for 1947. 

Just before the start of the ’47 season, Dodgers manager Leo Durocher was suspended “for conduct detrimental to baseball,” and replaced by Burt Shotton. Like Durocher, Shotton was perplexed by Barney’s inability to cure his wildness. Rex reversed his 1946 record, winning five games and losing two. But his strikeout to walk ratio remained a sore point and turned most of his games into nail-biters.

On May 1, 1947 Barney married Beverly Duda, a girl he had known since high school in Omaha, at a Catholic church in Brooklyn. They had two children, Christine and Kevin. The marriage ended in divorce.

For Barney, life on the playing field was far less rewarding, especially late in the season. Nevertheless, Shotton selected Rex to start Game Five of the World Series against the Yankees. For four and two-thirds innings, he allowed just two hits and two runs, but he walked nine batters.

The opening inning epitomized Barney’s career. With no out, the Yankees loaded the bases on a pair of walks, to George Stirnweiss and Johnny Lindell, sandwiched around Tommy Henrich’s double. DiMaggio was due up next.

Coach Clyde Sukeforth walked to the mound and told Barney, in words to this effect: “Nothing to worry about. Just strike this bum out and get the next one to hit into a double play.”

Well, Barney overpowered the Yankee Clipper with a strikeout, got the second out on George McQuinn’s comebacker to the mound, forcing Stirnweiss at the plate, and then fanned third baseman Billy Johnson.

There was more trouble in the third when, with one out, Barney issued consecutive walks to Henrich and Lindell. This time, Rex induced DiMaggio to hit into a 6-4-3 double play.

Pitcher Frank Shea’s run-producing single followed a pair of walks in the fourth. With one out in the fifth, Barney tried to throw another fastball past DiMaggio, but this time the Yankee center fielder hit it into the left-field stands. Shotton replaced Rex with two outs in the inning after he gave up his ninth base on balls. Shea won the game, 2–1; Barney took the loss, and the Yankees went on to win the Series in seven games.

Rex seemed to put it together in 1948, winning fifteen games against thirteen losses, including his crowning baseball moment, the no-hitter against the Giants. Rex ranked second in the league in strikeouts, and he tied for second in shutouts with four. His 3.10 earned run average ranked fifth in the league. This was his only professional season in which he struck out more batters than he walked, 138 versus 122.

But if ‘48 was a personal high for Barney, it was a season of transformation and turmoil for the Dodgers. On July 15 the baseball world was astounded to learn that Durocher, back as manager after his yearlong suspension, had resigned from the Dodgers and replaced the fired Mel Ott as the Giants’ field leader. Shotton, in turn, returned to Brooklyn to lead the Dodgers.

Barney admitted that he was “devastated” to see Durocher go. “I cried when he left. I was used to tough managers and I felt that I had begun to turn things around for him and now he was gone.”

Rex didn’t always see eye to eye with Shotton, but he continued to pitch well. On August 18, he outdueled the Phillies’ Robin Roberts with a one-hitter, winning by a 1–0 score in Philadelphia. The Phillies’ lone hit was a looping single to center by Ralph “Putsy” Caballero in the seventh inning.

Barney’s 2–0 no-hitter against the Giants came on a rainy night at the Polo Grounds. The date was September 9. It had rained throughout the day, but with a sizable advance sale at the gate (36,324), the Giants decided it would be wise to start the game.

The opening inning provided the most angst for Barney. After he walked the leadoff man, Jack “Lucky” Lohrke, on four pitches and retired Whitey Lockman, he fielded Sid Gordon’s slow roller and threw wildly in an attempt to get a force out at second base. Then cleanup hitter Johnny Mize walked and the bases were loaded. But Willard Marshall hit the first pitch to second baseman Jackie Robinson, who started a 4-6-3 double play.  

The only other Giant to reach base was losing pitcher Monte Kennedy, on Robinson’s error in the third inning. Barney retired the last twenty Giants in order, capped by Lockman’s foul popup to catcher Bruce Edwards for the final out. Remarkably, only forty-one of Barney’s 116 pitches were wide of the strike zone on this night. Only four Giants went down on strikes.

Durocher, who had been the Dodgers’ manager just weeks earlier but was now the Giants’ field boss, ran past Barney on his way to the clubhouse. “I’m proud of you, kid,” he said to Rex.

Another version of that encounter appears in Peter Golenbock’s book Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Durocher reportedly told Barney: “You skinny son of a bitch. Why’d you have to do this to me? I’m your greatest fan. Why did you do it to me?”

The plate umpire on this memorable evening, Babe Pinelli, called Barney “the fastest thing in baseball today. I don’t care about Lemon or Feller. I’ve seen them. This kid is it. And no finer boy in baseball could have pitched it. He has a heart as big as a lion, and a wonderful disposition.”

Thirty-two years later, in 1980, the New York Baseball Writers presented the “Casey Stengel You-Could-Look-It-Up” award to Barney at their annual dinner in recognition of the last no-hitter at the storied Polo Grounds. No other Brooklyn pitcher ever no-hit the Giants in their own ballpark.

Unfortunately, Barney had reached his peak at the age of twenty-three. With the notable exception of a second one-hitter, against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on September 19, Rex was a so-so pitcher with the pennant-winning Dodgers in 1949. He won nine games, dropped eight, and his earned run average was a high 4.41.

In the World Series, with the Dodgers trailing the Yankees three games to one, Shotton gave Barney the ball for Game Five. He allowed five runs in two and two-thirds innings and took the loss. The Yankees went on to wrap up Casey Stengel’s first world championship as a manager with a 10–6 victory.

The 1950 season ended in disappointment for the Dodgers when they lost the pennant to Philadelphia on the season’s final day. Limited to twenty appearances and only one start, Barney won two of three decisions, but his ERA skied to 6.42.

Some observers, and Barney himself, believe that a broken ankle, suffered sliding into second base on the final day of the 1948 season, forced him to alter his pitching style. “In 1949 I won nine ballgames, but from then on, by my own admission, I never had the same motion, never had it again,” he told Golenbock. “I never got into the same flow, and in baseball everything is rhythm.” 

The Dodgers optioned Barney to Fort Worth of the Texas League in 1951, hoping that manager Bobby Bragan, a former Dodgers catcher, could help Rex learn the strike zone. It did not happen. In five appearances with the Class AA club, he walked thirty-nine batters in just fourteen innings. In a game against Houston, Barney broke the league record for walks given up by a pitcher in a game by issuing sixteen in seven and two-thirds innings. 

In 1952 Rex was assigned to the St. Paul Saints, the Dodgers’ farm club in the American Association. His pitching line for the Saints that season read: four games, three innings pitched, no victories, one loss, fourteen walks, seventeen earned runs, and a 51.00 ERA. Barney’s professional baseball career was over. His major-league won-lost record was 35-31, with a 4.34 earned run average. The strikeouts (336) were outnumbered by the walks (410).

At twenty-eight Rex Barney was a has-been. He admitted to contemplating suicide. But then he remembered what Dodgers broadcaster Red Barber had told him a decade earlier: That he had a pleasing radio voice, and should consider getting into broadcasting when his playing career was over.

Barney did just that. He started a circuitous climb up the radio ladder—some work in his hometown of Omaha, a 250-watt station in Vero Beach, Florida, some play-by-play work at WCAW in Charleston, West Virginia, the game-of-the-day for the Mutual Broadcasting System. When the Dodgers and Giants went west in 1958, WOR-TV hired Barney and Al Helfer to bring National League games into New York.

With assistance from Lee MacPhail, the Baltimore Orioles’ general manager who had been an office boy during Rex’s early Brooklyn days, Barney began a sports talk show in Baltimore in 1965. He became a celebrity in his adopted city.

During the late 1960s he began filling in for Bill Bolling, the public address announcer at Memorial Stadium. When Bolling departed in the spring of 1973, Barney became the Orioles’ regular PA man, a job he held during the move to Camden Yards and until his death on August 11, 1997. He is buried in Lorraine Park Cemetery, Woodlawn, Maryland.

His trademark sign-off, “THANK Youuuu,” and cry of “Give that fan a contract,” after a spectator made a nice play in the stands, became part of the Baltimore culture. “His voice was almost like a security blanket,” said Mike Flanagan, the former Orioles twenty-game winner and now a television announcer.

Barney’s last years were plagued by ill health. He suffered a stroke in 1983 and a heart attack in 1991, one year before he had a leg amputated because of circulation problems associated with diabetes. His second marriage, to a Baltimore schoolteacher named Carole Bennett, also ended in divorce. 

“I should have been up there with the greats,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I should have gone right up the ladder, but too many rungs were missing.”

Sources

Barney, Rex, with Norman L. Macht. Rex Barney’s THANK Youuuu for 50 Years in Baseball from Brooklyn to Baltimore, Tidewater Publishers, 1993.

Barney, Rex, with Bill Roeder. “Can’t Anybody Help Me?” Collier’s, April 16, 1954.

Corio, Ray. “Rex Barney, 72, Dodger Pitcher; Threw a No-Hitter for Brooklyn,” New York Times, August. 13, 1997.

King, Larry. “Rex Barney:” Alive, Well and Talkative,” Sporting News, May 28, 1984.

Madden, Bill. “A Baseball Voice is Silenced: Rex Barney Dead at 72; Ex-Dodger, Announcer,” New York Daily News, August. 13, 1997.

Young, Dick. New York Daily News, Sept. 10, 1948.

Baseball Guide and Record Book, Charles C. Spink & Son, 1944, ‘48, ‘49, ’50.

Rex Barney player file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Aug. 12, 2009.

Born on January 23, 1947, in Miami Beach, Florida, Kurt Anthony Bevacqua was raised by his parents in the same town. His stepfather, Mario Bevacqua, was chief bellhop of the Fontainebleau Hotel for 23 years. He not only loved baseball but also could teach a boy the value of a well-bet two-iron golf shot.1 His mother, Ethel (Cole), like many women at the time, was a homemaker raising Kurt and younger brother Rick. She was a member of choral group Sweet Adelines. Bevacqua was never pushed into sports; he truly loved playing and competing. He spent most summers and weekends at Moore Park. “I would leave in the morning, round up friends, head to the park where you could check out equipment,” he said. “The park closed from 12-1. Went home for lunch and we would go back and play until close. Very much of a ‘be home when the streetlights go on’ childhood.”2

Bevacqua’s favorite teams growing up were the Yankees and the Dodgers, who then dominated baseball. Mickey Mantle was his favorite player. “I had a Brooklyn Dodgers hat, too, and that was my favorite hat,” he said in 2020. “So, as most people know, I don’t like the Dodgers now, but I still wear a Brooklyn Dodgers hat that my son bought me.”3

Bevacqua honed his baseball skills in Little League and American Legion. He attended North Miami High School, where he earned All-City honors. In the spring of 1959, he served as a visiting batboy for the Baltimore Orioles in spring training. He took ground balls with Luis Aparicio.4 “I got a lot of help from Bobby Richardson, and I know working around big-league players helped my batting,” he said.5

After high school, Bevacqua transitioned to Miami Dade North Community College, a baseball powerhouse under College Baseball Hall of Famer Demie Mainieri. Bevacqua said the talent on the team was so deep that fellow North Miami alum Steve Carlton went out for the team and was told that he would not be a starter.6 More than 100 of Mainieri’s former players were drafted or signed by professional teams, and 30 of them made it to the major leagues.7 Bevacqua endeared himself to his coach with his outrageous hustle and ridiculous cockiness. “He’d run to the plate to hit,” says Mainieri. “Nothing intimidated him. We’d be playing the best teams, against the best pitchers, and he’d be yelling, ‘Give us your ace! We wanta see your ace!'”8

Drafted by the New York Mets in the 32nd round of the MLB June Amateur Draft in 1966, then by the Atlanta Braves in the sixth round of the Secondary Draft in January of 1967, and finally by the Cincinnati Reds in the 12th round of the Secondary Draft in June of 1967, Bevacqua signed with Reds scout Sheldon “Chief” Bender. When Bevacqua’s professional career began in the Reds’ minor league system, he played every position except pitcher and catcher; that versatility would define his career. In 1968, with the Tampa Tarpons of the Class A Florida State League, he showed flashes of potential. Teammate Bob Hall from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was the first person who told Bevacqua that he would make the major leagues.9 In 1969, Bevacqua advanced to Double-A Asheville with teammate Dave Concepción. By 1970, he’d climbed to the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians, where he hit .261 and began to refine his approach at the plate.

In the spring of 1970, Bevacqua earned the nickname “Dirty Kurt,” which fit his relentless, hard-nosed style. That spring in Florida, the minor leaguers would dress and get on the bus in the early morning. They’d head across state to towns hours away like Cocoa Beach, play the B game, and face the major-league starters, who worked early to beat the afternoon heat. A long bus ride back to Tampa in uniform would follow. On arrival the minor leaguers were expected to finish the big-league spring training game. After the game, infield coach Alex Grammas lined up all the minor leaguers at shortstop for infield work. Fungoes were sprayed between second base and third base. Ten stops in a row were required. Grammas made everyone dive for the last ones. This was the daily routine.

Given Bevacqua’s tenacity, his uniform was dirty daily. One day, the Reds minor leaguers faced Houston’s J.R. Richard in the B game. Then they rode the bus for three hours back to the big-league game, played the rest of the game, then fielded Grammas’ postgame fungoes. For a guy whose uniform was always dirtiest on the team, that day was filthier than usual. Pete Rose had left the big-league game early but was still at his locker when Bevacqua had finished fungoes, Rose looked Bevacqua up and down and said, “You’re dirty [expletive]. You’re Dirty Kurt.”10

Bevacqua was the last player cut after spring training in 1971. “I was called into Sparky [Anderson]’s office. I knew what was going to happen.,” he said. “I had had a great spring and really thought I would make the team. Sparky told me that the club was going for more experience off the bench in Ty Cline and Jimmy Stewart. I was shocked.”11 He was sent to Indianapolis, then quickly traded to the Cleveland Indians and assigned to Triple-A Wichita. After the trade, Bevacqua told his mother, “Don’t worry, you’ll be able to see me on TV in about a month.”12

Indeed, it was just about a month later when Ken Harrelson abruptly retired from baseball to play professional golf. That opened an opportunity for Bevacqua, and he played in his first major-league game against the Red Sox at Fenway Park on June 22, 1971. Bevacqua played in 55 games mostly at second base. In a July 16 game against the Royals, he went 2-4 with a 3-RBI triple and scored a run in an 8-4 Cleveland victory.

Sent down to Triple-A Portland at the start of 1972, Bevacqua said, “I didn’t think they gave me enough of a chance for work in spring training.”13 He hit .313 at Portland and earned a late-season call-up. That November, Bevacqua was traded to the Kansas City Royals. He made the 1973 roster and saw playing time in 99 games across in the infield and outfield. On June 1, Bevacqua started what became a trend in his career, hitting a home run against his former team. With one out, Bevacqua drilled a solo shot against Indians reliever Tom Hilgendorf, giving the Royals a 5-4 win.

That offseason, he was traded to Pittsburgh. After limited playing time in 1974, Bevacqua was traded back to Kansas City in July. George Brett’s Rookie of the Year season cut Bevacqua’s time in Kansas City short. His contract was sold to the Milwaukee Brewers during spring training 1975.

That season, the Joe Garagiola Bazooka Big League Bubble Gum Blowing Championship put Bevacqua on the national stage. “Back then there was Game of the Week. It was the only national broadcast,” Bevacqua said. “We always knew where the cameras were and when they were pointed in the dugout. Guys would try anything to be on camera. Mine was to slide in frame and blow bubbles. So, we are on Game of the Week, Joe Garagiola came up to me before the game, well before the contest ever started, and he goes, ‘Would you be interested in being in a bubble gum blowing championship?’ He says, ‘We’re gonna have a championship and have a representative from each team, and I’m picking you to win.’”14 The contest began in August 1975 with each team having its own competition. Then from a round of two- and three-player “blow-offs,” a pair of league champions emerged: Johnny Oates of the Philadelphia Phillies and Bevacqua.15 The championship aired on a special episode of the Baseball World of Joe Garagiola before Game Three of the 1975 World Series in Cincinnati. Bevacqua prevailed and was commemorated with a special 1976 Topps baseball card. When asked, he has often said, “The trick is to not blow but breathe into the bubble.”16

Bevacqua saw regular work for Milwaukee in 1975, but in 1976 he was used sparingly, with just seven plate appearances, mostly as a late-inning pinch-runner for Hank Aaron. On May 30, 1976, Bevacqua pinch-ran for George Scott, scoring the winning run, but was demoted to Triple-A Spokane after the game. While Bevacqua punished Pacific Coast League pitching, he hoped for opportunity with expansion. The Seattle Mariners’ first general manager, Lou Gorman, previously director of player development for the Royals, knew Bevacqua well. Thus, Seattle purchased his contact that October.

Bevacqua had a great spring in 1977, batting .467 with several game-winning hits. Even so, he was unexpectedly cut. “As I understand it, Danny Kaye [then Seattle’s part-owner] heard me cussing on the bench one day, and there were some kids around,” he said. “When they cut me, they said I was a ‘bad influence’ on younger players. Hell, I was a monk compared to some of them. But instead of starting, I was in the street. I wound up with Texas, which traded me to San Diego in 1978, so it worked out O.K., but at the time I wasn’t too happy about it.”17

After being released, Bevacqua hit the phones to find a baseball home, landing with the Rangers. His self-described “wackiness and innate optimism” led to his continued presence in the game. Bevacqua was able to negotiate a contract with Rangers owner Brad Corbett at a birthday party held at a country club. He shared time at third base and designated hitter with John Lowenstein in 1978 but did not deliver and was traded to the Padres.18

San Diego quickly became his home. During the 1979 season, he saw time at first base, second base, third base, and left field. Bevacqua often rose to the occasion. On August 29, 1979, in a start at third base, he singled, doubled, and drove in two of the three Padres runs in a victory over the Cubs – one of his six games that season with multiple RBIs.

The 1980 Padres were inconsistent in play and plan – the team was called a soap opera in the press. Nonetheless, Bevacqua had established himself as one of the game’s premier pinch-hitters. The San Diego press questioned why he was not playing more. On May 18, 1980. against the Cubs, down 3-0, Bevacqua pinch-hit in the seventh inning and drove in two runs. He stayed in the game at second base and batted again in the ninth inning, facing Bruce Sutter, then one of the game’s premier closers. Bevacqua singled to center, scoring Paul Dade and Dave Winfield for the walk-off win. For the day, he was 2-for-2 with four RBIs.

Yet that performance still did not translate into more playing time.19 Bevacqua, hitting .300, asked for a trade and went to the press.20 At the All-Star break, the team fired general manager Bob Fontaine and hired “Trader” Jack McKeon as replacement.21 Bevacqua got his wish in a 2 AM phone call from McKeon and was sent to Pittsburgh.22

The Pirates were the defending World Series champion when Bevacqua joined the team. The culture change renewed “Dirty Kurt.” After the trade he said, “I was with the Pirates in 1974, and they haven’t changed a bit. When the game was over, everybody came into the clubhouse saying, ‘We’ll kick them tomorrow.’”23 Bevacqua finished the season and spent most of 1981 with the Pirates. “They were some of the best teammates. Willie Stargell was as good as it gets. He was the real deal,” he said.. “Dave Parker in his prime, what a tremendous ballplayer and guy. Dock Ellis too. I connected with those guys. The whole team was a real team.”

However, Bevacqua continued, “The politics of the game limited my opportunities with the Pirates.”24 The 1981 season was marred by the longest in-season strike in baseball history. Bevacqua was the Pirates’ assistant player representative, and he was vocal. He was one of 10 major-leaguers in strike negotiations. Bevacqua explained, “I came here because I’m an average major-league player, not a superstar, the kind of player who will be affected by the owners’ compensation proposal.”25 He added, “I sat there and listened, and I didn’t see any sign of any kind of settlement whatsoever. The only thing I saw was adamancy. I’m ready to sit out all season if I have to, and when the strike started that was the last thing I wanted to do. We’re no closer to a settlement than we were a year ago.”26

When the players held a brief two-day strike in 1985, Bevacqua recalled the 1981 stoppage. “A lot was written on me because Bob Boone, Dave Winfield, and Mike Schmidt were there, and all of sudden, Kurt Bevacqua shows up. I said what I thought. Well, the day they settled, I was sent to the minors. Anything can happen. If a player is dumped on, it’s always the extra man.”27 Sent to Triple-A Portland to make room for Bill Robinson, Bevacqua announced to the press that he would not go down to the minors at age 34. Willie Stargell had a long talk with his friend and said, “Keep the uniform on your back.”28 He returned in September but was released by the Pirates after the 1981 season.

San Diego and Bevacqua were a match made twice. By 1982, the Padres had turned a corner; according to Bevacqua, “They are doing things that are important to a winning team.”29 He had signed with the club in the offseason, a veteran on a youthful Padres squad, including rookie Tony Gwynn. Bevacqua’s skills were in demand and there were rumors that the Dodgers were interested in signing him.30 Dick Williams, by then well-known as one of the finest managerial turnaround artists, fired up the Padres clubhouse. He demonstrated faith in Bevacqua’s ability to pinch-hit. The veteran became the unofficial clubhouse spokesman, unafraid of “Dirty Kurt” commentary to the press.

That season the Dodgers-Padres rivalry heated up. According to Bevacqua, the agitation started on June 29, 1982, when San Diego beat L.A. 7-5 at Dodger Stadium in 10 innings. In the top of the ninth inning, Jerry Reuss was just three outs away from his 10th win of the season and a possible 4-0 shutout. The Padres rallied. Bevacqua, playing first base, doubled to left-center, scoring Sixto Lezcano and moving Terry Kennedy to third. The score was 4-2 with no outs. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda went to the mound to get Reuss and called his bullpen. Bevacqua’s double had knocked Reuss out of the game.  Lasorda verbally unloaded on Reuss and stared down Bevacqua at second. “He’s yelling at Reuss but looking at me. He is calling me an [expletive] hitter. I yelled at Lasorda, grabbed my crotch and told him where to stick it and next thing I knew Alan Wiggins was tapping me on the shoulder telling me that Dick Williams sent him in to pinch run. So, I left the field upset at Williams and Lasorda,” Bevacqua said.31

The Padres scored five runs that inning, but the Dodgers tied it in the bottom of the ninth to force extra innings. Wiggins drove in two in the 10th for the Padres’ biggest comeback of the year.32

Bevacqua’s most memorable moment of 1982 came in a game the next day – in which he never played. In the nightcap of the June 30 doubleheader, Broderick Perkins homered off Tom Niedenfuer in the ninth inning. The next pitch hit Joe Lefebvre in the helmet. Bevacqua, who was not in the game, charged the mound; he was stopped by first base umpire Joe West and ejected. He was the first and only one out of the dugout.

On July 3, Niedenfuer was fined $500 for the beaning. After learning about the fine, Bevacqua told reporters, “They ought to fine the fat little Italian who ordered the pitch.”33 The reference was obvious and led to Lasorda’s expletive-laden rant the next day. A sanitized version was published on July 5 as, “If I were going to order a pitcher to throw at a hitter, it wouldn’t be at .170 hitters like Bevacqua and Lefebvre. When I was pitching, I would send a taxicab to pick up guys who hit like they do.”34

The full audio came out a few weeks later. In it, Lasorda disputed that he ordered the beanball and claimed, “[Expletive] Bevacqua couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a [expletive] boat.”35

In the press, a feud ensued. For the Padres and their developing rivalry with the Dodgers, it was marketing gold, according to former Padres Vice President of Marketing Andy Strasberg. “Both Lasorda and Bevacqua took advantage to keep the story alive. They knew that it had legs,” he said.36 According to Strasberg, “The Padres needed a rival. The Dodgers had the Giants, but the rant gave us the opportunity to promote a rivalry. It didn’t hurt that the team was improving against the talented Dodgers.”37 The rant was national sports talk radio fodder, with KLAC’s provocateur Jim Healy fanning the flames.

The rivalry continued for years. By midseason 1985, the story still had legs. On June 29, the San Diego Madres, a non-profit that provides financial assistance for youth baseball and softball, held a luncheon with Lasorda and Bevacqua as featured guests and Strasberg as emcee. A capacity crowd enjoyed the afternoon. Lasorda and Bevacqua were both gentlemen and funds were raised for the Madres.

Bevacqua recalled, “I saw him a few times after the incident, but never really talked about it. As a matter of fact, I did a luncheon with him when I was still playing when the Dodgers came into town.”38 When Lasorda died in 2021, Bevacqua said in an interview, “It was never hate…He was the kind of guy that you cannot stand when you are on the opposite side of the field, but when you are on the same side you love ’em.”39

The 1983 Padres added longtime Dodgers rival Steve Garvey. Garvey cost Bevacqua time at first base, but a fast and lasting friendship developed. Bevacqua sported a “Steve Garvey is My Shadow” t-shirt in spring training.40 They became San Diego’s odd couple. “A winning baseball team is more than just good players, it’s a chemistry, a combination of factors. I supply the flakiness,” said Bevacqua.41

On July 14, Bevacqua launched a pinch-hit grand slam, the first in the majors since 1975, to put the Padres ahead of the Pirates 6-3. It was not a day to celebrate, however – the Pirates put up four in the ninth. When asked for comment, he replied, “Oh bleep.”42

As a pinch-hitter in 1983, he batted .412 with one HR and 16 RBIs.43 However, the season wound up as a disappointment for the Padres, who finished in fourth place with a .500 record, as they had the year before.

Bevacqua was also a fan favorite off the field: Padre Fever Day, charity luncheons, and the Michelob-Kurt Bevacqua Celebrity Golf Classic were all part of his off-field community work. The range of causes included St. Madeleine Sophie Center, San Diego Children’s Hospital, St. Jude, and more. “It comes from a place of being in a position to take advantage to help.” Bevacqua said. He also started a Padres newspaper, Baseball Gold with Fred O. Rodgers; its circulation grew to more than 50,000.44

The 1984 Padres continued to beef up their veteran presence. Rich “Goose” Gossage was acquired in free agency. Eight days later owner Ray Kroc, whose purchase of the franchise in 1974 kept the team in San Diego, passed away. The McDonald’s builder had been determined to bring a winning team to the city. The Padres were predicted to win the National League West Division.45 They fulfilled that expectation, winning a team-record 92 games and spending 145 calendar days in first place.

The team famously brawled with the rival Atlanta Braves on August 12. Bevacqua, who was not in the game, was hit by a beer and charged into the stands. A total of 17 players were ejected.46 “It was one of those deals where you’re watching out for your teammates…Did it go overboard a little bit? Eh, maybe. But looking back at it, we probably would have done everything basically the same,” Bevacqua said.47

For Bevacqua himself, the regular season performance was hot and cold. At the end of June, he was batting .333, but that mark fell until September 14, when he doubled home two runs to give the Padres a 4-2 win over the Houston Astros.48 “A pinch-hitter on a winning club doesn’t bat as much as a pinch-hitter on a fourth, fifth or sixth place club,” he said. “I haven’t felt too bad lately.”49

The Padres, in the postseason for the first time, faced the red-hot Chicago Cubs, in the postseason for the first time since 1945. Opportunities were scarce for Bevacqua in the NLCS: he had only two at-bats, both times pinch-hitting for Dave Dravecky. In Game Two, Bevacqua grounded into a double play in the eighth inning. In the series finale, Game Five, he flied out to center field in the fifth inning before the Padres completed their improbable comeback from a two-game deficit to win the National League pennant.

The 1984 World Series was played with American League rules, so the Padres added the designated hitter. Dick Williams selected Bevacqua for the role despite his meager .200 batting average, one home run, and nine RBIs in 80 at-bats in the regular season.50 In retrospect, Williams’ selection was not a surprise. According to Bevacqua, “He was the kind of manager who basically pinch-hit me for almost everyone in the lineup with the exception of Gwynn and Garvey over those few years. He put me in the middle of the lineup when Pascual Pérez pitched against us his next start after the brawl in San Diego. He put me right smack dab in the middle of the lineup that night, hitting fourth. He then found a place for me in the lineup during the World Series when other managers probably wouldn’t have. But he must have known something that I was the kind of player that could rise to the occasion. I think that’s one of the reasons I look back at Dick so kindly.”51

Game One of the 1984 World Series, at Jack Murphy Stadium, was a battle. Jack Morris masterfully used his split-finger fastball to jam and get out of jams. The Tigers held a 3-2 lead. Leading off in the seventh inning, Bevacqua slashed a drive down the first base line into the right field corner and under the in-play bullpen bench. Rounding second, he got the sign from Ozzie Virgil, stumbled, then made for third base. Kirk Gibson fired to Lou Whitaker, who heard the roar of the San Diego crowd, turned and fired to nail the head-first sliding Bevacqua easily.52 With no outs, it was a monumental error. What could have been a game-tying run was a costly out.

Bevacqua did not realize how big this base-running gaffe would be in the media. To the Padres’ credit, Williams, Virgil, and Bevacqua all took the blame as their own. Bevacqua was second-guessed and badgered post-game. “I can say this now, the plan was to run on Gibson. We thought he had a weak arm. I went for it, I stumbled, and we lost. If we win Game One, then we go to Detroit up 2-0.” Bevacqua recalled.53 He vowed to himself to atone for that mistake.54

He did so straight away. In Game Two, held the next night (October 10), Bevacqua gave the Padres franchise its first World Series win by blasting a three-run homer off Dan Petry for a 5-3 Padres victory, tying the Series at one game apiece.

His trot around the bases created a stir with Sparky Anderson, by then Tigers manager. Bevacqua pirouetted before first base, thrust his index finger at second base, and blew kisses to the crowd while rounding third base.55 “It’s probably the most jubilant moment of my career.” Realizing the magnitude of this understatement, “Probably? What a dumb statement,” Bevacqua told reporters after the victory.56

Garvey told reporters, “He came back into the dugout with that look of his. It’s kind of a far-off Jack Nicholson look. You know he’s there physically, but you know he’s someplace far away mentally.”57

Bevacqua, now a World Series star, was booked on The Today Show via satellite from Detroit. As the Series moved to Detroit, however, the momentum, however, shifted to the Tigers. Although Bevacqua singled in Game Three and doubled in Game Four, both were San Diego losses.

In Game Five, Bevacqua drew a walk and scored on a Bobby Brown sacrifice fly in the fourth, which evened the score at 3-3. By the seventh inning, the Tigers had pulled ahead 5-3, when Bevacqua homered to left field off Cy Young Award winner Willie Hernández. It was not enough – the Padres fell, 8-4.

Bevacqua led his club in the Series, batting .412 and slugging .882 with two HRs and four RBIs. “What disappoints me most is that we didn’t get this thing back to San Diego. The fans deserved it,” he told reporters.58

Offseason publicity took the tone of Bevacqua the ballplayer rather than the off-the-wall persona. “He makes it easier to come to the park,” said Tony Gwynn.59 Bevacqua started writing a weekly inside baseball column for the Blade-Tribune. He also put himself on the cover of the January 1985 issue of Baseball Gold. “Actually, my editor did it. He said, ‘You’re the only one from the Series we could honestly single out.’”60 The media published introspective articles on the game’s premier pinch-hitter. “I hear guys say, ‘I owe the game of baseball everything.’ I don’t feel I owe it anything. I know I’ve put a lot more into it than I’ve gotten out of it.”61

Though Bevacqua was more serious, he was still able to pull a great baseball prank. On April 1, 1985, he bewildered listeners of the KBZT radio phone-in show. He announced that the Padres had traded Tim Flannery to Milwaukee for Rollie Fingers, and then traded Fingers, Steve Garvey, and Gerry Davis to the Yankees for Don Mattingly and Willie Randolph. Bevacqua then hung up, forgetting to say that it was an April Fool’s gag. He called back, but it took hours to get through as the KBZT listeners jammed the phone lines.62

In 1985, the Padres could not recapture the magic of 1984 and slid into third place in the NL West. After his heroics in the Fall Classic, Bevacqua reverted to statistical norm, but he did crank two grand slams that June. In the final season of his contract, Bevacqua described a recurring dream on his San Diego radio show. He would be traded and return to the Padres as a free agent. That dream was unfulfilled and he filed for free agency in November. The Padres did exercise the right to arbitrate with Bevacqua.63 At the end of the one-month window, the team declined to offer a contract but did extend a non-roster invitation to 1986 spring training. Bevacqua said, “There comes a time when you get fed up with being a slab of meat and that’s what my situation here has come down to. I might even consider my options outside of baseball.”64

Bevacqua got into eight games in camp in 1986, batting .316 with four RBIs, but it was not enough. He was cut in late March. “Kurt did a lot of good things for this club. He’s been a very important piece to our puzzle,” said Gwynn on learning that Bevacqua had been released.65 Dirty Kurt’s playing days were over.

Unknown, but speculated at the time, was major-league ownership’s collusion against free agents.66 Bevacqua was one of 62 players from 1985 who were frozen out.67 The MLBPA eventually filed grievances, and a $280 million settlement to over 650 players in November 1990 was reached, but payments for damages with interest were not awarded until 1995. Bevacqua received $272,012.42 for lost jobs and $13,600.62 for lost labor mobility.68

Broadcasting was Bevacqua’s next role. He worked on a call-in sports show, “San Diego Sportsline” and auditioned with NBC opposite Marv Albert.69 He landed the job on the backup Game of the Week. Later he had roles with ABC and ESPN. Bevacqua remained in the public eye and popular in San Diego. According to Strasberg, “Kurt is one of the few ballplayers that is also a fan.”70

As of 2025, Bevacqua and wife Cynthia resided in the San Diego area and were parents to five children. In addition to his charity work, Bevacqua ran the Major League Baseball Retired Players Association, a 501(c)(3) non-profit with the motto of “Players helping players.” The group focused on pensions, licensing payments, and other issues facing retired ballplayers while giving back to the community. “There is not the support that most former ballplayers think there is,” Bevacqua said. “MLBRPA is set up to help players and their legacy.”71

Last revised: July 28, 2025

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Kurt Bevacqua and Andy Strasberg for their input.

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and David Bilmes and fact-checked by Tony Oliver.

Photo credit: Kurt Bevacqua, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the SABR Weir Collection, Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, baseballalmanac.com and LA84 Foundation Digital Library Collections.

Notes

1 John Underwood, “A Great Role Player,” Sports Illustrated, July 1, 1985, https://vault.si.com/vault/1985/07/01/a-great-role-player

2 Bevacqua telephone interview with author, May 20, 2025. (Hereafter Bevacqua telephone interview.)

3 Rocco Constantino, “Dirty Kurt: Kurt Bevacqua,” BallNine, November 12, 2020, https://ballnine.com/2020/11/12/dirty-kurt-kurt-bevacqua/

4 Bevacqua telephone interview.

5 Neil Amdur, “Miami High, Southwest Land Four Players Each,” Miami Herald, May 11, 1965: 25.

6 Bevacqua telephone interview.

7 2014 College Baseball Hall of Fame Inductees, https://www.mlb.com/college-baseball-hall-of-fame/class-of-2014#mainieri. (last accessed June 4, 2025).

8 Underwood, “A Great Role Player.”

9 Bevacqua telephone interview.

10 Bevacqua telephone interview.

11 Bevacqua telephone interview.

12 Al Levine, “Bevacqua has optimism plus a chance to play,” Miami News, May 18, 1971: 33.

13 Charlie Nobles, “Bevacqua says Orioles were ready to go home,” Miami News, September 30, 1972.

14 Bevacqua telephone interview.

15 Tom Shieber, Bubble Play, National Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/discover/short-stops/bubble-play (last accessed June 4, 2025).

16 Bevacqua telephone interview.

17 Underwood, “A Great Role Player.”

18 Bevacqua telephone interview.

19 Bevacqua telephone interview.

20 “Bevacqua want out of Padres,” Daily Times-Advocate, July 10, 1980: 43.

21 “Padres face a major shakeup,” Daily Times-Advocate, July 9, 1980: 33.

22 Bevacqua telephone interview.

23 Dan Donovan, “Dirty Kurt makes typical debut as Pirate”, Pittsburgh Press, August 6, 1980: 51.

24 Bevacqua telephone interview.

25 Jerome Holtzman, “Baseball Owners, Players haven’t reached first base,” Pittsburgh Press, June 27, 1981: 8.

26 Associated Press, “Baseball negotiations break down,” The Times, Saturday June 27, 1981: 6.

27 Kenneth Reich, “Strike III”, Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1985: 43.

28 Underwood, “A Great Role Player.”

29 Gary Hyvonen, “Bevacqua knows how to help in a pinch,” North County Times, March 15, 1982: 17.

30 John Maffei, “Jones Spoiling Padre Plans for Gwynn,” Daily Times-Advocate, April 23, 1982: 31.

31  Kurt Bevacqua, email correspondence with author, May 24, 2025.

32 Steve Dolan, “Padres rally twice, win in 10th, 7-5,” Los Angeles Times, June 30, 1982: 27.

33 Chris Cobbs, “Bevacqua ‘Fine Lasorda, Too’,” Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1982: 37.

34 Dan Hafner, “Bevacqua’s comment, of course, infuriates Lasorda,” Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1982: 17

35 Tommy Lasorda meltdown about Kurt Bevacqua full audio, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzjWQF1oP2M (last accessed May 25, 2025).

36 Strasberg telephone interview with author, May 27, 2025. (Hereafter Strasberg telephone interview.).

37 Strasberg telephone interview.

38 Constantino, “Dirty Kurt: Kurt Bevacqua.”

39 Fox 5 San Diego, “Former Padre Pays Respect to Tommy Lasorda,” January 8, 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WBNpxsvjxo (last accessed May 14, 2025).

40 Don Norcross, “Steve Garvey the newest Padre has been accepted,” Daily Times-Advocate, March 25, 1983: 23.

41 Underwood, “A Great Role Player.”

42 Larry Weinbaum, “Pirates trip up Padres,” Daily-Times Advocate, July 15, 1983: 21.

43 Larry Weinbaum, “Feeling is relaxed as Padres open spring training,” Daily Times Advocate, February 27, 1984: 15.

44 Craig Muder, “#Cardcorner: 1980 Topps Kurt Bevacqua,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/discover/CardCorner-1980-Topps-Kurt-Bevacqua (last accessed May 22, 2025).

45 Bob Matthews, “Padres’ pennant chances are more than just a prayer,” Statesman Journal, March 31, 1984: 38.

46 Bill Nowlin, August 12, 1984: Braves-Padres brawl leaves 17 players ejected in one game, SABR, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-12-1984-braves-padres-brawl-leaves-17-players-ejected-in-one-game/ (last accessed May 2, 2025).

47 Constantino, “Dirty Kurt: Kurt Bevacqua.”

48 Dan Hafner, “Padres Win, and Magic Number is Six”, Los Angeles Times, September 15, 1984: 60.

49 Steve Dolan, “Bevacqua makes some noise with his hitting as Padres top Astros,” Los Angeles Times, September 15, 1984: 21.

50 Underwood, “A Great Role Player,”

51 Constantino, “Dirty Kurt: Kurt Bevacqua.”

52 Fred Mitchell, “San Diego crowd help Tigers win World Series opener,” Chicago Tribune, October 10, 1984: 47.

53 Bevacqua telephone interview.

54 Bevacqua telephone interview.

55 Vern Plagenhoef, “Bevacqua’s three-run shot kills Tigers, 5-3”, Muskegon Chronicle, October 11, 1984: 31.

56 Dave Distel, “In the finest traditions of World Series, Bevacqua jumps from nobody to hero,” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 1984: 34.

57 Distel, “In the finest traditions of World Series, Bevacqua jumps from nobody to hero.”

58 Dave Distel, “Tiger fans make the day even worse for Padres,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1984: 38.

59 Underwood, “A Great Role Player.”

60 Underwood, “A Great Role Player,”

61 Gary Ferman, “Padres’ batter Bevacqua not ready to quit swinging,” Miami Herald, February 3, 1985: 409.

62 Underwood, “A Great Role Player.”

63 Gary Hyvonen, “Padres leave three roster spots open,” North County Times, December 10, 1985: 22.

64 Gary Hyvonen, “Padres give Bevacqua a ‘no’ with an option,” North County Times, January 8, 1986: 21.

65 John Shea, “Few farewells for Bevacqua,” Daily Times-Advocate, March 25, 1986: 17.

66 Steve Beitler, “The empire strikes out: Collusion in Baseball in the 1980s,” SABR, https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-empire-strikes-out-collusion-in-baseball-in-the-1980/(last accessed May 2, 2025).

67 Jeff Barto, “1985 Winter Meetings: Free-Agent Freezeout: Collusion I,: SABR, https://sabr.org/journal/article/1985-winter-meetings-free-agent-freezeout-collusion-i/ (last accessed May 13, 2025).

68 “Baseball Collusion Damages,” USA Today, January 19, 1995: 12.

69 Larry Stewart, “Long, Wide World of ABC Highlighted in a 2-hour special,” Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1986: 55.

70 Strasberg telephone interview.

71 Bevacqua telephone interview.