Dick Stuart

Dick Stuart was fun – as long as you didn’t have to be on the field with him.

He ran the bases head down and looking anywhere except at the third-base coach or the outfield or a teammate who might be able to tell him something, often sending his team out of the inning. As a fielder, suffice it to say that his nickname was “Dr. Strangeglove,” and no less an authority than Henry Aaron before the annual Hall of Fame game on August 5, 1963, greeted him, “Hello, Stone-fingers.”1 A cadre of fans with a literary bent and a special fondness for Alexandre Dumas christened him “The Man with the Iron Glove.” As a first baseman, he led his league in errors seven straight years, usually by a wide margin. Playing in only 64 games his rookie year (1958), he managed to commit 16 miscues. Given that he played with one of the great keystone combinations of all time in Dick Groat and Bill Mazeroski, one can only wonder how many double plays they might have turned with any other first baseman. Stuart led the American League in 1963 with 29 errors, a number made uglier by the fact that the runner-up committed only 12. (For the record, future Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda led the National League with 21, still far behind Stuart.) He received a standing ovation for catching a hot-dog wrapper on the fly. In fairness, Stuart did one thing well with a ball in his hands. He had a terrific kind of halfway behind-the-back toss to the mound to end the inning, delivered in quasi-contemptuous fashion and proving that he could master a skill if he put his mind to it. Life was never dull with Big Stu in the game.

He could be and often was immature, shamelessly money-hungry, arrogant, boastful, dangerously self-confident, loquacious (especially when holding forth on his favorite subjects, himself and his home-run-hitting prowess), vain, egotistical, and narcissistic. Scores of players (teammates and opponents alike), managers, executives, and fans found him hard to take. Oddly enough, he had enough personal charm to keep people from hating him, many saying something on the order of “I like the guy.” Some writers called him “refreshing” and “colorful,” likely euphemisms for “good copy.”

A person this annoying and destructive must do something well to stick around, and Stuart did. Playing among contemporaries like Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Willie McCovey, Eddie Mathews, Orlando Cepeda, and an emerging Willie Stargell, he could hit a baseball farther than just about anybody. True, he didn’t connect as frequently or for as many years as they did, but for distance and majesty he had few equals and no superiors.

And he did it all, the good and the bad, with a wink and a twinkle in his eye – but not without a hint of sadness, perhaps the sadness of someone who sees the joke or has a sense of what’s coming.  Stuart’s eyes have the look one often finds in pictures of Abraham Lincoln, Lou Gehrig, and others. The lips may be smiling, but the eyes give the man away. An anecdote, possibly apocryphal, illustrates the point. The scene could play out in several ways, but it shows that Stuart was more intelligent and quick-witted than people assumed. Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh summoned Stuart to his office to discuss a misplay of the day before. Stuart sauntered in, calling Murtaugh by his first name. Erupting at Stuart’s familiarity, Murtaugh explained that players were to call him “Manager” or “Skip” or “Mr. Murtaugh,” finishing his tirade with “You’re nothing! Remember that! I’m mister and you’re nothing!” Waiting for his point to sink in, Murtaugh said, “Who am I?” Stuart answered, “I guess that you’re the manager of nothing.”2 

The quintessential nonconformist in an era that demanded conformity, Stuart often had a hard time of it with teammates, opponents, the media, and many fans who didn’t think he took the game or anything else seriously enough. To get a glimpse of Stuart’s penchant for individuality, one had only to walk along Grant Street to the now-departed Hotel Carlton House, where the Pirates gathered to take the bus to the airport. Bunched together around their Samsonite luggage would be the Bucs – Groat, Mazeroski, Skinner, Burgess, Virdon, Law, Friend, Face, Hoak, even the somewhat aloof Clemente – a few smoking, all chatting among themselves, wearing dark suits or sport coats with starched white (or the occasional blue or blue-and-white-striped) shirts and dark solid or conservatively patterned ties. Off a fair bit to the side would be Stuart, pure Hollywood, in a white suit with a black shirt opened two or three buttons down, shades, maybe combing his much-attended longish hair, a cigar or cigarette at the ready. Alone, that’s how the scene struck an outsider.

The future slugger was born Richard Lee Stuart on November 7, 1932, in San Francisco of Scots-Irish descent to Roy Tresmour Stuart, an electrical engineer for Pacific Utility, and the former Phyllis Dickerson, who worked in a grocery store.3 He graduated from Sequoia High School, where he played basketball and baseball, in 1951. Soon after graduation, Bob Fontaine of the Pittsburgh Pirates signed him as an amateur free agent.

Stuart’s start with Modesto in the Class-C California League wasn’t auspicious – a .229 batting average with 4 home runs and 31 RBIs in 66 games. His work in the outfield was even less impressive: 9 errors against 91 putouts and 7 assists. He matured enough over the offseason to tear up the Pioneer League (Class C) in Billings, Montana, in 1952, hitting .313 and leading the league in homers (31), RBIs (121), runs (115), hits (161), and total bases (292). Not so impressively, he struck out 99 times.

Shortly after the season ended and just five days before his 20th birthday, Stuart married Diane Mellen. They had a daughter, Debbie Lea, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1957.

Just as the right-handed Stuart seemed to be hitting his stride, and his full growth of 6-feet-4 and 210 pounds, Uncle Sam came calling, and Stu spent the 1953 and 1954 seasons in the peacetime Army – at Fort Lewis (26 home runs) and Fort Ord (24 homers). Coming out of the service in 1955, he might have been a bit rusty or overmatched; short stays in New Orleans (Triple-A American Association) and Mexico City (Double-A Mexican League) yielded a combined 10 hits in 57 at-bats, a home run, 7 RBIs, and 18 strikeouts, garnering him a demotion back to Billings, where in just 101 games he hit .309, led the league with 32 round-trippers, drove in 104 runs, and fanned 109 times. The pattern for Stuart was clear: home run or strikeout, all or nothing, and he seemed content even if no one else was.

Stuart’s work in Billings got him a promotion to Class-A Lincoln, Nebraska, in the Western League. The move was a blessing or a curse, depending on who’s looking at it.

For the third time in his career Stuart spent what amounted to a full season in one place. Each year he led his league in home runs, but he was astounding in 1956. Batting .298, he sent 66 balls out of the park, a league record that was never broken. He also topped the league with 385 total bases and 158 runs driven in. On the flip side, he set another league record that’s never been broken, striking out 171 times, a number that becomes truly ugly when set against his 156 hits. In addition, playing the outfield and first base (where he was moved because he was such a poor outfielder), he committed 30 errors for an abysmal .936 fielding percentage. To make matters worse, Stuart’s homers failed to earn him a call-up to the majors. Stuart maintained that the home runs worked against him, that the number didn’t look real, that he’d have been better off with 30-40 bombs. It seems more likely that his terrible fielding, his all-or-nothing approach to hitting, and his attitude kept him down.4 Whatever the reason, Stuart knew what put his name out front: For the rest of his life, he signed all autographs “Dick Stuart 66.”

The Pirates tried moving Stuart up in 1957, to Hollywood in the open-class Pacific Coast League again. He appeared in 23 games with the Minnesota Twins affiliate in Atlanta, but it didn’t work out as he evenly split 46 games in the two cities with a combined 14 homers and 38 RBIs with a .222 average to go with 63 strikeouts. Back to Lincoln went Stuart, where he played in 97 games, hitting .264 with 117 strikeouts to accompany 31 homers and 84 RBIs. Stuart did one thing to help himself, though not by design. He played for Frank Oceak’s Santiago team in the Dominican Republic Winter League, where he came under the wise tutelage of Hall of Fame first baseman and two-time .400 hitter George Sisler, who helped him reduce his strikeouts and improve his fielding.

His marriage to Diane having dissolved, Stuart moved to Salt Lake City in the newly classed Triple-A Pacific Coast League for the 1958 season. Sisler’s instruction began to pay off as Stuart struck out just 76 times in 80 games. He didn’t lose his hitting stroke, going .311 with 98 hits, 31 homers, and 82 RBIs. Playing exclusively at first base, he even brought his fielding percentage up to .986. He also found time to marry Lois Morano on May 31; they would have two sons, Richard Lee Jr. and Robert Lance.

Seeing Stuart’s numbers and perhaps thinking marriage might have matured him, the Pirates brought him to the majors in July. He made his debut on July 10, getting his first hit, a home run, a two-run shot off Don Elston in the ninth inning of an 8-7 loss to the Cubs in Chicago. He got his second hit the next day, a grand slam off Moe Drabowsky in the fifth, as the Pirates beat the Cubs, 7-2. The year was a mixed bag, as Stuart hit .268 while homering 16 times and driving in 48 runs in only 67 games. On a less positive note, he tied Rookie of the Year Orlando Cepeda (who needed 147 games) with 16 errors to lead the league.

Stuart had nothing like a sophomore slump in 1959; in just 397 at-bats he hit .297 with 27 home runs and 78 RBIs. He was in the majors to stay. The Pirates, for their part, slipped from their surprise second-place finish of 1958, falling to 78-76 and fourth place.

Nobody needs to be reminded about 1960, that magic year. The Pirates win the pennant! The Pirates win the World Series – over the aristocratic, mighty New York Yankees! Stuart contributed with a pair of huge games in June: 5-for-6 in game one of a doubleheader on the 12th in St. Louis with two homers and five RBIs in a 15-3 romp; 4-for-5 against the Giants in the nightcap of a doubleheader on the 30th with three homers and seven RBIs, helping the Pirates win, 11-6. Nevertheless, it was something of a down year for Stuart. His average fell to .260, his home runs to 23, with just 48 runs scored. He drove in 83 runs, but the number has a hollow ring to it. The Series wasn’t much for Stuart, either, with three singles in 20 trips in five games. However, he was in the on-deck circle when Bill Mazeroski according to legend made Mickey Mantle cry and became Pittsburgh’s greatest hero since the French and Indian Wars. Stuart was dreaming of being the hero, as would anybody with a pulse, but he wound up jumping up and down, yelling, backslapping, and hugging along with everybody else.

Stuart had his first breakout season in 1961, with career-high batting and slugging averages of .301 and .581 to go with 35 homers and 117 RBIs. He made the All-Star team, playing in both games and contributing a double in the first. Unfortunately for the Pirates, only Stuart and Roberto Clemente, who hit .351 to earn his first batting title, improved on their performances of 1960. Fresh off their upset of the Yankees, the rest of the Pirates fell flat and finished sixth with a mark of 75-79; it was little comfort that they outscored their opponents. Although Stuart led the league with 121 strikeouts, life looked good, so good that he decided to tweak the noses of the boo-birds by having bumper stickers printed reading “Don’t Boo Stu in ’62.” How could he not feel good about himself? After all, several people noted seriously that he seemed better in the field. Not believing everything said about him, Stuart observed, “People keep telling me my fielding has improved. They didn’t say anything like that before I hit 35 home runs.”5 He also knew the significance of his fine season. Asked if he thought he could hit 61 homers, as had Roger Maris in 1961, Stuart noted that Maris had a short right field in Yankee Stadium while it was a cab ride to the scoreboard in Forbes Field.

Optimism and bumper stickers aside, the 1962 season was an unmitigated disaster for Stuart, made more obvious as the Pirates improved to 93-68 with nearly everybody rebounding from the slump of 1961. Stuart reached career lows, for a full season, in almost every offensive category: 114 games (only 100 started at first base), 90 hits, 11 doubles, 16 homers, 64 RBIs, .228 batting average, .286 on-base percentage, and .398 slugging percentage. Worse, this low point came about in an expansion season, diluted pitching and all engendered by the birth of the Houston Colt .45s (now the Astros) and the New York Mets (losers of 120 games). It got so bad that Stuart had another set of bumper stickers printed: “Don’t boo Stu. He’s due.” It never happened. By season’s end, Stuart and the Pirates had come to the end of the road, and Stuart had still another set of bumper stickers printed: “Free in ’63!”6 That last set came true. On November 20 the Pirates traded Stuart and pitcher Jack Lamabe to the Red Sox for catcher Jim Pagliaroni and pitcher Don Schwall.

Going to Boston was good for both Stuart and the Red Sox, as he had the second outstanding offensive season of his career, leading the American League in RBIs (118) and slugging 42 home runs. Apart from homers and RBIs, he finished third in the league in strikeouts (144) and grounding into double plays (24).

It was in the field, however, that the big guy really left his mark. According to Retrosheet, among American League first basemen Stuart ranked first in games (155), games started (155), complete games (143), innings (1376⅓), putouts (1207), and assists (134). He missed the top only in double plays with a mere 100. It looks like a terrific year, maybe even worthy of a Gold Glove, until one sees 29 errors and a .979 fielding percentage. The errors are the most by any first baseman since 1946, the fielding percentage the lowest over the same period. Particularly interesting about the errors is that Stuart played error-free ball for the first 26 games of the season (from April 9 against the Angels until the first game of a doubleheader against the Angels on May 15). Proving the first game was no fluke, he committed his second one in the nightcap.

Stuart did well in 1964, too, with 33 homers and 114 RBIs to go with his .279 average. He also cut his errors to 24 but still led the American League. For his efforts he was named first baseman on The Sporting News’ American League All-Star Team.

He was also wearing out his welcome in Boston, primarily because of his fielding and his constitutional inability to get along with manager Johnny Pesky. As to his fielding, all one needs to know is that Red Sox reliever Dick “The Monster” Radatz suggested that Stuart’s license plate should be “E-3.” Stuart took Radatz’s suggestion to heart and got a vanity plate. Stuart seemed to have been put on Earth to bedevil Pesky, a good man, a fine ballplayer and hitter, a baseball lifer, and a universally respected and even loved institution in Boston. Radatz told one particularly good story about the two strong-willed individuals: “When John told us one day there were going to be fines for violating curfew – 500 bucks for the first offense, 1,000 for a second – Stuart sat in the back of the clubhouse, and when Pesky asked if there were any questions, Stuart said, ‘John, is this tax-deductible?’”7

To the surprise of no one, the Red Sox traded Stuart to the Phillies for pitcher Dennis Bennett on November 29. Life in Philadelphia was hardly pleasant. Stuart contributed 28 home runs and drove in 95 runs, impressive numbers negated by a .234 average and .287 on-base percentage. He was finished as a full-time player.

On February 22, 1966, the Phillies traded Stuart to the Mets for Jimmie Shaffer, Bobby Klaus, and Wayne Graham, not much for a 95-RBIs guy. In 31 games for the Mets, he hit a miserable .218 with 4 homers, 13 RBIs, and 26 strikeouts. The Mets released Stuart on June 15, and he caught on with the Dodgers on July 5. He got his average up to .264, hit three out of the park, drove in nine runs, and got into two games in the World Series (0-for-2), which the Baltimore Orioles won in a humiliating four-game sweep that included shutouts in the last three games.

With nobody showing interest in him, Stuart moved on to Japan, signing with the Taiyo Whales of the Central League. He started the 1967 season well on April 19, homering in his first at-bat, off rookie southpaw Yutaka Enatsu of the Hanshin Tigers. Enatsu went on to win 206 games and rack up 2,987 strikeouts in 18 seasons. Stuart’s tenure was shorter. He was solid in 1967, hitting .280 with 33 homers (third in the league) and 79 RBIs (tied for third in the league) while leading the league with 100 strikeouts. The next season was a flameout with a .217 average, 16 home runs, and 40 RBIs in 83 games.

Stuart’s two seasons in Japan were hell. The extraordinarily harsh training sessions and grueling practices, even on game days, came as a shock to him and all other Americans who played in Japan. Worse, his nonconformity in a nation and culture that demanded conformity and his often glib, flippant manner, though rarely accompanied by spite or malice, tended to alienate his hosts and employer. As William Ryczek shows clearly, the feeling was mutual, titling his chapter on Stuart’s time in Japan “I Don’t Think I Could Play Here One More Minute.”8

Back in the United States, Stuart had one last fling, signing with the California Angels on April 7, 1969. He could muster only a .157 batting average, 4 RBIs, and his last home run, a solo shot off Tommy John of the White Sox on April 14. Since his first major-league hit in 1958 was a home run, it seems fitting that his first hit of 1969 should also be a homer. The Angels released Stuart on June 3, a week after manager Bill Rigney was fired.

Finished as a major leaguer, Stuart caught on with the Giants’ Triple-A club in Phoenix of the Pacific Coast League. Appearing in 74 games, he hit .244 with 12 homers and 42 RBIs, showing he still had some power, but one must surmise that 22 errors and .966 fielding percentage were intolerable.

For his 10-year career, Dick Stuart hit a respectable .264, belted 228 home runs, drove in 743 runs, and had a solid .489 slugging percentage. He hurt himself with 957 strikeouts against only 301 walks for a meager .316 on-base percentage. His fielding became the stuff of legend. Given the nicknames he earned, it’s safe to conclude that much of the legend is based in fact.

Life after baseball went on for Stuart. He and Lois separated in 1966, divorced in 1967, remarried in 1970, and divorced for good in Stamford, Connecticut, on June 30, 1971.9 He went into finance and enjoyed moderate to considerable success but didn’t devote his full energy to it, spending much of his time taking potential clients to lunch or the golf course. He even felt compelled to joke about his life in the financial world at an affair in his honor in 1981: “I’m in the finance business in New York City. I can’t tell you its name; I’m trying to duck my ex-wife.”10 Presumably not everybody laughed.

Stuart’s last years read like an odyssey of directionless meandering from one thing to another, settling nowhere. Stuart, who craved the spotlight and being the center of attention, essentially became what he feared most – being nobody.

Living “in virtual anonymity,”11 Dick Stuart died of cancer in Redwood City on December 15, 2002. His remains were cremated. He was survived by his daughter Debbie, sons Richard Jr. and Robert, and brother Daryl. To say he was estranged from them is perhaps too strong, but they were not close. Indeed, Daryl had met Debbie but not his nephews.

The life and career of Dick Stuart strike one as a “What If?” story. What if he hadn’t been obsessed with the home run? What if he had learned bat control and plate discipline? What if he had bothered to develop the skills of a complete ballplayer? What if he had learned the game and its nuances? What if he had taken better care of himself? Golf and water skiing are fine, but they don’t offset late nights. What if he had learned the ins and outs of the financial world, the world beyond golf and lunch? What if he hadn’t been so self-absorbed? What if he had taken himself, baseball, and life more seriously? What if others besides Arnold Hano had been perceptive enough and vocal enough to see what might have been the real Dick Stuart? “You listen to this Dick Stuart [who had been comparing himself – and not favorably – to Mickey Mantle, Harmon Killebrew, and Frank Howard], and you wonder why nobody has ever suggested he is an introspective person, for all his popping off, a man with the usual self-doubts?”12 Dick Stuart won’t have the infamous asterisk that almost came to plague Roger Maris before more rational minds took over, but a question mark might not be out of place.

Alone – Dick Stuart.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Len Levin, Bill Nowlin, and Carl Riechers for their close reading, fact-checking, editing, and kindness. They made this article better. It’s been a pleasure to work with them.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author drew on personal recollections.

Statistics are from Baseball-Reference, Retrosheet, Daguerreotypes, and The All-Time Japanese Baseball Register.

Various articles and clippings from Stuart’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

Bauer, Carlos. The All-Time Japanese Baseball Register: The Complete Statistical Record of

All the Great Japanese & American Players. (San Diego and San Marino: Baseball Press

Books, 2000.)

Breslin, Jimmy. “Dick Stuart: Pittsburgh’s Problem and Baseball’s Dilemma,” True: The Man’s

Magazine. September 1959: 40-43, 68, 72-75.

Cope, Myron. “Irrepressible Egotist,” Saturday Evening Post, April 28, 1962: 65-66. 68.

Cushing, Rick. 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates Day by Day: A Special Season. An Extraordinary World

Series (Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc., 2010).

Green, Ernest J. “Minor League Big Guns,” Baseball Research Journal, 24 (1995): 53-57.

Groat, Dick. The World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates (New York: Coward-McCann, 1961).

Harris, Mark. “The Man Who Hits Too Many Home Runs.” Life, September 2, 1957: 85-86,

89-90, 92, 97.

Johnson, Lloyd, and Miles Wolff, eds. The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball. 3rd ed.

(Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, Inc., 2007).

Keene, Kerry. 1960: The Last Pure Season (Champaign, Illinois: Sports Publishing, 2000).

Madarasz, Ann. “Beat ’Em Bucs: The Story of the 1960 Pirates.” Western Pennsylvania

History. Fall 2010: 20-26.

Maraniss, David. Clemente: The Pride and Passion of Baseball’s Last Hero (New York:

Simon & Schuster, 2006).

Moody, John. Kiss It Goodbye: The Mystery, the Mormon, and the Moral of the 1960

Pittsburgh Pirates (Salt Lake City: Shadow Mountain, 2010).

Musial, Stan, with Bob Broeg. “Stan Musial Rates the Big Leaguers,” Sport, June 1964:

20-23, 86-88.

O’Brien, Jim. Fantasy Games: Living the Dream with Maz and the ’60 Bucs (Pittsburgh:

James P. O’Brien, Pub., 2000).

_____. Maz and the ’60 Bucs: When Pittsburgh and the Pirates Went All the Way (Pittsburgh:

James P. O’Brien, 1993).

_____. We Had ’Em All the Way (Pittsburgh: James P. O’Brien-Pub., 1998).

Skornickel, George R. Beat ’Em Bucs: The 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates (Baltimore: Publish America, 2010).

Spoehr, Luther W. “Stuart, Richard Lee, ‘Dick,’ ‘Stu,’ ‘Dr. Strangeglove.’ Biographical

Dictionary of American Sports: Baseball. David L. Porter, ed. Revised and Expanded

Edition. Vol. 3 (Q-Z). (Westport, Connecticut, and London: Greenwood Press, 2000), 1497-1499.

Notes

1 Quoted in “Stuart Ranks Next to Foxx,” by Harold Kaese, Boston Globe, August 16, 1963.

2 Fred Katz, “The Manager of Nothing,” Sport, May 1968: 16.

3 1930 United States Federal Census. Cf. Arnold Hano, “Dick Stuart: Man and Showman,” Sport, June 1964: 60. “He was born Richard Lee Stuart in tiny San Carlos, California, 20 miles below San Francisco, the son of a dry cleaner.” All other sources say he was born in San Francisco. The 1930 Census clearly identifies his father as Roy Tresmour Stuart; it’s possible that he lost his job as an electrical engineer during the Great Depression and was a dry cleaner in 1932.

4 For discussion see Mark Harris, “The Man Who Hits Too Many Home Runs, Life, September 2, 1957: 85-86, 89-90, 92, 97; and Jimmy Breslin, “Dick Stuart: Pittsburgh’s Problem and Baseball’s Dilemma,” True: The Man’s Magazine, September 1959: 40-43, 68, 72-75.

5 William J. Ryczek, Dr. Strangeglove: The Life and Times of All-Star Slugger Dick Stuart (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2021), 170-171.

6 Personal recollection of author.

7 Mike Barnicle, “You could smile at clowns of yore,” Boston Globe, June 29, 1997: B1; summarized in Ryczek, 215, without attribution to Radatz.

8 Ryczek, 266-278, passim.

9 John Gearan, “If He’d Had a Glove On, They’d Have Known Him Instantly,” Worcester (Massachusetts) Telegram, January 23, 1981. Stuart informed Gearan of the dates, noting he and Lois had divorced “late last year [1980] … just before Christmas.” The date of June 30, 1971, is from the Connecticut Divorce Index at Ancestry.com.

10 Gearan.

11 Ryczek, 297.

12 Hano, 63.