Dick Schattinger and the Summer of ’42 (Page 3)

With the summer drawing to a close, Dick was bid adieu by the Braves along with an entreaty to keep the team posted on his draft classification.  He returned to California to enroll in UCLA where he

With the summer drawing to a close, Dick was bid adieu by the Braves along with an entreaty to keep the team posted on his draft classification.  He returned to California to enroll in UCLA where he earned a varsity letter and was regarded as the college’s outstanding freshman ballplayer.  Along with many others of America‘s “greatest generation,” Dick put civilian life aside to serve his country, enlisting in the U.S. Navy in 1943.  While repairing naval aircraft in the New Hebrides, the Solomons and the Philippines, he also managed to play a little second base at some of the jerry-rigged diamonds in the Pacific theater.  Upon his release from military service in the spring of 1946, Dick shook off the baseball rust by joining the semi-pro southern California Cincinnati Reds Juniors, led by future California Angels manager Harold “Lefty” Phillips.  There, he attracted the attention of Pirates’ scout Babe Herman who inked him to his “second” professional contract.  Although a self-professed “good field