Posted on 05/01/2018 8:42:39 AM PDT by fugazi
Noteworthy events in baseball history by players that served in the military
On this day in 1912, University of Michigan freshman picher George Sisler strikes out an incredible 20 batters in seven innings. Sisler will go on to serve in a chemical weapons unit commanded by Branch Rickey during World War I before an outstanding 15-year Hall of Fame career.
1951: Minnie Minoso – the first black White Sox player – hits a home run off the New York Yankee’s Vic Raschi in his first major league at bat. Raschi, who served as a physical trainer for the Army Air Force during World War II before winning 21 games three years in a row and winning six World Series, will also allow Hank Aaron’s first major league home run three years later.
In the same game, Chicago right hander Randy Gumpert (who served in the Coast Guard during World War II) watches as rookie Mickey Mantle sends his pitch sailing over the wall – the Mick’s first major league home run. Although Mantle wanted to serve in the military, an old high school football injury prevented him from joining.
Bob Feller, who served aboard the battleship USS Alabama during World War II, throws his record-setting 12th one-hitter as the Cleveland Indians shut out the Red Sox 2-0 on this day in...
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
1951 was Mantle’s rookie year and DiMaggio’s last year.
The first game I ever went to was at Yankee Stadium in 1962. I saw the Yankees beat the Kansas City Athletics 9-8. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris both hit home runs. What a game.
Picture perfect swing. Raw power. Nine of the foolish Charlie Lau theory of hitting.
According to the Wall Street Journal review of a new book about Mantle (”A Season in the Sun”), “Joltin’ Joe praised him to reporters but dismissed him as a ‘rockhead.’ “
Then in the ‘51 World Series, Mantle did the damage to his knee which plagued him ever after, when he caught his spikes on a drain cover trying to avoid DiMaggio chasing a ball in right-center.
As a kid growing up in the 50s, my Dad took me to a lot of KC Athletics games and we saw Yankee greats and White Sox greats on their visits. Casey Stengel grew up in Kansas City so when he visited managing the Yankees the news media would really let him ham it up on the radio before and after games. Mantle was from the tri-state area around Joplin so he was almost a home town type of guy as well.
Quote in post #6 should’ve read “dismissed him to intimates.”
I.e., Joe praised Mantle in public and slammed him in private.
Hot dogs at the concession stand and on the field (Vic Power).
One of his former Yankee managers described a typical scene before a game -- one that he never saw with any other player in his managing career. Opposing players would crowd around the cage to watch him during batting practice.
The silliness started when Charlie Finley bought them. At first he was pretty popular. Later, it got to be too much.
Then when he moved them to Oakland, he became the most unpopular person in KC history.
They were Bill James’s boyhood team as well. He’s written that just when it seemed like they were going to get good (Campy, Catfish), they moved away.
I liked Norm Siebern, but to get him they had to give up Roger Maris!
Then they traded Siebern for Jim Gentile, and it turned out that both Siebern and Gentile were over the hill, but Gentile did have a good year for them in ‘64.
In those days the Maris family lived in KC as did a lot of baseball families. Many of them stayed in the east side of Jackson County or in Leawood even after they moved to other teams.
I have a friend whose wife and her family lived on the same block with a number of those old baseball legends and she grew up babysitting their kids. She still goes up to the Dakotas to help run the Roger Maris golf tourney.
The Owner before Finley, Arnold Johnson, who bought the team from Connie Mack, was secretly using his KC team to support and act as a major league farm team for the NY Yankees.
This was so well known that Finley was looked on as a hero initially for cutting that tie.
Roger Maris seems to have been a very grounded, down-to-earth person. I’m glad to hear the family ties persist.
Bill James relates that in the off-season following the 61 homers and fame, Maris would still get up every morning and go help his friend Whitey Herzog build Herzog’s house.
I think it’s clear that from a personal standpoint, Maris would’ve been a far better fit in Kansas City than New York.
Interesting about Arnold Johnson.
Like the A’s/Yankees, hockey’s St. Louis Blues were essentially a farm team for the Chicago Blackhawks.
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