Posted on 12/13/2015 1:07:31 PM PST by EveningStar
The following piece was originally published in the March, 1958 issue of True, and is excerpted from The Top of His Game, a collection of W.C. Heinz's best sportswriting. It is reprinted here with permission from Gayl Heinz.
Maybe Pete Reiser was the purest ballplayer of all time. I don't know. There is no exact way of measuring such a thing, but when a man of incomparable skills, with full knowledge of what he is doing, destroys those skills and puts his life on the line in the pursuit of his endeavor as no other man in his game ever has, perhaps he is the truest of them all ...
In two and a half years in the minors, three seasons of Army ball, and 10 years in the majors, Pete Reiser was carried off the field 11 times. Nine times he regained consciousness either in the clubhouse or in the hospital. He broke a bone in his right elbow, throwing. He broke both ankles, tore a cartilage in his left knee, ripped the muscles in his left leg, sliding. Seven times he crashed into outfield walls, dislocating his left shoulder, breaking his right collarbone, and, five times, ending up in an unconscious heap on the ground. Twice he was beaned, and the few who remember still wonder today how great he might have been ...
(Excerpt) Read more at thestacks.deadspin.com ...
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I got to talk to Reiser when he was third base coach for the Cubs. A fine gentleman who might have been one of the greats but for all of the injuries.
I used to see Pete on the El train platform after the games. This was back when he was coaching for Leo.
That was in 1958, when Pete was 39. I used to see him about ten years later, when he was coaching for the Cubs. He'd be waiting on the El platform after the games, and he was fat and a chain-smoker. It was kind of sad.
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Reiser was in a position to know---he lived in St. Louis in the offseason at the time.
I kept hearing rumours that the owner of the Browns, Don Barnes, was running around St. Louis trying to raise the three million dollars. The banks wanted to know what he wanted the money for. He told them, “Iâ€m buying the Dodger ballclub for St. Louis.†They all thought he was out of his mind.I don’t know if MacPhail really would have gone through with it, but can you imagine what would have happened in Brooklyn if the St. Louis Browns players all had turned up there one day wearing Dodger uniforms?
---Reiser, to Peter Golenbock, for Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Here's a great story about W.C. Heinz, by the way:
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