It’s been a tough off-season this year with major league baseball losing both a current player and a number of aging former stars and Hall of Famers.  

Add another aged star to the list as former Yanks colorful outfielder, 3 time All Star and former Baltimore Orioles manager Hank Bauer passed away on Saturday of cancer according to a statement issued by the Orioles.  Bauer was 84.

Saturday’s report in the New York Times on Bauer’s passing provides a background on Bauer’s major league baseball career which spanned 14 seasons as a player, the first 12 seasons with the Yankees before being traded to the Kansas City Athletics for the final 2 seasons of his career, having been traded in the deal for which the Yanks acquired Roger Maris.  It also reports on Bauer’s 4 1/2 year managerial career with the Baltimore Orioles, including the Orioles 1966 World Series victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers and a final managerial season in 1969 with the Athletics.  The report also outlines his earlier life including his army service during World War 2.

Bauer joined the Yankees in the closing weeks of the 1948 season, hitting singles in his first three at bats. He then barreled through the next 11 seasons as the Yankees dynasty moved from the Joe DiMaggio era into the Mickey Mantle era. The Yankees won nine American League pennants and seven World Series during his seasons with them. In all, he played 14 years in the major leagues.

Bauer, who had a powerful throwing arm, was named to the American League All-Star team three times, from 1952 to 1954, and compiled a career batting average of .277 with 164 home runs, 57 triples, 229 doubles and 703 runs batted in.

                        

He is remembered for his World Series performances, including a record 17-game hitting streak (1956-58) and a game-saving catch. But one of his finest baseball moments came seven years after the Yankees had traded him so they could acquire Roger Maris.

                            

It was in 1966, when Bauer, now a manager, led the Orioles to their first World Series title, a four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in a contest loaded with future Hall of Famers like Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer of the Orioles and Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale of the Dodgers.

Bauer acknowledged that he was not a natural fielder or hitter, but at a muscular 6 feet and 202 pounds, he played baseball with a fullback’s ferocity. “When Hank came down the base path, the whole earth trembled,” said Johnny Pesky, the shortstop for the Boston Red Sox.

Bauer said: “It’s no fun playing if you don’t make somebody else unhappy. I do everything hard.”

Henry Albert Bauer was born July 31, 1922, in East St. Louis, Ill., where he admired the aggressive style of the St. Louis Cardinals, renowned in the 1930s as the Gashouse Gang. He was the youngest of nine children of an Austrian immigrant who had lost a leg working in an aluminum mill and later made a living as a bartender. A brother described Bauer as “a real dead-end kid who always was going around with a bloody nose.”

As a youngster, he played high school and American Legion baseball. After graduating from high school, he joined a pipe fitters’ union and repaired furnaces in a beer-bottling plant. But in 1941, his brother Herman, who was playing in the Chicago White Sox farm system, arranged a tryout for Hank, who batted and threw right-handed. Hank won an assignment to the Oshkosh team in the Class D Wisconsin State League.

Bauer’s baseball future seemed to recede in January 1942, when he joined the Marines soon after Pearl Harbor. He spent nearly three years of World War II in the South Pacific as a combat platoon leader, sustaining 24 attacks of malaria, receiving shrapnel wounds in his back on Guam and in a thigh on Okinawa, and winning 11 campaign ribbons, 2 Bronze Stars and 2 Purple Hearts.

After the war, he returned to pipe fitting, but a Yankees scout remembered him and signed him to the Yankees’ farm team in Quincy, Ill. Two years later, he was called up to New York at 26.

In the 1951 World Series, which the Yankees took from the New York Giants, 4 games to 2, Bauer almost single-handedly won the sixth and deciding game, hitting a bases-loaded triple and making a diving catch of a line drive for the game’s final out with the tying run on base.

The four home runs Bauer hit in his last Series, in 1958, when the Yankees beat the Milwaukee Braves, 4 games to 3, is the second-highest total in a Series after Reggie Jackson’s five in 1977. (The other players to hit four: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig,  Duke Snider and Gene Tenace.)

With his talents in decline, the Yankees traded Bauer to the Kansas City Athletics in 1959 as part of the Maris deal. In June 1961, he replaced Joe Gordon as manager of the A’s, but after two years of ninth-place finishes in the 10-team league, he quit and moved to the Orioles in 1963 as a coach. He became the manager in 1964. When the Orioles finished third behind the Yankees, he was named A.L. manager of the year.

He earned that honor again in 1966, when he managed the Orioles to a 97-63 record and a World Series sweep of the Dodgers. A pitcher on that Baltimore team, Steve Barber, died Sunday at 67.

Bauer remained with the Orioles until 1968 and spent a final season managing the Athletics in 1969.

Bauer — of whom Mantle once said, “He taught me how to dress, how to talk and how to drink” — also had a role in some Yankees history off the field. In one incident, in 1957, a group of Yankees players, accompanied by their wives, became involved in a confrontation with another group of patrons at the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan. One, a Bronx delicatessen owner, sued Bauer, accusing him of punching him. The man lost the lawsuit after catcher Yogi Berra testified, “Nobody never hit nobody.”

Bauer could be unforgiving, though, if he felt his teammates’ off-the-field activities were hurting the Yankees’ on-the-field performance. Pitcher Whitey Ford remembered how Bauer reacted when he thought players like Ford and Mantle were overindulging themselves after hours: “He pinned me to the wall of the dugout one day and said, ‘Don’t mess with my money.’ ”

Hank Bauer, 07-31-1922 to 02-09-2007

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Associated Press reports for Sports Illustrated that former Braves hurler Lew Burdette, best known for going 3-0 against the Yankees in sparking the then Milwaukee Braves win in the 1957 World Series and for being the winning pitcher in the famous Harvey Haddix extra inning perfect game loss, died Tuesday at age 80 after being ill for an extended period with lung cancer.

Burdette was the second noted former Braves hurler to pass away during this off-season.  In November, this blog reported the passing of Johnny Sain.

Yahoo Sports reports on Burdette’s career;

Burdette’s greatest success came in the 1957 Series when he went 3-0 with an 0.67 ERA while pitching three complete games against the New York Yankees. He capped his performance with a seven-hit shutout in Game 7 at Yankee Stadium, finishing off a run of 24 straight scoreless innings.

“I have a boatload of memories about Lew Burdette,” commissioner Bud Selig told The Associated Press by telephone from Milwaukee, where he grew up rooting for the Braves. “I think what I remember most was that he was a tremendous competitor. He pitched in pain, he pitched to win.”

“Winning that Game 7 at Yankee Stadium, 5-0, Eddie Mathews fielding Moose Skowron’s smash and stepping on third base for the final out. What a day that was,” he said. “I kept in touch with him. He came back here quite a lot. The last time I saw him was at Warren Spahn’s funeral.”

Burdette started his career with the Yankees and was traded to the Boston Braves for Johnny Sain during the 1951 season. He also spent time with the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia Phillies and California.

The righty led the NL with 21 wins in 1959, ERA (2.70) in 1956 and twice led the league in shutouts. He pitched a no-hitter against the Phillies on Aug. 18, 1960, and was the winning pitcher in a famous game in which Harvey Haddix lost a perfect game in the 13th inning — Burdette went all 13 innings for the victory.

Born Selva Lewis Burdette Jr. in Nitro, W.Va., he was called both “Lew” and “Lou.” He was 179-120 in 13 seasons for the Braves. He was Atlanta’s pitching coach in 1972-73.

Burdette went 17-9 in 1957, then took over the Series. He beat the Yankees 4-2 in Game 2 and outpitched Whitey Ford for a 1-0 victory in Game 5. Burdette came three days later to clinch the title.

He was 20-10 in 1958, again teaming with Spahn to pitch the Braves into the World Series against the Yankees. Burdette homered and won Game 2 but, with chances to close out the championship, lost Game 5 and again in Game 7. The teams were tied at 2 in the eighth inning of the final game, but Skowron’s three-run homer helped New York pull away.

Burdette hit 12 home runs, including two off Sandy Koufax. The Braves star especially enjoyed swinging at the Coliseum, where the Dodgers played from 1958-61. The reconfigured football stadium featured a left-field pole about 250 feet from home plate, along with a screen more than 40 feet high.

Burdette hit half of his career homers at the Coliseum, and lofted a fly ball over the screen for his only grand slam as part of two-homer, five-RBI game against the Dodgers in 1958.

Baseball Library recounts that after coming to the then Boston Braves in the trade for Johnny Sain who had previously been part of a great pitching tandem with Warren Spahn, Burdette joined Spahn to form another great tandem which was to propel the Braves to back-to-back World Series appearances in 1957 and 1958.

Spahn and righthander Burdette gave the Braves a formidable one-two punch, with 443 victories between them in 13 seasons. A slider and sinkerball pitcher, Burdette was widely accused of throwing a spitball as well. His constant fidgeting on the mound fed that suspicion; it didn’t indicate nervousness. Teammate Gene Conley said, “Lew had ice water in his veins. Nothing bothered him, on or off the mound. He was a chatterbox out there … He would talk to himself, to the batter, the umpire, and sometimes even to the ball.”

Baseball Library indicates that Burdette was not exactly modest as to his talents and that in the winter following the great duel with Haddix;

The puckish Burdette asked for a $10,000 raise, explaining: “I’m the greatest pitcher that ever lived. The greatest game that was ever pitched in baseball wasn’t good enough to beat me, so I’ve got to be the greatest!”

Yahoo Sports writes further;

Burdette was survived by his wife, Mary Ann; son Lewis; daughters Madge, Mary Lou Burdette-Wieloszynski and Elaina Fontana; a brother, a sister, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

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Former Baltimore Orioles lefthander Steve Barber passed away at age 67 on Monday of complications from pneumonia according to an announcement on Monday by the Orioles. 

Barber is the second former Orioles hurler to have passed away in the off-season.  In late November, 2006, it was reported that Pat Dobson passed away after being diagnosed with leukemia.

The two pitchers were from different periods of Oriole history, with
Barber being the first pitcher in Oriole history to win 20 games, having his best year in the majors going 20-13 with a 2.75 ERA in 1963.

Barber won 10 or more games in 5 of his 7 seasons with the Orioles, and in 6 of his first 8 years in the majors including going 10-5 on the 1966 staff that led the Birds to their first World Seriers triumph, to a 4-0 sweep of the  L.A. Dodgers.  Barber was on the same Orioles staff with Jim Palmer and  Dave McNally who would later be part of that great 1971 Orioles staff with Dobson and Mike Cuellar.

Associated Press reports on ESPN about Barber’s 14 year major league career;

A two-time All-Star and a member of the Orioles’ Hall of Fame, Barber was 121-106 with a 3.36 ERA from 1960-74. The lefty spent the first half of his career with the Orioles and was traded to the New York Yankees in July 1967. He later pitched for the Seattle Pilots, the Chicago Cubs, the Atlanta Braves, the California Angels and the San Francisco Giants.

Barber started out the 1967 season in impressive fashion, holding the Angels hitless before Jim Fregosi doubled with one out in the ninth inning. Two weeks later, however, Barber pitched his most memorable game.

The AP story ESPN recounts that Barber was the losing pitcher in one of the wildest no-hitters in baseball history;

Facing Detroit in the first game of a doubleheader at old Memorial Stadium, Barber took a no-hit bid and a 1-0 lead into the ninth inning despite severe bouts of wildness.

Barber walked the first two batters in the ninth, then retired the next two hitters. But he threw a wild pitch that let the tying run score and, after yet another walk, was pulled from the game.

Stu Miller relieved, and the Tigers scored the go-ahead run on an error. The Tigers wound up winning 2-1 despite getting no hits. Barber’s line that afternoon: 8 2/3 innings, 10 walks, two hit batters, a wild pitch and a throwing error.

This blog also recorded Barber’s memorable no-hit loss.

The AP report continues; 

A hard-thrower, Barber led the majors in walks and also topped the AL in wild pitches as a rookie. The next year, in 1961, he pitched eight shutouts and tied for the major league lead with Camilo Pascual.

Born in Takoma Park, Md., Barber signed with the Orioles when he was 18. Barber spent three seasons in Class D ball before jumping to the majors in 1960 as was part of the “Baby Birds” staff that included Milt Pappas, Jack Fisher and  Chuck Estrada, all of them in their early 20s.

Barber was 28 when the Orioles won their first World Series with a whole new staff of aces in their early 20s — Jim Palmer, Dave McNally and Wally Bunker.

In 7½ years with the Orioles, he went 95-75 with a 3.12 ERA in 253 games. Overall, he pitched 1,999 innings in the big leagues.

Survivors include his wife, Patricia; his son, Steve Barber Jr. of Ellicott City, Md.; three daughters, Tracy Barber of South Carolina, Danielle Ehlert of Wisconsin, Kelly McCarthy of North Carolina, and a brother, Richard Barber of Ellicott City, Md.

The Orioles said the funeral would be private and that plans for a memorial service were incomplete Monday.

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MLB reports on it’s “History of the Game” page that on January 28, 1958, Brooklyn Dodgers catching star Roy Campanella suffered a broken neck and a damaged spinal chord in an early morning car accident.  Baseball Library shows a one day descrepancy, reporting that the accident occured on January 29th.

Campanella played 10 years for the Brooklyn Dodgers, having made the team after 2 years in the minors.  Campy’s debut with the Dodgers was on April 20, 1948.  He went on to play 83 games for the Dodgers in 1948 before becoming the Dodgers starting catcher in 1949 where he starred for the next 9 years, being an important cog in 4 Dodger pennants and Brooklyn’s lone World Championship in 1955, until the paralyzing injuries he sustained in the accident ended his baseball career.

Baseball Library writes this about Campanella;

For the next nine years, he caught for outstanding Brooklyn teams whose members have been lionized as “The Boys of Summer.” They won National League pennants in 1949,  1952, 1953, 1955, and 1956, narrowly missed two others, and climaxed Brooklyn’s baseball history with its only World Series triumph in 1955. Campanella’s contributions to the Dodgers were remarkable. He won the MVP award three times in five years. In 1953, his best season, he batted .312, and scored 103 runs. Also, his 142 RBI (which led the league) and 41 HR set ML records for catchers (plus one HR as a pinch-hitter). He fielded with grace that belied his physique and handled with distinction a predominantly white pitching staff.

Like those of many catchers, Campanella’s career was punctuated by injuries. In spring training of 1954, he chipped a bone in the heel of his left hand and damaged a nerve. It affected his hitting and limited him to 111 games. Surgery helped in 1955, but the problem returned the next year.

                          

In January 1958, Campanella was permanently disabled in an automobile accident. Returning home from his liquor store, which he ran in the off-season, he lost control of his car on an icy street. The car slammed into a telephone pole and flipped over, pinning him behind the steering wheel. The crash fractured his fifth cervical vertebra and damaged his spinal cord. He survived and endured years of therapy, living far beyond the normal span for quadriplegics, but his career was over. He committed himself to decades of work in community relations for the Dodgers.  (SG)

Highlights of Roy Campanella’s career can be viewed here.

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Lowell Reidenbaugh, former Managing Editor of The Sporting News magazine from from 1958 to 1979 who propelled the magazine to a status of the “Bible of Baseball” during his tenure passed away Saturday in St. Louis at 87 years of age.

Did numerous internet seaches on Reidenbaugh, including The Sporting News site, Wikipedia, Baseball Library and Baseball Almanac and found nothing on Reidenbaugh or his contributions to baseball journalism other than a listing of his various books on baseball, sports and histories of Civil War-time Virginia Infantry Units on Google.  There is not even one picture of Lowell Reidenbaugh on a Google image search.  The internet has given short shrift to one of the true pioneers of baseball journalism whose tenure as managing editor of The Sporting News made a great impact on reporting on the game and recounting it’s history.

Dick Kaegel of MLB.com writes about Reidenbaugh;

Reidenbaugh commanded an extensive corps of correspondents throughout the country as managing editor from 1958 to 1979. A tireless editor, he was known as a knowledgable and extremely talented journalist.

Before he retired in 1989, he was senior editor and corporate editor and wrote books, including a history of The Sporting News dating to 1886.

Born Sept. 7, 1919, in Lititz, Pa., he grew up in the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch country. He graduated from Elizabethtown (Pa.) College in 1941. After Army service in World War II, he began his journalism career with the Lancaster (Pa.) Intelligencer-Journal and then joined the sports staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1946. He accepted an invitation from J.G. Taylor Spink to join The Sporting News in 1947.

In addition to his baseball expertise, Reidenbaugh was a national authority on Confederate campaigns in the Civil War, particularly those involving Stonewall Jackson.

Reidenbaugh will be buried on Wednesday at Forever Oak Hill Cemetery in Kirkwood, Mo.

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Former pitching coach Vern Ruhle succumbed to the cancer which caused him to miss half of the 2006 season as pitching coach for the Cincinnati Reds.

I remember Ruhle’s pitching days, particularly his best over-all season, 1980 as part of the pitching staff of the Houston Astros who faced the  Phillies in perhaps the greatest National League Championship Series ever played.  That year, Ruhle finished with a 12-4 mark with 6 complete games, a 2.31 ERA with 159 1/3 innings pitched.  He was on that staff of Joe Niekro who went 20-12, J.R. Richard, Nolan Ryan and included fine relievers Joe Sambito and Dave Smith.

Mark Sheldon of MLB.com gives further background on Ruhle’s battle with cancer and his Major League career;

Pitching coach Vern Ruhle, who missed the 2006 season while being treated for cancer, lost his battle and died on Saturday night.

Ruhle was five days shy of his 56th birthday. The former Major League pitcher passed away at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston of complications from a donor stem cell transplant for the treatment of multiple myeloma.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete. Ruhle is survived by his wife Sue, daughter Rebecca and son Kenny.

“It’s something you never want to hear,” Reds manager Jerry Narron said from his home in North Carolina. “I know Sue has been with him the entire time. My thoughts and prayers are with his entire family.”

Ruhle pitched for the Tigers, Astros, Indians and Angels from 1974-86 and was 67-88 with a 3.73 ERA. From 1997-2003, he was a pitching coach for the Astros, Phillies and Mets, and he joined the Reds organization in 2004 as a pitching coach with rookie level Billings. Ruhle was promoted to Minor League pitching coordinator before the 2005 season.

On June 21, 2005, after manager Dave Miley and pitching coach Don Gullett were dismissed, Ruhle became the Reds’ pitching coach on Narron’s staff.

For the 2007 season, Ruhle had been reassigned to work as the organization’s pitching rehabilitation coordinator at its Minor League complex in Sarasota, Fla.

“Last year at this time, he was [at the camp] with guys coming in early,” Narron said. “I thought it was great how hard he wanted to work. He gave his heart and attention to each of the pitchers. He’ll definitely be missed.”

Last February, doctors discovered Ruhle had cancer after he underwent his annual physical at the start of Spring Training. After he took a leave of absence from the team, he spent the summer splitting time between his home in Sarasota and the hospital in Houston while bullpen coach Tom Hume assumed pitching coach duties on an interim basis.

In August, Ruhle was able to rejoin the club for some home games after he was informed by doctors during a checkup that he was showing improvement.

Reds reliever Todd Coffey worked with Ruhle at both the Minor and Major League levels.

“We definitely always got along,” Coffey said from his home, also in North Carolina. “I was so happy to see him near the end of the season. I thought he was over the hump. I hate that he passed away, but maybe now he won’t be in pain. He was a great pitching coach and a great man. The organization, we lost a good person.”

While he underwent cancer treatments last spring and summer, the risk of infection kept Ruhle confined to his hospital bed for three months. But during that difficult time, it was baseball that helped keep him upbeat. Ruhle monitored games over the Internet and on television, and he regularly received phone calls and e-mails from the coaching staff, especially Hume.

“[Baseball] was something that really helped me throughout the summer in the healing process,” Ruhle said on Aug. 18. “I always had something to talk about that was very neutral in the eyes of the doctors, the nurses and the visitors. We could always talk about something other than my medical aspect of what’s going on and what was and wasn’t working.”

General manager Wayne Krivsky had been with the Reds less than a month when Ruhle was diagnosed. But Krivsky was impressed with the coach’s dedication to the organization.

“Everybody is really saddened by the loss of Vern,” Krivsky said. “He was very committed to the Reds. I didn’t know him very well, but I got to know him over the past year. He gave it his all to make the Reds better. My heart goes out to his family and to Sue.”

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