Posts Tagged ‘Houston Buffs’

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“Little Joe” Presko: The Vertically Variable Buff!

September 11, 2009

Joe Presko 001 “Little Joe” Presko didn’t have much trouble with his height while he was toiling in vain as a righhanded starting pitcher for the hapless 1950 Houston Buffs. The Buffs made it all the way to the Texas League cellar that year in spite of people like “Little Joe” and his 16-16 record with the 3.14 ERA. Joe also hit with some authority for the ’50 Buffs, slamming 3 HR on the season, a rare feat for any Houston pitcher back in the day. All the while he was here, however, Presko’s reported height and weight  stood firm at a constantly reported 5’9″ and 165 lbs.  Iconic Buffs radio announcer Loel Passe even called him “Little Joe” – and that description sure worked for me. At age 12 during the 1950 season, I noticed that Presko was one of the few Buffs who stood barely taller than me. I only reached 5’11” at full growth, eventually, but I achieved most of that height very early.

By the time Joe Presko reached the big leagues in 1951, we started reading these occasional reports from national and St. Louis sources that he was six feet tall. I had to wonder a little in private amusement over these reports if major league baseball really did bring about that kind of three-inch growth spurt in a man who was due to turn 23 on October 7, 1951? I don’t know. Baseball Almanac continues to report 6’0″ as Joe Presko’s height while other Internet sites list him variably at 5’9″ or 5’10”.

Regardless of the height mystery, the true baseball measurement of Joe Presko was about his ability as a cool and steady little pitcher who handled game pressure with an ability to pitch smart with finesse. Over the course of six years and 390.2 innings pitched in the big leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals (1951-54)  and Detroit Tigers ((1957-58), Presko only struck out 202 batters, but he also only walked 188.

Signed by the Cardinals at age 19 out of his Kansas City, Missouri home town, Presko complied a 16-8, 2.70 ERA record for Class C St. Joseph in 1948. He followed that good work with a 14-9, 3.18 ERA mark with the 1949 Class A Omaha team. That background brought Joe Presko to Class AA Houston for the 1950 season.

Joe Presko 004Presko enjoyed his best season in the big leagues in his rookie 1951 year. He won 7, lost 4, and posted a 3.45 ERA over 12 starts and 3 relief jobs. In his four seasons with the Cardinals, he won 24 and lost 36. His two seasons with Detroit would later add only one win and one loss to his career MLB record.

Joe Presko 003 Joe Presko pitched one more minor league season following his last year as a major leaguer with the 1958 Tigers. He pitched for two AAA clubs in that 1959 season. He was 4-5 at Charleston and 0-3 at Toronto.

After baseball, Joe Presko returned to Kansas City. He stayed close to baseball for years there as a coach in the American Legion baseball program. Future big league pitching star David Cone was one of the kids that Joe Presko coached in Legion ball.

Litte Joe Presko will be 81 in less than a month. As an old fan from his 1950 Houston season, I just want to say this much: “Joe, the real long and short of it is this. – Your abilities were good enough to buy you six years in the big leagues. That’s more major league time than most aspiring ballplayers ever see. I also want to add this thought from the still vivid  memory of your once 12-year old fan. – Thanks for making the 1950 Buff season a little less painful. Whenever you took the mound at Buff Stadium, we Buff fans, at least, knew that we had a chance to win. Hope you are well – and Godspeed to you and yours!”

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George Payne: An Oldie But Goodie!

September 10, 2009

George PayneHB 001 DIZZY DEAN The great 1931 Houston Buffs will always be remembered as the club that served as Dizzy Dean’s showcase and launching pad to his Hall of Famous baseball career with the fabulous Gashouse Gang, the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals. Dean (far left) posted a 26-10 record with a lights out 1.57 ERA with the ’31 Buffs.

Far fewer, if any, fans remember another fellow who picthed pretty well for the ’31 Buffs, a guy who went by the name of George Payne (shown at the far right in the White Sox uniform). All George Payne did for the ’31 Buffs was rack up a 23-13 record with a 2.75 ERA. So, based alone upon what the stats alone tell us, what’s the big difference between the famous Dean and the forgotten Payne? Not much.

If we look closer at the papers from that era, we won’t have to look far to find all the ink that writers were giving to young Dizzy Dean’s incredible stuff and his brassy attitude about all the great things we was going to accomplish in baseball – and all of this praise and braggadocio was flowing about and from a guy was still only 21 (DOB: 01-16-10) when the Buffs wrapped up the ’31 season.

The 5’11’, 172 lb. righthanded George Payne, by contrast, was 42 years old (DOB: 05-23-89 in Mount Vernon, Kentucky) by the time the 1931 season concluded. In fact, everything George Washington Payne accomplished in the minor leagues were all done as an older player. Why he got such a late start, I have no idea without conducting further research.

My minor league records here at home only go back consistently to 1922. As a result, I’d have to do further external source study to be able to even tell you exactly when Payne started his minor league baseball career. I do know that he broke into the big leagues for his only exposure at that level on May 8, 1920, just fifteen days prior to his 31st birthday. He pitched only 29.3 innings in relief for the ’20 White Sox, compiling a season/MLB personal record of 1-1, with a 5.46 ERA.

My records next pick up George Payne as a pitcher for Class A Little Rock in 1922, where he compilds a mediocre record of 5-6, with a 4.36 ERA.  Over the next eight seasons, however, Payne is in double digits for the win column every time, reaching twenty-plus wins in half of those years. A 28-12 record with Wichita Falls in 1929 eventually lands Payne with Houston in 1930, via a short early stay in the spring with Indianapolis. George Payne went 13-10, with a 3.51 ERA, for the ’30 Buffs. Following his 23-win year in 1931, Payne worked three more years for Houston (1932-34), winning 18, 19, and 13 games. He won 15 and lost 7 for his last double digit win year at Class C Sringfield in 1935. After laying out during the 1936 season, Payne returned for eight more wins over three final years in the lower minors (1937-38, 1940) before hanging ’em up for good at age 51.

George Payne passed away on January 24, 1959 at his hometown of Bellflower, California. He was 70 years old and deserving of respect and some acknowledgement for his accomplishments as a pretty fair country minor league pitcher back in the 1920s and 1930s. He must’ve had some good stuff, but I can’t begin to tell you what he threw or how good he was on pitch command. I just know that he ended up with a pretty impressive bottom line in the win/loss columns. As for being there, I wasn’t. Even I’m not old enough to have been an eyewitness to the 1931 Texas League Champion Houston Buffs.

If you’re a baseball fan, nevertheless, and you’ve never heard of George Payne prior to today, your memory of his name and the accomplishments listed here will do fine. In fact, it will produce more recognition justice for George Payne than the wall of baseball  history has given to him up til now.

ADDENDUM FROM A VALUED CONTRIBUTOR: Tony Cavender, a good frriend and fellow member of the Larry Dierker Chapter of SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) sent me an article response e-mail that contained information that really neeeds to be added to the George Payne story. – First, I want to say to Tony, and all others, any time you have something to contribute to any of my articles, go ahead and add it as a comment in the section that follows each post. It will be most welcomed!

Here’s what Ton Cavender wanted us to further know about George Payne, based upon data available at the SABR website:

“George Payne won 348 games in the minors, and collected 307 hits in his long minor league career.  He was able to play through the Depression, which must have been a motivator.  I’ll bet that Casey Stengel encountered a lot of guys like this when he started playing ball for Kankakee.”

Thanks, Tony!

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Octavio Rubert: A Cubano Cut Above Most Others Today!

September 9, 2009

octavio rubertBy the time the young man from Sancti Spiritus, Cuba arrived here  in 1951 as a member of the Houston Buffs pitching staff, the 26 year old righthander was already drawing favorable comparisons to the  great big league Cuban hurler of the 1920s, Adolfo Luque of the Cincinnati Reds. Rubert had stormed onto the scene in 1946, going 13-6 with a 1.72 ERA for  the Class C West Palm Beach club. – He then bettered that mark with the same team in 1947 by pumping his record up to 23-12 1ith a 1.76 ERA.  Want more? Rubert went over to Class C Tampa in 1948 and pulled off a 22-7 record with a 2.11 ERA.

The next three seasons sometimes happen to international players who pitch twelve months a year. Rubert spent most of his winters pitching well for Almendares in his native Cuba, but that also meant that his arm also tired or experienced injury that briefly limited his state side service during “our” baseball season. After going only 2-0 consecutively as a reliever in limited action for the AAA Rochester Redwings in 1948-49, Rubert moved down to Houston after the season was underway in 1949 to go 3-10 with a 4.68 ERA for the AA Buffs. Based on his 10.13 ERA at Rochester in 1949, I’d say this move was more of a “find his right level” transfer than it was due to any arm problems. Still, he had to be tired. At age 24, he’d been pitching all year over the course of his enire walking, breathing, ballplaying life.

Octavio found his level in 1950, going 17-8 with a 3.07 ERA for Class A Omaha – and stirring the anticipation of his return to the Buffs in 1951. He did not disappoint.

Rubert posted a 19-5, 2.28 ERA for the “blow ’em all away” 19651 Texas League Champion Houston Buffs, second only in wins to Al Papai at 23-9, 2.44 ERA mark. It was a starting rotation that also included Vinegar Bend Mizell (16-14, 1.96), Freddy Martin (15-11, 2.55), and spot starter/reliever Mike Clark (10-7, 2.78) Throw in the big support bats of first basemann Jerry WItte (38 HR) and Larry Miggins (28 HR) and you walk over to the competition oven with most of the marinated ingredients for a championship year in the Texas League. – And, of yeah, and let’s not forget third baseman Eddie Kazak (.304) and knuckleballing reliever Dick Bokelmann (10-2, 0.73 ERA) for a little extra spice.

Mike Clark That’s “Black Mike” Clark and the bust of Eddie Kazak showing up in this cropping from a team photo – and they were just two of the guys who helped Octavio Rubert and the ’51 Buffs make their day in the baseball sun a mostly happy one. The party was only spoiled by Houston’s six-game loss to Birmingham in the Dixie Series. Our excuse? A mysterious stomach illness hospitalized Vinegar Bend Mizell and made him unavailable for the Buffs’ Series cause at crunch time.

Octavio Rubert had good stuff and good command, but he never got to pitch in the big leagues, probably for the ususal reasons – an  abundant supply of options controlled completely by the clubs through the reserve clause and a baseball cultural attitude of the time  that predominantly played out by the clubs as “we’ll use the guys who eventually are good, strong, and ucky enough to not get hurt trying too hard.” Survival of the fittest, and the luckiest, was the rule.

Octavio Rubert ran out of steam and luck after 1951. He became a hittable pitcher. He won only 22 more minor league games over the next four seasons and was out of baseball after 1955. Years later, his native country still celebrated his home cooking days. Octavio Rubert was admitted to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997.

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My Greatest Buff Stadium Memory: 1951.

September 4, 2009

NYY@HOU 51 Sunday, April 8, 1951 was the date of the most memorable game I ever watched at old Buff Stadium – and it didn’t even count in the standings. It didn’t have to count, except in the heart of play we witnessed that day – and in the pictures it imprinted upon the minds of the record crowd of 13,963 fans who attended that hot and sunny spring afternoon exhbition game.

I was only 13 at the time, but I was already seriously interested in photography. Unfortunately, I never had the money needed to pay for film and development of my pictures down at Mading’s Drug Store. Had I been able to spring for those costs back then, I would be showing you the pictures I took with the family’s Kodak Brownie box camera – not just trying to tell you about the images that remain on my soul-mind’s eye to this day, some fifty-eight years later.

First let me offer some perspective on where these pictures were taken.

Because my dad felt we wouldn’t need to buy tickets in advance, he, my kid brother John, my best friend Billy Sanders, and I all ended up standing behind the section of left center field that had been roped off for all of the other SRO fans who thought like my dad, but that turned out to be way more than just OK. First of all, we caught space on a section that was directly on the rope in the front row. There were four or five rows of other fans standing behind us. My dad was only 5’6″ and the rest of us were kids. We’d have been lost any further back, but that’s not how it happened. Next, and most importantly, we were standing no more than about ninety feet away from Joe DiMaggio in center field, to our left – and Gene Woodling in left field, to our right. They were wearing their blousy gray road uniforms with the words “NEW YORK” arching in dark letters across the breast plates of their jerseys. I don’t have a physical picture of DiMaggio wearing his road uniform that day, but I’ll never forget the one that plays on forever in my mind. DiMaggio was as graceful as the writers always described him in The Sporting News.

DIMAGGIO JOE 001I watched every single nuanced thing DiMaggio did in the field – and I loved it when he had to run over near us for a fly ball. He was close enough for us to hear the ball pop leather on the catch many times. I even thought we made eye contact once.

I watched the way Joe DiMaggio leaned in from center field prior to each pitch, getting some kind of instinctual/visual/baseball savvy gauge on which way he needed to lean in anticipation of a batted ball. Sometimes I would lean in with him and close my right eye. That closed eye blocked out my sight of Woodling and allowed me to pretend my way into the left field spot next to the great DiMaggio. And why not? There was a kid that was only five years older than me playing over in right field that day – an eighteen year old “phenom” from Oklahoma named Mickey Mantle. He was catching all the ink back then as the logical successor to Joe DiMaggio on the Yankee rosary chain of greatness.

Before the day was done, we would hear much more from both Mantle and DiMaggio. Mickey got the Yankees on the board for their first three runs by slamming a home run over our heads and over the double deck wall in left field in the fifth inning. Mantle nailed it off Buffs lefty starter Pete Mazar. Mantle’s blow almost swallowed the entire 4-0 Buff lead and with it, the player/fan delusion that the Buffs might actually defeat the World Champions that afternoon.

Not to be.

After Mantle’s reality blow landed, everybody else in the Yankees lineup began to hit Houston pitching awfully hard. We could have injured our necks watching balls fly over and into the walls that stood behind us that day. Joe DiMaggio also later homered with one on  in the ninth off  Buff reliever Lou Ciola.

buff Stadium 03

Wierd! And I learned about this later from dear friend and former slugger Jerry Witte. – After Joe DiMaggio’s top of the 9th inning homer, he sent the same home run bat over to the Buffs’ Jerry Witte as delivery on a promised gift. – Jerry Witte then immediately used it to hit a three-run homer to left for Houston in the bottom of the ninth. This may have been the only time in history, at least, at this level of professional baseball competition, that players from different teams have used the same physical bat to homer in the same inning of the same game they were playing against each other.

Mickey Mantle

Franks Shofner and Russell Rac also homered for the Buffs that day. Gil McDougald of the Yankees had three hits and teammates Johnny Mize, Yogi Berra, and Gene Woodling each had two bingles in the game. Mize’s hits included a double and Yogi’s production produced four runs batted in. The Buffs broke Yankee starter Tom Morgan’s streak of 27 innings pitched without giving up an earned run. The Yankees won the game, 15-9, and they out-hit the Buffs, 19-14.

I went home mildly disappointed that the Buffs had lost, but even at 13, I was proud of our boys for giving the fabled Yankees all they could handle. Wish I could say that I made a total return to reality by the time we got home, but I probably didn’t. You see, I’ll always remember that day as the game in which I sort of got to play left field next to DiMaggio in center – and Mantle in right. – In my most cherished baseball memory box, I even have the pictures to prove it.

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Wilmer David Mizell: The Buff from Vinegar Bend!

September 2, 2009

Mizell 003The young man they were already calling Vinegar Bend Mizell arrived in Houston with the Buffs  in the spring of 1951, heralded full bore as the lefthanded second coming of Dizzy Dean from twenty years earlier. Buff fans, sportswriters, club president Allen Russell, and the parent team St. Louis Cardinals all hoped the “Lil Abner Look-n-Sound-Alike” would turn out to be everything his growing legend screamed out that he was going to be: a sure-fire and consistent twenty game wins per season superstar and future Hall of Famer. Mizell wasn’t quite the young braggart that Dean had been, but he opened his mouth enough to create words that some writers ran to type as promises for use as future nails, should he fail to deliver.

Born in Leakesville, Mississippi on August 13, 1930, the still 20-year old new 1951 Houston Buffs pitching “phenom” claimed the nearby community of Vinegar Bend, Alabama as his hometown. When Cardinals superscout Buddy Lewis went to Vinegar Bend to sign Wilmer a couple of years earlier, he found him just where his mother said he was: literally up a creek in the nearby woods, killing squirrels from about sixty feet away with small thrown stones. “Wait a minte,” the observant Lewis quickly cried out, “I thought you were lefthanded! You’re killing those squirrels with righthanded throws! What’s the deal?

“I am lefthanded,” Mizell supposedly replied, “but I had to give up squirrel-huntin’ with my left hand. – It messes ’em up too bad!”

Lewis had Mizell’s signature on a Cardinals contract before nightfall.

Mizell’s first two seasons of minor league seasoning had marinated all the hope in his future to the “nth” degree. Pitching for Class D Albany, Georgia in 1949, Mizell posted an very impressive record of 12-3 with a lights out ERA of 1.98. His promotion to Class B Winston-Salem, NC in 1950 just pumped expectations all the higher, as Wilmer finished there with a record of 17-7 and an ERA of 2.48.

Mizell 001Mizell was critical to the success of Houston’s 1951 Texas League pennant drive, posting a 16-14 record that wasn’t altogether his fault on the short side of his wins to losses ratio. The club just had one of those seasons in which they often had trouble giving Mizell the offensive support he needed to take the win. His 1951 Earned Run Average of 1.96 still spoke volumes about his bright future as a prospect.

In appreciation of Mizell, and as a late season gate pump, Buffs President Allen Russell declared September 7, 1951 at Buff Stadium as “Vingear Bend Night.” Russell crowned the night such by picking up the bus travel and overnight room tab to bring all eighty residents of Vinegar Bend, Alabama to Houston to watch their favorite son pitch. Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of those nights I just mentioned. Mizell struck out 15 of the Shreveport Sports he faced that night, but he gave up three runs. Buff bats were absent and Mizell took the loss, 3-1.

A mysterious stomach ailment caused Mizell to be hospitalized for part of the playffs and all of the Dixie Series content with the Brimingham Barons. As a result, the Buffs lost to Brimingham, but Mizell was well and well on his majors the following spring.

The pattern from here flattened out for Mizell. He became a competent big league pitcher with a mediocre career record over nine seasons with the Cardinals (1952-53, 1956-60), the Pirates (1960-62), and the Mets (1962). He finished with  areer mark of 90 wins, 88 lossess, and an ERA of 3.85 – not the kind of stuff that gets any pitcher to Cooperstown.

After baseball, Vinegar Bend Mizell had a few surprises left up his sleeve. He ran for Congress from his adopted home state of North Carolina and was then elected for several terms as a Republican.

Mizell 002I had the good fortune of finally meeting Wilmer David Mizell when we were seated together at the same table at the banquet hall for the Spetember 1995 “Last Round Up of the Houston Buffs.” I had a chance to ask him if the squirrel hunting story were true. “Did you like the story?” Mizell asked me in return?” “Oh yeah! I always loved it!” I told Mizell. “In that case, it was absolutely true!” Mizell shot back with a wink and a smile.

“Here’s another one for you!” Mizell said, and I will leave you toady on this Mizell story note:

“The worst thing that happened to us back home in Vinegar Bend was the time we had the fire. – It started in the bathroom. – Fortunately, we were able to put it out before it reached the house.”

Sadly, we lost Wilmer Mizell early. At age 68,  he dropped dead of a heart atack on February 21, 1999 while visiting with friends in Kerrville, Texas. We miss you, Wilmer. And we miss all your funny true stories. We will also never forget how great you once were as a member of the 1951 Houston Buffs. Thanks for the memories.

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Eddie Knoblauch: As Good As He Wanted To Be?

August 29, 2009

Eddie Knoblauch 001 The late Eddie Knoblauch is a classic example of the currently popular axiom that “perception is reality.”Some of his fellow teammates, as well as Dutch Meyer, his manager at Dallas in the early 1950s, seem to think that Eddie had all the ability in the world to have moved on up to the big leagues over the 1938-1955 course of his career, but that he just lacked the will to crank it up to that level. If so, why not? One old teammate, armed by the cloak of anonymity in 1998 Dallas newspaper artile suggested that the money differential between minor leagie and major league pay back in the day simply wasn’t big enough to motivate Eddie Knoblauch.

“Eddie Knoblauch, well, he was kind of an unusual fellow,” said former Dallas Eagles manager Dutch Meyer in 1998. “He’d never say anything, and he could play just as good as he wanted to. I’m not trying to say he didn’t play his best all the time, but he was a funny guy, real quiet.”

Let’s cut Eddie a break here. The late Dutch Meyer was advancing into the early stages of Alzheimer’s when he made those comments back in 1998. Maybe players who were quiet and laid back were an easier target for sideways criticism by the old school managers of that era – or any era, for that matter. When you look at Knoblauch’s career stats, its hard to think that he didn’t do enough to reach the majors, anyway. His 15 season carrer production was downright dazzling.

In fifteen seasons, Eddie batted .306 or higher on twelve occasions. The lefty-throwing and lefty- hitting outfielder was only 5’10” and 160 lbs., but his bat was full of singles, doubles, and triples. His career all minor league play batting average of .313 included 2,543 hits. Only 20 of these hits were home runs.

Eddie Knoblauch 002Eddie Knoblauch garnered 391 career doubles and 117 career triples. He also scored 1,420 runs.

Born on January 31, 1918 in Bay City Michigan, the 20-year old Knoblauch broke into  organized ball with the Monett Red Birds of the Class D Arkansas-Missouri League in 1938. He celebrated his debut season by hitting .356, his best one-year mark.  His progress from there was steady, with his less-than-half a season mark of .297 at Ashville in the second half of 1938 appearing only as a chughole now on the final stat sheet.

After his first season, Eddie then hit .335 for Class C  Kilgore in 1939 before moving up to Class B Columbus, Georgia for averages of .345 and .346 in 1940 and 1941.

Knoblauch reached the then Class A1 Houston Buffs in 1942. He batted .308 before spending the next three seasons (1943-45) in the miltary due to Worold War II. Eddie’s return to the 1946 Buffs as a center fielder saw him hit .306, but it also gave him a chance to show off his defensive skills as well. In 72 games in center field, Knoblauch earned 19 outfield assists, plus another four assists as a left fielder.

Eddie put up only his second and third of four total sub .300 seasons for the Buffs in 1947 and 1948, batting .275 (his career low) and .295. These little dips may have led to his early season trade from Houston to Shreveport in 1949, followed by another transfer later that season to his third Texas League club in one year. He rewarded the Tulsa Oiler by finishing the year with a .314 mark. Knoblauch “slumped” to .298 with Tulsa in 1950. He was traded by Tulsa to Dallas after the start of the 1951 season, finishing the year at .308. Eddie “dropped” to .306 in 1952, as his Dallas club finished first, then lost in the post-season Texas League championship playoffs.

In 1953, Eddie Knoblauch batted .304 as his Dallas Eagles swept through the Texas League, winning the playoffs and then taking the championshp of the South by defeating Nashville of the Southern Association in the Dixie Series. The team championship in 1953 was Eddie’s second taste of victory in the Dixies Series. He did it earlier with the 1947 Houston Buffs.

1954 saw Eddie moving on again. After the season started, Dallas dealt him to Beaumont, his fifth of the eight Texas League clubs. Only San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and Fort Worth missed out on having soeme service time from Eddie Knoblauch. As per usual, Eddie rewarded Beaumont by batting .305 in 1954.

After the start of the 1955 season, Beaumont traded Eddie back to Dallas for what would prove to be his last season of professional baseball. The 37-year old Knoblauch rewarded Dallas by hitting .327 and winning the Texas League batting championship.

Eddie Knoblauch lived in Houston for many years after his retirement from baseball. He eventually moved to Schertz, Texas, where he died on February 26, 1991 at the age of 73. Yes, he was the uncle of former major leaguer Chuck Knoblauch – and also the brother of former minor league pitcher and longtime Bellaire High School Baseball Coach Ray Knoblauch. In 2002, his boyhood hometown of Bay City, Michigan voted Eddie Knoblauch into the Bay County (MI) Hall of Fame.

Why did a guy who hit and fielded that well never rise above Class AA baseball? Why did his minor league teams keep moving away from a fellow who played the game so consistently well? I really can’t tell you. All I know is that it’s hard for me to just buy into the argument that Eddie Knoblauch missed a major league career because he didn’t want it enough. Maybe he didn’t, but if he didn’t, he sure performed well, year in year out, for a guy who didn’t care enough to get better. Besides, the Eddie Knoblauch I saw play back then would’ve been a joy for me to watch – if he hadn’t been doing all those good things most of the time against my Houston Buffs.

Wish you were still around to give us your take on what actually happened, Mr. Knoblauch. – Eddie, we hardly knew you.

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Ken Boyer: Another Great One Not in the Hall!

August 24, 2009

Ken Boyer 001 Ken Boyer was neither the first nor the last of the baseball playing Boyer boys. He was simply the best of the six brothers who ventured into the arena of the professional over the two decades that followed World War II. The Alba, Missouri native was also just one among the pack of the fourteen kids born to the rural Boyer family who discovered baseball as a way up and out to the larger world when he began his career with Class D  Lebanon in 1949. Ken started as a pitcher, going 5-1 with a 3.42 ERA in ’49, but he also did something else that first year that distracted the parent Cardinal organization from seeing his future on the mound. He hit .455 for the season. Once Boyer’s pitching record slipped to 6-8 with a 4.39 ERA in 1950 with Class D Hamilton, while his battting average stayed up there at .342, the Cardinals felt that they had to keep the guy in the lineup as a position player.  Ken made the transition just fine as a third baseman for Class A Omaha in 1951. He batted .306 with 14 HR and 90 RBI before going into the service for two two years (1952-53) during the Korean War. Ken Boyer resumed his career in 1954 as a third baseman for the Houston Buffs. His career took off like a rocket. Batting .319 with 21 homers and 116 runs batted in for the ’54 Buffs, Boyer led the club to the Texas League championship – as he also launched his own career to the major league level in 1955.

For the next fifteen seasons, and principally with the Cardinals, Ken Boyer was one the premiere sluggers in the big leagues. After his eleventh season with the Cardinals, back trouble led to Ken’s trade to the Mets. Ken’s last four seasons (1966-69), playing variably back and forth among the Mets and White Sox, and finally with the Dodgers in 1969,  were fairly unproductive. He still finished his career with a .287 batting average, 282 homers, and 1,141 runs batted in.

After his playing days were done, Ken managed in the minor leagues before returning to the big leagues as a coach for the Cardinals in 1971-72. Kenny eventually took over as manager of the Cardinals in 1978, but he was forced to resign early in 1980. Shortly thereafter, Ken Boyer was diagnosed with lung cancer, an illness that took his life at the age of 51 on September 7, 1982.

In 1984, the St. Louis Cardinals retired Ken Boyer’s # 14. It remains the only retired number among those so honored by the Cardinals that doesn’t belong to a Hall of Fame player. The memory of Ken Boyer of the Cardinals, like Ron Santo of the Cubs, remains among us today as another of those hard slugging, slick fielding third basemen who were never selected for induction into the Hall of Fame. Ken Boyer was better than “good.” His production won him the National League MVP award in 1964. He also won five gold gloves awards for his fielding over the course of his career.

Older brother Cloyd Boyer went 16-10 for the 1948 Houston Buffs. He then (1949-52, 1955) achieved an MLB pitching record of 20-23 with an ERA of 4.78 over five seasons. Younger brother Clete Boyer, another third baseman, posted a career record of .242, 162 HR, and 654 RBI over 16 seasons in the majors (1955-57, 1959-1971). Clete and brother Ken set a record when they became the only brothers in history to homer in the same World Series game in 1964. Ken did it for the victorious Cardinals in the form of a game-winning grand slam. Clete did it more quietly in a losing cause for the New York Yankees.

Three other Boyer brothers had brief experiences as minor leaguers, but went no further. Still, any family that produces six kids good enough to play professional baseball at any level is definitely rolling hard and fast in the baseball gene stream.

Have a nice Monday!

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John Hernandez: Minor League Star, Major League Dad.

August 22, 2009

Johnny Hernandez John Hernandez was the star lefthanded battting and throwing first baseman of the 1947 Texas League and Dixie Series Champion Houston Buffs. After an early acquisition from Oklahoma City in 1947, Hernandez did very well in Houston. His .301 batting average, 17 home runs, and 78 runs batted in were a big  part of the reason the Buffs enjoyed one of their finest seasons of all time that year, and that doesn’t even take into account his defensive contributions with the glove. The guy was a sweet fielding wizard at his position.

The future of John Hernandez had major league star written all over it by the end of the 1947 season, and his prospects soared in spite of the fact that he already had lost three seasons to military service in World War II (1943-45). Prior to the war, Californian Hernandez already had built a good start on his resume’. Breaking in with Class D Valdosta in 1941, John batted .290 with 2 HR and 25 RBI. He improved in 1942 with Class C Salt Lake City by hitting .312 with 2 homers and 72 RBI.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t always move in straight lines. Something happened to the vision of John Hernandez after the 1947 season, however, that would effect his career and the road of his life forever. Hernandez went to see an optometrist in the 47-48 off-season, complaining of “blurry” vision. I don’t know if this doctor was here in Houston or in his home near San Francisco, but I rather think it was the latter. The doctor prescribed lenses that Hernandez claims were filled with prisms. When Hernandez got off to a bad start with the 1948 Buffs as a result of his vision impairment, he tried a number of things to restore his eyesight, including eye exercises, but nothing helped. His eyes had been permanently damaged. John kept playing, but Houston traded his contract back to Oklahoma City for the balance of 1948. On the year,  Hernandez’s production had dropped to a .228 BA with only 11 HR and 61 RBI.

Hernandez dropped down to Class A Wilks-Barre for a respectable .281 mark to start the season, but his power was gone. He garnered only 8 HR and 38 RBI. Dropping down to Class D San Angelo that same year, John batted only .241 with 3 long balls and 6 RBI before he got another call back to the AA Texas League with Oklahoma City. At Oklahoma City and Beaumont over the rest of 1949, John Hernandez drew the curtain on his own career by batting only .203 with 2 HR and 17 RBI.

John Hernandez was done as a ballplayer after 1949. He took a job as a fireman in San Francisco and decided to simply dedicate himself to being a good husband and future family man. When his two young sons, Gary and Keith, came along in the years that immediately followed their father’s baseball retirement, they were born into the life of a dad who was already  there for them on a daily basis, and  one who was ready to teach them all he had learned about baseball that they were willing to absorb.

keith-hernandez John Hernandez’s son Keith grew up to be one of the greatest defensive first baseman in major league history. Keith Hernandez’s 11 straight gold glove awards is a mjor league record. He also wan’t too shabby as a hitter either, leading the National League in hitting in 1979 with a .344 average at St. Louis. Keith Hernandez also was a leading force on two World Series ball clubs, the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals and the 1986 New York Mets. What a lot of people don’t know is that Keith Hernandez always used his dad as his anchor man coach for helping him straighten out anything that was getting in the way of his best game, and that assistance covers a lot of ground in this instance.

When Keith Hernandez retired after 1990, he finished his seventeen season major league career with a batting average of .290, a total of 162 HR and 1,071 RBI. His father John survived to see it all unfold, watching his son have the major league career that had slipped away from his own personal grasp. Now, was this all random coincidence – or a beautiful example of divine serendipity? A talented father is denied a major league career due to an unsolvable vision problem, but this reality puts him in position to become an everyday guiding factor in his own future son’s development as a ballplayer.

Based on what we each believe, or disbelieve, we all have to decide this question for ourselves. As for me, I’m casting my vote for the Hernandez family as a prime example of divine serendipity. Keith Hernandez certainly was no altar boy model as a young man, but nevertheless, he turned out very allright in the long run.

What would have happened to Keith Hernandez had he not had the everyday dad that John Hernandez turned out to be while he was growing up? That is the real unanswerable question.

 

 

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Bill McCurdy

Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher

The Pecan Park Eagle

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Red Munger: A Kid from the Houston East End!

August 20, 2009

Red Munger 01 We just returned last night from a two-day train trip to Lake Charles, but that’s a story for another day. This morning I want to tell you about another ex-Cardinal and former Buff pitcher who also just happened to be a good friend. His name was George “Red” Munger, a name that won’t be lost to the memories of anyone who was around during all those 1940s years of great Cardinal teams. Red Munger just happened to be a big part of that success. The native Houstonian and lifelong East Ender was smack dab in the middle of that zenith era in Cardinal history, even though he lost all of 1945 and most of the championship 1946 season to military service. Red still managed to return in time to make his own contributions to the Cardinals’ victory over the Boston Red Sox in the 1946 World Series.

George David “Red” Munger was born in Houston on October 4, 1918. Like most able bodied, athletically inclined  East Enders of his era, Red was drawn to sandlot and Houston youth organized baseball at an early age. I never asked Red if he made it  to the opening of Buff Stadium on April 11, 1928, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did find a way to get in as a nine-year old baseball fanatic. He lived in the neighborhood and he was an avid Buffs fan long prior to his two short stints with the 1937 and 1938 Houston club.  Red also made it downtown as a young kid to old West End Park prior to the opening of Buff Stadium. The little I know today from years past about West End Park still comes mainly from what I was told by Red Munger and former Browns/Senators catcher Frank Mancuso. My regret is that I didn’t make a focused attempt in earlier years to drain their brains of all they each knew about the facts and lore of West End Park. Recording history gets a lot tougher once all the eye witnesses and other primary sources are gone.

Red Munger was signed by Fred Ankenman of the Houston Buffs as a BR/TR pitcher following his 1937 graduation from high school. The Buffs sent Red to New Iberia of the Evangeline League where he promptly racked up a 19-11 record with a 3.42 ERA in his first season of professional ball. Red finished the ’37 season with Houston, posting no record and a 2.45 ERA in limited work. 1938 found Red back at New Iberia, where his 10-6 record quickly earned him a second promotion to the higher level Buffs club.  Munger only posted a 2-5 mark for the ’38 Buffs, but his improvement over the next four seasons at Asheville (16-13), Sacramento (9-14) (17-16) and Columbus, Oho (16-13) finally earned him a shot the withthe  big club.  Red went 9-5 with a 3.95 ERA at St. Louis in 1943; he then went 11-3, with an incredible 1.34 ERA with the 1944 Cardinals.

Red Munger’s 1944 success earned him a place on the National League All Star team, but before he got to play, he was called up and inducted into the army for military service. RedRed Munger 02 achieved some great, but unsurprising success in service baseball. He was just too good for the competition he faced at that rank amateur level. Once Red obtained his second lieutenant’s commission and was assigned to developing the baseball program at his base in Germany, he just stopped playing in favor of full time teaching. He even said that he had no heart for pitching or hitting against competitors who were too young, too green, and too unable to compete against him.

Red returned from the service in late 1946, just in time to pitch a few innings in the late season and to throw a complete game win over Boston at Fenway Park in Game Four of the World Series. The 12-3 Cardinal victoy tied the Series at 2-2 in games as Munger also benefitted from a twenty hit Cardinal attack on Red Sox pitching. Over the next five seasons with the Cardinals, Red posted two outstanding years in 1947 (16-5, 3.37) and 1949 (15-8, 3.88). His other years were fairly mediocre. The nadir in Red Munger’s career came falling down upon him in 1952. He was dealt to the Pittsburgh Piartes and his combined record with St. Louis and Pittsburgh was 0-4 with a 7.92 balloon-level ERA for the year.

Red would have one more year in the majors in 1956 when, after returning from Hollywood of the Pacific Coast League after four seasons, he went 3-4 with a 4.04 ERA for the Pirates. Munger had earned his way back with a 23-8, 1.85 ERA mark at Hollywood in 1955. After two more piddling years in the minors, Red Munger retired after the 1958 season and closed the door on a twenty year playing career. He left beind a respectable major league mark of 77-56 with an ERA of 3.83. All told, Red Munger pitched for twenty seasons from 1937 to 1958.

Red Munger 04 After baseball, Red Munger worked as  a minor league pitching coach and also as a private investigator for the Pinkerton agency. He later developed diabetes and passed away from us on July 23, 1996 at age 77. I took that last picture of him in the 1946 Cardinals replica cap on a visit to his home, about two weeks before he died. Red gave me that cap that he wore in the picture at left on the same day. I have treasured it ever since.

Red was generous to a fault. I never accepted any of his offered gifts of authentic artifacts, but strangers to the man were not as kind. I advised Red to save his things for family and history, but Red had a mind and heart all his own. One time a guy came to interview Red a single time. In the process, Red warmed up to the guy and offered the man his 1938 Buffs uniform, which he somehow managed to have kept for all those years. The man took it and was never seen again. I think that stung Red pretty deeply.

Red loved talking about the everyday action of life in the big leagues. His stories go way beyond the scope of a single blog article. One of his early “edge” lessons came from Warren Spahn. “We were up in Boston, playing the Braves,” Red drolled, “and old Spahn was pitching against me. He was doing so well that I decided to pay closer attention to his mechanics. It didn’t take me long to find the source of his ‘edge’ because I was looking for it when no else, even the umpires,  apparently weren’t. What Spahnie was doing was gradually covering the pitching rubber with that black dirt they used to have on their mound at Braves Field. Once that was done, he would simply start his windup about one foot closer to the plate. With good control, a pitcher becomes much more effective at 59 feet six inches than he is at sixty feet six inches. I know. I tried it after watching Spahn do it. For me, it was good enough to produce a win. No, I never talked about it with Spahn, but I feel sure he knew what I was doing too. We both had a reason to keep our mouths shut, now didn’t we?”

Red Munger 03Red Munger enjoyed watching position players with strong arms and then imagining how effective they might be as pitchers. His favorite subject that last summer of 1996 was Ken Caminiti – and this was long before all the disclosures about Ken’s mind-altering and performace-enhancing drug abuse. Red Munger just liked the man as a gifted athlete. Caminiti fit the bill on what Red Munger was looking for in pitching potential. “Give me a guy with a strong arm and I can probably teach him the other things he needs to know about pitching. I can’t teach a guy how to have a strong arm – and as far as I can see,  no one else can do that either beyond telling him to work out and hope for the best. As far as I’m concerned in the matter of good arms, you’ve either  got one or you don’t.”

Red Munger didn’t live long enough to see the steroid era coming, but I think I can tell you this much: He would not have liked it at all. Red Munger may have taken the “Spahn Edge” on that mound dirt in Boston, but he honestly believed that baseball was a game to be played with the natural abilities that came to a player at birth. I asked him about the use of alcohol and stimulants like amphetamines once. “A lot of people drank back in my time, but beer or booze never made anybody a better pitcher. As for the use of drugs, we didn’t have that kind of stuff going on in my day. We just got out there and played the game with what the God Lord gave us through Mother Nature. If that wasn’t good enough, a player had to start looking for another line of work.”

Recreationally, Red used to say that he enjoyed Crosley Field as one of his favorite ballparks. “My liking of the place had nothing to do with me pitching better there.” Red stressed. “I just liked watching old Hank Sauer of the Reds running up that hill in left field, trying to catch a fly ball without falling down.”

Red Munger would have loved Minute Maid Park!

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Howie Pollet: One of Those Rickey Melons!

August 17, 2009

HB 003 HOWIE POLLET 2From the late 1920s through the early 1950s, the St. Louis Cardinals operated a farm system that pretty much resembled the good  and growing business of a fabled Hempstead, Texas watermelon grower. – Everything they harvested came out tasting sweet – with very little hassle from unwanted seeds.

Such a melon was a a tall and slim lefthanded pitcher from New Orleeans named Howard Joseph “Howie” Pollet. This guy’s work and production were as sweet as they came. Starting out with the New Iberia Cardinals of the Class D Evangeline League in 1939, Pollet was only age 17 on Opening Day. He didn’t hit age 18 until June 26th, but age didn’t matter. Howie rolled through his first season of competition against other kids and many older men by posting a 14-5 record with an ERA of 2.37. This young melon came cooled. And he was good enough to spend the end of the season with the then Class A1 Houston Buffaloes of the Texas League, posting a 1-1 mark and a 4.67 ERA.

The 19-year old second year version of Howie Pollet pitched the whole season with Houston, registering a 20-7 record with an outstanding ERA of 2.88. Under future Cardinals mentor Eddie Dyer, the 1940 Buffs won the Texas League straightaway championship in a 16-game lead runaway from second place San Antonio. Houston then won the Shaughnessy Playoff before bowing to the Nashville Vols, 4 games to 1, in the Dixie Series.

HB 003 HOWIE POLLET Back with Houston in 1941, the now 20-year old lefty showed that he had little left to prove in the minor leagues, even at his still tender age.  In 1941, Pollet posted a 20-3 record for the Buffs and a league leading  ERA of  only 1.16. In all of Texas League history through 2008, only Walt Dickson’s 1.06 ERA, also posted with Houston back in 1916, beats the 1941 mark of Howie Pollet. Pollet also led the Texas League in strikeouts in 1941 with 151. The Buffs again won the Texas League straightaway race, this time by 16.5 games, but they lost in the first round of the playoffs for the Texas League pennant.

No matter what, Howie Pollet’s minor league days were done after 1941. Pollet finished that season in St. Louis, going 5-2 with a 1.93 ERA for the parent Cardinals. Howie spent the next two “war seasons” of 1942-43 going 15-9 over both seasons. His 1.75 ERA in 1943, however, still led the National League. Pollet then spent 1944-45 in the military service, coming back in 1946 in time to go 21-10 with a second league leading 2.10 ERA title. Pollet was 0-1 in two games of the 1946 World Series, but he wasn’t the only melon in the patch. The Cardinals still won the sweet taste of a world championship.

After a couple of mediocre years in 1947-48, Howie Pollet revved it up again in 1949, going 20-9 with a 2.77 ERA in 1949. He then fell back to 14-13 in 1950.

On June 15, 1951, Howie Pollet was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates with Bill Howerton, Ted Wilks, Joe Garagiola, and Dick Cole in exchange for lefty pitcher Cliff Chambers and outfielder Wally Westlake. A couple of years later, the Pirates would deal Pollet to the Chicago Cubs. Howie would return to finish his career in Pittsburgh in 1956. His 0-4 mark with the Buccos in ’56 convinced him to hang ’em up. He finished a 14-season MLB career with a record of 131 wins, 116 losses, ann ERA of 3.51 over 2,107.1 innings of big league action, and 934 strikeouts to 745 walks. Howie Pollet never blossomed into the territory of sustained greatness that most people predicted for him, but when he was good and really on his game, he had the kind of stuff that placed him way up there among the best of all time. He spent his last two seasons working out of the pen.

PolletHoward473.84_HS_CSUAfter baseball, Howie Pollet returned to his adopted home of Houston and went into the insurance business with his former Buffs and Cardinals manager, Eddie Dyer. He even returned to baseball one year to serve as pitching coach for the Houston Astros. He was only age 53 when he died of cancer in 1974. Sometimes the good guys who arrive early also make an early exit. Baseball and Houston were the poorer from the early passing of the great Howie Pollet, but we’re glad we had him while we did.

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