OK, so here’s the poop for
anyone who cares. I had to split for a bit and sometimes when I do that I
pre-write the posts and post-date them so they go up on Blogger about once a
day. Somehow I screwed that up and then completely lost this one which stinks
since it is so damn long. So this one will probably come up around mid-May
which will be a pretty big gap. Oh well. It couldn’t have happened to a more
fitting post. The 1973 Cleveland Indians were not too crazily different from
their other recent teams, except of course in the line-up. In fact, outside of
Chris Chambliss not one position in ’73 was filled by the same regular guy as
it was in ’71. That’s a lot of turnover and though the Tribe had some interesting
young guys – Chambliss, Buddy Bell, Charlie Spikes, Dick Tidrow – come along
during that span, the team also had to put up with the near constant raids by
the Yankees that already claimed the team’s best slugger in Graig Nettles and
would also soon claim Tidrow and Chambliss. It was also Ken Aspromonte’s second
year managing and depending on who you asked Ken was either just a low-key guy
or a manager who turned control of the team over to his ace Gaylord Perry and
Perry’s goon, John Ellis. Either way, between the turnover, the lack of real
authority, and the uneven performances the team never got any real traction and
finished with yet another losing record. Things needed to change and in about a
year they would with an historical appointment that worked, at least for a
while. Here the team looks a bit bleached out posing at home and I don’t
believe I’ve ever seen a guy in a windbreaker with the coaches before. Oscar
Gamble and his afro are easy to spot as is pretty much everyone else. And this
will be a split post so nothing on the checklist until the next one.
That was some team in ’54 and
it’s pretty crazy how after all those wins it went down so fast to the Giants.
Blame Willy Mays I guess. Here we go on the bio’s:
Leon “Daddy Wags” Wagner was covered on the Angels team
post.
Carl Lind, first real name
Henry, was a New Orleans
guy through and through. He went to Tulane after high school where he played
ball through ’25 – he was team captain in ’23 – and from the school photos of
him appeared to have either also played hoops or run track. He was admitted to
the school’s hall of fame in 1980 but there is no associated bio out there.
Carl signed with Peoria
in ’26 and in the B league that year hit .292 while playing shortstop. He then
spent most of ’27 in A ball at Denver where he upped his average to .331 before
playing a couple games in Double A and then being sold to the Indians for a
September call-up. He only hit .135 in his few games but did nice work at
second base and so was given the starting gig there in ’28. He did a nice job,
leading the AL
in at bats while hitting .294 and scoring 102 runs with 42 doubles. He returned
to that role in ’29 and started off the season swimmingly defensively and after
an April set against Detroit
in which he recorded eight double plays was on a record pace for that
statistic. But offensively he was in trouble and took until the end of May to
get his average above .200. He’d contracted malaria in winter ball and it was
surmised that his health was pretty bad for a bit. He spent the summer of ’29
on the DL and finished the year at .240 in 225 at bats. In ’30 it was more of
the same except the Tribe sent him down much earlier, ending his career up top
with a .272 average in 256 games. He finished out the year in A ball where he
hit .307 and in ’31 hit only .226 in a season split between A and Double A. He
hit .264 in A ball in ’32, his last regular season. For a short while he seems
to have worked locally in the New
Orleans area as a college hoops referee and may or may
not have later coached at that level. Info on him pretty much dries up then and
even baseball-reference has a tough time, indicating he died in both 1946 and
2001.
Earl Averill grew up in Snohomish, Washington
where he played local rec ball until he had to leave school and work at age 15
in about 1917. He got re-involved with local ball around 1920 and was good
enough that people in his hometown paid for him to go to Seattle for a tryout with a team loosely
affiliated with the Indians in ‘24. He didn’t make the cut, joined a local team
in Bellingham, WA, where he hit about .269 before upping
that big to over .400 in ’25. That got him signed by the San Francisco Seals,
the PCL powerhouse, where over the next three seasons Earl averaged about .342
on way over 200 hits – the PCL played about 190 games a year back then – and 27
homers as a center fielder. In ’29 he was sold to Cleveland and he was a huge hitter right off
the bat, hitting .332 his rookie year, with 110 runs and 96 RBI’s. Earl would
have a great ten-year run for the Tribe, during which he averaged .325 on about
190 hits, 115 runs, 37 doubles, 12 triples, 23 homers, and 108 RBI’s per year,
including a ’35 season when he had to play with a blistered hand because a
firecracker had gone of in it on July Fourth. He bounced big to have his
biggest season in ’36 with a .378 average on an AL-leading 232 hits and 15
triples. In ’37 he developed a spinal condition that killed his stroke, though
he continued to be the regular center fielder through ’38, hitting .330 that
season. During the ’39 season he was traded to Detroit where he finished the year as the
reular guy in left and in ’40 finally saw some post-season action as a reserve.
He finished up with the Boston Braves in ’41 with a .318 average on 2,019 hits,
238 homers, 128 triples, and 1,164 RBI’s in about eleven full seasons. He went
hitless in his Series at bats and made each of the first eight All-Star teams. He
finished the ’41 season back in Seattle
of the PCL – he hit .325 – and then retired from playing back to his hometown
where he helped run the family greenhouse business. That he did until 1950 when
he bought a motel that he ran the next twenty years. He retired in ’70, made
the Hall in ’75, and passed away in ’83 from pneumonia at 81. He has a great
bio linked to here.
Joe Jackson is covered on the
White Sox team page.
Charlie Jamieson was a Jersey
kid who grew up in Paterson
(he went to the same high school as Larry Doby). Signed by Buffalo, a Double A team, in 1912 when he was
19, he kicked off his career as a pitcher and his first two years went a
combined 27-17 with a 2.97 ERA. In ’14 he started putting in some outfield time
and while his pitching stats fell a bunch to 3-8 and a 4.60 ERA, he hit .308 that
year. In ’15 it was all outfield as he hit .307 in 138 games. He was sold to
the Senators that September and hit .279 that final month. After another
season-plus of little use he was selected off waivers by the A’s in July ’17.
Though he got more regular time the rest of that season and the next his
numbers weren’t so hot and prior to the ’19 season he went to Cleveland in a trade. That year he had to do
after-war service work and he missed pretty much the whole season. But in ’20 he
gradually worked his way into the regular spot in left, hit .319 and began his
eleven seasons as the regular guy there. While with the Tribe he averaged .316 with
a .390 OBA and about 89 runs a season. He had his biggest year in ’23 when he led
the AL with
222 hits and hit .345. The next year he hit .359. He batted over .300 eight of
his eleven full seasons and twice had over 200 hits. He wound things down in ’31
and ’32 and then played a final season in Jersey
City in ’33 when he was 40. Charlie finished up top
with a .303 average on 1,990 hits and hit .333 in six games in the ’20 Series.
He also pitched a bit and went a combined 2-1 with a 6.19 ERA in 48 innings.
While playing he frequently played in local fall leagues back in Jersey under an assumed name, though everybody knew it
was him. He returned to the Paterson
area full time where I have been unable to find what he did professionally. He
passed away there in ’69 at age 76.
George Burns was called Tioga
George after a town in PA near where he grew up in Philly to distinguish him
from another George Burns who was playing when this George came up to The Show. After
leaving school at 16 to play local ball, George eventually worked his way to
the pros by the time he was 20 in ’13 in D and A ball out west, hitting .338 at
the lower level and .301 at the higher one. He was sold to Detroit prior to the ’14 season and hit .291
his rookie year as the team’s regular first baseman. He remained with Detroit through ’17 putting
up decent but unspectacular numbers, peaking in ’16 with a .286 average and 73
RBI’s. He was then sold to the Yankees and flipped to the A’s and hit .352 his
first year in Philly on an AL-leading 178 hits. His average fell to .296 the
next year and shortly into the ’20 season he was sold to Cleveland for his first round with the Tribe.
While he barely played as a back-up first baseman he did hit .300
with three RBI’s in the Series that year. After another season of back-up work
in ’21 – though he hit .361 with 49 RBI’s in 224 at bats – he was traded to
Boston, took over first for the Sox, and averaged .317 with totals of 19 homers
and 155 RBI’s his two seasons there. He then returned to the Tribe where he
settled into a regular gig at first the next few years. After putting up
comparable numbers to his Boston ones the next two seasons he broke out in an
MVP ’26 season, hitting .358 with 115 RBI’s, an AL-leading 216 hits and a
record-setting 64 doubles. After settling back to his pre-’26 level in ’27 –
but with 51 doubles – he spent the next two seasons playing sparingly for
Cleveland, the Yankees, and back with the A’s. He finished with MLB marks of
.307 with 444 doubles, 72 homers, 952 RBI’s, and 2,018 hits. In the post-season
he hit .250 in six games. Somehow while playing up top George also managed to
manage – oops – teams in the minors his last three seasons. He did that again
briefly in ’30 before that season moving out to play and then both manage and
play in the PCL. He hit well out there for those super long seasons, averaging
about .337 in his five years as a regular. He then relocated to Seattle full time and
became a deputy in the sheriff’s department which he did through his retirement
in ’68. He passed away early in ’78 from cancer at age 84. He has a SABR bio.
Al Rosen was a Jewish kid who
was born in South Carolina and grew up in Florida where he played
ball through bouts of asthma and boxed to defend his heritage. He became
awfully good at both and after high school continued to do so at the University of Florida for a year. He left school in ’42
to play pro ball and signed with a D affiliate of the Indians where he hit .307
that summer. He then went into the Navy for WW II where he was in the Pacific
Theater until early ’46. He returned that summer to C ball and hit .323 with 16
homers and 86 RBI’s and then moved to Double A the next year where he exploded
with a .349/25/141 season and then got some token at bats that Fall with the
Tribe as he would the next couple seasons. In both ’48 and ’49 he put up big
numbers in Triple A before a mid-year call-up that second season. Initially in
Cleveland Al had to play third behind Ken Keltner but in ’50 he finally gained
the starting spot and, still a rookie, led the AL with a then rookie record 37
homers, hitting .287 with 116 RBI’s and a .405 OBA. In ’51 he disappointed
himself with a .265/24/102 year but bounced in ’52 with a .302.28/105 season in
which he led the AL
in RBI’s. That was also the first of his four successive All-Star seasons. His
MVP season came in ’53 when he narrowly missed the Triple Crown with a
.335/43/145 season in which he lost the hitting title by .001 to Mickey Vernon.
He also led the AL
with 115 runs and had an OBA of .422. But Al had a bad back and after a ’54 season
of .300/24/102 he faded pretty fast the next two seasons and voluntarily
retired after the ’56 one. Al put up a .285 average with 192 homers and 717 RBI’s
and .384 OBA in basically six full seasons. He only struck out about once every
ten at bats, pretty good for a power guy. In the post-season he hit .231 in
four games. After playing he became a broker in Cleveland with Bache and Company, a
forerunner of what is now Prudential. He did that for 17 years while also
coaching in the spring. He then left to work in casino management which he did
until ’78 when he was hired to be GM of the Yankees, a frustrating task under
the Boss. Al lasted through that year’s title and then quit in ’79 after being
frustrated with his role (Sparky Lyle was not a fan in “The Bronx Zoo”) and
then returned to casino management for a couple years. In ’80 he became GM of
the Astros and though his time there was frustrating as well the team went 386-372
through ’85 when he left. He then took the same role in San
Francisco where he helped revive the Giants to two playoff
appearances and helped the team go 589-475 through ’92 when he retired to California, where he
continues to reside. Al has a SABR page as well.
I always want to put an extra
T in Hal Trosky’s name and turn him into a revolutionary but Hal actually had a
pretty mellow youth while growing up on his dad’s farm in Iowa. A big three sports guy in high school,
he was signed by a local scout of the Indians when he graduated in ‘31, hit
.302 his first summer in D ball, and .322 in ’32 in a season split mostly
between D and B ball. Hal batted cross-handed, a habit he continued in the
majors. In ’33 he hit .323 with 33 homers in Double A and then .295 in his
September call-up for the Tribe. His first play at first base he fielded a
liner by Babe Ruth that was hit so hard it knocked his glove into right field.
He then had a huge rookie year in ’34 during which he hit .330 with 35 homers
and 142 RBI’s. In ’35 his numbers faded a bit to a .271/26/113 season. In ’36 he
had his biggest year with a .343/42/162 season as his RBI total led the AL along with his total
bases. The next three years he averaged .321/25/114 seasons but his playing
time decreased each season as he began experiencing incapacitating migraine
headaches. In ’40 his numbers dropped to .295/25/93 and his RBI totals coming
in at under 100 bummed him a bunch. In ’41 as team captain he relegated himself
to platoon work at first and after a .294/11/51 half-season he took himself out
of the line-up full time to return to Iowa,
farm for the war effort, and try to solve his headache issues. After sitting
out all of ’42 and ’43 he returned in ’44 to play for the White Sox and as their
first baseman hit .271 with ten homers and 70 RBI’s to lead the team. The
headaches again took him out of action in ’45 and he returned to Chicago in ’46 to hit
.254 in his final season. He finished with a .302 average, 228 homers, and
1,012 RBI’s. In ’47 he managed a local semi-pro team and for the next few
seasons worked as a scout for the ChiSox. He continued farming through ’62 when
he took a gig selling agricultural real estate, which he did a bit over ten
years. He passed away of a heart attack at home in ’79 at age 66.
