It's the moment every ballplayer dreams of - when the rep from Hillerich & Bradsby sits down and guides you through the process of ordering your very own custom signature-model Louisville Slugger bats. This rite-of-passage dated back to the early 1900's when Honus Wagner became the first pro ballplayer to have his own Louisville Slugger with his signature stamped into the barrel. Since then, the Kentucky bat maker had given everyone from Hank Aaron to Frankie Zak his own custom model. It's as momentous a moment as when a rookie gets his own big league uniform, visual and physical proof that he had really "made it" as a ball player.
 
That spring day in 1944 must have been especially sweet for Jesus "Chucho" Ramos. His Louisville Slugger order not only marked his personal advancement to the major leagues, but also a historic moment for his native country: Ramos would be joining the Cincinnati Reds as the very first position player from Venezuela.
 
Students who studied abroad in America imported baseball to Venezuela in the 1890’s. The Amenodoro brothers formed the Caracas Baseball Club in 1895, and the game slowly spread from there. American engineering and oil companies also formed their own company teams, and in 1917 the Navegantes del Magallanes were formed. This club still exists today and is kind of the New York Yankees of Venezuela. When the country formed its first professional league, the Federación Venezolana de Béisbol in 1927, the Navegantes were among the first ball clubs to join. Because Venezuela was a considerable distance from the other Caribbean baseball hot spots like Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, Venezuelans had to play on those islands in order to advance their careers.

If a Venezuelan ball player like Jesus Ramos had dreams of playing the United States, he had a long road ahead of him that would require not only talent, but also other provisions before he reached his ultimate goal. First among them was the language barrier. Common baseball terminology was universal, but simple interaction with teammates or during travel from town to town could be daunting and frustrating if one did not grasp basic English. Unlike today, no team would consider hiring a translator to help out a Spanish-speaking recruit. Why would they when there were thousands of eager English speakers to take their place? And if a player was able to master the language barrier, there was the ever-present issue of race. Though several Latinos had played in the majors before World War II, they were usually singled out for heckling and derision. Just like every other ethnicity, Latino's were known for certain crude stereotypes that were accepted as common knowledge. A Latino had an even harder time if his skin tone was a shade or two darker than an Italian, Native American or other "accepted" ethnicities with a swarthy complexion.
So, these were the obstacles Jesus Ramos had to navigate before that day in 1944 when he sat down and ordered his first batch of signature model Louisville Sluggers.  

Jesús Manuel Ramos García was born on April 12, 1918 in the city of Maturín. Capitol of the state of Monagas, Maturín was one of the hubs of Venezuela's petroleum industry. He was an outstanding all-around athlete in high school where he was a track star as well as ball player. Ramos picked up the nickname "Chucho" as a boy. "Chucho" translates to "Babe" and is a term of endearment in his native Venezuela. Though being called Babe would later lead to his being confused with being a home run slugger, Ramos would freely point out the more innocent origins of the name he would be known by his entire life.
 
After high school, Ramos entered the prestigious Venezuelan Military Academy where he continued to enjoy success in numerous sports. At the age of 19, Ramos was selected to represent Venezuela at the 1937 South American Olympic Games, where he won the gold in the 100 and 220-meter races. That same year he began playing in the Federación Venezolana de Béisbol, initially for Nacional in 1937, then switching to Vargas for the next three seasons. At this point in his career, Chucho was a left-handed pitcher and played the outfield. In the meantime, Ramos graduated from the military academy as an artillery specialist. He joined the Caracas police department, working in the headquarters of the San Agustín district where he picked up the additional nickname "El Comisario", or "The Captain".
 
During this period, Venezuelans had made a small, but distinct, impression on the international stage. Several had played in the Cuban and Puerto Rican winter leagues, and pitcher Alejandro Eloy Carrasquel Aparicio (better known as Alex Carrasquel) became the first Venezuelan to reach the major leagues when he suited up for the Senators in 1939.
In 1941, Ramos was selected to represent his country in the Amateur World Series. The tournament had been played annually since 1938, but this was only the second year Venezuela fielded a team. Playing against teams from Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Dominican Republic, United States, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico and El Salvador, Venezuela's 7-1 record tied them with Cuba, setting the stage for a climactic playoff game. Venezuela's ace, Daniel Canónico, out-dueled future big leaguer Connie Marrero for the gold medal. Ramos played outfield during the series and hit a nice .389 for the team that would become known in Venezuelan baseball history as "Un héroe del 41" (The Heroes of '41).

1941 was also the year Ramos reached the big time when he joined Navegantes del Magallanes. The Magallanes were and still are the class of the Venezuelan League. Ramos acquitted himself well, hitting over .400 in 1942-43 and then .365 in 1943-44. At the plate, Ramos batted right handed, a natural line drive hitter. The speed he exhibited as a track star translated well into base running. His former pitching arm plus his speed made him a skilled outfielder, and he also played first base when needed. In an odd twist, while a right-handed batter, Ramos threw left-handed. This baseball anomaly added to his versatility, giving him the option of playing first base when needed.

Eventually word spread of Chucho Ramos. The Brooklyn Dodgers were reportedly interested in signing Ramos in 1942, but he ultimately chose to stay home in Venezuela. 

After a couple years of war, America's baseball's talent pool was completely decimated. Anyone able to hold a rifle was lost to the service, and anyone left over was siphoned off to work in the war industry or face being drafted. To fill this void, many major league teams looked to Latin America. The Washington Senators, Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds were three teams who made extensive sweeps through the Cuban and Puerto Rican leagues looking for players. In the spring of 1944, Hector Gouvernier, an English teacher and State Department official in Caracas, contacted Reds General Manager Warren C. Giles to suggest a prospective player. The two men had previously met in New York, and Giles invited Gouvernier's prospect to spring training on his word alone. Within days Chucho Ramos was on his way to America. As he was in transit to America, an offer from the Washington Senators arrived on the recommendation of Ramos' fellow countryman Alex Carrasquel.

International and domestic travel in 1944 was extremely difficult due to the war. Civilians were regularly bumped from planes, trains and buses to make room for servicemen, and Ramos was even more handicapped by his lack of English. Somehow he made it from Caracas to Miami via Pan American Clipper, then by train to Cincinnati, successfully navigating all the connections and delays. He arrived in Cincinnati on April Fools Day and reported to the Reds offices, all in one piece, but shivering in the late winter freezing weather. A front office employee took pity on Ramos and helped him purchase his very first overcoat. This protected, Chucho was sent on to the Reds spring training camp in Bloomington, Indiana. Due to wartime travel restrictions, all major and minor league spring training was to take place within a close proximity to the cities they represented. Because Cincinnati trained in Indiana, Ramos was able to experience snow for the first time. 

The Reds team Ramos was joining in 1944 was a shell of its former self. Cincinnati had won back-to-back pennants in 1939-1940 and won the World Championship in 1940. However, the leaders of those teams were either on the downside of their career or serving in the military. Manager Bill McKechnie did his best to cobble together a competitor, but players slipped away to the war like sand through fingers. 

While on many of the other big league clubs Ramos would have immediately ran into the language barrier, the 1944 Reds had Cuban pitcher Tommy de la Cruz and linguist-relief pitcher Joe Beggs to translate for him. The other Reds players found Ramos a very likeable fellow and instead of the usual mean-spirited ethnic ribbing, seemed to enjoy having the Venezuelan in the clubhouse. His limited English gave birth to the teams' spring training rally cry of "Ho Kay!", one of the only phrases Ramos knew when he arrived and with which he answered almost all questions posed to him. With Cruz' and Beggs' help, Ramos quickly added to his vocabulary, and soon he was able to speak enough English to talk to reporters and coaches. As was common in those days, his English skills were a point of humor in the newspapers, though in Chucho's case it appears more good-natured than malicious. For instance, scribes particularly enjoyed the formality by which Ramos addressed people: Reds coach Hans Lobert was "my dear coach", Traveling Road Secretary Bill McCorry was "my dear secretary," and newspaper writers were addressed as "my dear newspaper." A big gold tooth that sparkled in the sunlight added to Chucho's colorful and exotic image.

After his first day in the Reds camp, Ramos was excited enough that he insisted on placing a person-to-person call to his mother back in Venezuela. Tommy de la Cruz helped him navigate the logistics of an international call and timed the conversation so it would not run past the 3-minute limit. As it turned out, de la Cruz didn't need to keep time as Ramos was so excited that he ended the conversation after a minute and a half, even though he had paid the full $17 for three minutes. The beat writers ate this stuff up.

His second day in camp was when Chucho Ramos was asked to join the likes of Ruth, Cobb and DiMaggio by signing a contract for his own personalized bat. Tommy de la Cruz and Joe Beggs helped Louisville Slugger rep Junie Hillerich smooth out the details with Ramos. The Venezuelan looked over his teammates bats and selected a Bucky Walters model that suited his specifications. As the ever-present beat writers looked on, Ramos signed his name with a flourish, ordering his first batch of bats that would bear his name.

Although Ramos had been primarily and outfielder in Venezuela, McKechnie had the rookie work out at first base where his snappy play made a good impression on the coaches. His nickname of Chucho (Babe) had led to Ramos being perceived as a home run hitter, but he quickly let the writers know that Chucho was not in reference to the great Babe Ruth, but a term of endearment given to children back home. Home run hitting aside, Ramos made an impression with his line drive hitting ability, though one of them he hit in batting practice severely injured Estell Crabtree when it hit him above his eye.

Ramos' hustle and good nature made him a pleasant addition to what would have otherwise been a very mediocre Reds spring training. The Reds had a surplus of outfielders, but Ramos' speed and first base option made him worth keeping. McKechnie told reporters that Ramos looked "very promising," and it was thought that bringing him along slowly over the course of the upcoming season would gain him the experience needed to make good. When the team broke camp and traveled to Cincinnati for Opening Day, Chucho Ramos was with them.

Wearing number 24, Chucho Ramos made his major league debut on May 7, 1944 in the second game of a Sunday double header in St. Louis. On the mound that day was Max Lanier, one of the Cardinals' best pitchers. Batting seventh in the lineup and playing right field, Ramos had his first at bat in the top of the 2nd. With a runner on first, he lined a single to right, advancing the runner to third. Trying to take advantage of his speed, McKechnie signaled Ramos to steal second, but Lanier cut him down at the base. In his next at bat, again with a runner on first, Ramos hit a double off the Cardinals ace, moving the runner to third, who scored on the next play. In the 6th Ramos hit an infield single to extend his perfect record. It wasn't until the top of the 9th that Lanier was able to retire Ramos, getting him to hit into a forced out. 3 for 4 against one of the National League's best pitchers was a heck of a way to make a debut. When word reached Venezuela the following day, the nation's baseball fans rejoiced at Chucho's success.

Besides being only the second Venezuelan to make the majors, Ramos' debut marked just the third time in the history of the game that a player made it to the majors without appearing in a minor league game. The first was White Sox legend Ted Lyons, and the second, coincidentally, was Ramos' fellow countryman, Alex Carrasquel.

On May 12, Ramos was sent in to pinch run for catcher Ray Mueller, but was stranded when the inning ended with a fly out. On May 21 against the Dodgers, McKechnie sent Ramos in to hit for Max Marshall in the 6th inning. Chucho hit a single off Fritz Ostermueller and stayed in for the rest of the game, though he had no other at bats. After three big league games, Chucho Ramos' batting average was a lofty .800.

Seven days later Ramos would play what would be his last big league game. Facing the Philadelphia Blue Jays at Shibe Park, Ramos went 1 for 5 and scored a run in the Reds 7-4 win. That night, a check of newspaper box scores showed that Chucho Ramos of Cincinnati was batting .500.

With this win, the Reds were now 2 games out of first place, but disaster was close at hand. A series of injuries suffered by most of the pitching staff sent manager Bill McKechnie into damage control mode. Reaching down into his limited farm system, McKechnie started bringing up young arms. In order to make room, the Reds no longer had the luxury of breaking in Ramos over the course of the season. On June 2nd, the Reds skipper asked Ramos to come to his office. Waiting for him was Tommy de la Cruz who translated the bad news that he was to be sent down to the Syracuse Chiefs. In what probably both shocked and perplexed the veteran McKechnie, Ramos slumped into a chair and broke out in tears. Though what was said went unrecorded, McKechnie most likely explained through de la Cruz that Ramos would be better off playing every day in Syracuse where his added experience would make him more valuable when he rejoined Cincinnati. When he regained his composure, Chucho gathered his things and bid farewell to his teammates, adding, "I'll be back." 

Ramos finished out the 1944 season in Syracuse where he hit a disappointing .259. The Reds had him return to spring training the following year, but he was farmed out Syracuse again for the entire 1945 season, finishing with a .255 average. 

With the war over, 1946 saw a huge influx of returning veterans. For a wartime foreign replacement such as Chucho Ramos, this meant some stiff competition to compete against. Unfortunately for Ramos, he was never given the opportunity to do just that. In late January the Reds mailed him his unconditional release. Although the doors to the big leagues were closed, there were still plenty of venues still open for a ball player like Ramos. He was still a star in Venezuela and he quickly rejoined the Magallanes. For the next 11 years, Chucho Ramos established himself as the greatest first baseman in Venezuelan baseball history, helping the Magallanes win pennants in 1950, 1951 and 1955. After the 1955 championship season, the 38 year-old Ramos retired, credited with a .271 lifetime batting average.

Chucho remained close to the game, though as he aged he opined that the newer players and management lacked the love and mysticism players of his generation held for the game. Jesús Manuel Ramos García passed away on September 2, 1977 from respiratory failure in Caracas. He was aged 59 and was survived by his beloved wife of 21 years, Rosa Elena. 

Although Chucho Ramos' career in The Show was brief, his .500 average and acknowledgement as a trailblazer inspired more than 200 of his fellow countrymen to reach the major league level. To mark his importance to Venezuelan baseball history, a league in that country was named in his honor, and in 2009 Chucho Ramos was elected to the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame.

When I was a kid back in the late 1970's, my dream was to be a relief pitcher for the New York Mets. Many a summer afternoon I would daydream about hearing the roar of the Shea Stadium crowd as the helmet car took me out of the bullpen and onto the field. I'd imagine PA announcer Jack Franchetti's voice bellowing "Now pitching for New York... number 21... Gary Cieradkowski..." echoing around the ballpark as I fired in my warm up throws to Ron Hodges behind the plate. With the exception of the helmet car and some slight details, my daydream was no probably no different than any other boy's since the turn of the century. 

Growing up on Chicago South Side in the 1930's, Dick Sipek's daydreams were no different - with one major exception that is - his was completely devoid of sound. No PA announcer to herald his big moment, no roar of the crowd, not even any ribbing from the opposing bench. See, Dick Sipek was deaf.

Dick was the second of John and Emily Sipek's four kids. The family shared an apartment on Chicago's Komensky Avenue with Emily's widowed father who had immigrated from Bohemia at the turn of the century. Around the age of five, the boy lost his hearing. Even Dick himself had no idea how or why it happened - some said it was due to a fall down the stairs and others put the blame on some kind of illness. Regardless of the cause, back in 1930's Chicago, there wasn't too many career avenues for a person afflicted with hearing loss. Schools didn't offer any kind of special needs programs like today, and soon Dick fell far behind the progress made by his other classmates. Fortunately, John and Emily Sipek enrolled their boy in the Illinois School for the Deaf, located in Jacksonville. In an environment geared towards his unique disability, Dick flourished academically and became an honor student. 

The school gave its students vocational training in jobs that people with hearing loss could competently hold when they graduated. Sipek trained as a baker, but what he really wanted was to play in the major leagues. Dick possessed all the basic elements of a professional athlete - he was strong, fast, and co-ordinated. He played basketball and was an all-state back in football, but baseball was his true love. While most people with a handicap such as Sipek's would have thought a career in pro ball was beyond his grasp, the Illinois School for the Deaf had a person on staff who proved just such a thing was possible. The school's baseball coach was none other than former New York Giants ace Luther Taylor. Besides winning 116 big league games from 1900 to 1908, Taylor, like Dick Sipek, was deaf. Taylor was the second deaf player in the majors after William Hoy, who began his big league career in 1888 and was still in the league when Taylor made his debut. In accordance with the parlance of the time, both deaf players were saddled with the nickname "Dummy", which didn't have as nasty a meaning back then as it does today. In fact, William Hoy referred to himself by his nickname until he passed away in the 1960's.

At first Taylor tried to make Sipek into a pitcher like himself, but the kid wanted to play everyday and insisted on the outfield. Taylor's coaching helped Sipek develop into a first-class ballplayer, and the old pitcher's example allowed him to believe that making the major leagues was indeed possible. World events would also inadvertently contribute to making Sipek's dream come true.

America's entry in World War II drained the ranks of professional baseball of most of the game's stars. By 1943 many players who normally would have never been able to crack a major league roster were now playing in the big leagues. The Washington Senators had a New York City garbageman on vacation playing in the outfield and one-armed Pete Gray was burning up the minor leagues on his way to the major leagues. It was in this environment that Dick Sipek got his big chance.

In 1943 Coach Taylor contacted his old friends at the New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds and told of his star pupil. The Giants brushed him off, but Warren Giles, GM of the Reds, took Taylor's word for it and signed the kid, sight unseen, to a professional contract. The Reds assigned the 20 year-old to the Birmingham Barons, who in turn farmed the kid out to the Erwin Aces in the Appalachian League. After three dozen games Sipek was hitting well over .400 and the Barons recalled him to see what he could do in Birmingham. Right from the start he made a good impression with his hustle and drive. If at first people were skeptical of Dick's ability to play without hearing, he quickly put them to rest. His teammates warmed up to the rookie whose jovial personality put them at ease. Most of the team willingly learned some American Sign Language and his roommate, Kermit Wahl, went so far as to familiarize himself with the whole alphabet and key words. What couldn't be said with sign language was taken care of with a handy pad and pencil and over the years he'd become quite proficient in lip reading. Everyone's biggest fear was, of course, communication in the outfield. Though he was often referred to as a "deaf-mute", Sipek had lost his hearing after learning how to talk, so he could sound out words when needed. While saying "I got it" helped him out half-way, Barons' manager, Johnny Riddle, came up with a simple, but effective plan to deal with his deaf outfielder. He put Sipek in right field and instructed the center fielder and second and first basemen to let Sipek take any ball he called for. If he didn't call for it, the ball was theirs. It worked: Sipek made just 5 errors all season.

By the end of 1943 Sipek has batted .336 with a pair of homers. As a side bonus, the Rickwood Field fans voted him their favorite Baron of 1943. The Black fans who sat in the segregated right field bleachers took a particular liking to Sipek, and passed the hat amongst themselves, collecting $7.50 in nickles and dimes as a token of their admiration. He came back the next season and hit .319, again earning the fan's vote as the most popular player on the team. As a side-note, one of Sipek's teammates that summer was a fifteen year-old lefty named Joe Nuxhall. Sipek's stats in Birmingham earned him a late-season call-up to the Reds, who like every other Major League team, was hurting the loss of quality players to the war effort. Though he didn't get into any games that year, newspapers opined that he'd be a Reds outfielder in 1945. They were right.

The 22 year-old joined the other young hopefuls at the Reds spring training camp in Bloomington, Indiana. Because of the war, big league teams were required to hold spring training close to their home parks instead of the warmer climates of Florida and California. From the start, Sipek emerged as a good prospect for the big club, and he cemented this evaluation when his 9th inning home run beat the Cubs in an April 7th exhibition game before 7,000 soldiers at Fort Knox. When the team broke camp and headed to Cincinnati to begin the 1945 season, Dick Sipek was with them.

Wearing number 21 on his back, Dick Sipek made his major league debut as a pinch hitter on April 28 at Crosley Field. Batting for catcher Joe Just, Sipek drew a walk from Blix Donnelly of the Cardinals. He was sent up to pinch hit again the next day but was struck out by Ken Burkhart. Sipek would have to wait almost a month before he had his first major league hit, a pinch hit single that scored a run against the Phillies on May 16. In the meantime, his teammates learned to adjust to having a hearing impaired player in their midst. Just like in Birmingham, Sipek's good nature made him fit right in, and soon he was "one of the boys". Due to his hearing loss, Sipek was, of course, exempt from military service. Although the loss of his hearing was almost complete, he could hear extremely loud noises. When his teammates found out about that, they exploited it for all it was worth, dropping large objects behind his back and accusing him of faking his disability by chanting "Go to the army! Go to the army!"

Though most of his 82 appearances with the Reds in 1945 were as a pinch hitter, Sipek did play 31 games in the outfield, split between left and right field. Over the course of the season he was charged with two errors for a .972 fielding average, ranking him number 40 of 66 National League outfielders. This was just below the league average of .977. Sipek made his last appearance in the majors on September 29 against the Cardinals. Pinch hitting for pitcher Howie Fox. Sipek popped out to shortstop, freezing his major league batting average at .244 with 6 doubles, a pair of triples and 13 RBI.

The next spring saw the return of all the former ballplayers from the service. Players like Dick Sipek were relegated to the minors. The Reds sent him to their top farm team in Syracuse but after only hitting .245 he was sent to a series of lower minor leagues. As his baseball career was winding down, his personal life picked up. While at the Illinois School for the Deaf, Dick had met fellow student Betty Ann Schmidt. The couple married in 1947 began planning a family. In 1948 Sipek was sent to the Reidsville Luckies of the Carolina League where he hit .318 with 13 homers. He stayed with the Luckies for four summers where he became a favorite of the Reidsville fans. A broken collarbone ended his career in 1951 and he returned to Illinois.

By now the Sipek's had a son, Ron, and the family would eventually grow to include two daughters, Janice and Nancy. They made their home in Quincy, Illinois, where Betty Ann grew up and Dick put his high school training to use working for the Bueters Bakery. Both Ron and Janice lost their hearing and went on to attend the Illinois School for the Deaf. Ron followed in his father's athletic footsteps and and was the quarterback for the schools undefeated 1969 squad. Nancy did not develop hearing loss but her son eventually did.
 
After working in the bakery for many years, Dick took a job as custodian at St. Mary's Catholic School in Quincy. The old ballplayer spent the rest of his life sharing his memories with countless young kids with hearing disabilities. One of the stories Sipek liked to tell was of meeting another ballplayer who also triumphed over what seemed like insurmountable odds. One afternoon in 1946, Sipek, then playing for the Syracuse Chiefs, headed onto the field for batting practice and passed a Montreal Royals player who was headed to the locker room. That player was Jackie Robinson, then in his first season of professional baseball. Sipek asked Robinson "how you feeling?" and Jackie replied "I'm good, good", then, acknowledging that he knew of his handicap, added "keep it up". Dick then said "You're black and I'm deaf - the two of us are the same". The two ballplayers then shook hands and parted ways, one on his way back from becoming the third deaf player in the majors, the other on his way to breaking baseball's color barrier.

Although he wasn't a star, Dick Sipek's 82 games in the majors proved that deaf players could make it in the big league, inspiring several generations of children to look past their handicaps. Sipek lived to see another deaf player in the major leagues when Curtis Pride took the field for the Montreal Expos in 1993.

Dick Sipek passed away in 2005 at the age of 82. Although he never heard the roar of the crowd, he sure knew what it was like to be a major league ballplayer.

Back in 1989, my very first client as a graphic designer was Will Arlt, owner of the late Cooperstown Ball Cap Company. They made the greatest reproductions of old-style ballcaps ever. The company is no longer around, but don't worry, it is re-emerging in a slightly larger form as the Ideal Cap Company. Anyway, I traded my services for caps, I thought (and still do) they were the greatest thing ever made out of wool, and every delivery bearing the Cooperstown label made me rip the box open like a kid at Christmas! Ever once in a while Will would slip in an unsolicited cap. One of those was a 1944 St. Louis Browns cap. It had a brown bill, white crown with orange and brown stripes - the friggin' ugliest cap before the Astros and Padres dirtied up the 1970's. For some reason I really came to like this bastard cap, wearing it often and getting comments from more fashion-minded folks and every so often a wink from an oldster who'd mumble "hey, the Brownies!"

The Browns are the goats of baseball history. Even their greatest moment, winning the 1944 American League pennant, is dismissed as an anomaly brought on by wartime deprivations. At a glance, that's pretty much correct - after '44 they just sank lower and lower, settling into position as the league's whipping boy and occasional headline grabber when owner Bill Veeck would stage one of his wacky stunts. The Browns were also known for their hiring of one-armed Pete Gray, who perhaps more than anything else underlined the desperate straits major league baseball found itself in during World War II. But just like everything else, peel back the skin and there is much more under the surface: One can make the point that by hiring Pete Gray, The St. Louis Browns destroyed any chance their franchise had in turning around their fortunes. Yeah, I said it: Pete Gray destroyed the Browns.

The Browns team that won the pennant in 1944 did so by expert management by skipper Luke Sewell. He cleverly platooned his players and was able to secure the services of a few guys who, because of their defense plant jobs, could play only on weekends. Often disparaged as a bunch of cast-offs and boozers, that perception is only partly correct. Sure they had some first-class tipplers like Sig Jakucki and Mike Kreevich, but on a whole the quality of players the Browns fielded wasn't any worse than what the Yankees were putting in pinstripes at the time. After the excitement of the 1944 season, The Browns had formed a tight-knit team that carried themselves with pride. Despite losing the World Series the team had confidence going into spring training that they had essentially the same group of guys and the rest of the American League was, if anything, weaker due to the draft.

The only thing the Browns lacked in 1944 was popularity in their own home town. St. Louis was a Cardinals town and had been since the 1920's. Even though while traveling on the road fans flocked to see the upstart Browns, attendance at their home games, even when in first place, was much less than the Cardinals. Management knew they needed a little something more than just fielding a good team. Enter Pete Gray.

Like many American boys he grew up with a passion and talent for baseball. Unfortunately a fall from a delivery truck crushed his arm and it had to be amputated just above the elbow. Unlike many boys who would have given up his dream of playing professionally, his disability only made Pete bear down harder. Through countless hours of practice he developed his own way to adapt his body to play the game he loved.

For fielding, Pete stripped out all the padding on his glove to make it light and easy to manage. After catching a ball he would raise the glove to his right stump letting the ball roll backwards out of the pocket, down his wrist and against his chest. He then pulled his fingers out of he glove, now clamped securely under his stump, and let the ball roll into his hand. Performed in one well-practiced motion it seemed to defy gravity and sportswriters all around the country made Pete demonstrate it in every town he passed through.

At the plate Pete utilized a 38-ounce bat, heavier than the norm. Holding the bat aloft with his one hand he left a space at the bottom of the bat where his missing right hand would normally have been. He get the bat in motion earlier than a two-handed player and later on in the big leagues this would lead to his downfall. But at a lower level of ball Pete could compensate successfully. He even worked out a way to control his bat in order to bunt - Pete was a very fast runner and he used this that speed to his advantage.

It's hard to say whether or not Pete would have been picked up by a minor league team had it not been for the war. So many players were in the service that the low minors were signing anything they could get their hands on, only to see them slip away as the majors siphoned off the best and then just as fast would in turn lose them to the draft. With only one arm, Pete wasn't going overseas and he first broke into organized ball with the Three Rivers Renards of the Canadian-American League in 1942. Batting a staggering .381 he was bought by the AAA Toronto Maple Leafs but was sold because of an incident that occurred during spring training: Hiding behind a potted plant in the lobby of the Leaf's hotel, skipper Burleigh Grimes eavesdropped on Gray criticizing his management abilities.

Now property of the Memphis Chickasaws, Pete hit .289 and had only 8 errors for 1943. Not too bad but the next year he positively dominated the Southern Association by hitting .333, 21 doubles, 9 triples and even slugged 5 one-handed homers. He stole 68 bases and in the outfield his fielding percentage was a perfect 1.000. On top of that Pete won the league's MVP Award. A side-show? Yeah, but he also proved he could play ball professionally. An MVP Award is an MVP Award and they don't hand those things out for charity cases.

Now I can go one and easily turn this into a feel-good piece on Pete Gray's determination and how how he inspired countless disabled American servicemen returning from the war but that's not what I want to do. Baseball history is littered with testiments to Pete Gray's courage and determination. Hell, there was even a television movie about it. By the same token I can slip into socially-conscious spiel about how sick and twisted the racial sensitivities were at the time that when the lack of talent was so bad, Major League Baseball in all it's Jim Crow glory couldn't see to sign some of the hundreds of qualified blacks in the Negro Leagues. Instead they chose to utilize a 15 year-old kid (Cincinnati's Joe Nuxhall), a 36 year-old garbage man (Ed Boland of Washington), a one-legged war veteran (Bert Shepperd, again of Washington) and of course, a one-armed guy named Pete Gray.

Where I aim to take the rest of this story is to make the argument that The Brown's signing of Pete Gray in essence became the torpedo which sank the franchise.

The Browns that turned up for spring training was essentially the same team that won the league pennant the previous year. The common perception of the team was of one that was in perpetual shock of how far above their station they had come and that no one had even a slight glimpse of hope that the team would repeat in 1945. None of that is true. Through the long hard summer of '44 the Browns had been forged into a cohesive team. Because Luke Sewell had cleaned house when he took over as skipper, none of his players had gotten used to long futile careers with a bad team. The Browns of 1945 were eager youngsters and seasoned vets. They were winners and knew they were just as good or better than the rest of the American League. There was no reason they couldn't expect to repeat.

Enter Pete Gray. Maybe if he was a whole, healthy young ballplayer it would have gone easier. It's one thing to have a new young buck brought up to the big club fresh off of an MVP season in the minors. But this guy had one arm and along with that came the press freak show eager to cover the whole thing. For a bunch of guys serious about defending their pennant in a tough war year, a side-show was the last thing they needed.

If he sat on the bench or maybe just gave catching and throwing exhibitions during batting practice, maybe everything would have gone well. But Pete Gray was a St. Louis Brown for one reason only: to attract fans to the ballpark. And that wasn't going to happen with him riding the pines in the dugout. The Browns needed to play the guy.

Inserting a novelty into the lineup of the defending American League champions spelled trouble from the outset. The other guys knew Pete was there as a freak attraction. As major leaguers, they all knew that this wasn't no Southern Association and real pitching with real curveballs was going eat this guy alive. And the flawless motion that he used to field his position? To his teammates that added up to one thing: extra base hits for opposing batters. On top of all this, who was going to have to take a seat while the one-armed guy made history? Mike Kreevich, that's who.

Kreevich was a former White Sox prodigy who nearly drank himself out of the game only to find redemption on The Browns. He hit just over .300 in 1944 to lead the team and although he was up there in age, was still a valuable cog in The Browns machine. Still a heavy drinker, losing playing time to a one-armed guy just sent Kreevich spinning out of control. By being an everyday player helped keep Kreevich sober and responsible. Being platooned with Gray not only threw off his timing at the plate but took away the lifeline to sobriety he precariously clung to. The other players looked on in shock as management appeared to want to sacrifice their success on the field for some modest bump in attendance. The team's cohesiveness broke down.

As infielder Ellis Clary eloquently put it: "He screwed up the whole team. If he's playing, one of them two-armed guys is sitting in the dugout pissed off."

The press, used to poking fun at the Browns lowly status now turned the novelty of Pete Gray against them as well. How lousy are The Browns players that management has to dig down and come up with a cripple to play on the team? The rest of the team seethed with resentment as they tried to hold it together and win the pennant.

The race was pretty tight. Detroit won it all and while the Browns finished in 3rd place, they were only 6 game behind the Tigers. Pete Gray played in 77 games that season and batted .218. How much better could Mike Kreevich have done had he been the team's constant outfielder? We'll never know, but it's not that far of a jump to assume Kreevich's bat could have been the deciding factor in winning, say, 6 or 7 games that season. The same could be said for team spirit. How much of a difference did it make with the press side-show that surrounded Pete Gray. How much did it get in the heads of the players, knowing that management seemed to be sabotaging a pennant for box office success?

What the hell do I know? I'm just a simple artist born more than 25 years after the Browns won their only pennant. But I can say that things such as this really makes the game of baseball so fascinating to me, even after 40-something years on the planet. Just think about it - if the Browns had repeated in 1945, that could have signaled the resurgence of their team. Maybe they wouldn't surpass the Cards as St. Louis' favorite boys, but what if they stayed contenders? St. Louis had supported 2 teams for decades and with a decent record, who's to say support wouldn't dwindle away like it did when the team sank to the bottom of the standings and stayed there for the next 7 years. Look at Chicago. The Cubs and the White Sox exchanged seasons futility for decades and still attracted enough fans to continue sharing the same city. Philadelphia is another example. Both the A's and Phils stunk up their respective leagues for years, yet remained side-by-side residents of the same burg. Maybe it would have been another 2-team city that would have lost a team to Baltimore in 1954.

And just think about it: What would the San Diego Padres colors have been had the Browns stayed put? Things like that are likely to keep an avid baseball fan up at night with the night terrors...

Just to wrap this whole thing up, I don't want to overlook what an accomplishment it was for Pete Gray to make it to the big leagues. Sure, he was a gimmick used to attract fans, but he wasn't an Eddie Gaedel or a Jackie Mitchell. Pete really did hit .333 at Memphis and was MVP of the Southern Association. The man could play ball - just not at a major league level. As an inspiration to people all over the world, his story is a life lesson in perseverance and for that I tip my well-worn Cooperstown Ball Cap 1944 St. Louis Browns cap to him!

If you'd like to read the best book on the 1944 Browns and their pennant winning season get yourself a copy of David Alan Heller's book "As Good As It Got." Heller does a hell of a job profiling all the players on this fascinating team, puts wartime baseball in perspective and takes you through the entire '44 season, demonstrating how this remarkable team captured their one and only pennant.

Since I began this website I always liked to feature a special story for Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Indeed some of my favorite stories have been part of this little series: Eddie Grant, Bill Niemeyer and Sam Kau to name a few. This Veteran's Day I'm reminded that not all vet's served in combat. Some men served in peacetime like Sig Jakucki and Torpedo Mills, and then there were those who for whatever reasons were spared the horrors of battle.

Jackie Robinson was one of those men. 

In the summer of 1944 2nd Lieutenant Jack Robinson found himself at Camp Breckinridge, an infantry replacement training depot in the hills of western Kentucky. The war had been rough for Robinson - not on the battlefields of France or a nameless island in the Pacific, but at home in a racial war whose injuries were not physical but mental.

Before the war Jackie Robinson was a well-known collegiate athlete. His exploits as a track star at UCLA set numerous records and his skills on the gridiron made the sports page from coast to coast. If he had been white, Jackie Robinson would have had to fight off offers from National Football League teams upon graduation. Instead Robinson took a position with a government-run athletic program which quickly folded. Looking for employment, Robinson took the most lucrative sports job he could find - semi-pro football in Hawaii. After a successful 1941 season, Robinson booked passage on a steamship back to Los Angeles. On Sunday, December 7th, 1941 he was contemplating his next move when the Japanese decided it for him. 

The 23 year-old Robinson received his draft notice in early 1942. After basic training with a cavalry regiment he and several other black soldiers requested a transfer to officer's candidate school. Robinson's natural leadership qualities and UCLA education made him ideal officer material but his skin color worked against him. His transfer was put on the back-burner until boxer Joe Lewis stepped in to help open the gate allowing black soldiers to attend officer's school. By January 1943 the former college star was 2nd Lieutenant Jack Robinson,U.S. Army.

Robinson was assigned to the 761st Tank Battalion at Ft. Hood Texas. Known as the "Black Panthers", the 761st would go on to earn a distinguished combat record serving under General Patton in Europe. For two reasons Lt. Robinson wasn't one of them.

Years of strenuous athletic activity had left Robinson with an old ankle injury that required testing to guarantee he was combat-ready. On afternoon while awaiting the results of the test, Robinson boarded an integrated Army bus and took a seat near the front. When the driver told Robinson to sit in the back he flatly refused. The driver reported the incident to the Military Police who took the insolent lieutenant in custody. The commander of the 761st flatly refused to prosecute his young officer but the matter was taken out of his hands when Robinson was transferred to another battalion. His new commanding officer happily signed off on court-martial proceedings before the ink was dry on his transfer papers.

After a humiliating trial in which he was acquitted of all charges, Robinson found himself a soldier without an army. His unit had deployed to Europe during his court martial and medical tests found his ankle was tender enough to keep him out of combat. The trial had made news and his superiors at Ft. Hood didn't want him around so he was transferred to another black unit, the 372nd Infantry Regiment.

The 372nd had a brilliant battle record from the first world war. The units shoulder patch was a red hand on a white disk trimmed in blue and red. This striking insignia was bestowed on the regiment by the French Army of Africa with which the unit had fought with in 1918. By the time Lt. Robinson caught up with the regiment at Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky it was being used as a feeder unit that trained replacement infantry troops. As a distinguished college athlete, Robinson was named the regiment's athletic director.

It was only a temporary assignment. Robinson's fight against the bogus court marshal gained him a reputation as a hard case, and with a bum ankle he wasn't any good for combat. The army decided to discharge him. In the meantime, Robinson waited for the slow moving paperwork to wind its way through Army bureaucracy by keeping the recruits occupied with baseball.

One afternoon Robinson happened upon a soldier throwing big league curve balls on the baseball field. The soldier was Ted Alexander, a former pitcher with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. Robinson had had a brush with Negro League baseball back before the war when a traveling blackball team had played a pickup team which Robinson was a part of. When the game ended the team took off without giving Robinson his agreed upon money for the exhibition. The whole experience left Robinson with a bad taste in his mouth and a lingering distrust of black baseball operations. When Robinson told Alexander of his concerns about post-army employment, the pitcher revealed the the Monarchs were always hiring good talent. The war had hit black baseball as hard as the white version with many of its good players in the service. However with many blacks now employed in high paying war industry jobs, blackball was the most popular diversion for their new-found disposable income. The Negro Leagues were experiencing their most profitable period in their history.

The former Monarchs pitcher surely related all this to Robinson and before the two men parted ways Alexander had given the Lieutenant Kansas City Monarchs' owner Tom Baird's contact information. When he received his honorable discharge in November of 1944, Robinson wrote to the Monarchs inquiring about a position. In the meantime he took a job as athletic director at Sam Huston College in Austin, Texas. When spring rolled around the Monarchs sent Robinson a $400 a month contract and instructed him to report for spring training. 

Jackie Robinson's baseball career had begun.

This was a neat story I stumbled on when seeking players for my Kentucky Baseball book project. Much has been written about Jackie Robinson, yet I found it a much neglected side bar that the roots of his professional baseball career actually dated back to a late summer afternoon in western Kentucky. This was a fun illustration to work on especially since his army regiments insignia was so unique - I just knew that red hand would make the drawing. My old pal Will Arlt, owner of Ideal Cap Co. was in town last week and I showed him my illustration. We both agreed that the cap I depicted Jackie wearing would have to be an eventual offering from Ideal, so be on the look out for it next year.

Next week I will revert to the customary baseball card format for my drawings - it just so happens that I recently completed two full-page illustrations for the Kentucky project and I thought it would be a shame to shoe-horn them into a smaller format.

Anyway, this post is dedicated to all the men and women who have served in the United States military. It was your sacrifices and sense of duty that allowed me the life I am fortunate to enjoy. I think of that every day, not just on Memorial and Veteran's Day. Thank you from this very grateful artist.

By the morning of March 4th, 1945, the boys of G Company, 2nd Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment, 5th Infantry Division had become hardened veterans. Most had just arrived in Europe barely 3 months before and now those same freshly minted young soldiers had checked the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge, chased their asses back across the Rhine and were now slugging their way into the Third Reich itself. The war was close to being over with, the Allies gaining more momentum everyday and the enemy knew it. If the Germans were only fighting the western powers they most likely would have caved in already. However, on the other side of Germany the Soviets were smashing towards Berlin and every day they held out meant more Germans could make their way west to be captured or at least get to an area occupied by the western Allies. No one wanted to be around when the Russians came so the war ground on.

The boys of G Company probably didn’t care much about the reason why the Germans still fought them tooth and nail. Each man had had his life interrupted and shipped half way around the globe to stop an evil that was threatening to swallow the whole world. The boys of G Company had left pretty young wives, anxious mothers, college classrooms or good jobs and took up a Garand Rifle to do their part. Complaining about what they were missing out on was pointless - the fella next to you had the same story. Maybe even better than yours. Nah, complaining wouldn’t do any good. Best thing was to keep marching forward and get this over with. As they wearily crossed the makeshift bridge built over the Kyll River they just cared about the fight they had ahead of them that afternoon and the one after that and the one after that until these Krauts threw in the towel.

If any of the boys in G Company were still sleepy, chances are the mortar fire that greeted them as the crossed the bridge woke them up. The enemy they’d been chasing since Luxembourg had dug in around the town of Erdorf. As the German lines collapsed and contracted the enemy became more dense, more desperate. Besides regular infantry, G Company was marching right into redeployed artillery and Panzer units. As they pushed forward the resistance became stiffer and more determined. Each gain was met with vicious counter-attacks and artillery barrages.

G Company was deployed to sweep the fields around the village of Erdorf. This was pleasant farm land of rolling little green hills and blooming trees. To the boys of G Company, the area they were clearing of enemy troops looked a lot like familiar places in the northeast and Midwest United States. Perhaps more than a few were suddenly lost in thoughts of an afternoon spent in surroundings much like this. The boys of G Company thought back to little places they left behind called Sussex County, Washington Courthouse, Mechanicsburg or Crescent Springs.

To the officers of G Company, this place was just called Hill 378.

The company spread out and took a low hill like they had countless other times in the last three months. All very textbook. Regrouping and moving forward, they entered a wooded area where entrenched German troops and the Panzer tanks were waiting. This obstacle, too, was eventually beaten aside by G Company and just like every other hill and wood and field G Company had cleared in the past three months, they left behind some of their own. As the troops emerged on the other side of the wood and continued eastward into Germany, one of the 32 boys they left behind that afternoon was 22 year-old Private First Class Bill Niemeyer of Crescent Springs, Kentucky. The life he had put on hold in order to beat back the evil that darkened the world consisted of his young wife Marie, infant daughters Deanna Gail and Mary Johanna and a promising pitching career in the Chicago Cubs organization.

Even though Bill Niemeyer never made it up to the Cubs, I wanted to depict Bill in a Chicago uniform. Was he good enough to have eventually made it to Wrigley Field? I don’t know. We will never know. The same as we will never know what any of the other boys in G Company who died that afternoon in Germany would have accomplished in their lives. The one thing I do know is that is their sacrifices, all veteran’s sacrifices, made it possible for me to have a good life in the greatest country in the world. As I sit here writing this, I can see and hear my neighbors enjoying this beautiful Memorial Day weekend. The shouts of the boys next door, the couple across the street putting a pair of mountain bikes in their SUV and the girl on the corner attempting to train her new puppy on her green front lawn. In a few hours I will be going over to see my fiancé who I love very much, and share a nice, lazy summer evening. All that I see and hear right at this very moment was possible because of men and women like Bill Niemeyer, a 22 year-old promising ballplayer who once lived right down the street from where I sit right now, the place he left to go off to war and never saw again.

Many thanks to Gary Bedingfield who is the foremost authority on baseball and World war II. While looking around for a ballplayer to feature this Memorial Day I of course consulted his amazing website www.baseballinwartime.com. Consulting a page he constructed showing the many professional ballplayers who died fighting for our country, Bill Niemeyer jumped off the screen. He was born and raised right where I was sitting. I might even pass his relatives at the market or live next door. The fact that he came from this place made his sacrife a bit more personal for me, especially as I sat there with a nice fresh cup of coffee by an open window enjoying the beautiful Kentucky scenery he never saw again. The place of his death was even more interesting as that part of Germany looks very similar to what he had grown up in. I’m glad I found Bill’s name on that website and I encourage every other baseball fan to take a look at Gary Bedingfield’s monumental work. His site features in-depth articles about hundreds (actually it might even be thousands of entries by now!) of players who found themselves in the service during the war. Gary is also an author of two indispensable books on the subject, "Baseball's Dead of World War II: A Roster Of Professional Players Who Died" and one of my personal favorites, "Baseball In World War II Europe (part of the Images of Sports series)."
 

The halfway point on the drive between New Jersey and Kentucky is Donora, Pennsylvania. Besides being my own personal milestone of almost being home or almost being to my Grandmother's house, Donora is the birthplace of 2 Hall of Fame ballplayers. I say 2, but it's actually just 1 at the moment - Ken Griffey, Jr. hasn't gone through the formalities of being inducted, but he will. In 35 years of watching baseball in person, Griffey was the absolute greatest ballplayer I had the pleasure of seeing in person. So I call him a Hall of Famer. The other Hall of Famer who hailed from that town of Donora was Stan Musial. Stashu. That Man. Stan The Man. 

He was THE budding superstar of the early 1940's. On a St. Louis Cardinals team that was loaded with talent, young Stan Musial stood out. Unlike tough and rough teammates like Whitey Kurowski or Enos Slaughter, Musial was a quiet, friendly fella. So nice was he that when radio announcers pronounced his Polish last name wrong, Stan was too nice of a guy to bring it to their attention. Thus, Musial (pronounced "Mu-shill") became Musial (pronounced "Mu-see-al"). He seemed to have come out of nowhere - a converted pitcher from the sticks of Pennsylvania who hit .315 and quietly forced his way into the starting lineup of the best team in the National League. It was while he was still relatively unknown that Stan got his famous nickname. Dodger fans at Ebbets Field began referring to the new ballplayer as "that man", as in "oh shit, it's that man again" when he came to bat against Brooklyn. It seemed that every time "that man" came to bat he tore Brooklyn pitching apart. Eventually it evolved to "The Man", the name he was forever known by. That rookie season was just a teaser - in 1943 he led the league in hits, doubles, triples, batting average, slugging percentage - being named the National League MVP was just a formality. 1944 was pretty much a repeat of the previous year and for the third year in a row the Cardinals went to the World Series. But there was that thing called World War II going on and it was inevitable that The Man would have to take part. Brooklyn's Pete Reiser pushed hard to get Stan to join the Army and play on his Fort Riley ball club but Musial wanted Navy instead. 

Seaman Stan Musial was posted to Bainbridge Naval Training Center in Maryland. During the war all military bases had football, basketball and baseball teams to keep the servicemen occupied and out of trouble. Team sports helped build an esprit de corps among the recruits and many of the larger bases fielded varsity teams loaded with former big leaguers. Teams like the Bainbridge Commodores, which Musial played on, would play exhibition games against major league teams and local semi-pro outfits for the benefit of the troops. Free admission to see Bainbridge take on the Philadelphia Athletics or Brooklyn Dodgers kept many a sailor out of trouble for the afternoon and take his mind off of what was to come when they shipped overseas.

While with Bainbridge Musial played with Lum Harris (A's), Dick Wakefield (Tigers), Thurman Tucker (White Sox), Stan Spence (Senators) and Dick Sisler (Cardinals). Not a bad variety of talent for a Navy base. It was while stationed there that Musial decided to tinker with his batting mechanics enabling him to pull the ball. Pulling the ball allowed him to hit more home runs to entertain the sailors. Besides making the white hats happy, the adjustment turned a great hitter into a power hitter.

Musial continued to play ball when he was shipped out to Hawaii. In 1945 the island was an arsenal of talent and it can be argued that the level of ball being played on any given weekend in Hawaii was better than what was being offered by the Major League back in the States. Playing ball the entire two years in the Navy gave Musial the edge when he rejoined the Cardinals for the 1946 season. He led the National League in all the same offensive categories that he did in 1943 and of course was again given the MVP Award as the Cardinals won the World Series over Boston. 

The Man went on to have one of the best careers in baseball history. Besides being arguably the best hitter of all-time, Stan was also one of the most respected. His cheerful personality and fair sense of sportsmanship earned him the respect of millions of fans. There's a story from 1947 that sums up what Stan Musial was all about. During a Dodger-Cardinals game, Jackie Robinson, playing first, was intentionally spiked by Enos Slaughter. This was Robinson's first year and he was under strict orders not to fight back. To do so would jeperdise the whole integration effort. Players from the other teams knew this as well and it was open season on Robinson. Enos Slaughter took full advantage. Out by a mile, Slaughter leaped into the air and slid his spikes down the defenseless Robinson's calf as he stretched for the ball. When Robinson got himself on base a few innings later, he stood on first, poised to spike the hell out of whoever was covering second. Stan was playing first for St. Louis and told Robinson that saw what happened and he wouldn't blame him for spiking whoever was covering second. Musial's sense of sportsmanship and empathy struck Robinson and made him realise that not everyone was against him. Stan's words that day totally defused a situation  that could have gotten totally out of control had Robinson intentionally hurt who ever happened to be covering second.

When Stan passed away last week at the age of 92, baseball lost a great man. What more can I say except Do widzenia Stashu!

If you flip through an old St. Louis newspaper or an issue of The Sporting News in 1940 or 1941, the chances are pretty good you'll come across at least a mention of a ballplayer named Johnny Grodzicki. The Cardinals of the early 1940's were arguably the best franchise in the game due in no small part to their vast farm system. Spread throughout the country their vast network of affiliated clubs spewed forth a continuous stream of young arms that fed the mighty St. Louis war machine: Mort Cooper, Howie Pollet, Max Lanier, Johnny Beezley... all stars of their day. So with all this top-drawer talent on the big club why spend the ink on some kid with an unpronounceable name still in the minors?

Because Johnny Grodzicki was that damn good. In fact, he wasn't just damn good, he was a can't miss, full-fledged superstar. Grodzicki was, as they say, the "next big thing."

Growing up in the gritty industrial town of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, all Johnny Grodzicki thought he had to look forward to was a life spent in one of the many factories that filled the sky above with gray smoke. He came from a big Polish family that resided in the Honey Pot section of town. His parents, Ignatz and Lottie, were recent immigrants and he had five brothers: Stanley, Chester, Casimer, Richard and Edward and two sisters: Jean and Alfreda. To supplement the meager paycheck he received from his job in a silk mill, Grodzicki started selling subscriptions to the Sporting News. Back then, everyone read the Sporting News, and helped by his genial personality, Grodzicki sold enough subscriptions to get himself a scholarship to the Ray Doan Baseball School in Hot Springs Arkansas. Doan's school attracted the best young ballplayers in the country and the 1935 faculty was chock-full of the games' top stars. As a pitcher, the strapping Pole was tutored by none other than Schoolboy Rowe, ace of the world champion Detroit Tigers and the immortal Dizzy Dean, at that time by far the best hurler in the game.

Under the watchful eyes of Rowe and Dean, Grodzicki learned how to properly hold a curve ball and all the other skills needed to become a professional. By the time the school had ended Johnny Grodzicki was signed by St. Louis (undoubtedly due to Dizzy Dean's recommendation) and thrown into the giant swimming pool that the Cardinals called their farm system.

Grodzicki surfaced with the New Iberia Cardinals in Louisiana's Evangeline League. The big righty threw hard but was wild and he ended his first season with a 16-12 mark. He showed great promise but needed work. If nothing else, Grodzicki impressed the Cardinals with his eagerness to learn. Hard work and determination brought him a promotion to Houston in 1937 and he tore up the Texas League with an 18-11 showing. However he was still prone to walks and topped the league with 174 passes. None-the-less the Cards had enough faith in him that they promoted him to their top farm club in Rochester. Under the watchful eye of manager Billy Southworth he dropped to 8-7 trying to get a hold of his control but by the end of the season he was undoubtedly the jewel of the St. Louis farm system.

Tragedy struck during the Red Wings' spring training when Grodzicki came down with influenza. The virus spread quickly and infection wracked his body. A stocky 6'-2" and 215lbs at the time of his illness, nine days later Grodzicki had lost 50lbs and was fading fast. Doctors weren't discussing whether or not he'd be able to play ball again but whether he was going to survive the infection. The Cardinals spared no expense to save their future star and after a battery of operations and round after round of serum injections, Grodzicki emerged from the hospital, weak but alive. He got into 25 games with the Red Wings that season and not surprisingly went 3-3. Trying to regain his strength and form on the mound, Grodzicki traveled south to Panama in that winter. In the four-team Panama League the big Pole came into his own and won 10 games for the Colon ball club and when the season ended, Grodzicki was tanned, bubbling over with confidence and ready for spring training. The bosses in St. Louis had been following his progress south of the border and now he had a guardian angel looking out for him - Billy Southworth, his manager in Rochester, was the new Cardinals manager. Southworth knew what the big fella was capable of and had him report straight to St. Petersburg, Florida. Johnny Grodzicki was spending the spring with the Cardinals.

It was a great spring training by any definition. On the mound the big phenom beat the hell out of the world champion Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees. The sportswriters couldn't find enough adjectives to describe the big Pole from Nanticoke and the Cardinal executives were spraining their brains thinking about all the pennants that lay ahead. By the time the team broke camp Grodzicki was on the train north to St. Louis. Though everyone agreed he still needed some fine tuning, for the time being he was a Cardinal.

On April 18, 1941 he faced the Chicago Cubs in the top of the 9th inning and retired all 3 batters he faced. Two days later he was brought in again in the ninth against the Cubs and retired the last two batters to end the game. After another two days rest Grodzicki was again brought in from the bullpen, this time as the fifth Cardinals pitcher against Pittsburgh with the score tied 7-7 in the 12th inning. The rookie walked three and gave up a run as the Pirates went ahead, but fortunately a double by Marty Marion and a hit by Enos Slaughter put the Cardinals on top in the bottom of the 12th. As the last pitcher standing, Johnny Grodzicki got his first major league win.

Exactly a week later Grodzicki was rushed in to relieve starter Bill McGee in the third against the Giants in New York. In six innings he gave up 1 earned run on 3 hits, whiffed 5 but walked 4. He also picked up his 2nd win as a Cardinal. Despite a pretty good beginning the front office decided it was best if their young phenom spent another year in the high minors honing his craft. With all their existing arms, the Cards could afford to wait another year before unleashing the big Pole on the National League.

Grodzicki was sent to the Columbus Red Birds. Columbus, along with Rochester, was the top rung of the Cardinal organizations farm system. The ball club he joined was stocked with future major league all-stars Harry Brecheen, Murry Dickson, Harry Walker and Preacher Roe. Grodzicki dominated the American Association that summer striking out 136 men in 199 innings and compiling a .792 winning percentage. Besides leading the league in winning percentage his ERA was the lowest and he was undoubtedly the best pitcher in the loop. His 19-5 record led the Red Birds to the Little World Series where they beat the Montreal Royals in 6 games, Grodzicki winning two of them.

The sky was the limit for the Pennsylvania Pole as he went home to Nanticoke for the winter. Come opening day 1942 there was nothing stopping him from joining the Cardinals for good.

Nothing except World War II.

After spending one last Christmas and New Years with his family, Johnny Grodzicki and his brothers went down to the local army recruiting station and enlisted. Because of his notoriety the big Pole was sent straight to Fort Knox, Kentucky and put to use on the ball field. At the time this practice wasn't uncommon. With the huge influx of volunteers the army could spare a few professional athletes and put them to use entertaining the troops. The Navy began a spirited competition with the Army trying to see who could field better teams and the publicity derived from the inter-service rivalry help build an esprit de corp amongst the new citizen-soldiers. Such was Grodzicki's fame that Bob Feller named him to his personal Army-Navy team that played against the American League All-Star team in Cleveland. Though Feller's team lost 5-0, the fact that this guy who appeared in just 5 major league games was selected to play with the best ballplayers in the game says something to the way his contemporaries thought of his talent.

With the war effort moving into full swing, Grodzicki transferred to the 17th Airborne Division and went overseas in the summer of '44. After slugging through the Battle of the Bulge, the 17th did their first combat jump in March 24, 1945 when they parachuted behind enemy lines into Westphania, Germany. After capturing strategic bridges spanning the Issel River they continued into the heart of the Third Reich. After 5 days of combat a German shell exploded next to him, killing three of his fellow paratroopers. Grodzicki was alive but chunks of scrap iron tore into his right side, smashing his hip and lower leg.

At a field hospital doctors discovered that the sciatic nerve was damaged and Grodzicki was told he'd probably never walk again. Surgeons removed the shrapnel and the pitcher began a long, hard regimen of rehabilitation and therapy. By the time Grodzicki returned home to Nanticoke he was on crutches and his right leg below the knee was shrivelled to half of it's former size.

Like his bout with influenza back in 1940, Grodzicki gave it his all in trying to regain his strength. Again, as in 1940, he went south to Panama where he worked out with the Colon ball club and when spring came around he was in the Cardinals camp. Newspapers trumpeted his return and he was held out as a shining example of courage and sacrifice.

But despite everything he and the Cardinals tried, Grodzicki's major league career and dreams were over. He stayed with the club throughout the '46 and '47 season but by the spring of 1948 it was obvious that Grodzicki had better start looking for another line of work. The Cardinals still thought highly of their former phenom and put him to work as a coach and manager in their farm system. In the winters he played and managed in Panama and eventually the Cardinals made him their roving pitching coach. He stayed with the organization until 1964 when he switched to the Mets for two years when he went over to the Detroit Tigers. In 1979 made the majors again, this time as the Tigers pitching coach. After over 40 years in organized ball, Grodzicki retired to Daytona Beach to spend time with his wife Anita and his stepson and stepdaughter. He passed away on May 2, 1998 at the age of 81.