Net54baseball.com Forums - Tuesday Trivia: A World Series Hero (and in life too)

Quote:

Originally Posted by commishbob (Post 2338777)

Hank Bauer, my Dad's favorite player not named Joe DiMaggio.

This was a question on another baseball forum recently which is why I remember.

Ding Ding Ding!!

Hank Bauer hit successfully in a record 17 consecutive World Series games.

Before joining the Yankees, Hank Bauer won two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts as a Marine in World War II.

Some other facts about Hank Bauer:

1) One of Hank's older brothers Herman signed with the White Sox as a catcher and was a top prospect when he was drafted into the army in 1941. Henry said Hank was the family’s best player, but he never got a chance to prove it. Herman was killed in action in France in 1944.

2) Hank followed his brother Herman into the military, joining the Marines in 1942, at age 19. Hank was shipped to the Pacific Theater and promptly came down with malaria. He endured 23 attacks of the disease during his four years in the Marines. He also survived jungle combat on Pacific islands. He earned his first Bronze Star and Purple Heart on Guam, where he was hit by shrapnel. His second medals came in the fierce battle for Okinawa. Only six of the 64 men in Sergeant Bauer’s platoon survived the battle. When shrapnel from an artillery shell ripped a hole in his left thigh, he told a buddy, “There goes my baseball career."

3) Hank carried bits of shrapnel in his back for the rest of his life. He recovered from his wounds, but gave up on baseball and found a job as an ironworker. Yankee scout Danny Menendez, who remembered him from before the war, signed him to a Class B contract in 1946. The teenage shrimp had grown to a powerful 6-foot, 196-pound man.

4) Hank hit .305 for Kansas City, the Yank's top farm team in 1948 with 23 home runs and 26 stolen bases before the Yankees called him up for a September audition. Batting 3rd between Tommy Henrich and Joe DiMaggio, he singled in his first 3 plate appearances.

5) Hank was a favorite of Casey Stengel. Of Hank, Stengel said "Too many people judge ball players solely by a hundred runs batted in or a three hundred batting average. I like to judge my players in other ways,” pointing to Bauer. “Like the guy who happens to do everything right in a tough situation.”

6) Mantle looked up to Hank and as a rookie in 1951, said Bauer “taught me how to dress, how to talk, and how to drink.”

7) The most infamous moment of Bauer’s career happened at a birthday celebration for Billy Martin in 1957. Several Yankees and some of their wives went to the Copacabana night club to see Sammy Davis Jr. perform. At least one drunk in the crowd taunted the Davis Jr. with racial slurs, and Bauer told him to pipe down. What came next was in dispute. The loudest drunk wound up on a bathroom floor with a broken nose and bloody face. He said Bauer had slugged him, but Bauer insisted, “I know it was not me, and it was not Billy Martin.” The charges were dropped after Berra testified that “Nobody never hit nobody nohow.”
The truth remained a mystery for six decades, until a former Copa bouncer, 88-year-old Joey Silvestri, claimed he had thrown the punches.

8) The Yanks won 9 pennants and 7 World Series in Bauer’s first 10 full years. As the roster turned over from the prewar DiMaggio generation to the Mantle era, only Bauer and Berra played in all nine Series. Bauer’s 53 games in the Fall Classic are tied for fourth all-time, his 46 hits tied for 6th. (Berra, who played in 14 World Series, leads in both categories.)

9) Was traded with Don Larsen to Kansas City as part of a 7 player deal that brought Roger Maris to NY.

10) Became a player manager of the KC Athletics in 1961, his final year as a player. Went on to mange the Orioles where he won a World Series in 1966.