Washington DC Baseball

[GeoPoto]

Player #168B: Charles M. "Charlie" Gelbert. Shortstop for the Washington Senators in 1939-1940. 766 hits and 17 home runs in 9 MLB seasons. 1931 World Series champion. He debuted with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1929-1932 and 1935-1936. In 1930 with the Cardinals, he posted a .360 OBP with 92 runs scored and 72 RBIs in 574 plate appearances. He finished his career with the Boston Red Sox in 1940. He lost two full seasons recovering from a severe ankle injury suffered while hunting. Though he returned to baseball in 1935 and played six more seasons, he was limited to a utility role for the rest of his career.

“Ripley’s Believe It or Not” featured Charley Gelbert in 1941, noting that he “played 239 major league games with a broken leg.” Shortstop Gelbert put in four full seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals and played in back-to-back World Series, losing one and then winning one. And then an offseason hunting accident nearly ended his career. But he kept on playing, and saw duty in five more big-league seasons.

He had seemed destined for greatness. Hall of Famer and teammate Frankie Frisch said, “If he hadn’t been hurt, he would have been the best.” . . .

. . . That November (1932), Gelbert shot himself with a 12-gauge shotgun. It was an accident. On November 16 he went hunting with four friends and a number of dogs not far from his home in Fayettesville, Pennsylvania . “It could have happened to anyone,” he said afterward. “I was talking along, carrying my gun properly, and my foot slipped. I fell backward, my feet flew up, the gun went off. …” His foot had snagged on a hillside vine and as he tried to right himself, the other foot turned on a piece of rock. “The gun in his right hand crashed against the rocky mountain side. There was an explosion. The jar had discharged Gelbert’s gun.” The shotgun blast hit him in the left leg about four inches above the ankle. “They were afraid to loosen the boot for fear the foot would fall off. That’s how bad it looked.” An Army surgeon who had served in World War I evaluated his foot and worried that it would need to be amputated; there were few tendons left. But treatment at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia saved his foot. Gelbert told his wife, “From now on, I’ll confine myself to golf. … I know now there is nothing safe about a gun.”

Surgeries followed, and Gelbert spent two months in the hospital. He then began a long stretch of rehabilitation. His fibula was entirely disconnected and four inches of his posterior artery and nerve were destroyed. He missed both the 1933 and 1934 seasons, needing even further skin grafts late in calendar 1934. He took a position as football coach at Gettysburg College but had to resign that position in September 1934 because he still was not able to physically do the work of coaching on the field. When the Gas House Gang Cardinals won the World Series in October, they remembered their former shortstop and voted him a $1,000 partial share. . . .

. . . The 1940 season was Gelbert’s last in the major leagues, split between the Senators (for whom he even pitched in two games (four innings in relief), with a 9.00 ERA) and the Boston Red Sox. He was actually batting .370 for Washington (albeit in only 59 plate appearances over 22 games), when the team placed him on waivers to give prospect Jimmy Pofahl more playing time.