Henry "Hank" Thompson

[GeoPoto]

Still just 29 years old, with two fine seasons behind him going into the 1955 campaign, Thompson should have been at the peak of his career. But his average dropped to .245 and his home run output fell to 17. The next year he injured his shoulder in spring training and lost his regular job to light-hitting rookie Foster Castleman. For the season, he hit only .235 with eight homers in 83 games, although he excelled as a pinch-hitter, hitting .333 with a pair of homers in 24 pinch at-bats.

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696405031
https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696405034

[GeoPoto]

Before the 1957 season, Thompson was sent down to the minor leagues with a missed exhibition game in San Diego probably having some bearing on the demotion. Playing the outfield for Minneapolis, he endured nagging leg injuries and hit only .243 with a pair of homers in 78 games before leaving the team in late July. In subsequent interviews, he remembered ending his playing days on that note, but he did in fact try to resurrect his career with Ponce in the Puerto Rican Winter League after the season – an effort that lasted only three games before his career as a professional baseball player was truly over.

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696496881
https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696496884

[GeoPoto]

Thompson’s off-the-field behavior had been a problem throughout his baseball career. He began drinking as a teenage semipro player and admitted to being an alcoholic by the age of 17. In the service he went AWOL on one occasion and spent time in the stockade for fighting on another. He liked to carry a gun, which led to his killing a man before joining the Giants. In 1953 a violent altercation with a cab driver made headlines, prompting the black publication Our Sports to publish a profile of Thompson entitled “Problem Child?”

Stanley Glenn, a catcher with the Negro League Philadelphia Stars before entering Organized Baseball said, “Hank was a little bit off-center. He had a drinking problem and a woman problem. … But he was all baseball on the field.”

Former Monarchs teammate Sammy Haynes remembered, “He (Thompson) had a lot of little kid in him … but he had a temper and liked to play rough.”

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696583172
https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696583181

[GeoPoto]

Well-respected strong man Monte Irvin, a longtime teammate, apparently exerted a positive influence on Hank. “Every once in a while Thompson would get out of line and Monte would get on his case,” recalled former teammate and coach Bill Rigney.

In his autobiography Nice Guys Finish First, Irvin said, “Hank was known as a carouser.” He recalled when Leo Durocher came over to his locker and said, “Monte, I’m going to put you in charge of Hank while we’re in St. Louis. Watch him and make sure he doesn’t go astray. Make sure he gets to the hotel on time. Make sure he catches the bus. You’re in charge of him.”

It’s probably no coincidence that Thompson’s performance began deteriorating in 1955, the year the Giants cut Irvin in midseason.

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696672221

[GeoPoto]

Not surprisingly, Hank’s troubles worsened after he left baseball. He couldn’t hold a job, and though he’d made good money with the Giants, he’d blown it as fast as he earned it. During his first year out of baseball, he was arrested for stealing a car, and soon after that he was charged with unlawful entry and third-degree assault of a woman he claimed was his girlfriend when she refused to lend him money. The car-theft matter was subsequently dropped, but he spent a week in jail and paid a fine for the assault charge. He and Maria divorced in 1959, and he was still living in Brooklyn in 1961 when he held up a local bar where he was well known, having previously hocked his 1954 World Series ring there. He was convicted of stealing $37, but was released on probation with orders to leave New York after Giants owner Horace Stoneham and Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick interceded on his behalf. That fall Stoneham gave Hank a job at the Giants’ spring training facility in Casa Grande, Arizona, but the former player soon hooked up with an old girlfriend and moved to Los Angeles.

By 1963, Hank had drifted to Houston, where he stole $270 from a liquor store at gunpoint. He was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to ten years in the Texas corrections system.

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696756471
https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696756482

[GeoPoto]

Thompson reportedly got his life together in prison. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous, found religion, became a trustee, coached the prison baseball team, and began counseling first-time offenders. His fall from World Series hero to 31-year-old has-been in two short years is graphically documented in “How I Wrecked My Life – How I Hope to Save It,” which was published in Sport Magazine in 1965 while he was still in jail.

Apparently Hank said all the right things, because he was paroled in 1966 after serving four years. He moved to Fresno, California, where his mother lived, got a job as a playground director, and began working with troubled teens. Plans for a movie about his life, starring Sidney Poitier, were reported in early 1969. During the summer Thompson appeared at a Giants old-timer’s game and told friends he’d quit his job in Fresno and would be working for the team. But he died suddenly of a heart attack at his mother’s home in Fresno on September 30, 1969.

Like his baseball career, Thompson’s life ended prematurely. He had always lived fast – arrested at 11, drinking at 15, playing professional baseball at 17, becoming a war hero and an alcoholic at 19, making his major-league debut at 21, and setting World Series records at 28. But he was already past his prime at the age of 29, out of the major leagues at 30, and through with baseball at 31. When he died, he was only 43 years old.

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696842670
https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696842674

[GeoPoto]

Hank Thompson was a truly unusual talent. Despite a pedestrian .267 lifetime batting average, he combined power with a sharp eye at the plate to finish with an excellent .825 career OPS. For comparison purposes, Hall of Fame third-base contemporary George Kell retired with a .781 career mark. In fact, according to Baseball-reference.com, “Thompson has a higher Adjusted OPS than ten of the third basemen in the Hall of Fame, although his career was much shorter than most of them.”

Listed at a smallish 5-feet-9 and 174 pounds (he personally claimed to be only 5-8½ and 168), Thompson managed to generate tremendous power with the bat. He was reportedly awarded $2,000 for hitting a homer into the distant center-field bleachers during a Cuban Winter League game. The back of his 1957 Topps baseball card states, “He has been known to put the ball out of the park high over the Polo Grounds 450 feet sign many times.” A bit of hyperbole, maybe, but he obviously had a reputation for hitting the ball a long way.

Though not a prolific base stealer in the major leagues, Thompson was fast on the bases. In fact, his power-speed rating ranked seventh and eighth in the league in 1950 and 1953 respectively.

Hank demonstrated this rare blend of speed and power on August 16, 1950, when he hit two inside-the-park homers in one game against the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds. He was the first big leaguer to accomplish that feat since 1939, and it wasn’t matched again until Dick Allen did it in 1972.

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696928487
https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1696928495