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Hank Bauer
Henry Albert Bauer (July 31, 1922 – February 9, 2007) was an American right fielder and manager in Major League Baseball. He played with the New York Yankees (1948–1959) and Kansas City Athletics (1960–1961); he batted and threw right-handed. He served as the manager of the Athletics in both Kansas City (1961–62) and in Oakland (1969), as well as the Baltimore Orioles (1964–68), guiding the Orioles to the World Series title in 1966. A four-game sweep over the heavily favored Los Angeles Dodgers, it was the first world championship in the franchise's history.
Bauer was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, the youngest of nine children to an Austrian immigrant who had lost his leg in an aluminum mill and had been reduced to bartending. With little money coming into the home, Bauer was forced to wear clothes made out of old feed sacks, helping shape his hard-nosed approach to life. (It was later said that his care-worn face "looked like a clenched fist".) He played baseball and basketball at East St. Louis Central Catholic High School, suffering a broken nose from errant elbow in the latter that was never fixed. Upon graduation in 1941 he was repairing furnaces in a beer-bottling plant when his brother Herman, a minor league player in the Chicago White Sox system, was able to get him a tryout that resulted in a contract with Oshkosh of the Class D Wisconsin State League.
One month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bauer enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served with the 4th Raider Battalion and G Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. While deployed to the Pacific Theater Bauer contracted malaria on Guadalcanal, however he recovered from that well enough to earn 11 campaign ribbons in 32 months of combat, including two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts (for being wounded in action), and the Navy Commendation Medal. Bauer was wounded his second time during the Battle of Okinawa, when he was a sergeant of a platoon of 64 Marines. Only six survived the Japanese counterattack, and Bauer was wounded by fragmentation in his thigh. His injuries were severe enough to send him back to the United States to recuperate. Unfortunately Bauer's older brother Herman, once a solid hitting minor league catcher for the Chicago White Sox organization, never made it back home: after landing in the Normandy invasion, he was killed in action on July 12th, 1944, and is buried in the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.
Bauer returned to East St. Louis and joined the local pipe fitter's union. Stopping by the local bar where his brother Joe worked, he was signed by Danny Menendez, a scout for the New York Yankees, for a tryout with the Yankees' farm team in Quincy, Illinois. Paid $175 a month (with a $25 per month increase if he made the team) and a $250 signing bonus, Bauer batted .300 at both Quincy and the Kansas City Blues, New York's top minor league unit, and made his debut with the Yankees in September 1948.
In his 14-season Major League Baseball career, Bauer had a .277 batting average with 164 home runs and 703 RBIs in 1,544 games played. He recorded a career .982 fielding percentage. Bauer played on seven World Series-winning New York Yankees teams and holds the World Series record for the longest hitting streak (17 games). Perhaps Bauer's most notable performance came in the sixth and final game of the 1951 World Series, where he hit a three-run triple. He also saved the game with a diving catch of a line drive off the bat of Sal Yvars for the final out.
At the close of the 1959 season, Bauer was dealt by the Yankees to the Kansas City Athletics in a trade which brought them future home run king Roger Maris (1961). This deal is often cited among the worst examples of the numerous trades between the Yankees and the Athletics during the late 1950s – trades which were nearly always one-sided in favor of the Yankees.[citation needed]
In 1961, Athletics manager Joe Gordon chose to start Leo Posada over Bauer in the Opening Day starting lineup.
On June 19, 1961, the Athletics fired Gordon and Bauer was named the team's playing-manager. Bauer retired as a player one month later. He managed the team through the end of the 1962 season, going 107-157 over 264 games (for a .405 win percentage), and the A's finishing ninth in the ten-team American League both years.
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Hank Bauer
Henry Albert Bauer (July 31, 1922 – February 9, 2007) was an American right fielder and manager in Major League Baseball. He played with the New York Yankees (1948–1959) and Kansas City Athletics (1960–1961); he batted and threw right-handed. He served as the manager of the Athletics in both Kansas City (1961–62) and in Oakland (1969), as well as the Baltimore Orioles (1964–68), guiding the Orioles to the World Series title in 1966. A four-game sweep over the heavily favored Los Angeles Dodgers, it was the first world championship in the franchise's history.
Bauer was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, the youngest of nine children to an Austrian immigrant who had lost his leg in an aluminum mill and had been reduced to bartending. With little money coming into the home, Bauer was forced to wear clothes made out of old feed sacks, helping shape his hard-nosed approach to life. (It was later said that his care-worn face "looked like a clenched fist".) He played baseball and basketball at East St. Louis Central Catholic High School, suffering a broken nose from errant elbow in the latter that was never fixed. Upon graduation in 1941 he was repairing furnaces in a beer-bottling plant when his brother Herman, a minor league player in the Chicago White Sox system, was able to get him a tryout that resulted in a contract with Oshkosh of the Class D Wisconsin State League.
One month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bauer enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served with the 4th Raider Battalion and G Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. While deployed to the Pacific Theater Bauer contracted malaria on Guadalcanal, however he recovered from that well enough to earn 11 campaign ribbons in 32 months of combat, including two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts (for being wounded in action), and the Navy Commendation Medal. Bauer was wounded his second time during the Battle of Okinawa, when he was a sergeant of a platoon of 64 Marines. Only six survived the Japanese counterattack, and Bauer was wounded by fragmentation in his thigh. His injuries were severe enough to send him back to the United States to recuperate. Unfortunately Bauer's older brother Herman, once a solid hitting minor league catcher for the Chicago White Sox organization, never made it back home: after landing in the Normandy invasion, he was killed in action on July 12th, 1944, and is buried in the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.
Bauer returned to East St. Louis and joined the local pipe fitter's union. Stopping by the local bar where his brother Joe worked, he was signed by Danny Menendez, a scout for the New York Yankees, for a tryout with the Yankees' farm team in Quincy, Illinois. Paid $175 a month (with a $25 per month increase if he made the team) and a $250 signing bonus, Bauer batted .300 at both Quincy and the Kansas City Blues, New York's top minor league unit, and made his debut with the Yankees in September 1948.
In his 14-season Major League Baseball career, Bauer had a .277 batting average with 164 home runs and 703 RBIs in 1,544 games played. He recorded a career .982 fielding percentage. Bauer played on seven World Series-winning New York Yankees teams and holds the World Series record for the longest hitting streak (17 games). Perhaps Bauer's most notable performance came in the sixth and final game of the 1951 World Series, where he hit a three-run triple. He also saved the game with a diving catch of a line drive off the bat of Sal Yvars for the final out.
At the close of the 1959 season, Bauer was dealt by the Yankees to the Kansas City Athletics in a trade which brought them future home run king Roger Maris (1961). This deal is often cited among the worst examples of the numerous trades between the Yankees and the Athletics during the late 1950s – trades which were nearly always one-sided in favor of the Yankees.[citation needed]
In 1961, Athletics manager Joe Gordon chose to start Leo Posada over Bauer in the Opening Day starting lineup.
On June 19, 1961, the Athletics fired Gordon and Bauer was named the team's playing-manager. Bauer retired as a player one month later. He managed the team through the end of the 1962 season, going 107-157 over 264 games (for a .405 win percentage), and the A's finishing ninth in the ten-team American League both years.