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Hardball Legends and Journeymen and Short-Timers Sample file This page intentionally left blank Sample file Hardball Legends and Journeymen and Short-Timers 333 Illustrated Baseball Biographies Written and Illustrated by RONNIE JOYNER Sample file McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Joyner, Ronnie. Hardball legends and journeymen and short-timers : 333 illustrated baseball biographies / written and illustrated by Ronnie Joyner. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-7864-7052-5 Samplesoftcover : acid free filepaper 1. Baseball players—United States—Biography. 2. Baseball— United States—History—20th century. I. Title. GV865.A1J69 2012 796.3570922—dc23 [B] 2012007785 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE © 2012 Joseph Ronald Joyner. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover illustration by Ronnie Joyner Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com Contents Acknowledgments vi Preface 1 Assorted Legends, Journeymen, and Short-Timers 5 Big Boppers 8 1 Natural Born Hitters 107 Armed and Dangerous 1 28 Tragedies and Near Tragedies 1 65 World War II 1 78 Korea and Vietnam 209 Men of Desegregation 2 1 5 Music, Movies, and TV 225 Speedsters 249 Cool CouplingsSample file 260 Wholly-Worthy Half-Pagers 27 2 Black Sox: 1919 Chicago White Sox 280 Whiz Kids: 1950 Philadelphia Phillies 292 Pinstripers: 2009 New York Yankees 305 Index 321 v Acknowledgments The bio-illustrations featured in this book were produced con- tinually from 1997 through 2011, and were published in a variety of publica tions. The graphic nature of these illustra tions does not lend itself to traditional bibliographic forms of reference notation, but conscientious efforts were made within the text to give credit when information used or quoted was uniquely tied to specific sources. Credits for ordinary data like statistics or game details were impossible to accommodate in this graphic presentation. That information, none the less, was as important as any to the storytelling. The following sources were of great value in fleshing out the details: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chi cago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Sporting News, Baseball Di- gest, The Baseball Encyclopedia, Sports Illustrated, The Asso - ciated Press, United Press International, Topps, baseballin wartime. com, sabr.org, retro sheet.org, baseballlibrary.com, baseball- almanac.com, and baseball-reference. com. Gratitude must alsoSample be expressed file to the countless authors of other books, magazines, periodicals, websites, interviews—and all other manner of baseball writing—whose recording of baseball history was also invaluable. Lastly, thanks go out to Sumner G. Hunnewell, Jr., for his hard work in compiling the index. vi Preface Hello baseball fans! Or is it art fans? paper sports cartoonists of the early- to Maybe you’re both. If you are, then you’re mid–20th century. Sports cartooning for a lot like me. What follows in this book are newspapers was already a nearly-extinct 333 illustrated biographies of baseball art form by the time I started creating my players, mostly major leaguers, written bio-illustrations in 1997. Bill Gallo was still and drawn by me. These illustrations are keeping the genre alive up at The Daily the confluence of two of my favorite News in New York, but for the most part things—baseball and art—and I am lucky the era of newspaper sports cartoonists to have found a way to squeeze two of had long since been laid to rest by 1997. my biggest passions into one activity. And when Gallo himself passed away at People have referred to my work as age 88 in May of 2011, it could be viewed caricatures, or cartoons, or other similar as the official last gasp of a bygone art categorizations, but none of those de- form—at least on a mainstream level. scriptions really seem to hit the mark. The Sure, there will always be a few hard- dominant element of my graphic biogra- headed people who continue to work en- phies is the player portrait. Since these thusiastically in the old style, but it most portraits do not exaggerate the players’ likely will be enjoyed only by niche audi- facial features in a comical way, theSample term ences. file And you never really know. If there “caricature” never really fit. And while ever comes a day when the masses tire of these graphic biographies are peppered all the busy, over-the-top, hi-tech graphics with small cartoons, the overriding ele- splashed everywhere, good old-fashioned ment is still the portrait, thereby ren - sports cartooning might find its way back dering the term “cartoon” inadequate in into the mainstream. defining them. And then there’s the text. While sports cartooning has likely There is a lot of text in most of my pieces, been around as long as there have been so it seemed important to reference that sports (imagine a cave drawing of Cro- in whatever term I settled on to describe Magnon skull bad-hopping through legs my work. Sometime between 2000 and of surprised Neanderthal 1st baseman), 2005 I started to use the term “bio-illus- the “modern” age of sports cartooning for tration” to describe my graphic biogra- news papers can be traced to the early phies, and that seemed to be the perfect 1900s as an offshoot of the editorial car- resolution. toon. It was artists like Bob Edgren, E.W. There’s no denying that my bio-illus- Kemble, Thomas A. Dorgan (“Tad”), Burris trations owe everything to the great news - Jenkins, Jr., and Rube Goldberg who 1 Preface began to inject life into rather drab news- my bio-illustrations have generally been paper layouts with their flashy illustra- seen by relatively small audiences in the tions. Limitations in the newspaper print- grand scheme of things. Still, I have re- ing technology of the time led to ceived numerous comments on how less-than-stellar results in reproducing much my work reminds them of the car- photographs. Yet the crisp black-and- toons they saw in the sports pages of white high-contrast nature of these art - their youth, and to me that is the ultimate ists’ illustrations reproduced very well, compliment. making them jump off the page for read- One way in which my bio-illustrations ers whose eyes were weary of wall-to-wall differ from those of golden age sports text and mushy, detail-void halftones. cartoonists is the amount of text. My bio- The golden age of the sports cartoon illustrations feature much more text. Years was the 1930s, ’40s, and into the mid–’50s ago I sent a few samples of my work to as the genre was elevated by talented legendary sports cartoonist Murray Old- artists like Leo O’Mealia, Bob Coyne, Tom erman to seek his opinion as to where I Paprocki (“Pap”), John Pierotti, Lenny could improve. Not one to lavish false Hollreiser, Alan Maver, Lou Darvas, Karl praise on any artist, Mr. Olderman com- Hubenthal, Murray Olderman, and the mented that while my illustration tech- grand daddy of them all, Willard Mullin. nique was very good, my work would This is just a small sampling of the sports benefit by reducing the amount of text. cartoonists working in that period. Most That was sage advice from an illustrative papers had an artist on staff in the pre–TV point of view—which was Mr. Olderman’s boom era of newspapers, and the com- intent—but I felt it wasn’t the best direc- petition among them resulted in amazing tion for me. Here’s why: advancements in technique, layout, and The contemporary artists of the gol - creativity. Sampleden file age of sports cartooning were docu - As television grew in popularity in the ment ing current events. That allowed mid–1950s, newspaper readership began them to be much briefer with the text. For to decline—in the process taking down example, when Lou Darvas wanted to il- many of the sports cartoonists who’d lustrate the great year reliever Jim Kon- come to prominence during the glory stanty had just logged for the 1955 Yank- days. Some took to writing sports col - ees, he was able to do so with a large umns to supplement their dwindling illus- portrait, a handful of cartoons, and just a tration assignments. Some began draw - few blurbs of text. My bio-illustrations, on ing traditional editorial cartoons. Some the other hand, almost always recount the got out of the business all together. By entire career of the featured player. the 1970s there were just a handful of My bio-illustrations are said to have a sports cartoonists holding down the fort, vintage look. I chalk that up to two things— like the great Bruce Stark of The Daily my illustration style and the media I use. News, but the writing was on the wall. My style is a by-product of count less While I have worked diligently for the childhood hours spent poring over the last 15 years to keep the old style alive, works of the sports cartooning masters, 2 Preface then trying to emulate their techniques. wanted the gray tones to appear. There End result: my work looks more like that were two different developers with Duo- of the sports artists of the 1940s and ’50s shade—one bottle activated the light tone than that of many other present-day lines, and the second bottle activated the artists who are influenced more by mod- dark tone lines.