The Death of Hank Bauer, an America Hero
February 10, 2007
By
Richard J. Garfunkel
Yesterday February 10, 2007 Hank Bauer, the fighting marine died at the age of 84. You may have heard about his passing on the news yesterday. Today there was an obituary in the New York Times. If you hadn’t read it, I have included a copy. I was always a Yankee fan from my earliest days as a child and Hank Bauer, the solid right fielder for the Bronx Bombers, was one of my earliest heroes. He was one of the few members of the Yankees that was on the roster, and of course played with all of their championship teams from 1949 through 1953. Some of the others were Johnny Mize, Yogi Berra, Gene Woodling, Vic Raschi, Eddie Lopat, Allie Reynolds, and Phil Rizutto, Bauer, a solid and heroic type who not only starred on the Yankees, but starred with the US Marines in the Pacific. He won many battle stars in combat and was 26 when he finally got to the major leagues. Bauer’s career with the Yanks spanned from the end of the DiMaggio era through the rise of Mickey Mantle. It finally ended when he was part of Yankee General Manager George Weiss’s last great trade of his long career. In 1960 after the Yanks finished a poor third to the Go-Go White Sox in 1959, Bauer was traded with Norm Siebern, Marvelous Marv Thronberry, and Don Larsen for Joe DeMaestri, Kent Hadley, and one Roger Maris. Because of that trade I never really warmed up to Maris. But baseball is still a business and as JFK said long ago, “Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.” Roger was certainly an immediate success, but soon the “blush was off the rose,” and the injuries that had plagued him in his early career came back to haunt him and turn the once idolizing fans into boo-birds. The rest is history
I had a great fondness for Bauer, whose rugged looks became the model for famous cartoonist Willard Mullin’s prototypical Yankee. I have included a cartoon that he drew in the World-Telegram and Sun, circa 1962. Bauer, who batted right handed, slugged 156 homeruns as a Yankee. Left field in the old stadium was the home of what Mel Allen referred to as “Death Valley.” In other words hitting homeruns from the right side of the plate was never easy and many long blasts died out there in someone’s glove. In Bauer’s early years he was unhappy being part of Casey Stengel’s platoon system, but when he became a regular starter in 1950 he hit .320. In the World Championship year of 1956 he hit 26 homeruns. Bauer once said that his greatest memories with the Yankees were the four homeruns he hit in the 1958 World Series against the Braves, a record until broken by Reggie Jackson in 1977, and his bases loaded triple and his game winning catch in the 6th and final game of the 1951 World Series against the Giants. My greatest memory of Bauer was his heroics against the Braves in the 1958 Series. The Yanks were down 3 games to 1 and they rallied to win three straight behind the great pitching of Bob Turley and the clutch hitting of Hank Bauer. Bauer hit .323 in the Series and finished with a record, which still stands, of hitting in 17 straight series games. Hank Bauer had a great arm in right field and very few runners dared to go from first to third on a base hit to right.
After retiring as a player he had a successful coaching and managing career that included skippering the Orioles to a World’s title in 1966. He spent many years coming back to the Stadium as an old-timer and he joined with Bill “Moose” Skowron to sponsor a baseball “fantasy” camp in Florida. Though I never met him, I had the pleasure of hearing him and the “Moose” interviewed often. They had great stories and any real baseball fan would love to listen to the “hot stove” league banter. Bauer, like many veterans of WWII, never talked about his war exploits, but his record speaks for itself. Yesterday, unfortunately we lost another from that “Greatest Generation.”