When we baby boomers were kids, before the days of helicopter parents, we ran through this whole check list, more or less. One exception: my parents did NOT let me drive a car, but some of the kids who lived on farms did get to drive on their family’s land.
It was a different world. In the summer, from about age 9 or 10, I left the house on my bike at dawn and returned at dusk. That was typical in that era. My friend and I made a few bucks each day by scavenging for deposit bottles that people discarded at nearby picnic and amusement areas. A dollar bought a lot in those days – ten comic books or twenty packs of baseball cards.
I never forgot the top guy in the first pack of baseball cards I opened in 1958. That man, while still quite young, later turned out to be the baseball coach at my college. This was the card.
Gil was famous for two things:
1. He was the ultimate supersub. Casey assigned him to play wherever there might have been a weak spot, which means the Yankees of that era never really had a weak spot. McDougald led all American League infielders in double plays at three different positions – at third base (1952), at second base (1955) and shortstop (1957).
2. He hit the infamous line drive that nearly killed the rising Cleveland superstar Herb Score.
Score had been the rookie of the year with 16 wins, and followed that up with a 20-win season in his second season. He led the league in strikeouts both seasons. He was 23 years old. In early May of the next season, he was struck on the eye by McDougald’s liner, and that was essentially the end of his career. His lifetime ERA at the time was 2.63, lower than the lifetime figure for Whitey Ford or Sandy Koufax. He had struck out 9.6 batters per nine innings, compared to 9.3 for the great Koufax. Score seemed to have recovered in 1958 when he had a couple of good starts in April, but he tore a tendon in his left elbow early in the season, and the rest of his career consisted of aborted comebacks. He finally hung it up in 1963 after he went 0-6 with a 7.66 ERA – against poor competition in the minor leagues! He spent the next 30 years in the broadcast booth as a beloved Cleveland institution. His last game as announcer was the seventh game of the Indians’ World Series in 1997, when they came oh-so-close to a championship, losing a 3-2 heartbreaker in 11 innings.
Herb died in 2008. His best obit was written by … well, I believe it was me.
Gil died two years later. I’ll bet you can guess who authored the obit I’m linking to.