Former KC Blue
Have you ever read about the life of a person and wonder how they did it? How did they manage to squeeze all that adventure into one lifetime? I don’t think we see as many lives like that today. Think about some of the baseball players who served in World War II and what their lives were like. Bob Feller rose out of the cornfields of Iowa as a teen prodigy, made his debut with the Cleveland Indians, then went back to Van Meter, Iowa for his senior year in high school. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Navy and spent almost four years in the military. After the war, he had one more great season in 1946, in which he threw 371 innings and struck out 348 batters. During the off-season, Feller was an energetic barnstormer.
How about Yogi Berra? Came out of the same St. Louis neighborhood as Joe Garagiola, served as a gunner on a rocket boat during the D-Day invasion, then went on to a marvelous 19-year career in which he won three MVP awards and was part of ten World Series champions. He managed for many years and became a beloved baseball ambassador.
Ralph Houk (from Lawrence) and Warren Spahn both saw action during the Battle of Remagen. Spahn was a star, Houk was not, but it didn’t matter. They both answered the call and served. Houk went on to a distinguished managerial career in which his teams won 994 games over 21 seasons. Spahn came back from the war as a 25-year-old, played until he was 44 and won 363 games in the process.
Ted Williams, who I wrote about recently, served in both World War II and Korea. His wingman in Korea was John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. Glenn later went on to a distinguished political career.
I love reading about people like this and am often amazed at their accomplishments. Reading about them, I often feel like a slacker.
Another ball player whose life reads like a fantasy novel was a former New York Yankee named Jerry Coleman.
Coleman grew up in tough circumstances in San Francisco. His father was an abusive alcoholic who once shot Coleman’s mother. Pearl Coleman survived but suffered permanent injuries from the attack. Coleman and his sister spent more than nine months living with relatives while their mother recuperated. Gerald Coleman was never prosecuted for the shooting and unbelievably, later reconciled with Pearl.
San Francisco was a bit of a baseball hotbed in those days. The Pacific Coast League was home to many players who had the talent to play in the majors, but for assorted reasons, chose to stay on the West Coast.
The Brooklyn Dodgers tried to sign Coleman during his senior year in high school, but his mother wanted him to go to college. He planned to go to USC, where he was recruited to play basketball and baseball. Coleman never made it to USC. He changed his mind, as 17-year-olds are prone to do, and decided he wanted to fly fighter planes for the Navy. Since he wasn’t 18 yet, he signed with the New York Yankees and was assigned to Class D Wellsville of the PONY league. During his first season in the minors, a friendly pitching coach in Wellsville gave Coleman some advice on hitting. The coach was Chief Bender, a Hall of Fame pitcher and three-time World Series champion.
After the season ended, Coleman was accepted into the Navy flight program, where he learned to fly dive bombers. Coleman went on to fly 57 combat missions in the Solomon Islands and the Philippines.
After the war ended, Coleman returned to baseball and was assigned to the Binghamton Triplets, where he was managed by Lefty Grove. Coleman spent part of 1946 and all of 1947 playing for the Kansas City Blues.
Coleman made the Yankees out of spring training in 1949 and after an injury to Snuffy Stirnweiss, took over the second base job. In the final game of the season, the Yankees and Red Sox were tied for the league lead. As fate would have it, the two teams were playing each other. Late in the game, with the bases loaded, Coleman fought off an inside fastball and dumped a hit into right field. The bloop double cleared the bases and gave New York a seemingly insurmountable 5-0 lead. The Red Sox rallied but were unable to overcome the deficit. New York went on to defeat Brooklyn in the World Series and Coleman was named the league’s Rookie of the Year. In 1994, Coleman was visiting Ted Williams, who was confined to a San Diego hospital after a severe stroke. The first thing Williams said when he saw Coleman was, “that f**king hit you got”, in reference to the dying quail double 45 years earlier. Ted never minced words and never forgot.
Coleman’s best year came in 1950 when he hit .287 with a career high of 150 hits. He was named to his first and only All-Star tea,m and after the Yankees swept the Phillies in the World Series, Coleman was named the MVP of the series.
Coleman was recalled to the military just 11 games into the 1952 season. He was sent to Korea in January 1953, where he flew 63 combat missions. On his last mission, his tentmate flying just in front of him was hit by flak. The plane exploded, killing Coleman’s friend. The death shook him up and haunted him for the remainder of his days.
After his discharge, Coleman returned to the Yankees and got into eight games as the Bombers rolled to their fifth consecutive World Series title.
Coleman was never the same player after his return from Korea. He battled various injuries over the next four seasons before calling it a career at the age of 32.
After retiring, Coleman worked in the Yankees front office for a few years before gravitating towards broadcasting. After working for CBS for three years, Coleman found his way onto the Yankees broadcast team with Red Barber, Mel Allen, and Phil Rizzuto.
Coleman’s wife wanted to move back to the West Coast, and one of Coleman’s friends, Howard Cosell, hooked Coleman up with a sports broadcasting job in Los Angeles. In 1972, Buzzie Bavasi, president of the San Diego Padres, offered Coleman the team’s broadcasting job. It was a match made in heaven. Coleman broadcast Padres games for the next 42 years, except for one year, when he managed the team. Coleman became a cultural icon in the San Diego area. Fans loved his faux pas, which became known as Colemanisms.
“On the mound is Randy Jones, the left-hander with the Karl Marx hairdo.”
“He slid into second with a stand up double.”
“Winfield goes back. He hit his head against the wall. It’s rolling back to toward the infield.”
A few years ago, we toured Petco Park. It was a great experience with the peak being able to sit in Jerry Coleman’s seat in the broadcast booth. At the time, I was very aware of who Coleman was and of his influence on the San Diego area. It remains one of the few times in my life that I was in awe of another person. Almost a reverence. At the baseball museum in Denver, I was able to sit in Babe Ruth’s dugout chair. Same feeling.
Coleman died on January 5, 2014, at the age of 89, after complications of a fall. He was laid to rest with full military honors at Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego. Jerry Coleman, who overcame the toughest of circumstances and served his country honorably, was an American treasure.