Dirt in the Skirt to Sandman | Hall of Fame Connections Episode 3
In this episode of the Hall of Fame Connections series, we draw the line from an All-American Girls Professional Baseball League star to the ultimate closer. How?
In 1947, the league held Spring Training in Cuba. Mary Pratt played from 1943-1947, tossed a no-hitter in 1944, went to Havana in 1947. In 1947, for one year only, the AAGPBL and the Brooklyn Dodgers independently decided to have Spring Training in Cuba. That Spring Training, the AAGPBL outdrew the Dodgers.
1947 marked Jackie Robinson’s second year with the Dodgers organization – he spent 1946 with the highest-level minor league team in Montreal. However, in 1946 the Dodgers had experienced many problems with Florida’s Jim Crow laws, so they went to Cuba for a year. Robinson had the occasion to face one of the game’s rising stars in four World Series – 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956 – Mickey Mantle.
In 1952, Mickey Mantle received his first Topps card. Today, this card is especially valued because of its rarity. Since it was issued at the end of the season, few were purchased, and countless sets languished in the Topps warehouse for years. Eight years after its issue, in order to make room, Topps exec Sy Berger had the remaining cards placed on a garbage scow and unceremoniously dumped at sea, including an unknown number of Mantles. Highly graded examples of this popular card now sell in excess of seven figures.
Don Zimmer debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1954, but he only faced off against Mantle once in the postseason – in the 1955 World Series, when the Dodgers defeated the Yankees on the strength of Johnny Podres’ arm and Duke Snider’s bat. Zimmer drove in two runs that Series, and went on to a 12-year, largely undistinguished playing career, but really made his mark as a great baseball mind and a good man to have in the dugout. From 1967 until his death in 2014, Zimmer was coaching, managing, or advising somewhere in baseball. From 1996-2003 Zimmer was the bench coach for the Yankees, where he met a young Panamanian pitcher named Mariano Rivera.
Mariano Rivera debuted with the Yankees in 1995 and became part of the famed Core Four, winning their first World Series in 1996, then as the closer from 1997 on. He was the last player to wear No. 42 (grandfathered in) after it was retired throughout all of baseball
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