Birthday greetings

February 3, 2008

Belatedly, to Red Schoendienst, a baseball “lifer” since 1945.

Schoendienst, who played for the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants, and Milwaukee  Braves, suffered a bout of tuberculosis as a player back in 1958 while with Milwaukee. Following a recuperative stay at a sanitarium, he made a courageous comeback that was chronicled by Al Hirshberg in The Man who Fought Back (Messner, 1961). More recently, Red, who turned 85 on Feb. 2, wrote his autobiography: Red: A Baseball Life.

Speaking of redheads, Feb 3 marks the birthday of The Roaring Redhead: Larry MacPhail:  Baseball’s Great Innovator, which was published by Don Warfield in 1985.

MacPhail gets credit (or blame, depending on your point of view) for creating night games. This was a nod to the working stiffs during the war, who put in a hard day at the factory and needed some well-deserved entertainment. I wonder if MacPhail would have felt had he know that night games during the World Series would routinely end well past young fans’ bedtimes.

Both Schoendienst and MacPhail are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

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