Lest We Forget: Charlie Silvera

September 13, 2019

Be honest. When you think of being a major league ballplayer, it’s always as a star, like Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax, or Yogi Berra. Who ever aspires to be a Charley Silvera, Berra’s back-up backstop for the Yankees from 1948-56? The San Francisco native was traded to the Chicago Cubs after that season and played for another season before retiring.

Silvera, pictured second from right below, passed away on Sept. 7 at the age of 94.

He averaged fewer than 30 games per year over his career, with exactly one home run. That memorable event came in the first game of a July 4th doubleheader against the visiting Washington Senators that the Yankees lost, 9-6. One hopes the ball was retrieved and given back to him as a souvenir.

Here’s Silvera’s obit, written by Richard Goldstein in the Sept. 10 issue of The New York Times.

I think I speak for a lot of lifelong fans out there when I say that I wouldn’t mind hanging around for ten years on any major league roster.

Charlie Silvera, second from right, was Yogi Berra’s backup catcher during the Yankees’ dynasty years of the 1950s. He gave pointers to three young catchers (from left, Gus Triandos, Lou Berberet and Vince Pisani) at a pre-season Yankee workout in Glendale, Calif., in 1953.

 

 

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