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.
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