Duke Snider
Hall of Famers at War
| Date and Place of Birth: | September 19, 1926 Los Angeles, CA |
| Date and Place of Death: | February 27, 2011 Encondido, CA |
| Baseball Experience: | Hall of Fame |
| Position: | Outfield |
| Rank: | Fireman, Third Class |
| Military Unit: | US Navy |
| Area Served: | United States/Hawaii |
Our hero and pride and joy, Mr. Duke Snider, just reached his
17th birthday and therefore will have a pretty good athletic future
before the war guides his destiny.
Long Beach Independent, December 5, 1943
Edwin D. "Duke" Snider was born on September 19, 1926, in Los Angeles,
California. “My Dad started to call me Duke when I was just five years
old,” he told The Sporting News on July 27, 1949. “But he never did tell
me why. I guess it was just one of those things that stick.”
Snider was a gifted all-around athlete. At Enterprise Junior High
School, which he entered in 1937, he was a pitcher on the softball team
and helped them win the league championship three straight years. The
team failed to win when he was in eleventh grade, however. Three of the
teams best hitters were Japanese boys and when the war started they were
sent to internment camps in the Midwest.
In the fall of 1942 he entered Compton High School and played tailback
on the football team. The following spring he pitched a 6-0 no-hitter
against Beverly Hills in his initial prep league appearance, and led the
Compton Tarbabes to a second place finish in the Bay League and
runner-up honors in the Pasadena Southern California baseball
tournament, batting .411.
In June 1943, Snider’s baseball coach at Compton, Bill Schleibaum, wrote
to Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers informing him of the baseball
talent under his supervision. “During the past ten years, I have been
directly connected with coaching,” Schleibaum wrote, “and it is my
belief that Duke Snider is one of the finest baseball prospects that I
have ever seen.”
The Dodgers were hot on his tail and while playing summer baseball with
the Montebello Merchants, he was invited to a tryout camp at Long Beach
in September by Brooklyn scout Tom Downey. The Dodgers were keen to sign
the youngster but had to wait until his graduation the following
February. “Scouts from the Cardinals and Reds also had talked to me,”
Snider told The Sporting News on November 19, 1952, “and I didn’t make
up my mind until Downey came to my house a few days after I graduated.”
Snider accompanied the Dodgers to their Bear Mountain training camp in
New York. “During our stay at Bear Mountain we played the Army varsity
team a couple of times,” he recalled. “I replaced Dixie Walker in the
fourth inning one day and hit a homer over Glenn Davis’ head.”
Snider was 17 years old when he reported to the Montreal Royals of the
International League in April 1944. He made just a couple of appearances
with the Royals and played the remainder of the season with the Newport
News Dodgers in the Piedmont League. Snider got off to a great start at
Newport and was hitting .342 in his first 19 games. He was later hit on
the elbow by a pitched ball and finished the season with a .295, which
was still fourth best in the league.
He returned home to California after the season, turned 18 on September
19, and reported to the pre-induction center in the Watts section of Los
Angeles for his military physical on October 19.
"They checked us just enough to make sure we were warm and upright," he
explained in his autobiography The Duke of Flatbush, "and a guy handed
me some papers I didn't want to know about and screamed 'NAVY!' in my
face at the top of his lungs. I was headed for he high seas. I wondered
why they took me if they thought I was deaf."
Snider served as a fireman, third class on the submarine tender USS
Sperry at Guam. Snider used to win bets against other sailors and
servicemen by throwing a baseball the length of submarines that arrived
at Guam, that's about 300 feet. "I'd throw the ball the length of their
sub, my crewmates would win $300 or so, and I'd pick up my guarantee -
$50," he recalls.
“We played lots of baseball and basketball on Guam. Pee Wee Reese was
stationed there, too, but I never bumped into him.” Snider moonlighted
for the 2nd Marine Division team while on Guam as well as playing for
the USS Sperry team.
In between playing baseball, Snider's main duty on the USS Sperry was
dishwashing detail. "There was a porthole behind the sink and any time
we came across a chipped glass or dish that wouldn't come clean in less
than a second we fired the sucker into the Pacific Ocean."
Snider felt he had a very comfortable and safe war while his father -
also serving with the Navy - was involved in many of the island
invasions in the Pacific. "There was one close call when it looked as if
I was going to find myself in combat after all," he explains in The Duke
of Flatbush. "I was on watch duty on the number one 5-inch gun when we
sighted an unidentified shop ahead. The command came down from the
bridge to load the gun with a star shell that would be fired if the ship
did not respond to our signal requesting identification.
"No World Series moment ever scared me as much. I was no authority on
loading or firing shells. All I had been told in our drills was that you
press this lever, a shell comes up, you put it in and press another
lever, and the shell goes 'Boom!' I pressed the first lever, the shell
came up, and I put it into the loading chamber. I was actually shaking
while waiting for the command to fire. Two ships might start firing at
each other in the middle of the Pacific Ocean as a small part of World
War II, and I was going to be the one to start the firing.
"Seconds before the command to fire would have come, the other ship
identified itself as friendly. I needed an immediate change of
underwear."
Snider was later stationed at Long Beach Army Air Base in California,
and while playing for the base team Babe Herman offered him $13,000 to
sign with the Pirates, but Snider had his Brooklyn commitment to
fulfill.
After 19 months of military service Snider returned to the Dodgers’
organization in June 1946 and played for the Fort Worth Cats of the
Texas League. He played 68 games and got off to a slow start but made
Branch Rickey sit up and take notice when he hit a home run that cleared
the clock in center field at Fort Worth, 430 feet from home plate.
Snider began 1947 with Brooklyn but was sent to the St Paul Saints of
the American Association on July 4, where he batted .316 with 12 home
runs in 66 games and got a late-season recall to Brooklyn. He started
1948 with Montreal and after batting .327 with 17 home runs he was
called up to Brooklyn mid-season, appearing in 53 games and batting
.244.
The following season The Duke of Flatbush was in the starting line-up
for good. He hit .292 that year with 23 home runs, raising that figure
to 31 in 1950 along with 107 RBIs.
The fleet-footed, left-handed swinging power-hitter patrolled
centerfield for the Dodgers for the next 12 seasons. In an 18-year major
league career that ended in 1964, Snider batted .295 with 407 home runs
and 1,333 RBIs in 2,143 games, was an eight-time all-star and appeared
in six World Series.
Duke Snider scouted for the Dodgers and Padres and managed in the minor
leagues before becoming a popular play-by-play announcer for the
Montreal Expos from 1973 to 1986. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall
of Fame in 1980.
Duke Snider, who passed away on February 27, 2011, at the Valle Vista
Convalescent Hospital in Escondido, California, lived in Fallbrook,
where he'd continued to root for the Dodgers.
Date Added July 26, 2016
Duke Snider at Baseball-Almanac
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