Mickey Grasso
Ballplayers Who Were Prisoners of War
| Date and Place of Birth: | May 10, 1919 Newark, NJ |
| Date and Place of Death: | October 15, 1975 Miami, FL |
| Baseball Experience: | Major League |
| Position: | Catcher |
| Rank: | Technical Sergeant |
| Military Unit: | 168th Infantry Regiment, 34th Infantry Division US Army |
| Area Served: | Mediterranean Theater of Operations |
Newton M. “Mickey” Grasso was born on May 10, 1920 in Newark, New
Jersey. He grew up playing baseball on the sandlots of Newark with such
teams as the Dukes and Temox, getting his chance in professional
baseball when an uncle, Bob Ciascoa, a pharmacist in Trenton, got him a
trial with the Trenton team of the Interstate League in 1941. In 52
games he batted .234.
Former outfielder Goose Goslin, signed Grasso as a second baseman but
converted him to a catcher during his rookie year. It was to be the only
season for the youngster before he entered military service with the
Army at Fort Dix, New Jersey on January 20, 1942.
Grasso served with the 34th Infantry Division as a technical sergeant
and was in North Africa in early 1943, where he was taken prisoner by
German forces on February 17. Surrounded by Rommel’s Afrika Korps troops
at a location known only as Hill 609 in Tunisia, Grasso was among 6,000
Allied prisoners taken by the retreating Germans who were being pursued
by Britain’s General Montgomery.
“A young lieutenant,” The Sporting News reported on March 11, 1953,
“turned to Sergeant Grasso and asked, ‘Mickey, shall we fight?’
“Mickey glanced apprehensively at the guns ready to blast the squad out
of existence, estimated the overwhelming odds, swallowed and replied,
"Man, don’t be crazy.”
A three-day hike followed to an airfield where the prisoners were flown
to Italy. They were then loaded into box cars for a five-day rail
journey to their home for the next two years – prisoner-of-war camp
Stalag IIIB in Furstenberg, 60 miles southeast of Berlin, Germany.
On a daily ration of thin soup and a slice of bread, Grasso dropped from
205 pounds to 145. But baseball was never far from his mind. Also in the
camp was former Appalachian League outfielder, Harold Martin, who had
been serving with a tank division when captured four days after Grasso.
Grasso, Martin and another prisoner, Keith Thomas, devised a baseball
game using playing cards which kept them entertained during the long
periods of boredom during the winter months of 1943-1944. They were so
enthralled with the game that Martin wrote The Sporting News from the
prison camp in December 1943, asking if anything similar existed.
But it was not just card games of baseball that Grasso played. During
the summer of 1943, competitive prison camp fast-pitch softball leagues
were formed and Grasso was a star player with the Zoot Suiters. In the
summer of 1944, there were major and minor leagues, with the majors
divided into National and American divisions. Games were well attended,
the level of play was high and culminated in a World Series in August.
In the final days of the war against Germany, Grasso devised an escape
with nine other prisoners. “They were marching us to Denmark after the
Russians broke through,” he explained, “and the guards they put on us
were all 65 or 70 years old. Ten of us slipped away into a field when we
stopped for a rest.
“We had a French fellow in the group and a Jewish boy who spoke German.
We marched through about ten villages in columns of twos. We were
stopped a couple of times by German officers, but the Jewish boy saluted
smartly, explained we were a working detail, headed down the road and we
got away with it. We marched from the Oder to the Elbe, discovered a
rowboat with one oar by a home on the edge of the river, found a sheet
and painted a big black cross on it.
“The Russians and Germans were firing at each other a few hundred yards
down the river, but we piled into the boat anyway and took off for the
other side.
“We drifted downstream toward the fighting, but finally made it to the
other side.”
“It seemed like about nine million GIs came out of the bushes to meet
us. We were looking down the barrels of a lot of 35th Infantry Division
rifles, but we told ‘em who we were and, thank God, they believed us.
Then they told us we were crazy to escape – that the war was all but
over.
“Anyway, they got us back to some chow. They shoved a ton of good food
at us, but about all we could do was nibble on a chicken leg. Our
stomachs had shrunk so much we couldn’t handle any more than that.”
The former prisoners were then flown to Le Havre in France and returned
to the United States on the Queen Elizabeth.
Grasso remained in the Army for a further five months and returned to
the Giants’ organization in 1946. After being away from the professional
game for four years, Grasso - now 26 years old -played with the Jersey
City Giants in the International League in 1946. Despite being sidelined
some of the time with a strep throat, he had a good season (13 home runs
in 106 games) and made his major league debut with the New York Giants
on September 18. Grasso appeared in seven games before the season ended,
collecting three hits in 22 at-bats.
He was back with Jersey City in 1947 and was purchased by the Detroit
Tigers in April 1948. The Tigers assigned Grasso to the Seattle Rainiers
of the Pacific Coast League where he continued to play through 1949. In
November 1949, he was drafted by the Washington Senators and returned to
the major leagues in 1950, playing 75 games and hitting .287.
Grasso hit .206 in 52 games with Washington in 1951 and played a
career-high 115 games in 1952, batting .216. In 1953 he played a further
61 games and was traded to the Cleveland Indians in January 1954. Two
months later, the 33-year-old catcher broke his ankle sliding into
second during an exhibition game. The injury sidelined him for most of
the season but he did make four regular-season appearances for the
Indians and his only World Series appearance came in Game One against
the Giants as a late-inning defensive replacement for Jim Hegan.
In November 1954, Grasso was drafted by the Giants – the team he had
began his professional career with 13 years earlier. He played eight
games with the Giants before being released in May and was signed as a
free agent by the Indianapolis Indians of the American Association.
Grasso later played for Miami in the International League and ended his
career with that team - aged 38 - in 1958.
Grasso remained involved in baseball in some capacity for the rest of
his life. In June 1975, he operated a summer camp offering a unique
combination of activities and events for both disabled and non-disabled
children. “Challenging, frustrating and rewarding,” was the way Grasso
described the camp to the Troy Times Record on June 21, 1975.
“In our integrated setting, handicapped children are able to witness and
observe activities of non-handicapped children. Thus, a child has
someone to model after,” explained Grasso. “Our camp also allows
non-handicapped children to be exposed to children less fortunate than
themselves. This potentially increases children’s awareness that while
some people are different, they need not shy away from them.”
Four months later, on October 15, 1975, Mickey Grasso passed away in
Miami, Florida. He was just 55 years old.
Date Added May 16, 2020.
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