Sy Rosenthal
Ballplayers Wounded in Combat
| Date and Place of Birth: | November 13, 1903 Boston, MA |
| Date and Place of Death: | April 7, 1969 Boston, MA |
| Baseball Experience: | Major League |
| Position: | Seaman First Class (S1c) |
| Rank: | Unknown |
| Military Unit: | US Navy |
| Area Served: | European Theater of Operations |
Sy Rosenthal, Red Sox outfielder of the 1920s, lost his son and
the use of his legs in WWII, yet he devoted his life toward polio
drives, aiding the blind, fighting cerebral palsy, and countless other
charity campaigns.
Simon “Sy” Rosenthal was born on November 13, 1903, in Boston,
Massachusetts. He graduated from Dorchester High School and, in 1921, he
was picked from the sandlots of Dorchester, by the Boston Red Sox. When
he first signed, Hugh Duffy was the manager. "Duffy wanted me to change
my name to Rose because it would fit easier in box scores,” he later
explained. “But I told him that I wouldn't do it. I was born with the
name Rosenthal. It won't make any difference if my name is Rose,
Rosenthal or O'Brien, I'll rise and fall on my own name."
Rosenthal played the outfield with the Hartford Senators of the Class A
Eastern league in 1922, appearing in 134 games and batting .279 with 10
home runs. He was with Albany and Pittsfield of the same league the
following year, and was a top minor league prospect with the San Antonio
Bears of the Class A Texas League in 1924. Batting .324 in June, and
having set a Texas League record with eleven consecutive base hits, he
broke two bones in his right ankle sliding into second base, bringing an
abrupt halt to his career.
Fully recovered, Rosenthal was back with San Antonio in 1925 and tore up
the league. He was batting .397 when purchased by the Boston Red Sox on
June 21, 1925. He made his debut with the Red Sox on September 8,
appearing in 19 games and batting a respectable .264.
Rosenthal played 104 games as the Red Sox rightfielder in 1926. He
batted .267 with 34 RBIs and four home runs. But the following season he
was purchased by the Louisville Colonels of the American Association for
$7,000. He never returned to the major leagues but continued to play in
the minors with Chattanooga, Dallas, Nashville, Galveston, Atlanta,
Mobile, Quincy and Beckley, and ended his career with Peoria in 1935.
In 1943, Rosenthal – aged 39 – entered military service with the Navy.
He had previously been rejected for service on physical grounds because
of bad teeth and a damaged cartilage in his knee. He had the cartilage
removed and got a new set of upper teeth. "The next time I tried, they
accepted me,” he told The Sporting News on September 24, 1947. “So I
liquidated my business - I had been manufacturing tin cans in South
Boston - and pretty soon I found myself on a mine-sweeper.”
At this time, his 17-year-old son, Irwin "Buddy" Rosenthal, was serving
with the Marine Corps in the Pacific. "I had been corresponding with
Buddy pretty regularly and, on putting in at Norfolk in February 1944. I
found a mass of my letters to him had been returned. And I had received
no word from him in a long time. Then I learned of his death.”
On the day after Christmas Day 1943, Buddy Rosenthal went ashore at Cape
Gloucester, New Britain, with the 1st Marine Division. "They went
through some tall grass - I learned later - and, as they went along,
they couldn't locate the Japs. My boy deliberately exposed himself for
an instant. The instant was too long. A second later he was dead.”
On May 5, 1944, S1c Sy Rosenthal set sail on a minesweeper for European
waters. "My minelayer - the USS Miantonomah - got around quite a bit,"
he recalled. "On D-Day she was off Omaha Beach, performing a few minor
services for the USS Texas. She seemed to be a pretty lucky minelayer,
and on September 25, 1944, she had just come out of Le Havre [France],
heading for Plymouth, England. From there she was going to Boston.
"It was a raw day. It was around 2.30 in the afternoon. I was to go on
watch in about 20 minutes and I was sitting on deck reading The Reader's
Digest - the article, I think, was 'They Take The Wounded Off Normandy.’
"Next thing I knew, there was an explosion and I was pirouetting through
the air. Then I was in the water. I couldn't swim, but my life-jacket
was holding me up. Soon I felt a terrific heaviness from the waist down.
"After a while, I could see our chief pharmacist swimming over towards
me. He grabbed me and pulled me over to a life-raft. He got me on it
somehow, and I sort of half-landed, half-rolled onto a couple of other
men.
"More time passed and a small British boat - a lot like one of our PT
boats - came out and took me aboard. The men on the British boat looked
at the two men on whom I was lying. Both were dead.
The USS Miantonomah had struck a mine. She sank about 20 minutes after
the explosion with a loss of 58 officers and men.
Rosenthal was paralysed from the waist down and would never walk again.
He spent time at hospitals in France and England before returning to the
United States and further hospitalization. With his son dead, the only
light in his life at this time was the correspondence with his ex-wife
Josephine Davis, whom he had married while playing for San Antonio and
had divorced in 1929.
"Josephine kept writing to me - some pretty lovely letters - and from
the US Naval Hospital in Chelsea, Massachusetts, I wrote her proposing
that we re-marry." They remarried at their old home in Dorchester on
March 3, 1946.
Rosenthal was a patient at Cushing General Hospital, a veteran's
hospital in Framinghan, Massachusetts, when the Red Sox staged a day for
him on September 13, 1947. The day started a drive to raise funds to
build him a house without stairs so he could navigate in his wheelchair.
The day alone raised $12,500 towards the $25,000 required.
Then, on March 25, 1949, Edith Nourse Rogers, US congressional
representative from Massachusetts, presented a check for $10,000 to
Rosenthal to complete his house-building fund in ceremonies at the
Needham Paraplegic Project.
In later years despite his handicap, Rosenthal devoted his efforts
toward polio drives, aid to the blind, fighting cerebral palsy, and
countless other charity campaigns. He was also active in several
veterans' organizations including the Jewish War Veterans, Veterans of
Foreign Wars, American Legion and Military Order of the Purple Heart.
In 1960, Mayor John F. Collins of Boston, formally declared a "Si
Rosenthal Day" and on March 28, 1963, he was honored at a testimonial
staged by the Disabled American Veterans for his service in the
fostering of brotherhood.
In 1967, Catholic priests of the Divine Word Seminar dedicated a
gymnasium at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, to Rosenthal for his part in
teaming with Father Charles Burns in raising $55,000 of the $120,000
then needed for the gym. In honoring Rosenthal the Seminary noted that
he contributed $5,000 of his own money and raised another $10,000 from
personal friends across the nation.
Simon Rosenthal passed away in a Veteran's Hospital in Boston on April
7, 1969. He was 65 years old and is buried - with his son, Irwin - at
Beth El Cemetery in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
Date Added December 24, 2017
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