Eddie Bockman | MLB veteran and scout that signed Larry Bowa, dies at 91

On the eve of the opening game of the ALDS playoffs, Yankee fans had a moment to pause. Another one to wear the pinstripes left their ranks. Joseph “Eddie” Bockman, a rookie third baseman with 1946 Yankees, passed away Thursday at his home in Millbrae, Calif. He was 91.

Bockman’s career was almost over as soon as it started. He first signed with the Class D Bisbee Bees of the Chicago Cubs organization in 1939. After playing in 62 games with a .285 average, Bockman was nose-to-nose with one of baseball’s harshest realities, being released.

Eddie Bockman / Bowman

“I wasn't doing that bad. … I sat around a whole day trying to figure out why,” said Bockman in a 2009 interview I conducted with him via telephone. “It was quite a while after I got released, two to three weeks before they went out and hired someone else. I couldn't understand it. You're just a kid at that time and you can't really put it together.”

Bockman dusted himself off and drew the attention of the New York Yankees, signing to their Class A team in Joplin the following season. As he started to move up the ranks, another team requested his services, the United States Navy.

Bockman joined the Navy in 1943 and was stationed in San Diego. It was here that Bockman would begin to mature as both a man and a ballplayer.

“As I got older, I did well in the Navy," he said. "Of course, you weren't playing against the competition as good as you did in professional baseball, but it was a ballgame. Over the course of two to three years, I played well, even if I say so myself!”

During his service time, Bockman would team up with many budding major league stars as a member of the Long Beach Service Stars.

“We had a good ballclub. Ray Boone, George Vico, Charlie Gilbert, Cliff Mapes and Bob Lemon were all with us.”

Returning to the Yankees organization in 1946, Bockman’s skills gained by playing in the Navy allowed him to make the jump to the Kansas City Blues of the Class AAA American Association. Bockman feasted on the league’s hurlers to the tune of a .303 average with 29 stolen bases. This led to a late September call-up by the Yankees that also included future Hall of Famer Yogi Berra.

Despite playing alongside such legends as Joe DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, and Bill Dickey, it was Bockman’s trade to the Indians with Joe Gordon for Allie Reynolds during the offseason that would place him in a front row seat to an even bigger piece of baseball’s history.

On July 5th, 1947, Indians owner Bill Veeck ushered Larry Doby in to the clubhouse, seeking to integrate the American League. Bockman vividly recalled a timid Doby making his way into the fold.

“In the clubhouse, the day he walked in, in Chicago, he was scared to death," he said. "He didn't know what to expect.

“He was different than Jackie Robinson. Robinson was a cocky guy. If he disagreed with you, he'd be ready to fight you. Doby was the other way. [He was] kind of a laid back guy, a good kid. I got along with him well.”

Bockman was used sparingly for the remainder of the 1947 season and was then purchased by the Pittsburgh Pirates. He spent two seasons as part of their third base platoon and then continued in the minors as a player-manager through the 1958 season.

He used his extensive career as a player and manager to transition into a scouting role with the Philadelphia Phillies. He left his mark on the 1980 World Series Championship team by signing seven of the members of that club, including his most prized recruit, Larry Bowa.

“He was very easy to sign," he said. "He wanted to play and nothing was going to stop him. When I went over to sign him, he jumped in the back seat of the car. That's the term we use when we didn't have any problems signing the player.”

Bowa carved out an All-Star career with the Phillies. He marveled at Bowa’s durability despite the shortstop's small stature.

“He played 16 years in the big leagues and I said he was pretty damn lucky to play that long in the big leagues and never was hurt," Bockman said. "He was always there, never a broken bone, a sore arm, or bad legs. There wasn't a hell of a lot on him to hurt! He got 100% out of his ability. He wasn't scared to work. You had a hell of a time getting him off the field. I had to pull him off the field a few times, he didn't want to leave.”

During our 2009 conversation, Bockman, using his scouting eye, took a humble assessment of his abilities.  As a scout, Bockman questioned whether he would sign himself.

“I wasn't that good of a player. I look back on myself now; I was good enough to get there,” said Bockman. “I scouted for 45 years and I would stop and think sometimes if I would scout myself [with] my abilities. I'd say to myself, ‘Shoot, I wouldn't sign myself.’”

Despite his post-playing reservations about his abilities, Bockman found a redeeming quality in his desire to be on the field.

“I liked to play and it bothered me when I wasn't in the lineup; I wanted to play," he said. "That was a factor of why I got signed in the first place. I had the ambition and I wanted to play. I didn't care where or who I was.”

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Ralph Branca: A Moment in Time - Book Review

The essence of a man’s life cannot be captured by any singular event or circumstance. Ralph Branca’s new autobiography A Moment in Time: An American Story of Baseball, Heartbreak and Grace (Scribner, 2011), attempts to quell the notion that his career is summarized by the high-inside fastball he threw to Bobby Thomson on October 3rd, 1951.

Informed by one of his Detroit Tiger teammates in 1954 of the Giants intricate sign-stealing system that included a buzzer system and telescopes, Branca held on to his secret for decades. Battling the burden of bearing the weight of the hopes of an entire city being dashed by one pitch, Branca finally felt that the time was right to illuminate his career after being quiet for so long.

Click here to see video of Branca discussing his new book, as well as to read the entire review.

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Bill 'Ready' Cash, veteran of eight Negro League seasons dies at 91

Bill “Ready” Cash, an All-Star catcher with the Philadelphia Stars of the Negro Leagues from 1943-1950, passed away Monday at Roxborough Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia. He was 91.

Born February 21, 1919 in Round Oak, Georgia, Cash moved to Southwest Philadelphia as a youngster, where he honed his baseball skills on the local sandlots. After quitting his high school team, as he was the only black player on the squad, he starred on local semi-pro teams in the early 1940s. Under the tutelage of Negro League veteran Webster McDonald, he was brought to Philadelphia manager Goose Curry in 1943 and was invited to join the Stars.

Cash played eight seasons in the Negro Leagues, all with Philadelphia. He was selected to the East-West All-Star game in 1948 and 1949; during the latter which he caught the entire game. In demand for his prowess behind the plate, the well-traveled catcher played in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, and Canada.

I had the opportunity to meet Cash in 2008 at an event at the Philadelphia Convention Center. Even at his advanced age, he rattled off names and explicit details of legends such as Ray Dandridge, Buck Leonard, Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige. I marveled at the size of his hands, which were not only huge, but disfigured from the multiple broken fingers due to the hazards of catching. I only wondered about the power of those hands during his prime.

He earned the nickname “Ready” after being taken out of a game early in his tenure.  He wasn’t happy about the benching and quickly told the manager, "When I put on the uniform, I'm ready to play." The moniker followed him the rest of his career.

A few years after major league baseball integrated, the Chicago White Sox signed Cash at the age of 33. Fueled by the promise of a spot with Class-A Colorado Springs, Cash batted .375 during spring training, besting fellow Negro League alum Sam Hairston’s .214 average. Despite his torrid spring, the White Sox executives did not hold up their end of the bargain and sent Cash to Class B Waterloo. Infuriated, Cash asked for his release.

“I was mad because they lied to me,” he said in Brent P. Kelly’s Voices from the Negro Leagues.

Reluctantly, Cash stayed on with Waterloo, seeking to prove his major league worthiness. His aspirations were derailed when he broke his leg less than 40 games into the season and was shelved for nine weeks. Upon his return, he was reassigned to Class C Superior to help them in their playoff run. It would be the end of Cash’s quest to get to the major leagues. He played a few more years in the Mandak League as well as with a semi-pro outfit in Bismarck, North Dakota before finishing in 1955.

Even at the end of his career, Cash’s skills continued to impress. During a 2008 interview I conducted with his Bismarck manager Al Cihocki, the mention of his name elicited an excited response.

“How about Bill Cash? Holy Christ, boy could he hit and throw. If he was playing today, he would be worth a fortune.”

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Carl Erskine talks sign stealing and the 1951 Giants and Dodgers rivalry

Carl Erskine was one ill-placed curveball from possibly changing the fate of the 1951 playoff between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.

When manager Charlie Dressen checked with his coach Clyde Sukeforth on the status of both Erskine and Ralph Branca to relieve a tiring Don Newcombe, Sukeforth replied, “He [Erskine] just bounced his curveball.” A few pitches later, Bobby Thomson stepped up to the plate and blasted the infamous home run off of Ralph Branca that became widely known as “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”


This is Part 5 of a series of interviews with Brooklyn Dodger great Carl Erskine about his experiences playing with the storied franchise. Erskine appeared recently in New York on behalf of the Bob Feller Museum and was kind enough to grant us access to produce this series of vignettes regarding his career.

Much speculation has developed as to whether the Giants were using a sign-stealing system that gave Thomson advanced knowledge of Branca’s inside fastball. Author Joshua Prager drew an admission from the late Giants third-string catcher Sal Yvars in his book, The Echoing Green, that the Giants were indeed relaying pitch information to their hitters. Thomson, however, until the day he died, vehemently denied that he had any knowledge of Branca’s offerings.



Erskine, who has often discussed his recollections of that fateful October day in 1951, didn’t seem to have ill feelings about the issue of sign-stealing 60 years later.

“Well, if you go to that year, ’51, there is no rule that I know of about using a telescope or a set of binoculars to steal signs,” he said. “It’s always assumed that ethically you steal them on the field, second base, or if the catcher is a little sloppy so that the first base can see, or some mannerism that the catcher does every time he calls a curveball his elbow goes out. Other than the ethics involved of mechanically stealing, baseball didn’t have any rule against it.”

That’s not to say that Erskine didn’t have his suspicions about it taking place across the league.

“We used to think Chicago, with that scoreboard in Wrigley Field, where they used to hang the numbers, there are big openings,” he said. “Those guys probably stole signs from the scoreboard; nobody ever checked it.”

Special thanks also goes to the promoters of JP Sports' East Coast National Show for accommodating us during Mr. Erskine's appearance.

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Carl Erskine explains how Roy Campanella helped to stabilize the Brooklyn Dodgers pitching staff

Carl Erskine and Roy Campanella were battery mates for Campanella’s entire ten-year career with the Brooklyn Dodgers. If anyone should know a thing or two about how Campanella handled the pitching staff, it’s Erskine.

Roy Campanella and Carl Erskine

This is Part 4 of a series of interviews with Brooklyn Dodger great Carl Erskine about his experiences playing with the storied franchise. Erskine appeared recently in New York on behalf of the Bob Feller Museum and was kind enough to grant us access to produce this series of vignettes regarding his career.

Campanella wasn’t exactly a rookie when he joined the Dodgers; he had been playing nine years in the Negro Leagues, learning from Hall of Famer Raleigh “Biz” Mackey. For those familiar with Campanella's lineage, it was of little surprise then that Campanella skillfully handled his pitching staff.

“What Campy did more than anything else with the pitching staff, was how he made you pace yourself,” Erskine said. “Pitchers are always overanxious, especially if you have a bad pitch or you throw a home run or something.  You want the ball back, you want to go again; he wouldn’t let you do that, he made you stay within yourself.” Although Campanella should have worn a sign saying, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”, because he threw out 51% of would-be base stealers during his career, it was his mental approach to the game that set him apart from other receivers at the time.

“His savvy ... that’s something you can’t describe; he just had a feel for the game,” Erskine said.

Erskine described how Campanella's "feel" helped to mold on one of the mainstays of Brooklyn’s rotation, Don Newcombe.

“Campy … was great at the mind game,” he said. “What to throw, when to throw it. … He was an easy personality. He helped [Don] Newcombe a lot because Newk was a little volatile and he was one of the early blacks. He had to face a lot of the indignities, same as Jackie [Robinson] did. He wasn’t handling that as well as Jackie probably, so Campy was a real soothing influence on Newcombe.” Campanella’s ability to handle the pitchers was so esteemed, that the coaching staff gave Campanella wide latitude with his charges.

“The manager would basically say to the pitching staff … ‘If you shake Campy off, you better have a good reason,” he said. “He’s been around, he knows what to do; you kinda follow Roy.’ So Roy used to say to the young pitchers. ‘Now you young pitchers, you just throw what ‘Ol Campy calls and I’ll make you a winner!’" Sometimes, Campanella would lead them down a path that was not always victorious. Erskine took the opportunity to remind him that the loss went next to his name, not the catcher after a loss. “So I’d lose a game and I’d bring him a box score,” Erskine said. “His locker was right next to mine. I’d say, 'Hey Campy, look at this! It says Erskine losing pitcher. Shouldn’t that say Campanella, losing catcher?'"

Campanella gave a quick-witted reply.

“Well you would always shake me off!”

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