Welcome to Baseball History Podcast, featuring baseball biographies. I’m your announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 37 of the 2011 baseball season.
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 3 week of September.
September 19
1955 Cubs’ infielder Ernie Banks hit his fifth grand slam of the season to establish a new major league mark, but Rip Repulski’s 12th inning homer off of Jim Davis proves to be the difference as the Cardinals beat Chicago, 6-5.
Eldon John Repulski, nicknamed “Rip”, was born October 4, 1928 born in Sauk Rapids, MN.
Repulski was a fine defensive player at all outfield positions but a streaky power hitter. He became the Cardinals’ regular centerfielder as a rookie in 1953.
Repulski enjoyed storytelling, especially after his Major League career came to a close. He eventually opened a cocktail lounge in Minnesota. He was a “hands-on” owner of his liquor establishment, frequently coming out from behind the bar to share tales of his baseball career with anyone who might have even a dim connection with the sport.
Never one to allow anything to get in the way of a good story, Ripulski regaled his audiences with tales of his ball-field exploits: how he escaped death in plane and bus crashes, that he could still hit left-handed pitching, that the Cardinals kept him in the minors too long, and that his lifetime batting average was the same as Yogi Berra’s (it wasn’t). The stories went on and on until closing time.
A friend and college teammate of Repulski recalled, “All his life he was like a big kid. All he ever wanted was for people to like him.”
Repulski signed a professional contract with the St. Louis Cardinals.
While playing in the minor leagues he was promoted to the team in Fresno, California. He later told the following story to a writer, “I was supposed to play minor-league ball with Duluth instead of Fresno but that fell through at the last minute.”
Had he been a member of the Duluth Dukes in 1948, he believed he would have been a passenger on the team bus that collided with a truck on Minnesota Highway 36 near St. Paul on July 24, 1948. Dukes manager George Treadwell and four of his players were killed at the scene or died later as a result of the accident. Others were severely burned. Only four of the survivors ever played pro ball again. One was Elmer Schoendienst, brother of Red Schoendienst, later a friend and teammate of Repulski.
Repulski was 24 when spring training opened in 1953 and later said, “I knew things would be different. They gave me Terry Moore’s number. That was quite an honor.” Moore had been the Cardinals’ center fielder and team leader in the 1930s and ‘40s.
Manager Stanky installed Repulski as his starting center fielder and kept him there throughout the season. He was to hold on to a starting outfield position for the Cardinals for four consecutive seasons.
Stan Musial told the writer that Repulski “is a real hitter, and he may become a great one.” He added that Repulski was easily capable of hitting the ball to any field. Repulski acknowledged the hitting tips given him by brothers Harry and Dixie Walker, both St. Louis coaches. “I appreciate the work everybody’s put in with me. As long as I keep hitting the ball, I’ll do whatever they tell me.”
Repulski hit .275 with 15 home runs and 66 RBIs during his rookie year. He also drew attention for hitting a home run in every major-league park in which he played.
Repulski was a strong candidate for Rookie of the Year honors until he slumped at the plate in the last three weeks of the season.
Spring training in 1954 provided no worries for Repulski, for he had established himself as a regular. He had to shift to left field as rookie Wally Moon took his place in center. The shift in positions didn’t alter his status with the club. In fact, playing left field caused less wear and tear on his legs. He went on to play in at least 100 games for the next four years.
The Cardinals started the 1954 season well and were in contention for April, May, and most of June, but a string of defeats called to mind the team’s failure the previous year. According to sportswriter Bob Broeg, Repulski become demonstrative on a train trip from New York to Philadelphia. Broeg wrote, “A snub-nosed grinning kid with a blond crew cut and appearance of the All-American boy delivered an impromptu speech in the Pullman aisle.”
Repulski said, “I’d just love to play in a World Series and heck, not because of the money either. It was just like winning the Junior World Series two years ago. All the dough in the world couldn’t have brought that thrill.”
According to Broeg, Repulski “brought a smile of appreciation from his nearest listener, Vic Raschi, who had just appeared in six World Series with the Yankees. A professional soldier of baseball fortune could—and did—enjoy the amateur attitude of a promising young player.”
On June 13, Repulski delivered a pair of hits in each game of a doubleheader against Pittsburgh. This started him on a string of 10 straight games in which he registered at least two hits. During the 10-game span, he got 22 hits in 44 at-bats. Eleven of the hits were for extra bases, including eight home runs.
The Cardinals, however, were going nowhere. Typical of the season was an event that occurred on July 18. The Phillies were in St. Louis for a Sunday doubleheader. The first game was delayed more than an hour by rain in the seventh inning, then went into extra innings with Philadelphia pulling out an 11-10 victory. Repulski led off, played left field, and had three hits in five at-bats. Due to the length of the game, it was 6:50 p.m. as the second game commenced. The Phillies quickly jumped to an 8-1 lead after four innings. Manager Stanky then initiated stall tactics, hoping the game would be called by darkness before it could become official. Pitcher Cot Deal took an inordinate amount of time between pitches, and, when he did throw, he was wild. Next, out of the blue, Cardinals catcher Sal Yvars picked a fight with the unsuspecting Earl Torgeson. Umpire Babe Pinelli blamed Stanky for the shenanigans and forfeited the game to the Phillies. National League president Warren Giles suspended Stanky for five games.
St. Louis ended the season in sixth place despite leading the league in hits, runs, and batting average.
Surprisingly, Stanky was retained to manage the club in 1955. Repulski batted .283 with 15 homers and at one point during the season had a 16-game hitting streak.
The early season saw Repulski hitting .417 by late April before tapering off. His teammates, however, did not get off to a strong start, and St. Louis was floundering. In a game the Cardinals had just lost to the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field, manager Stanky abandoned all control, damaging the visiting team’s clubhouse, overturning the postgame meal, and throwing equipment at anyone approaching. Cardinal owner Gussie Busch’s patience had expired. Stanky was fired on May 27 and replaced by Harry “The Hat” Walker.
The lifeless Cards finished the 1955 season in seventh place with only 68 wins, 30½ games out of first. Repulski’s batting average slipped to .270, but his home run total increased to 23. On October 12, however, something happened to the Cardinals organization that would change Repulski’s life forever. Gussie Busch replaced general manager Richard Meyer with Frank “Trader” Lane. Lane had just resigned as general manager of the Chicago White Sox. His favorite trading partner had been St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck. The pair took particular delight in shuttling a shortstop named Willie Miranda back and forth between the White Sox and the Browns. In 1956, Lane did what fantasy baseball owners do now—make trades just for the sake of making them.
In spring training, Repulski sensed that Lane wanted to get rid of him. Bob Broeg reported that Lane had told him he nearly traded the Repuski to Philadelphia because, according to Lane, “they had what we needed. But Philadelphia backed down.” Broeg wrote, “Lane is happy now that the trade didn’t go through. By the time Rip rapped a homer off the Giants at the Polo Grounds May 21, touching off a 4-1 St. Louis victory, the six-foot, 185-pound right-handed hitting Repulski led the National League with a .404 average.”
“I don’t want to be traded,” Rip grumbled, “because this club is going places.”
Unfortunately for Repulski, the Cardinals, once again, were going nowhere. The team finished in fourth place, 17 games behind third-place Cincinnati, despite a .268 team batting average, best in the National League. General manager Lane proceeded to sabotage, whether intentionally or not, the team with a pair of blockbuster trades.
St. Louis is a baseball town and has had major-league teams since 1882. Cardinal fans have been described as the most loyal in baseball, and they are slow to accept change. They form attachments to favorite players and hate it when they move on. Lane upset the balance between St. Louis fans and players when he traded 1955 Rookie of the Year Bill Virdon to Pittsburgh.
Then, On June 14, Lane did the unthinkable. He traded away Red Schoendienst to the New York Giants. One of the most popular players in Cardinals history, the redhead thought he would finish his career in St. Louis.
The highlight of Repulski’s 1956 was his selection to the National League All-Star team. He finished the season with a .277 average. Repulski had managed to escape the season without being traded. He could not, however, avoid the offseason. On November 19, Lane finally got the deal he wanted with Philadelphia. He traded Repulski to the Phillies.
The offseason also provided a tragic event that would be the source of one of Rip’s pet stories. The Cardinals wanted him to play winter ball in Venezuela. “I had the airline tickets for me, my wife, and daughter and was all set to go when my mother-in-law fell and broke her hip. I had to call the Cardinals and tell them to send someone else. They sent an outfielder named Charley Peete.”
The plane, a four-engine Constellation, crashed into a fog-shrouded mountain near Caracas. Dead were Peete, his wife, and three children, plus 20 other passengers. Repulski’s story about cheating death tends to lose credibility because he was traded to Philadelphia on November 19, 1956, and was no longer property of the Cardinals when their plane crashed on November 27.
“I hated to leave St. Louis,” Repulski said. “It was a great organization. Even with Lane. They have the best fans in the world, too.”
The fans in Philadelphia were worse. Repulski recalled later, “Really a bad bunch of characters. I once got three hits, including a homer, but I popped out with men on base. When I got back to my outfield position, they threw things at me. They would boo the Pope.”
Under manager Mayo Smith, Philadelphia finished in fifth place with a 77-77 record. Repulski, however, led the team with 20 homers and batted .260.
At this stage of his career Rip was relying more on the long ball and less on speed to leg out hits. He would later observe, “With ballplayers, the legs are the first to go.” At age 29 in 1958, his batting average slipped to .244 and he lost his starting outfield job to Wally Post.
Rip knew he no longer fit in the Phillies’ plans, so it did not surprise him when he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers that winter. In return for Repulski, Philadelphia got second baseman George Anderson. Anderson, known as “Sparky,” batted .218 for the Phillies in 1959, his only year in the big leagues. He soon began a career as a manager that sent him to the Hall of Fame.
Repulski played in only 53 games for Los Angeles, but being a Dodger in 1959 gave him the opportunity to play in his only World Series. On October 6, he pinch-hit in the fifth game of the series, drawing an intentional walk in the Dodgers’ 1-0 loss to the Chicago White Sox at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. He subsequently went in to play right field, replacing Wally Moon, who moved over to center.
Repulski told Dave Anderson of the St. Cloud Daily Times, “The Dodgers are a great organization. They treat you well.” On May 6, 1960, the Dodgers traded Repulski to the Boston Red Sox. An American Leaguer now, Repulski responded on May 10 with a grand-slam home run in a 9-7 Red Sox victory. Vic Wertz also hit a grand slam for Boston. In fact, Repulski’s home run came after he borrowed Wertz’s bat.
Boston used Repulski in 73 games in 1960. After his grand slam, he hit only two more homers and finished the season with a .243 batting average and 20 runs batted in.
He later said. “I was lucky in my career in that I got to be teammates with two of the best to ever play the game, Stan Musial and Ted Williams.”
“Williams was remarkable. If Ted didn’t swing at a pitch, the umpire knew it was a ball. We’d often discuss fishing. He used to tie flies in the Red Sox clubhouse. Fans knew this and would send him feathers from all over the country. The clubhouse smelled like a chicken coop.”
Repulski went to 1961 spring training with Boston, but after participating in only 15 regular-season games was released. He was 32 years old. This was the first year for the Minnesota Twins, and Repulski desperately wanted to catch on with the home-state team, but he only was offered a contract with Syracuse, Minnesota’s Class AAA farm team. He accepted the offer, played 78 games in the International League, hit seven home runs, and batted .245.
The Twins signed Repulski to a minor-league contract with their new Class AAA team, Vancouver. In February, he was released by Vancouver.
he said, “I had a good career, played in the World Series, hit a lot of home runs, and made more than $30,000 one season. I did better than most.”
Needing a job, he turned to his father, a respected and long-time employee of the Great Northern Railway Company, predecessor to Burlington Northern. John Repulski had worked at the railway’s St. Cloud shops for nearly a half-century and saw to it that his company took care of his son with a job at the shops. At the shops in 1974, he told reporters that his major-league lifetime batting average (.269) was the same as Yogi Berra’s. Berra retired as an active player in 1965 with a batting average of .285.
Fellow railroad employees absorbed Rip’s stories without question. After all, how many times do you get to work next to a major leaguer? D.E. Hall, shop planner for Burlington Northern in St. Cloud said, “We remembered him as one of the greatest athletes the state of Minnesota ever produced.”
When he was in his early 50s, Rip’s health began to fail. In a period of six months, he underwent four stomach surgeries. Gradually he withdrew from the public eye. He turned down speaking engagements. He was bitter and confused. He became a recluse.
Repulski died on February 10, 1993 in Waite Park, Minnesota at the age of 64.
A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by George Rekela. It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org
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Well, that’s it for today’s Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
