1956-1957

In the 1940s and well into the 1950s, the premier first baseman in the American League was Mickey Vernon. On a daily basis, no other first sacker matched his considerable ability as both a hitter and fielder. With a bat in his hands, his classic left-handed stroke helped him win two batting titles, and he was regularly among the league leaders in a variety of offensive categories.

He was born on April 22, 1918 in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania and attended Eddystone High School, where he was a basketball star. There was no baseball team at the school, so he played in youth leagues, including an American Legion team in nearby Chester. 

As a teenager, he hitchhiked to Philadelphia to see his favorite team, the Philadelphia Athletics, play at  Shibe Park. In 1933, when he was in the 10th grade, he hitchhiked to Washington with three friends to see the Senators in the World Series. 

Mickey was playing for Sun Oil in the Delaware Valley Industrial League when he accepted a baseball scholarship to Villanova University. He attended Villanova for one year, and played on the freshman team. After the season, he had an uneventful tryout with the Philadelphia Phillies but later he worked out for the St. Louis Browns and they signed him to his first contract. In the spring of 1937, he headed to the minors.

Mickey hit .287 with 10 home runs in 83 games at Easton, which finished in second place. After the season, however, the Browns did not pick up his option, so he was signed by Washington. He spent spring training in 1938 with the Senators. Ultimately, he was shipped to the Greenville (South Carolina) Spinners of the Class B South Atlantic League, where he hit .328.

The following year, he began the season with the Springfield (Massachusetts) Nationals of the Single-A Eastern League. After hitting a league-leading .343 in 69 games, the 21-year-old was called up to Washington. At the start of the 1940 season, he was sent down to the Jersey City Giants of what was then the Double-A International League. At the end of the season, he was summoned again to Washington, where he played in five games. He never played in the minor leagues again.

Shortly after the 1943 season ended, Mickey was inducted into the Navy. He spent the next two years as a sailor, serving some of the time in Honolulu and the South Pacific, where he was part of a traveling baseball team, made up mostly of major leaguers.

After his discharge, he returned home and began preparing for the start of the 1946 season. When the 1946 season began, he had yet to hit .300 in three years as a big-league regular. Having just returned from two years in the war himself, he hadn’t played at all in 1945 — not even service ball. But he took the lead in the batting race early in the season, withstood a late challenge by Ted Williams, and held on to capture the crown with a .353 average. After his great 1946 season, his average dropped significantly. He hit only .265 in 1947 and .242 the following year and following the 1948 season he was traded to Cleveland.

His average had bounced up to .291 in 1949, his first season with the Indians. In June 1950, with Luke Easter taking over as the Indians’ first baseman, Mickey went back to Washington, where he finished the season.

In 1953, he was back in the chase for the American League batting crown. Again he led most of the season, but had to go down to the last day to edge Al Rosen for the title by just one point with a .337 average. 

After the 1955 season, the Senators again traded him, this time to the Red Sox as part of a nine-player swap. He hit .310 and .241 in two seasons with Boston. In his first season, he often batted fourth behind Ted Williams. At the end of the 1956 season, Mickey had 15 home runs and 84 RBIs.

In the early part of 1957, his bat stayed hot, but his bat cooled off as the season progressed, and he wound up splitting first base duties with Norm Zauchin and Dick Gernert. Mickey wound up playing in just 102 games and that winter, he was sold for $20,000 to the Indians.

In 1958, he hit .293 at Cleveland. The following spring, he was dealt to the Milwaukee Braves. In a reserve role in 1959 for Milwaukee, he only hit .220 and at the end of the season was released. 

Mickey signed on with the Pittsburgh Pirates as the team’s first base coach in 1960. Late in the season, as the Pirates surged to the National League pennant, he was activated as a player, appearing in nine games in September and collecting one hit in eight trips to the plate.

After one year with the Pirates, he became the first manager of the expansion Washington Senators, after the original Senators had become the Minnesota Twins. The Senators had last place all to themselves in 1962 and Mickey was discharged from his duties as manager. The following season, he returned to Pittsburgh, once again as a coach.

After spending the 1965 season as a batting coach with the St. Louis Cardinals, he embarked on a stint as a minor-league manager. Over a six-year period, he piloted the Vancouver Mounties of the Pacific Coast League for three years, the Richmond Braves of the International League for two, and the Manchester Yankees of the Eastern League for one. 

After his stint in Manchester in 1971, Mickey returned to coaching. Over the next 14 years, he served as a minor-league hitting instructor with the Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Yankees, and as the major-league batting coach with the Dodgers, Montreal Expos, and Yankees. In his final years in baseball, he served as a scout with the Yankees, retiring in 1988, at the age of 70, after having spent 52 years in professional baseball.

Mickey Vernon was one of the few major leaguers who played in four decades, appearing from 1939 to 1960. With the Senators, he won batting championships in 1946, with a .353 average, and in 1953, with a .337 mark. During a career that included seven other times in which he hit .290 or above, he slammed 2,495 hits while compiling a career batting average of .286. He led the league in doubles three times (1946, 1953, and 1954), was second in total bases three times, and second in hits and triples twice each. He was a member of seven All-Star teams (1946, 1948, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, and 1958) and twice among the top five in the Most Valuable Player voting (1946 and 1953). 

Mickey and his wife lived for 52 years in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. Later, they resided near Media, Pennsylvania. Throughout those years, he was a prominent member of the local community. He attended numerous events every year, a Little League was named after him, and a life-sized statue of him was placed in Marcus Hook. He also participated in numerous events for former major-league players that were held around the country.

In his later years, Mickey was the recipient of numerous honors, including induction into the Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and Delaware County Halls of Fame. The Mickey Vernon Museum Collection in  Radnor, Pennsylvania, honors his career, military service, among other artifacts

Mickey Vernon died of a stroke on September 24, 2008 in Media Pennsylvania. He was 90 years old.