1932

Andy Spognardi was born on October 18, 1908, in Boston. The family lived in Roslindale, about four or five blocks from two large city baseball fields – Fallon Field and Healy Field. The kids would play ball in the morning, take the five-minute walk home for lunch, then go back and play until dinnertime.

He attended Hyde Park High and was vice president of his class. Andy was fleet afoot and after his junior year, he was elected captain of the baseball team. When he was a senior, his high-school coach told him that Boston College was interested in him, and that he could get into BC if he had the marks.  Andy attended Huntington Prep for two years before starting college. The prep school had a baseball team, too, and Andy was captain of their team.

During that era, it wasn’t rare for college players to go straight to the major leagues, though few of them stuck. Andy never played minor-league ball on his way to the majors, but he did go back to playing town ball. Playing town ball in the summers all through college, he earned enough to be able to put himself through medical school as well. Baseball may have been more of a means to an end than a goal for him. He went to Boston College and at the end of the 1931 season, he was elected captain of the team for 1932. 

Andy signed with the Red Sox and his first appearance in a professional game came on September 1932, as a late-inning replacement in the second game of a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Athletics. Just 24 days after his debut, the season was over and he had 10 hits in 34 at-bats (.294 BA) and six walks, which gave him a .400 on-base percentage. 

In early 1933, he decided that his medical courses at Tufts College would prevent him from making the southern training trip to Sarasota for spring training. Andy was committed to his studies, but did get in some baseball after the school year was over, appearing in 22 games for the Reading Red Sox (Class A, New York-Penn League) and in four games for the International League Jersey City Skeeters (Double A).

In 1934, still in the Red Sox system, he played for the Syracuse Chiefs and for the Watertown (Massachusetts) Townies, who joined the Class B Northeastern League in July. 

Once Andy got into his third year at Tufts Medical School, though, there wasn’t time in the summers to play ball. He had to begin to gain practical experience working in hospitals. After graduating from Tufts in 1936, he interned at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Lowell. Dr. Spognardi completed his internship in 1938 and became a general practitioner. He operated his practice in Roslindale for a full half-century and retired in the summer of 1988.