1954
MICKEY OWEN   C

Arnold "Mickey" Owen was born on April 4, 1916, in Nixa, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was seven years old, so he and his mother moved to southern California, where he played baseball as a teenager.

He returned briefly to southwest Missouri and the family farm after graduating high school in 1934, before going on to play 16 games in the Class D Arkansas State League for the Rodgers Rustlers and the Bentonville Officeholders. The following year he signed as an amateur free agent with the St. Louis Cardinals.

His first professional stop came roughly 15 miles away from home with the Springfield (Missouri) Cardinals of the Class C Western Association in 1935. The next year, 1936, he played for the AA level Columbus (Ohio) Red Birds. He assumed the majority of catching duties and his .336, batting average was fourth-highest on the team.

Mickey's baseball skills quickly drew the attention of the parent club, for in 1937, he moved up to St. Louis, which still featured several members of the 1934 World Champion “Gashouse Gang.” But his mediocre hitting at the major league level was soon evident. He finished the year with a .231 average, but from 1938 to 1944, his fielding percentage ranked consistently higher than the league average and those seven seasons constituted the bulk of his playing career. He batted .259 in those campaigns, hitting nine of his 14 career home runs. 

He became expendable with the emergence of Walker Cooper, a backstop with more hitting ability and he was traded him to the Brooklyn Dodgers in December 1940. In 1941, he had one of his weakest seasons at the plate of his entire career, batting only .235 with one home run.

Mickey's value to a team came from his fielding and catching. He set a National League record for consecutive putouts without committing an error, with 476. For the season he recorded 530 putouts, the league’s best. 

Unfortunately, all of his fine defensive work for the season went for naught with the fateful dropped third strike in Game Four of the 1941 World Series. The Yankees were leading the Series two games to one when Game Four began. A  dropped third strike with two out in the ninth inning, allowed the New York Yankees to come back and win the game and is cemented among baseball’s best-known blunders, right up there with  Merkle’s Boner, Snodgrass’s Muff and the ball through Bill Buckner's legs.

By the ninth, Brooklyn led 4-3, and seemed poised to tie the Series at two games each. Brooklyn pitcher Hugh Casey induced two groundouts, including one he handled himself, before facing the Yankees' Tommy Henrich. So with two outs, the Yankee right fielder worked the count to 3-and-2. Next came Mickey Owens' defining baseball moment.

Casey’s pitch broke sharply down and in to the left-handed Henrich, who swung and missed badly. Umpire Larry Goetz called strike three, but the ball, eluded Mickey’s glove and rolled away. Henrich made it to first, and then the deluge began. The next four Yankee batters reached base and the score stood 7-4, before the Dodgers finally got the third out. The next day the Yankees won Game Five and the World Series.

In 1942, Mickey again made the All-Star team and received 103 MVP votes, good enough for fourth place. While he made the 1943 All-Star team, his numbers slipped somewhat from the previous year. In 1944 he rebounded, again leading the NL with 506 putouts, but also with 11 passed balls. He was also named to the National League All-Stars for the fourth year in a row.

In 1945 he entered the Navy in mid-season. While still stationed in upstate New York, in April 1946, Jorge Pasquel of the Mexican League announced that he had signed Mickey to a five-year deal as a player-manager for the Veracruz Blues. Mickey reported to Veracruz less than a week later and eventually, 18 major leaguers jumped to the Mexican League.

At first Mickey seemed to thrive in Mexico, but the language barrier had become an issue, and he brawled with opposing players unaccustomed to his “Gashouse” playing style. He chose to return home to Nixa in early August 1946 and promptly applied for reinstatement in Organized Baseball. 

Commissioner Happy Chandler denied his request and maintained the five-year suspension he had announced for all the offending players. In 1949 Chandler dropped the suspensions, and all the offending players were reinstated. Just days later the Chicago Cubs picked Mickey off waivers from Brooklyn.

He played in 1949-1951 with the Cubs and after the Cubs released him in December 1951, he then spent the next two years in the minors, mostly with American League affiliates.

In late February 1954, Mickey signed as a free agent with the Boston Red Sox. He played 30 games for the Red Sox in what turned out to be the last season of his paying career and hit. 235. The Red Sox released him in early January 1955, but he stayed on with them as a coach for the 1955 and 1956 seasons. He spent the next three years as a player/manager in the minors or scouting for the major leagues.

After 1959 he embarked on a new baseball endeavor. He purchased 595 acres off U. S. Route 66 in Lawrence County, Missouri, to establish a baseball camp for teenage boys. The camp bearing his name helped develop young talent in a safe, clean rural environment and quickly established itself as a local baseball powerhouse. Built every summer from the Midwest’s best talent, the camp’s teams routinely carved up local opposition from Springfield, Joplin, and surrounding smaller towns.

Mickey sold his ownership of the baseball camp when he ran for Greene County Sheriff in 1964, although he remained on the staff and appeared regularly at the camp into the 1980s. His four terms as sheriff could be viewed as another addition to Midwestern law enforcement family dynasties. Three of Mickey’s relatives had served as Greene County sheriff. 

His law enforcement success prompted him to test the waters of statewide politics. In 1980 he launched a campaign to become Missouri’s Lieutenant Governor., finishing third in the Democratic primary. After his campaign loss, he retired to Springfield, Missouri.

In the late 1990s, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and for better health services he moved to the Missouri Veteran’s Home in nearby Mt. Vernon, just miles away from his baseball camp in Miller.

On July 13, 2005, Mickey Owen passed away at age 89.