Happy Birthday, Red Schoendienst (95 today)

[fan_since79]

Hall of Fame player.

19-year career, 10-time All Star

Manager of the 1967 world champion Cardinals.

Schoendienst remains with the Cardinals as a special assistant coach. 2017 marked 73 consecutive years he has worn a ML uniform as a player, coach, or manager.

 

[Yellow Balloon]

Glad to see he is still with us.  I would have bet he died 20 years ago.  

[Tank]

i'd have bet dollars to donuts he died a few years ago, so i checked to make sure this wasn't one of those threads that adam resurrected from 2011.

[fan_since79]

Schoendienst dropped out of high school at 16 and joined FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps. While working on a fence he suffered a serious eye injury from a nail. The doctors recommended the removal of his eye, but he found a doctor who employed a non-surgical treatment. It left him enduring constant headaches for years.

In the Spring of 1942 he joined 400 other hopefuls in an open tryout for the Cardinals. He wasn't selected, but later on the team's chief scout changed his mind and drove to his town in Illinois and signed him for $75 a month. The rest is history.

[Angel Oracle]

As a player, he won two WS rings (one with the Cards in 1946 and one with the Braves in 1957) and just missed in 1958 with the Braves (losing 3-1 games lead).

As a manager, he won one WS ring in 1967 and again just missed in 1968 (losing 3-1 games lead).  

Even more frustrating, those two 3-1 WS games leads lost in 1958 and 1968 were lost while games 6 and 7 were played in Red's team's home stadium. 

[fan_since79]

With the death of Bobby Doerr, Schoendienst is the last surviving player who was in the 1946 World Series. No other person is alive who played on an earlier Series winner.

Milt Welch played for the 1945 WS champion Tigers, but his ML career consisted of only one game in June of that year.

Edited February 2, 2018 by fan_since79

[Taylor]

I didn't know @red321 was so old!