There was a story I heard a long time ago, I was trying to remember, but I can’t figure out the magic google spell to find it.
Some details may be totally mis-remembered, but I’ll say the ones I think I remember in case it helps.
I think he was a Detroit Tiger
I think it was 30-40s
I think he was a really big dude
I think he was having a big rookie season, until leg injury.
I know he had some weird new treatment that they left hooked up too long and destroyed his leg.
ETA. Maybe should have been game room, I’m never sure with Sports questions with exact simple answers.
Your recollections are very accurate. Great start to his career, .330 hitter, late twenties-early thirties, starting off with the Tigers. He twisted a knee and they decided to use heat to treat it, only he developed bad burns and gangrene (!). Kind of limited his mobility…
That’s him, thank you very much.
Most of my memory was good but I was clearly confused on it happening during his rookie year, And I was thinking a little bigger than 6 ft 3.
As I said, I thought your memory was quite impressive. Of course 6’3" probably came across as bigger then than it would now–certainly among baseball players.
As a 13-year-old or something I found him while flipping through the Baseball Encyclopedia (in those pre-Internet days)…I’d never heard of the guy, and remember being surprised at a) how good he was and b) how abruptly his career had come to an end. It was some time before I learned the details.
Joe DiMaggio missed several weeks his first year with the Yankees because the trainer, who thought he used better methods than over trainers, left DiMaggio’s foot in a diathermy machine too long.
6’3" was pretty big for a player in the 1930s. In the late 1990s when the Yankees won 4 championships in 5 years, one player from Stengel’s 5 in a row teams noted Derek Jeter at 6’3" was taller than any Yankee 1949-1953
