St. Louis Blues, Washington Nationals, Chicago
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1949 American League Rookie
of the Year and 5x American League All Star!
Roy Sievers
1961-68 Game model Retail Adirondack Model #1200S 34" 31.5 oz. Baseball Bat!
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Roy Sievers
Roy Edward Sievers (November 18,
1926 – April 3, 2017) was an American professional baseball player. He played
in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a first baseman and left fielder from 1949
through 1965. A five-time All-Star, Sievers was the first American League (AL)
rookie-of-the-year in 1949, and the 1957 AL home run leader and RBI champion.
He played for the St. Louis Browns, Washington Senators, Chicago White Sox,
Philadelphia Phillies, and the expansion Washington Senators. Sievers batted
and threw right-handed.
Sievers was born in St. Louis,
Missouri, on November 18, 1926, and was raised by his parents in St. Louis with
his two brothers. He attended Beaumont High School, and played on the baseball
team where coach Ray Elliott taught him how to hit with power. Three of his
high school teammates became major league players, and contemporaneous Beaumont
junior varsity player Earl Weaver became a Hall of Fame manager. Sievers was
nicknamed "Squirrel" as a schoolboy basketball star.
Sievers grew up three blocks from
Sportsman's Park where both the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns played major
league baseball. His father worked for an iron supply company, and once had a
tryout as a professional baseball player.
Sievers was signed out of high
school in 1944 by the St. Louis Browns, but then served two years in the U.S.
Army before starting his minor league career in the Browns' farm system.
Minor leagues
In 1947, Sievers was assigned to
the Class C Hannibal Pilots of the Central Association. He had a .317 batting
average, with 34 home runs, 141 runs batted in (RBI), 121 runs scored, 159 base
hits, a .583 slugging percentage and .990 OPS (on-base plus slugging). Sievers
led the Central Association in base hits, home runs, runs, RBI and total bases.
He played the majority of the 1948 season with the Class B Springfield Browns,
batting .309, with 19 home runs and 75 RBI in only 343 at bats. He also met his
future wife Joan (Colburn) Sievers, whom he married the next year.
Major leagues
St. Louis Browns
In 1949, Sievers won the
inaugural American League (AL) Rookie of the Year and The Sporting News (TSN)
Rookie of the Year awards He had a .306 batting average (which would be the
highest of his career), with 16 home runs, 91 RBI, 84 runs and an .869 OPS, for
the seventh place St. Louis Browns. His average fell to .238 in 1950, with only
ten home runs. In 1951, he played in only 31 games for the Browns, and was sent
to the Double-A San Antonio Missions to work on his hitting. After only 39
games, he suffered a right shoulder injury with the Missions, while trying to
make a diving catch in the outfield. The injury, with a dislocation and torn
muscles, was so severe he blacked out.
The following winter he was
diagnosed as having a chronic dislocation of his right shoulder, and it was
expected he would miss at least half of the 1952 season. He had not responded
to treatment and was sent to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for more
specialized diagnosis and treatment. There was a fear he would never play again
if he could not use his throwing arm, and the Browns moved him from the
outfield to first base. He played in only 11 games for the Browns in 1952, but
in 1953 Sievers played in 92 games and hit .270, with eight home runs in 285 at
bats.
The Browns were moving to
Baltimore in 1954, and had become the Baltimore Orioles. In February 1954, the
Orioles traded Sievers to the Washington Senators for Gil Coan before the 1954
season; without his ever having played as an Oriole
Original Washington Senators
Sievers became the standout star
player on a chronically poor Senators team.[5] In Washington, Sievers collected
95 or more RBI and played at least 144 games during five consecutive years
(1954–58). Sievers's most productive season as a major league player came in
1957, when he led the league in home runs (42), RBI (114), extra base hits (70)
and total bases (331), while batting .301. Sievers hit home runs in six
consecutive games that year, a record until 1956 He finished third in the Most
Valuable Player (MVP) ballot (behind Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams) with four
first-place votes and 205 points. In 1958, he had a team-leading 39 homes runs,
108 RBI and .295 batting average. Over his full six years in Washington, he hit
180 home runs with 574 RBI and an .859 OPS. Sievers made the AL All-Star Team
as a Senator three times (1956–57, 1959).
Despite his shoulder issues, he
played the majority of games for the Senators in left field, not at first base.
In March of 1954, Sievers was still in the process of recovering his arm
strength and he could not make throws from the outfield. Senators' manager
Bucky Harris, however, showed confidence in Sievers being able to improve his
throwing and play in the outfield again. In 1954, he led all AL players in
games played in left field (133) and putouts (296) by a left fielder. He was
second in the league among left fielders with 10 assists, and was third in
fielding percentage (.971).
In 1955, he was first among left
fielders in fielding percentage (.988), second in games played (129) and
putouts (245), and fifth in assists (6). In 1956, he split time almost evenly
between left field and first base, but in 1957, he was third among left
fielders in games played, putouts and assists, and fourth in fielding
percentage. In 1958, he again led all AL leftfielders in fielding percentage
(.991), but only played 114 games in left field that year, still ranking fourth
and fifth in putouts and assists.
In 1959, Sievers was injured
three times and played the vast majority of his 115 games at first base. Even
with the reduced play and injuries, he hit 21 home runs, but only batted .242
with 49 RBI He was still selected to both 1959 All-Star games.
Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia
Phillies and expansion Washington Senators
On April 4, 1960, Sievers went to
the Chicago White Sox in a trade that sent Earl Battey and Don Mincher to
Washington, plush cash. A year earlier, the White Sox had offered $250,000 for
Sievers and two other players, and also reportedly offered $300,000 and five
players (including Battey) but the Senators declined The White Sox still went
to the 1959 World Series. The 1960 offer was reduced in light of Sievers 1959
injury history.
Sievers did rebound from his 1959
season. In his first year with the Sox, he hit .295 with 28 home runs, 93 RBI
and a .930 OPS, and had almost an identical season in 1961, hitting .295 with
27 home runs, 92 RBI and a .913 OPS making his fourth All-Star appearance in
the second 1960 All-Star Game. He led the White Sox in home runs both years,
playing almost entirely at first base. In 1960, the White Sox finished in third
place in the AL (87–67), and fourth place in 1961 (86–76)
After the 1961 season, the White
Sox traded him to the National League (NL) Phillies for Charley Smith and John
Buzhardt.[36] He remained a first baseman for the Phillies. In 1962, he played
in 144 games, batting .262 with 21 home runs and 80 RBI; and in 1963, he played
in 138 games, batting .240, with 19 home runs and 82 RBI.
In 1964, he had played in only 49
games, with a .183 batting average and only four home runs when the Phillies
sold his contract rights to the expansion Washington Senators on July 16, 1964.
Sievers played in only 33 games for the Senators in 1964, and 12 games in 1965,
when he was released on May 15. He played his final game on May 9, 1965, coming
up as a pinch hitter, and then replaced by a pinch hitter.
Legacy
Sievers in 1993
Ned Garver, who pitched in the
American League during the 1950s, considered Sievers the best first baseman in
the league during that time. Sal Maglie, star pitcher for the New York Giants
who specialized in throwing the curveball, used Sievers as an example of a
curveball hitter in a 1958 article for Sports Illustrated.
At the time of his death in 2017,
Sievers was the oldest living member of the expansion Senators team Sievers was
one of only nine players to don the uniform of both the original and expansion
Washington Senators teams, the others being Rudy Hernández, Héctor Maestri, Don
Mincher, Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos, Johnny Schaive, Zoilo Versalles, and Hal
Woodeshick.
At a time when achieving 300 home
runs was still a rarity, he became only the 22nd ballplayer to reach the
plateau;[citation needed] he is also the earliest to hit 300 career home runs
and not eventually be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
In a 17-season career, Sievers
was a .267 hitter with 318 home runs, 1,703 hits, and 1,147 RBI, in 1,887
games. Defensively, he compiled a career .989 fielding percentage.
Coaching and managing
After his playing career ended,
he served one season (1966) as a coach for the Cincinnati Reds and managed in
the minor leagues for the New York Mets and Oakland Athletics. He managed the
Williamsport Mets of the Eastern League in 1967 to a 73–66 record. He managed
the Mets' Texas League affiliated Memphis Blues to a 67–69 record in 1968. He
also managed the Single-A Burlington Bees of the Midwest League (an Oakland
Athletics' affiliate) in 1969-70. He stopped managing because he could not
afford to raise his family on what he was being paid. Sievers returned to St.
Louis and worked for a trucking firm.
Sievers was inducted into the
Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 1992. He has also been inducted into the St.
Louis Sports Hall of Fame.
While playing for the Senators,
Sievers developed a friendship with then Vice President Richard M. Nixon. He
met three other presidents in addition to Nixon (Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F.
Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson), and even Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Nixon was the master of ceremonies at a special night honoring Sievers in 1957.
In the 1958 movie Damn Yankees,
it is Sievers's swing of the bat that is actually shown when the character
played by Tab Hunter is batting.
BAT BOB060