Hank Greenberg: Boom or Bust in Beaumont
It was the final game of the 1929 season, and 15,000 fans filled Yankee Stadium for the Sunday game against the Philadelphia Athletics. Connie Mack’s young team had so far won 103 games and clinched the AL pennant weeks earlier, a humiliating 17 games in front of the New York Yankees. From his first-row box seat beside the Yankees dugout, Hank Greenberg could almost feel what it would be like to be on the field.
The primo seat that afternoon was courtesy of Yankees general manager Ed Barrow, who fully expected Greenberg’s signature on a contract before long – and why not? Any kid would have to be nuts not to sign with the Yanks!
Yankees pitcher Gordon Rhodes loaded up the bases to start the first inning, but was able to get Al Simmons to pop out, then whiffed Jimmie Foxx and Bing Miller. In the bottom half of the inning, Cedric Durst led off with a walk and then went to third on a double by the great Babe Ruth. That brought up the Yankees’ first baseman, Lou Gehrig.
18-year-old Hank Greenberg had much in common with Gehrig. Besides being first basemen, the pair were native New Yorkers and college men whose parents frowned on playing pro ball for a living – and both were discovered by the man in the seat next to him: Yankees super scout Paul Krichell.
As Lou Gehrig strode to the plate, Krichell leaned in and, in a conspiratorial tone, said, “He’s all washed up. In a few years, you’ll be the Yankees’ first baseman.”
As heady as it was to hear the head scout of the mighty New York Yankees make such a grand assessment of his talent, Greenberg knew better. Lou Gehrig was just 26 and already had an MVP Award and back-to-back RBI titles under his belt. There was no way he or anyone else would unseat Gehrig as the Yankees’ first baseman anytime soon. Still, it was quite the compliment for a teenager from the Bronx.
HENRY BENJAMIN GREENBERG was the third of four children born to Romanian-Jewish immigrants David and Sarah. His parents had left the Old Country in hopes of a better life and to give their future children a solid American education. That meant not stopping at high school – no, David and Sarah Greenberg expected their kids to go all the way to college.
At James Monroe High in the Bronx, young Hy (as he was known back then) was more interested in sports than in books. He was a fullback on the soccer team, lettered in football, heaved the shot put in track, and led Monroe’s basketball team to the city championship. But Hank Greenberg’s real love was baseball.
The teenage Greenberg towered over everyone at 6’ – 4,” but his coordination was still developing. Hitting the ball a mile was no problem, but fielding was a challenge. His high school coach inserted him at first base, where there was slightly less opportunity for error.
Though he tended to brood over the slightest miscue, it did make him practice harder to correct his shortcomings. He played hours of pepper in nearby Crotona Park and built a homemade sliding pit in his backyard, much to his father’s chagrin.
When no scouts came to him with contracts, Greenberg went to them. The New York Giants often invited prospects to the Polo Grounds to shag fly balls during batting practice, allowing manager John McGraw to personally give them the once-over. Using family connections, Greenberg managed to get an audience with McGraw, but the Giants manager refused to allow him on the field. McGraw said his scouts had already looked him over at Monroe High and judged him too big and awkward to even shag flies in BP. The doors to the Polo Grounds were thereby closed to Hank Greenberg unless he bought a ticket.
TEMPORARILY DISCOURAGED, Greenberg acquiesced to his parents’ wishes and enrolled at New York University. His older brother had already graduated from St. John’s, and his sister was attending Columbia’s Teachers College. Still, the lure of baseball called to him. Before the fall semester began, he would give a baseball career one last shot.
In the summer of 1929, Izzy Goldstein, a neighborhood pal and former Monroe High pitcher, recommended Hank for a $7-a-game gig as an outfielder with a semipro club out of Red Bank, New Jersey. After a shaky first game, Greenberg began pounding out home runs. This led to his pal Izzy securing him a better job manning first base for the Brooklyn Bay Parkways.
The Bay Parkways played in the fast-paced Metropolitan Baseball League, whose teams were composed of former big leaguers, college stars, and up-and-coming youngsters. The pay was very good, and many players had turned down major-league contracts to take steady jobs during the week and play ball on the weekends.
That’s why Hank Greenberg was taken aback when, after hitting three homers in a doubleheader with the Bay Parkways, manager George Lippe handed every player except Greenberg a pay envelope. Greenberg told Lippe he wasn’t coming back next week because he wasn’t being paid. Lippe, genuinely shocked, said he thought Greenberg wanted to preserve his amateur status so he could participate in college athletics. When Greenberg said “no,” Lippe peeled off a five-spot and told him he’d double it after next week’s games.
The 18-year-old did well with the Bay Parkways and was hitting .454 after 21 games. When he crushed two home runs and drove in six runs against the bearded House of David barnstorming team, the big-league scouts took notice.
The first to come calling was Jean Dubuc of the Detroit Tigers. While he didn’t offer a contract per se, he did arrange for Greenberg to play in the Blackstone Valley League, a semipro circuit up in Massachusetts. If Dubuc thought stashing Greenberg in the New England sticks would keep other scouts away, he was wrong. The Washington Senators had him work out with the team at Fenway Park before a game against the Red Sox. Then Paul Krichell of the Yankees showed up.
Now the offers rolled in. The Senators and Yankees each offered ten grand to sign, while the Tigers offered $6,000 cash up front and $3,000 more when he graduated from college.
So that was where Hank Greenberg’s professional baseball career stood as he took in the final game of the 1929 season at Yankee Stadium.
Back home, Hank Greenberg convinced his parents that a career in pro ball was viable. David was especially won over by the Tigers’ offer, since it meant his boy would finish college. And his son did attend NYU – for two semesters.
When spring 1930 dawned, Hank Greenberg knew he had to play ball. He asked and received permission from the Tigers to report to their spring training camp, and he never looked back.
SPRING TRAINING was rough for the teenager. The veterans went out of their way to ignore the rookies, and playing against seasoned pros highlighted his inexperience. Then there was the Jewish thing.
As of 1930, fewer than twenty Jews had played in the majors. Ignorance and bigotry made him an easy target for the whole schmeer of religious and ethnic slurs. However, the 19-year-old stuck it out, and the Tigers assigned him to the minor-league Hartford Senators to gain more experience.
Hartford played in the Eastern League, equivalent to today’s AA level. The team and their fans fully expected the newcomer to be as successful as another New York native who had played first base for Hartford a few years earlier – Lou Gehrig. However, the rookie’s .214 average after a dozen games earned him a demotion.
The Tigers sent their prospect to the Raleigh Capitals in the Class C Piedmont League, roughly equivalent to the Rookie League today. With the pressure off and facing easier pitching, Greenberg hit a solid .314 along with his 19 homers. That earned him a look-see in Detroit at the end of the season. On October 14, Hank Greenberg got his first big-league at-bat, fittingly in the Bronx at Yankee Stadium. Pinch-hitting for pitcher Charlie Sullivan, Greenberg led off the top of the 8th by hitting an easy-out pop-up to second baseman Tony Lazzeri.
He rode the pines through the final weeks of the season, waiting for another shot. When the last game of the season began, and he was not in the lineup, Greenberg lost his cool. Standing up (and hitting his head on the dugout roof in the process), the uppity rookie declared, “I ain’t gonna play for this team.” He stomped into the clubhouse, changed clothes, hopped in his car, and headed back to the Bronx.
His Bronx homecoming was no warmer than in Detroit. Pulled over by one of New York’s Finest for a traffic violation, the former Detroit Tiger was asked what he did for a living. When he declared he was a professional ballplayer, the cop looked at the name on his driver’s license and, through a burst of laughter, exclaimed, “And who in the hell ever heard of a professional ballplayer named Greenberg?”
The next spring, Hank Greenberg was promoted back to Class A and assigned to the Beaumont Exporters of the Texas League. But there was a rub: Beaumont already had an experienced first baseman they liked. When it became clear Greenberg would be relegated to a backup role, Detroit shifted him to the Evansville Hubs of the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League. The “3-I League” was a step down, but at least he was guaranteed a starting job. Greenberg hit Class B pitching at a .318 clip and was told he would be Beaumont’s first baseman in 1932.
THE BEAUMONT EXPORTERS had a terrific club on deck for the 1932 season. Of the 19 men on the roster, seventeen were future or former major leaguers, and seven would play for the 1934-35 pennant-winning Tigers. The pitching staff was anchored by future All-Star pitcher Lynwood “Schoolboy” Rowe, while a trio of hard-hitting sluggers provided the offense: Pete Fox, Paul Easterling, and Frank Reiber. The team was managed by former Tigers catcher Del Baker, who would later pilot Detroit to the 1940 World Series.
But to Greenberg, the most welcome member of the Exporters must have been his old Monroe High teammate, Izzy Goldstein. Once the season began, the reunited duo became roommates on the road, and Goldstein, a 16-game winner for Beaumont the previous season, would help his pal navigate the idiosyncrasies of the Texas League.
Greenberg found the Texas League a give-and-take of the very good and the very bad. On the plus side, players traveled by train rather than bus. However, the stifling Texas heat meant open train windows let in a choking smog of coal dust and smoke. To cope with the intense heat, the Texas League was among the first to adopt night games, allowing teams to play in the cool of the evening. But with the night came voracious mosquitoes. While the team looked fashion-forward in their natty all-red road uniforms, the designers failed to consider that the red flannel would soak up the intense Texas sun. On road trips, the teams usually stayed in the best hotels. However, because the visiting teams had no showers in the clubhouse, the players had to change in their hotel rooms after a game. To dry out their sweat-soaked flannel uniforms, the players hung them from the ceiling fans, making their sleeping quarters stink like a locker room.
But when it came to baseball, all was very good for Hank Greenberg. He had established his slugging credentials in spring training, hitting a ball clean out of Beaumont’s Stuart Stadium and then crushing two home runs in an exhibition game against the New Orleans Pelicans. A sportswriter for the Beaumont Enterprise made a preseason prophecy: “We are making a not so bold prediction right here that the home mark of 1931 (19)… will be battered by Hank Greenberg.”
That’s not to say Greenberg was the finished product yet. He found that the more advanced Class A pitching took some getting used to. According to John Rosengren’s excellent book, Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes, chest-high fastballs were particularly troublesome for the big slugger. And then there was his fielding. An occasional error could be overlooked, but one that cost the team a win was unacceptable.
At one point during the season, pitcher Schoolboy Rowe had a 6-game undefeated streak going, and was trying to make it seven. In the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied at two. There was one out, and a runner was on third when the batter hit a grounder to Greenberg. The textbook play was to whip the ball home to preserve the tie, but instead Greenberg made the out at first, then threw home to nab the runner. The throw home was late, and the winning run crossed the plate.
To hone his craft, Greenberg made a point of taking extra fielding and batting practice. Beaumont’s manager, Del Baker, was also a big help, encouraging Greenberg through tough spots and turning on the praise when his hard work started paying off.
Early in the season, Greenberg’s pal Izzy Goldstein got the call-up to Detroit. By then, the New Yorker had grown comfortable with life in the Texas League. He found a synagogue to attend services and befriended Beaumont’s small Jewish community. His batting prowess soon quieted much of the antisemitic stuff thrown at him by ignorant players and fans. It also helped that Greenberg was an imposing 6’-4” – not many antisemites had the minerals to try any of the anti-Jew stuff on him in person.
Plus, Beaumont’s slugging star showed he would not hesitate to stand his ground on the field. In the June 11 game in Dallas, Greenberg hit a grounder to shortstop. A bad throw to Dallas first baseman Zeke Bonura put him directly in the path of the charging Greenberg, who knocked him to the ground. Bonura was a former college football star, a good 6-foot, 210 pounds of muscle. He got to his feet and slugged Greenberg in the face. Both benches cleared. In Greenberg’s autobiography, he describes the fight as “a lot of jawing and talking, not much swinging.”
However, other sources describe a real free-for-all. Beaumont pitcher Schoolboy Rowe was credited with sending Bonura back to the ground with a hard right. The Laredo Times reported that “Within five seconds, fists were flying like snowflakes in Switzerland,” and manager Del Baker told a reporter that Greenberg was the last man to stop fighting. Any thoughts of a round 2 in the next Beaumont-Dallas game were quashed in true Texas fashion: “Just before the game,” Greenberg wrote in his autobiography, “(umpire John) King sauntered around the baselines with his six-shooter in plain sight, and there was very little noise out of anyone that day.”
Throughout the league, fans flocked to the park to see Beaumont’s slugger pound the ball in person. While home runs helped the team, Greenberg discovered they could also be lucrative for his own pocketbook. In the Southwest, it was a custom for players to collect “fence money” after a home run or a good play. Fans would poke dollar bills through the chicken-wire fencing and toss coins onto the grass for the star player to collect. A good haul of fence money could reach into the hundreds of dollars – an incredible bonus in Depression-era America.
The Beaumont Enterprise sportswriter’s preseason prediction proved correct – Greenberg matched the 19 homers of the previous year’s leader and slugged 20 more. He struck out more than he liked, and his .290 average wasn’t setting any records, but when he did connect, it paid off: his 344 total bases on 174 hits meant he averaged two bases per hit.
Besides leading the league with his 39 home runs, the name “Greenberg” was also found atop the leader’s lists for runs scored, total bases, extra bases, and fielding chances. The sportswriters voted Hank Greenberg the Texas League MVP for 1932.
The Texas League used a split-season schedule; if the winners of the first and second halves differed, a best-of-five playoff was held to determine the pennant winner. That happened in 1932, when Beaumont won the first half but finished behind Dallas in the second. Beaumont swept Dallas in three games, largely due to Greenberg’s .364 batting.
Beaumont then faced the Chattanooga Lookouts, the Southern Association pennant winners, in the Dixie World Series. Hank Greenberg’s seventh-innings home run won Game One for Beaumont, but Chattanooga took the next four games to win the series.
The Texas League MVP spent the off-season in the Bronx, but come spring, he was back in the Lone Star State. This time, though, he was there to attend the Detroit Tigers’ spring training camp in San Antonio. The 22-year-old made the big club and left his minor-league days behind.
HANK GREENBERG batted .317 in his first season with Detroit. By the next season, he was one of the Tigers’ star players, and in a few more years, he was the “Hebrew Hammer,” known throughout America as baseball’s first Jewish superstar. His big bat would lead the Tigers to four pennants and two World Championships. In two of the years Detroit won the pennant, Greenberg was voted the league’s Most Valuable Player. In 1938, he was two shy of tying Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, and he would lead the AL in home runs and RBI four times. After spending three and a half seasons of WWII as a captain in the Army Air Forces, Hank Greenberg wrapped up his playing career in 1947 to start an even longer one as an executive with the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox.
Perhaps even more important than all the awards and headlines, Hank Greenberg became a source of pride for American Jews, giving them hope in an era of intense antisemitism and letting it be known once and for all that a Jew could succeed in the national pastime.
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For good reads on Hank Greenberg and his legacy, I heartily recommend Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes by John Rosengren, Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War by Ron Kaplan, and of course, Hank Greenberg: The Story of my Life by the man himself.
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