He began in baseball in 1946. He has had bad luck with injuries, but 1952 could be Bob's year."
-1952 Bowman No. 194
"In 1947, his second season of organized baseball, Bob led the Piedmont League with 208 strikeouts. The next year, the Yankees called him up from Newark after he had won 15 and lost 6 and had a league leading 2.17 earned run average. Bob tore a muscle in his throwing arm in '49 and was sent down to Kansas City after a brief stay with the Yankees in '50.
The Senators bought him during the 1951 season and Bob threw three shutouts and a 2-hitter for the Capitol City team."
-1952 Topps No. 301
"Bob began the 1951 season with the Yankees, then was sent to Washington. He appeared in a total of 21 games, winning 9 and losing 8. He did some excellent work with the Senators and is highly regarded. His career with the Yanks was marred by injuries.
He had an excellent record during the war, as a paratrooper."
-1952 Red Man No. AL-17
PORTERFIELD- SENATOR FROM VIRGINIA
Bob's "In" at Washington After Bucky Harris, Who Supported Him in N.Y. and Lost, Votes for Him Again
"Virginia has been going Democratic since Thomas Jefferson's day but the new Senator from Virginia has a Republican middle name, Coolidge. His birth certificate reads: 'Erwin Coolidge Porterfield,' but he's better known as 'Bob.' And he's not interested in politics because he's a baseball pitcher whose seat is on the bench and not in the nation's upper house.
Bob Porterfield is not only a Senator but the most important Senator on the pitching staff of Bucky Harris' aspiring Washington team in the American League. He reported at Griffith Stadium last June and proceeded to win nine games against eight losses for an outfit that finished deep in the second division- and three of his victories were low-hit shutouts. He has arrived at last, although not at the destination he chose.
That destination was Yankee Stadium, New York City. Back in 1948, Red Patterson, the New York Yankees' public relations counselor, would beam over the bar in the press room, 'Porterfield just won his ninth straight,' he would say. Or: 'Porterfield just pitched thirty-six scoreless innings.' These bulletins were being flashed from Ruppert Stadium, Newark, where the handsome young right-hander was burning up the International League. 'Porterfield can't miss,' Red would say, and if you were a betting man you might have wagered that Porterfield would someday succeed to the crown worn by such Yankee ace right-handers as Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, Spud Chandler, Red Ruffing and Bob Shawkey. Porterfield was imported from Newark to the Bronx that August and proceeded to win five games. He was so convinced about the permanence of his Yankee job that he moved bats, ball and baggage from Virginia to Belleville, N.J.
And then fate took a hand. Seated in the parlor of his pretty home in Belleville- just twenty-five minutes from Times Square- he was telling his story as he made spring training preparations:
'Bucky scouted me in Newark that summer of 1948 and when I reported he told me I was to be a regular starter, which pleased me because I pitch best every four days in rotation, with a schedule of running and limbering up my arm in between. It was wonderful being with the Yankees- they were like no other club in the game, playing team ball, dressing and looking the part of champions.
'Well, Bucky was fired that fall- I never knew why. That had nothing to do with my troubles, for Casey Stengel was great to me. I started an exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Stadium two days before the 1949 season began. The temperature was 38 and my arm cooled off during a Yankee inning when we scored four runs. I went back to the box, warmed up and felt all right. Then I threw a curve and something went pop. I'd torn the muscles away from the bone in my forearm.
'Afterward I tried and tried to pitch but the pain would be agonizing. On August 1, I breezed through two innings against the Philadelphia Athletics, pulled the muscle again and went home- for the rest of the season.
'In 1950 it was like some superman was after me with a club, swatting me on the head every time I tried to play. I banged my leg in spring practice when Bobby Brown hit a liner I couldn't dodge and was out for a month. Then on June 9, against Detroit, Paul Calvert hit me just below the temple with a pitched ball. It was a close shave- once inch higher and it might have killed me. As it happened, I got a concussion.'
That July, Red Patterson was entrusted with the sad task of handing Bob Porterfield a railroad ticket to Kansas City. There were tears in the big fellow's eyes as he packed his bags. 'I couldn't pitch at K.C.- in fact, I didn't recuperate until the following December. I still have trouble with my left ear. I'm a little deaf on that side.'
Bob reported to the Yankees at Phoenix last spring, an almost forgotten man. 'I appeared in only two regular games, mopping up in one of them with the Boston Red Sox about ten runs ahead. When cutting-down day arrived in May, I was cut down to Kansas City again.'
But Bob, at twenty-seven, was young enough to rebound. 'I had four decisions in about a month, two wins and two defeats,' he says. 'I didn't get enough work because we had too many on the pitching staff. One day Bucky Harris called me on long distance. 'I've got a trade on that includes Bob Kuzava for Fred Sanford, Tom Ferrick and you. How's your arm, Bob?' I told him it was as good as ever, even better because in 1948 I'd just poured fast balls over the plate whereas now I was throwing curves at three different speeds, a changeup and a fast one. 'I'm taking you,' Bucky said- and it was the best news I had heard in three years.
'And Bucky knew that I work best when I work often. He sent me in rotation every four days, except once when he saved me for a fifth day against the Yankees. I beat them that day and might have beaten them a second time- had them shut out with one hit when Mickey Mantle socked a three-run homer. I don't blame the Yankees for giving up on me, but beating them was my thrill of last year.'
Happily for Bob Porterfield, he knows how to take it, for he took plenty during World War II. He dug deep into his memory for the highlights of his young life, and when he couldn't remember details he turned to Vera, his wife. 'What date was that, hon'?' he'd ask. 'Hon', do you remember what happened to me that day. Sure, you do ... ' And Vera, who is tall, slim, fair like her husband, and who also speaks in the pleasantly smooth Virginia drawl, would always know. 'I'm the historian of the Porterfield family,' she said.
Then Bob resumed: 'My dad, Jesse P. Porterfield, is a farmer down in Giles County, general farm produce and livestock. I'm the youngest of four brothers, Noble, Cecil, Clyde- whom we call Mack- and myself, and we're all big like me, and the other three could have been ball players, too.
'Dad used to play semipro ball around the countryside- there's no big towns down there and Newport is no town at all, just some 300 farm people. He tried to get all of his to play, stuck a ball in my hand when I was six, and kept at me all the time, teaching me points of the game, pitching, catching, the outfield, positions he had played.
'I pitched and caught on pickup teams. At Newport High, I pitched right through my four years ... won thirty-three games and lost only three. Then, in September 1941, when I was only seventeen, I went into the Army.
'I was inducted at Camp Lee in Virginia and then sent to Camp McQuaide, in California, for infantry basic training. After about eight weeks I was shipped back East to Fort Benning, Georgia, attached to the 82nd Airborne Division. One day they picked thirty-three boys for tests, including me. I was one of the four finally selected as paratroopers.'
Many months were to pass before Bob was awakened early one summer morning. 'It was 3:47 A.M,' he says, as if the hour, minutes and seconds were burned into his brain. 'I climbed on a plane at 5:45 and we were in the air until 8:37 when I jumped ... '
The date was June 6, 1944- D-Day. And as Bob's parachute bore him earthward he saw the hedgerow of Normandy reeling toward him, behind the Nazi lines. 'I don't like to think of what happened that day,' he says. 'Two entire divisions floated down. We had 155s, howitzers, small arms- and didn't know where we were. Our job was to harass the Nazis' rear. We made contact later that day ...'
Bob fought until the enemy retreated across France. He was in engagement in that corner of Belgium and Holland where marshland concealed the bodies of thousands of the fallen. He was trapped for four days at Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge. He participated in the assault on Aachen which led to the smashing of the Seigfried Line. He crossed the famed river at Remagen Bridgehead and then raced across Germany to meet the Red Army allies. 'And I wound up the war in the heart of Berlin,' he says. 'I actually saw almost all of it in the west.'
There were five 'live jumps' into action- and a piece of shrapnel that lodged in Bob's wrist at Bastogne. 'Didn't amount to anything,' he avers. 'They plucked it out and it's never bothered me.' It was a rich experience, but one that Bob has no desire to repeat.
'I was out of the service on January 31, 1946,' he continues, checking the date with Vera. 'For a while that spring I helped Dad, but by June 1 I was playing baseball on a town team. One day we played Radford, a professional club in the newly organized Blue Ridge League. You won't believe this story but it's true: I was playing second base that day. In the sixth inning our pitcher hurt his arm and I went into the box in the seventh. I fanned nine men in a row.
'That was on a Saturday and we had a Sunday game. Before it started, Eddie Martin, the Radford manager, offered me a contract. For six weeks I pitched every three days for Radford. I guess it was love at first sight.'
And marriage followed within three months because by that time Bob had already been promoted to Norfolk of the Piedmont League. 'H.P. Dawson, who scouts for the Yankees in that neck of the woods, bought me on July 27. Vera and I were married in August. I was lucky- lots of the boys in that Blue Ridge League used to drink cokes and eat two slices of toast for breakfast, they were paid so little ... '
'You ate at our house and looked fat,' interposed Vera.
'And went home to Newport for home cooking,' laughed Bob. 'I won seventeen, lost nine and led the Piedmont League with 209 strikeouts in 1947. That brought me to the Newark Bears in 1948.' At Newark, Bob was easily the best pitcher in the AAA circuit with a winning streak of nine straight, two strings of scoreless innings, thirty-six and thirty-three, not to mention a league-leading ERA of 2.17. 'Russ Derry of Rochester twice beat me out of no-hitters. Once he singled in the seventh, the other time with two out in the ninth.
'Bill Skiff managed the Bears that year and helped me a lot. But my best advice came from Garland Braxton, the old American League pitcher. He taught me the changeup and how to pace myself through a nine-inning game. Later, with the Yankees, Spec Shear taught me the book on American League hitters.'
Then the rook fell in. Bob's luck turned all bad. 'We'd bought this house,' Vera explained. She shook her head. 'You never know what's going to happen in baseball.' At that moment, Vera knew what was happening upstairs in the Belleville house. Sandra, age nine months, was waking from her afternoon nap. Soon Sandra was crawling on the carpet in the company of her four-year-old brother, Bobby Lee, and a messenger was bringing a new collapsible chromium stroller. 'I can't resist a bargain,' Vera confesses.
Neither can Bob. In the driveway was a brand-new pigeon-blue sedan with burgundy fittings. 'I've been looking for a car this color for months. Saw it in the window of a Newark store and had to buy it.'
Nearby on the Jersey meadows are the homes of Yankee stars Phil Rizzuto, Gil McDougald, Yogi Berra and Gene Woodling. 'I was the first Yankee ball player to move around here,' Bob says. 'The woods are full of Yankees now.'
Bob is a Yankee no longer, but he's the Yankee type, Southerner though he may be. Which means that he's become a star, with no regrets that he is not a member of the World Champions. Clark Griffith is paying him a Yankee salary and the future looks bright. 'I'm on a young team now,' he concludes. 'And still young enough to be around when it starts burning up the league ... '
And Bob, barring further misfortune, promises to burn up the American League in 1952. He's ready and willing ... "
-Harold Sheldon, Baseball Digest, April 1952
BUCKY'S BOY
"Ironically, Bob Porterfield is regarded as one of the reasons why Bucky Harris, his present Washington manager, was fired as pilot of the New York Yankees after he led them to a world title in 1947 and finished third, two and one-half games out, in 1948. Harris' insistence on bringing in Porterfield from the Yankees' Newark farm in midseason, 1948, against General Manager George Weiss' wishes fomented friction between the two."
-Harold Sheldon, Baseball Digest, April 1952
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