TRIUMPH OF THE UNWANTED
Ignored In Camp, Snyder Forces Senators To Recognize Him
"One of the more engaging developments on the Washington club is the Jerry Synder story, strictly gee-whiz and very refreshing, because it is the triumph of an unwanted ball player.
He was the low man in the Senators' infield plans last March at Orlando, tolerated but not much esteemed. The only role charted for him was a bench job, if, indeed, he could escape banishment to Chattanooga for the third time. With the Senators, he was beginning to take on the status of a career fifth wheel.
Jose Valdivielso, the nimble Cuban, was Manager Chuck Dressen's favorite, alloted the shortstop job as if the candidacy of any other player was unthinkable. Dressen talked excitedly of Valdy as the best shortstop in the league and one of the few players on the Washington club not for trading.
And then for the first time in the knowledge of his teammates, Jerry Snyder blew his top. 'This is too raw,' he said. 'I'm a better shortstop than Valdivielso. I'm a better second baseman than (Pete) Runnels. I can't hit with Runnels but I can outhit Valdivielso and outfield him, too, and if they give me a chance, I'll prove it.'
The chance came to Snyder three days after the season opened and he started proving it. With the season six days old, Valdivielso was gone. Snyder was Dressen's shortstop. It had been fortunate for the Senators.
If Dressen was slow to recognize Snyder's talents in Florida, he was quick to backtrack after a few facts became evident and when he chose to cast his lot with Snyder it was whole-hog.
One day in Boston the Senators were about to be engulfed by their worst disaster of the season. They blew a 5-0 lead to the Red Sox and lost the first game of a doubleheader. They blew a four-run lead and were losing the second game, 9-7, and now there were two out and two on base in the ninth inning.
It was at that point that Snyder saved the ball game for the Senators by hitting the second home run of his major league career. This one was very special, because for the first time in his life he was hitting a ball out of the park. The only other homer he had hit in the majors was an inside-the-park type that he legged out.
So, to emphasize it, Snyder in 444 previous times at bat in his big league career, had never hit the ball over anybody's fence. That was probably because he knows his limits, is a deliberate choke-hitter, doesn't try for the fences. He let his hands slide down to the knob this time, though, and among his teammates it was the most-cheered home run of the season.
Both Dressen and Calvin Griffith can take a bow for the emergence of Snyder as something of vital value to the club. Dressen has left him in there against all kinds of pitching, and Rookie President Griffith in 1953 landed Snyder for the Senators in the first deal he swung for the club on his own authority.
It is remembered that Snyder was a throw-in when the Yankees got Irv Noren from the Senators in the Jackie Jensen trade. The Yankees hadn't bothered to call him up from their Kansas City farm, in fact, had demoted him to Beaumont in 1951. When Griffith had asked for 'something more' from the Yanks for Noren, they tossed in Snyder with no great sense of loss to their farm system.
Snyder bounced on and off the Washington roster in 1953-54-55, never quite making good against big league pitching, and always belaboring Southern Association pitching when they sent him back to Chattanooga. He was valued chiefly for his steadiness in the infield and his versatility.
In Florida during the spring, Dressen had Snyder at second base briefly while Runnels was switched to the outfield. When Eddie Yost came up with a lame arm, Snyder was Dressen's third baseman. They were thinking of shortstop only in terms of Valdivielso.
Before he broke his wrist in June, Snyder was batting a competent .270. As a right-handed hitter, he gets none of the best of it, either. Opponents rarely feed the Senators left-handed pitching, the idea being to feed right-handers to the big bully-boys like Sievers, Lemon and Olson. During one period, in 17 consecutive games, the Senators never saw left-handed pitching start against them.
A fellow named Tom Greenwade could be feeling very good about Snyder's new importance to the Washington club. He is the Yankee scout who signed Snyder off the Oklahoma lots, obviously divining some special talent in him. Greenwade is the same chap who turned up Mickey Mantle for the Yankees. The Senators were blessed when Snyder didn't make good quickly enough to please the Yanks.
Another gentleman who is feeling very good about Jerry Snyder's new eminence is his dad. Pere Snyder, Jerry says, always wanted a big leaguer in the family. He had ten children. He had to go to number ten to get his big leaguer. You see, Jerry is the youngest of the Snyder clan."
-Shirley Povich, Washington Post (Baseball Digest, August 1956)