"Vic learned to hit high fast balls and became the top Kansas City batter in 1955. He was switched to first base from the outfield and led the American League in double plays, putouts and assists. No sophomore jinx for Vic, he raised his batting average 64 points over his '54 mark."
-1956 Topps No. 67
KANSAS CITY SHOWBOAT
Vic Power May Ham It Up, But He's A Solid Performer
"Ask any player in the American League who's the biggest showboat and, chances are, you'll get the lightning answer: 'Vic Power.'
The rollicking Puerto Rican is upstage most of the time for the Kansas City Athletics, hamming up the most elementary situation at first base. He baits the crowds by making one-handed circus catches of easy bull's-eye pegs, and sometimes succeeds in nauseating his fellow athletes. But, along with all the histrionics, Vic manages to maintain his reputation as a pretty solid performer.
He led American League first basemen in assists last year, with 130, which was 46 more than his closest competitor, Boston's Norm Zauchin. He also hit .319, only 21 points below Al Kaline's championship average of .340, to which he was runner-up. Although injuries cramped his style this spring, Power was back knocking at the door of baseball's elite 'Club .300' as the season's halfway mark neared.
'Man, this here game is crazy,' grins the radiant Caribbean. 'And these fans out here are crazy, good and crazy, the way they cheer us on. I hope I don't hit too many of those crazy-bad slumps. I'm hoping I don't hit the skids like I did last July.'
Vic was a .425 slugger last year in May, but a .298 slumper in July. If he 'stays level,' he figures he could make a run for the top.
'I had three or four slumps last year,' he explains. 'One of them dropped me from .370 to .298 before I could pull out of it.'
Winter ball, Power feels, cuts down on his energy when major league weather gets hottest. Although he won't be 25 until November, the Little Latin says he is starting his eighteenth baseball campaign- nine summer and nine winter.
'I wouldn't mind giving it up in wintertime, but the folks back home want me to play- and there is always the money,' he says. 'So now I am working on a plan with the manager's (Lou Boudreau's) help to set up a baseball school in Puerto Rico, in addition to my playing during the winter.'
Power, like Clint Courtney and several other players, still holds a peeve against the New York Yankees, who once owned him but failed to bring him up.
'They didn't take me after I hit .349 for Kansas City (American Association, 1953), so I was glad to be traded.'
Vic was swapped, along with Jim Finigan and Bill Renna, to the Philadelphia A's, whence Kansas City's big league franchise sprang, in a multiple player deal involving Harry Byrd and Eddie Robinson, among others. Robinson, now 35, was brought to the A's in a recent deal with the Yankees.
Apparently trying to convince the Yanks how much of a mistake they made in letting him go, Power recalls that he 'tried to kill the ball all the time' that first year in Philadelphia. As a result, he hit a disappointing .255.
'I just swing now,' he says, 'and if the ball looks good, why I just go for it.'
Why do you make so many catches one-handed?
'To keep me loose,' beams the husky Athletic. 'When I grab 'em two-handed, I don't feel loose.' "
-James Ellis, Baltimore Sun (Baseball Digest, August 1956)
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