1958 Yankee of the Past: Jackie Jensen

"Last year, Jackie drove in more than 100 runs for the third time in his seven-year major league career. It was also the fourth straight season he belted more than 20 homers. Jackie's best year was 1956 when he hit .315.

Playing football for the University of California, he starred in the Rose Bowl. Jackie's life story was shown on TV."

-1958 Topps No. 130

Jackie Jensen (Topps All-Star)

"Power, speed and baseball sense sums up Jackie's qualifications to the '58 All-Star Team. He's consistently one of the top scorers and run producers in the junior circuit and can thrill a crowd with his hit-chasing. As a flychaser, he is adept at cutting down opposing baserunners with his powerful, accurate arm."

The Editors of Sport Magazine (1958 Topps No. 489)

"Jack is one of the power hitters of the Red Sox line-up. During the last four years, he has batted in an average of better than 100 runs a season. In 1955, he paced the American League in runs batted in with 116. He is also a dangerous man on the basepaths and topped the league in stolen bases with 22 in 1954.

Jack, who is married to swimming star Zoe Ann Olsen, had his best season in 1956 with a .315 average. He formerly played with the New York Yankees and Washington Senators."

-1958 Hires No. 56

1958 Yankee of the Past: Woody Held

"After three successive spring tryouts with the Yankees, Woody was one of the key players in the seven-man trade that sent him to the A's last year. He justified their confidence, rapping 37 extra-base hits, including 20 homers.

His troubles with grounders forced him to switch from shortstop to the outfield. Woody threw out 12 baserunners with his arm last year."

-1958 Topps No. 202

PITCHER'S FRIEND

A's Say Woody Held Cuts Off Six Runs A Week By Catches In Center Field

"Some three or four springs ago the Yankee camp at St. Pete was overstocked with shortstops as Casey Stengel began preparations for that inevitable day when Phil Rizzuto could no longer handle the assignment. With hands shoved in his back pockets, Ol' Case watched from the sidelines while various operatives scooped up scorching grounders in a fielding drill. Much in the fashion of a tourist guide, the Yankee skipper pointed out the sights.

'And this here feller,' he was saying, 'is a feller which has a treemenjous arm. He throws so good I might make him an outfielder.'

And on he rambled, never stopping to identify Woodson George Held. By last spring, however, the Ol' Perfessor had made up his mind.

'You start workin' in the outfield,' he said to Held. But Stengel was not the only one to observe the fly-catching potential of the then 25-year-old rookie. Held was learning his trade on the Denver farm when the big trade of Billy Martin was made with Kansas City. The Athletics demanded Held as part of the deal and the Bombers yielded.

'We couldn't even have gotten as high as seventh without him,' says Tom Gorman, the relief specialist. 'He was a friend of every pitcher on our staff. His catches cut off at least six runs a week.'

'I rate Held as the second best center fielder in the league,' says Harry Craft, his manager. 'Jimmy Piersall of the Red Sox has it on him by just a shade, but before this year is out Woody may be better than Jimmy.'

The development of this one-time Yankee farmhand has been a mite startling. Yet he has always been versatile. As a schoolboy he was an outfielder, signed a pro contract as a pitcher, became a shortstop, switched to third base and is now an outfielder for keeps.

How good is he? A grateful Gorman bobbed up with an example.

'I was pitching against Duke Maas of the Tigers,' said Tom. 'In the first inning there were two on and two out when Harvey Kuenn came to bat. He creamed one. Woody raced back to the wall and made as sensational a backhand catch is I ever saw. I thought he left his skin on the wall. That's how close he had to go.

'In the thirteenth inning- I'd left for a pinch hitter in the tenth- the Tigers were threatening again with one out. Jimmy Small was on second when the batter smashed one to center for a single. Small is fast, but Held fielded the ball so quickly that Small didn't dare go past third.

'Ray Boone got one with the fat part of his bat and shot a low line-drive to deep center. It looked like a certain hit. Woody came in to make a circus catch. Then he threw a strike to the plate and nailed Small trying to score from third. It was a double play and we won in the fourteenth.'

Nodding somewhat appreciatively at this graphic recital was Craft.

'Woody made a catch on Harry Simpson in the Yankee Stadium that was almost as good as the one Willie Mays pulled on Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series. It was just to the right of the monuments, about 460 feet from the plate. It was beautiful.'

The Kansas Citys were in slumps more than they were out of them last season because the country cousins of the Yankees are a rather dreadful ball club. In fact, they'd be worse off if they hadn't made all the deals they did make with their rich relations.  But their most dismal came when Held was invalided after a too abrupt visit with a wall in Washington. Without Woody, the A's had a solid week of defeats.

Russ Kemmerer, of all people, accidentally belted one deep. Woody raced back for the ball and got his glove on it with a backhand seizure. But he couldn't stop and his unprotected face smashed against the wall. He spun around and crumpled to the ground with the ball and glove in his lap. The ball trickled to the grass. Kemmerer, assuming the catch was completed, started to return to the dugout.

'Run, run!' hollered all the Washingtons. So the big pitcher got himself an inside-the-park home run, mainly because the Athletics were afraid to jostle the stricken hero and recover the ball.

'Will he be gun shy when he returns,' Craft asked himself. He had to wait more than a week for an answer. Woody ran boldly against the fence to rob a hitter of an extra-base hit. The question was answered.

Woody is a comparatively little guy, being five feet ten inches and 170 pounds. But he's solid, compact and generates power. After all, he did slam 20 homers last year.

The Athletics wish the Yankees would keep giving them players like Woodson George Held."

-Arthur Daley, New York Times (Baseball Digest, June 1958)

1958 Yankee of the Past: Billy Hunter

"Billy's fielding is as smooth as silk. He can glide across the infield grass and make the tough plays look easy.

Before donning the A's uniform, he was a member of the Orioles and Yankees. Billy was selected to the 1953 All-Star team. He came to Kansas City in a 10-man deal."

-1958 Topps No. 98

1958 Yankee of the Past: Willy Miranda

TRUE TO HIS FIRST GLOVE

For Nine Years Miranda Has Made Amazing Plays With Same Mitt

"One day last summer Willy Miranda took his glove out of his locker, gave it a fond pat and said, 'Well, Old Faithful, it's time to go back to work.'

Willy had just been restored to the lineup as the regular Baltimore shortstop. It was his glove that won him the job, and nobody could have been more grateful than the little Cuban.

It's not just an ordinary glove, this one that kept Miranda in the majors for parts of seven seasons. Most players get a glove they like, keep it for several seasons, then break in another. Not Willy. He started using 'Old Faithful' in the minors in 1949, has never used another in a league game since, and doesn't intend to. In all, he has handled 4,400 chances with the mitt.

Miranda has made 940 putouts and 1,619 assists in the majors with 'Old Faithful' (and 719 putouts and 1,125 assists in the minors) and he refuses to even think about the time when he will no longer be able to patch it up enough to keep it together.

It's no wonder Miranda considers his glove his best friend. His best year at bat was the .255 he hit for Baltimore in 1955. This season he wound up at .194, so it's not with the lumber that he holds down a job in the big time.

Because of his glaring weakness at the plate, Miranda has bounced from one club to another, but his trusty glove just refuses to let him drop from the majors. Since coming up with Washington in 1951, he has traveled from the Senators to the White Sox to the Browns, back to St. Louis again and then to the Yankees who traded him to the Orioles in the big deal that saw Bob Turley and Don Larsen wind up with New York.

It was Paul Richards who gave him his real chance as a regular at Baltimore, and Richards is the first to admit that Miranda has played a big part in the steady improvement of the club and that the Birds can't win without him in the lineup.

To be sure, Richards also occasionally gets fed up with the idea of having an All-American out for a regular. He frequently replaces Willy at short in an attempt to get more punch in the Oriole attack, but invariably the experiment fails and the Little Cuban winds up back at his old stand.

It was at the conclusion of one of these experiments last summer that Miranda was thanking his glove for putting him back in the lineup again, talking to it as though it were a beautiful woman.

'Old Faithful' is a huge glove, probably as heavy as any you'll find in the majors. It's as stiff as a board and his teammates can't understand how Willy can catch a ball, let alone pull off the miraculous plays that are a constant source of amazement to followers of the Orioles.

Willy is constantly repairing the old piece of leather. At the conclusion of the past season, it had four sponge patches on the inside and countless patches of tape on the outside, some pink, some brown from the different solutions with which Miranda doctors the leather. The string that runs all through the fingers has been replaced so many times, Willy can't begin to recall the actual number.

'She must be my best friend,' says Miranda in his fractured English.'She the wan who keep me in the beeg leagues. You don't theenk I do it with theese, do you?' he continues with a sidewise frown at the bat in the corner of his locker. 'I got to take care of theese babee. She take care of me.

'I buy theese glove when I'm with Shattanooga in 1949, and I never use another wan in a game since then,' says Willy. 'I always gotta a couple around to use in infield practice and even in exhibition games in the spring, 'cause I don't want to take chance on messin' her up.

'I even gat mad when the other guys tro the ball too hard 'round the infield. I'm afraid they mess up the strings or tear the leather. Theese the only glove ever been on the training table,' grins Miranda as he fondles his most prized possession.

'Sure Doc (Trainer Eddie Weidner of the Orioles) have to feex her up alla time. He put these patches on. Good job, huh?'

Once this summer, when a sporting goods representative visited the Oriole clubhouse, Willy made an appointment to have an overhaul job done on 'Old Faithful' and you'd have thought a surgeon was performing major surgery the way the two went at the operation.

Miranda finally consented this year to have the company that originally supplied the glove try to duplicate the old one. Of course, the model has long since been discontinued by the company, but Miranda is pleased with the special job turned out for him.

He worked hard over the last half of the season, attempting to break it in exactly like the old one, and although he is making progress, wouldn't ever consider using it in a regular game.

Occasionally a bystander will pick up the old glove, try to get his hand into it, and after failing to do so will ask, 'How do you use this thing, Willy?'

'You don't put the hand inside,' he replies. 'You just put the little finger here,  and let her do the rest. The bawl just stick in by itself.' The little finger and thumb are the only fingers Willy really extends up into the glove. The rest stop behind the main part of the pocket. There's probably not another one like it, but it does the job for Willy.

Because of his circus plays, Richards' pet name for Miranda is 'Ringling Brothers.'

'We win on defense, and we're just kidding ourselves when we don't have 'Ringling Brothers' in there,' says the Oriole manager. 'We need his glove at short to be at our best.'

Miranda never takes his pet glove out of his locker until just before game time. The rest of the time he has it sitting on top of his plastic helmet with a white baseball sock tied around it to keep it in shape. He wouldn't think of just tossing it in his locker when the game is over.

'Sure I take good care of her,' grins Willy. 'What I hit theese year? About .190? You don't theenk the bat keep me up here, do you?'

You can't argue with logic like that. No wonder nobody laughs when he goes by Willy's locker and sees 'Old Faithful' sitting on top of the helmet with a white bow tied on top."

-Bob Maisel, Baseball Digest, December 1957

"Probably the most graceful fielder in the league, Willy is an airtight defender who makes the tough plays look easy. He has a knack for being in position when the ball is hit.

Willy topped the American League in double plays in 1955. He's one of the most popular players on the team."

-1958 Topps No. 179

"Willy is a standout in the field and can hold his own with any shortstop in the majors. When it comes to the offensive side of the ledger, Willie just doesn't hit with much authority. He batted only .194 in 115 games for the Orioles in 1957.

At one time or another, Willy has worn the uniform of five American League teams, including Washington, St. Louis, Chicago, New York and Baltimore. His best season was in 1955 when he hit .255 for the Orioles."

-1958 Hires Root Beer No. 32

1958 Yankee Prospect of the Past: Hank Sauer

"Hank overcame a series of hardships to prove his worth as a big-league slugger. During his many years with the Reds and Cubs, he never hit fewer than 19 homers as a regular and led the league with 121 RBI's in 1952.

Hank was the Most Valuable Player in the National League in 1952. He conked three homers in one game on two different occasions."

-1952 Topps No. 378

"Hank's comeback in 1957 was the talk of the baseball world. Picked up as a free agent by the Giants, the veteran outfielder slammed 26 home runs and was a key factor in several of their big triumphs.

The cooler San Francisco weather could help Hank tremendously. If he can slam 25 home runs this season, he'll find his name added to the 300-home run club.

Hank was the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1952, when he batted in 121 runs, hit 37 home runs and finished with a .270 average for the Cubs.

Hank's brother, Ed, played in the majors for a while with the Cardinals, Braves and Cubs."

-1958 Hires No. 49

1958 Yankee Prospect of the Past: Bill Virdon

"When Bill switched from the Cards to Pittsburgh in 1956, his average zoomed 38 points! It was no surprise to those who had watched the clever hitter when he posted a flashy .333 mark at Rochester in 1954.

In 1955 he was voted Rookie of the Year. In 1956, Bill killed Dodger pitchers, hitting .417 against them."

-1958 Topps No. 198

"In 1955, Bill, as a member of the Cardinals, was named Rookie of the Year by the Sporting News. The next year, he was traded to Pittsburgh and batted a strong .319. His average declined to .251 in 1957 but Bill still hit with plenty of power and the bespectacled young outfielder figures prominently in the future plans of the Buccanneers.

Bill was originally with the New York Yankee organization until he was acquired by St. Louis in the Enos Slaughter deal in 1954. He is rated one of the best defensive outfielders in the National League."

-1958 Hires Root Beer No. 45