Baron’s Corner
Ashburn HOF
March 9
The Hall call we thought wouldn’t happen did on this date in 1995….Richie Ashburn is going into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the highest honor for a ballplayer.
When you think about it, Richie Ashburn touched more lives in the Delaware Valley than anyone else in sports. As a baseball player, broadcaster and sports columnist for the Evening Bulletin and Philadelphia Daily News, his Philadelphia career spanned 46 years.
“Whitey” was a Hall of Fame candidate as a player and the broadcasting and writing awards in Cooperstown, NY, a triple threat you might say. For a long time, he was hitless in the three categories.
His playing career consisted of 12 years with the Phillies (1948–59), two with the Cubs (1960–61) and one with the new expansion team, the Mets (1962). He joined By Saam and Bill Campbell on the Phillies broadcasting team in 1963, the first ever former ballplayer in the team’s booth.
Eight years later, he and Harry Kalas became a team. Harry was the expert play-by-play announcer, while Whitey’s folksy, storytelling approach, dry wit and farm-boy charm delighted millions of listeners and viewers. The partnership with Harry ended when Ashburn died September 9, 1997, in a New York City hotel after broadcasting a game against the Mets.
Born in Tilden, NE, on March 19, 1927, Whitey finally got a phone call he thought he’d never get. It came just a few days prior to his 68th birthday in 1995.
The Baseball Hall of Fame called me earlier that spring training. The Veteran’s Committee was going to make an announcement on Tuesday, March 7 and the HOF president might need Ashburn’s phone number. We lived in the same development in Largo, FL, just south of Clearwater. While I had a phone number (before cell phones) I knew I could go also to his condo if need be.
I alerted Whitey of the potential HOF announcement. He bristled as only he could do, “What makes you think I’ll get in. I haven’t had a hit in 32 years.”
Early that Tuesday morning the call so many of us and Phillies fans waited for so long finally arrived, the HOF needed his phone number, and can I bring him to Tampa for a press conference at 1 o’clock that afternoon?
This time he got the good news, we went to Tampa and then headed back to Clearwater for a celebration dinner party with Phillies people. He was appreciative that the hall call finally came but still steaming that it took this long. As we were driving back to Largo, he bristled again. “Baron, I just may not go to Cooperstown. What do you think of that?”
“Whitey, I understand. But if you don’t go, you will be robbing your family of the greatest day of their lives,” I responded. Silence followed. “Well, I guess you are right.”
When it came to induction day that July, Whitey delivered a speech straight from his heart and without a script. Among the 25,000-record crowd of Phillies fans were numerous Ashburn family members. They were seated in the front row, including his 91-year-old mother.
“Another great thing, I get to go in with Schmitty,” he said as he stood at the HOF podium. “Now, you don’t plan something like this. You can’t orchestrate it. Mike, of course, is going in on the first ballot. I am going in 30-some years after I retired. Nobody could ever plan anything like that.”
He ended the speech by recalling his last play as a player, being the third out of a season-ending triple play in Wrigley as the Mets lost their record 120th game. “As we walked into the clubhouse, Casey Stengel our manager was standing there, and he said to us, ‘Fellas I don’t want anybody to feel bad about this. This has been a real team effort. No one or two people could have done this.’ Well, I’m going to quote Casey, no one or two people could have done all this today. And everybody that had a part of it, God bless and especially the fans, you have made this the greatest day of my life.”
