Upon his discharge in 1945, the Cardinals sent Sisler to Cuba to learn how to play first base.[2] After a couple of weeks, the Cubans were proclaiming Sisler as their Babe Ruth. In his first game, Sisler recorded two home runs and in another game hit three more.[2] He then made his MLB debut with the Redbirds in April 1946, spending a full season for the eventual National League and World Series champions.
Playing career
Sisler's 1951 Bowman baseball card
Listed at 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall and 205 pounds (93 kg), Sisler batted left-handed and threw right-handed.
Only with the Phillies did Sisler play on a consistent basis; he was Philadelphia's most-used first baseman in 1948 and 1949, and regular left fielder in 1950 and 1951. He made the National League All-Star team in 1950, a season during which Sisler reached personal bests in games played (141), games started (136, all in left field), at bats (523), runs scored (79), hits (155), doubles (29), homers (13), runs batted in (83), on-base percentage (.373), slugging percentage (.442) and batting average (.296). The season also gave Sisler lasting fame.
Pennant-winning home run
On the 1950 season's closing day, at Ebbets Field, with the game tied at one, Sisler hit a tenth-inning, opposite-field three-run home run against the Brooklyn Dodgers that led to the "Whiz Kids"Phillies winning the club's first National League pennant in 35 years. Had Philadelphia lost, the Phillies and Dodgers would have finished in a flatfooted tie for the NL championship and played a best-of-three playoff.
The home run (coupled with his slugging five years earlier in the Cuban winter league) made Sisler world-famous in baseball and literary circles when Ernest Hemingway immortalized him in his novel The Old Man and the Sea. In a conversation between an aging Cuban fisherman and his young apprentice discussing the unfolding 1950 big-league season, the older man says:
"In the other league, between Brooklyn and Philadelphia, I must take Brooklyn. But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives in the old park. There was nothing ever like them. He hits the longest ball I have ever seen."[4]
His father, Hall of Fame player George Sr., had become a scout for Brooklyn after his own playing career ended, and served in that capacity when Dick Sisler hit his pennant-winning home run. When asked after the pennant-winning game how he felt when his son beat his current team, the Dodgers, George replied, "I felt awful and terrific at the same time."[5]
In the 1950 World Series that followed, however, Sisler would collect only one single in 17 at bats (.059), as the Phillies were swept by the New York Yankees in four games. Earlier, in 1946, he had gone hitless in two at bats as a pinch hitter for the Cardinals in that season's Fall Classic, but picked up a World Series ring when the Redbirds defeated the Boston Red Sox in seven games.
In August 1964, he was promoted to acting manager when Hutchinson, suffering from terminal cancer, was forced to give up the reins. He led the Reds to a 32–21 record, and the team finished in a second-place tie (with the Phillies), one game behind the Cardinals. After his formal appointment as manager in October 1964, he brought the Reds home fourth in 1965 with an 89–73 mark before being fired at season's end.[6] He then returned to the major league coaching ranks with the Cardinals (1966–70), San Diego Padres (1975–76) and New York Mets (1979–80). In 1967, while serving as the Cardinals' first base coach, Sisler earned his second World Series ring when St. Louis again defeated the Red Sox in seven games. In his late sixties, he was still working with young players as a roving hitting instructor in the Cardinal farm system.
