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Duke Snider’s Story
By Al Stump, from SPORT, September 1955
Before the Duke’s resounding home-run totals, the soaring batting average and the acclaim as a picture-book centerfielder, there was a long battle to subdue a seething temper that threatened to ruin a great baseball future For a ballplayer with a regal nickname and a classic bating and fielding style, Duke Snider appears to be a very average, neutral-shaded personality. His name never has been linked in the gossip columns with Hollywood beauties; he doesn't show a schoolboy's passion for sport by playing stickball in the streets with kids half his age; he never has been accused of scoring heavily on the night-club circuit at the expense of his batting average. He is a graceful, unemotional player on the field and a quiet, sober man away from it. The only touches of flamboyance about Duke are contained in the distance he achieves with his screaming home-run drives and the unbelievable character of some of the circus catches he makes in center field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. In every other respect he manages, despite the enormous publicity accorded him, to play his role in life with dignity and restraint. Friends in Duke's Southern California hometown have learned not to invite him on an early-Sunday morning golf date. After breakfast, he and his wife, Beverly, dress their two children in their go-to-meeting best and walk four blocks from their green-and-white stucco cottage on Carlen Street in the quiet Los Angeles suburb of Lynwood to the First Methodist Church, where they were married in 1947. They have occupied the same pew every off-season Sunday for nine years. Parishioners smile at the sight of the strapping -- six feet, one inch, 200 pounds -- Ed Snider and his delicately made, brunette wife. "There," they say, "goes the ideal married couple." Snider doesn't like alcohol and doesn't keep it in the house. He endorses a cigarette brand, but gives the complimentary cartons he receives to his father, Ward (Big Duke) Snider a U.S. Navy shipyard rigger at Long Beach and a rough-and-ready man at the age of 51. When Duke lectures an audience of schoolboy athletes, he opens his spiel with, "How many of you are 100 per cent clean trainers? Raise your hands ... Now, let me see how many knotheads we have in the crowd." Like Joe DiMaggio, Duke is quiet but proud. Once, in a contract argument with Branch Rickey, who was balking at $18,000 -- less than half the salary Snider now earns -- the cast-iron Rickey aplomb cracked. He hammered on his desk and roared. Snider's pale blue eyes grew smoky. He got up. "Don't yell at me," he told the boss. "I'll come back when we can be calm about this." And he walked out. Duke's sense of family is acute; couple it with his pride in smashing baseballs as hard and as often as anyone in the game today, and you have this story: In 1952 he tied the Babe Ruth-Lou Gehrig record of four home runs in one World Series while setting an all-time Series record by hitting for 24 bases. But he was keenly disappointed that his mother and father hadn't been there to see him do it. The next year, when the Brooks met the Yankees for the title, he mailed them round-trip airplane tickets. In the first three games, with his folks watching from a third-base box, Duke went homerless. The morning of the fourth game, "Mom" (Florence) Snider, falling ill, was ordered to bed. "Ed felt worse than I did," she says. "But he promised to hit one over the fence for me. I was surprised, because Ed is conservative . . . he never promises anything he can't make good on." The Duke made good on this promise. Along with a pair of doubles, he knocked a ball far over the right-field wall, tying the National League record for lifetime homers in Series play (five). He still calls that one the best hit he ever got. Snider has a loose, indolent manner, masking a tightly wound temperament. He has been inclined to "press" in games since he was a schoolboy, when his family began to worry about nightmares he was having regularly before and after he played. His Dodger background is studded with defeats of a nature all major-leaguers must face, yet they are still not forgotten by Duke; they still contribute to a lingering feeling of insecurity and a certain cynicism. In 1948, Leo Durocher (soon to be out as manager, with Barney Shotton in), optioned Duke to Montreal in May -- but with the firm promise that he'd be the first player recalled when help was needed. The need came in June -- with Snider averaging a booming .327 at Montreal. With his bags all but packed, he got a double shock. Durocher brought up Marv Rackley from Montreal and George Shuba from Mobile. Duke made no protest. He waited until Durocher approached him, hand extended in greeting, at Syracuse during an all-star game later in the month. Then he turned his back. "I don't know you," he said when Durocher persisted. "I don't know anybody who lies to me." Some see in the 28-year-old, strong-shouldered, prematurely grey-haired Californian a perfectionist in the DiMaggio mold. He is not that. There are days when, under some moody impulse, he performs raggedly, or not at all. He seems to need a tangible challenge before him. With runners on base, say National League pitchers, Duke becomes 25 per cent more dangerous. Last season, for instance, Stan Musial drove in and scored himself 246 runs, better than Mays, Kluszewski, Berra, Mantle, Mathews, Doby, Hodges or Avila could do. But Duke Snider's figure was 250 -- highest in the majors. It was even higher in 1953 -- 258. Last season his runs and RBI were 120 and 130, respectively; his batting average was a personal high of .341. As he stands today, then, Duke is a happily married, dedicated, idolized and brilliantly gifted athlete, who, at 28, is just reaching his peak, a picture-book hitter who also happens to be one of the finest defensive outfielders of his time. He has everything going for him a player can have. Yet this tells but a small part of his story. His baseball history is anything but placid. On the contrary, it's a long, vexing, frustration-filled struggle against a series of troubles both personal and professional. For example, in the winter of 1948, after playing 53 games in the Brooklyn outfield, Duke took a pick-and-shovel job on a sewage project in his California hometown. "I don't know what they (the Dodgers) want from me," he wearily told some of his friends, "but whatever it is, I haven't got it." The big fellow, in fact, originally came off $20-a-week federal government relief to try for a baseball career. From that low point he has pounded his way up to a $50,000 annual income, all of today's sources considered. That he made the climb is better evidence than any batting average of what sort of man he is. To succeed, Duke obviously had to learn how to beat National League pitching. But first he had to learn how to beat himself. That, as he will tell you now, was much the harder battle.
Shotton, succeeding Durocher, was the first to call Duke a problem child. He found him "spoiled -- thinking too mach of himself and, his average" -- and he implied that he became conveniently sore-backed or sore-armed when a lefthander was scheduled to pitch for the opposition. Under Dressen, who succeeded Shotton, the phrases "alibi artist" and "immature kid" were slapped on Duke, by now 23 years old. Between high spots, there were periods when his hitting reflected his attitude. Both Shotton and Dressen found it necessary to bench him. Twice, in June, 1951, and August, 1952, Dressen let it leak out that Duke might be traded off. It was in '52 that the threat of a salary-cut and a public bawling out led to an angry scene in which Duke threatened to punch Mike Gaven, a New York newspaperman who reported that baseball's greatest potential star had failed the club once too often and was finished in Brooklyn. Looking back now, Duke says, "I guess the worst time of all was late in 1951, the year I hit .277." Off 44 points from his .321 mark of the previous season, he caught the brunt of the sports-page blame when the Dodgers squandered a 13 ˝ game August lead and finished second to the Giants. "I went to Walter O'Malley and told him I couldn't take the pressure," Duke says. "I told him I'd just as soon be traded. I told him I figured I could do the Dodgers no good." The Dodger president, less baseball-wise than his predecessor, Rickey, but more understanding of Duke Snider, put an arm around him and, in a fatherly, heart-to-heart talk, explained that there was no need for discouragement. O'Malley made a flat promise. "We'll never trade you," he said. "We think you'll be great, in time. I know it. We're going to give you all the time you need. I'm not blaming you one bit for losing this pennant." From that moment, Duke believes, he can trace the beginning of his new confidence. O'Malley's pat on the back came in the psychological nick of time. For three seasons Duke had been at odds with a game which always seemed to expect too much of him. Now somebody was showing a little faith in him, and he responded to the challenge. It wasn't all clear sailing after that but the storms and squalls in Duke's career have become farther and farther apart. His hitting graph has climbed sharply; the barometer on his temper has been steady (except, as we shall see later, when he has been accused of ducking lefthanded pitching). Snider's .303 average in 1952 was made possible by a late-season tear at .355 which greatly helped Brooklyn to a pennant. His work in the Series -- ten hits, four homers, eight runs-batted-in -- could hardly have been better. In '53 he doubled his home runs and shot his average up 33 percentage points. Despite the noisy support given Willie Mays and the loyal backing for Stan Musial, the majority of baseball people consider Snider the best all-around player in the National League or, for that matter, in either league. Able to control his emotions, he no longer snaps at his manager -- "Walt Alston is the best I've worked for," says Duke, "because he doesn't pressure you” -- and he no longer alibis his mistakes, throws his bat or refuses to accept signs. He hustles out every hit. The moods and sulks that once drove Shotton and Dressen to despair have to a large extent disappeared: "The big change in Duke," said Carl Erskine recently, "is that he doesn't keep his troubles bottled inside himself. He used to go into a shell when he was in a slump, or hurt or getting panned in the papers. He shut out the world. But he'll talk things out now, he'll let his pals in on what's bothering him. The last couple of years, the guys on this club have got to know him better than they ever did before. And it's probably saved him a set of ulcers to get with the gang." Away from the clubhouse, it's different. A polite aloofness prevails between Duke and all but two or three old and trusted New York baseball-writing friends. This leads many of the fraternity to consider him a cold fish, egotistical or an enigma. And he doesn't mind saying why the feeling exists. "It's like this," he tells you. "We were in Philadelphia for a series last summer and I woke up the morning of the first game with a stiff back. I warmed up, figuring to play. After a few practice swings, Alston says, `You're chopping.' I said, `Yes, the back hurts.' He said, `Well, take a rest. I'll put Furillo in center and send Gilliam to right.' That was that, and none of us thought any more about it. The next day I read in three different stories that I begged off because Curt Simmons was pitching and I'm scared of lefthanders. Not one writer took the trouble to find out how we had it figured. We figured that Simmons is tough for me, even when I'm 100 per cent. At 75 per cent I probably wouldn't do much. "I'll admit I've had trouble against good lefthanders. For the good of the club, I'll sit down against them any time I'm not in good shape. But I don't jake off. Some writers claimed I sat out four times against lefties last year -- and that it cost us. What they didn't write was that each time I wasn't in good shape. If that's the kind of reporting I'm going to get, why should I be friendly with the press?" Snider's critics among the fans and ball writers point out that there was nothing apparently wrong with him the last three weeks of the '54 season when he, Willie Mays and Don Mueller were fighting it out for the batting title. Yet after hammering righthanders Max Surkont and Bob Friend of the Pirates for consecutive-game homers, he was conspicuously benched when southpaw Johnny Antonelli faced the Dodgers in, the final week. "He sat down for Sandy Amoros -- a .270 hitter," they say. "That makes sense?" Duke flared back at one critic, saying: "Are you guys all blind? Look at the record. The most games I could have played the last six years is 924. I've been in 894 of them. All but a few of the 30 I've missed I was sick or hurt." The criticism declined noticeably this season as Duke slugged righthanders and the infrequent lefthanders who faced the Dodgers with equal disdain. In the week that bridged May and June, Snider rapped 11 hits in 14 times at bat. Included in the streak were five homers, three in a single game against the Braves on the night of June 1. But the most rewarding blow was a double he stroked off Milwaukee lefthander Chet Nichols the last time up in his three-homer game. It came within six feet of clearing the right-field screen for a fourth home run. "I didn't hit it as hard as I did the one against Bob Miller (righthander) when I had a shot at four homers against the Phillies in 1950," Duke commented. "But I'll sure take it." Duke was actually ready to settle for a bunt single against Nichols, but when the pitch came in high and inside, he gave it a long ride. Earlier in the same game, manager Charlie Grimm had called in lefthander Roberto Vargas to pitch to Snider with two on. Duke promptly belted the ball far into the darkness beyond the right-field screen. There is nothing like a couple of lusty hits to cure a wavering self-confidence. After the game Duke said he had found an answer to his vexing southpaw problem. "I realized I was always off balance against lefthanders, so now I put my right foot forward. I don't step into the bucket any more." Along with the lefthander debate, Snider was in the middle of another controversy much of last season and through the winter. It abated considerably when the Dodgers and Duke took complete charge of the National League race at the very start of this season. But it flares up frequently and it goes like this: "Snider ain't in the same league with Willie . . .!" "Aaahhh, nuts! Mays leaves of playin' ball where the Dook begins . . . !" Last April, in a Los Angeles bowling alley, two men were arrested for assaulting each other with tenpins. They were arguing about Snider and Mays. It turned out they were father and son. Stimulated by newspaper build-up of the rivalry, Snider-Mays partisans are as hopped up as the fans of 30 years ago who argued Babe Ruth vs. Rogers Hornsby. Leo Durocher needed about ten seconds after the final 1954 statistics were posted to realize the publicity potential in the feud. All last winter, Leo barnstormed California banquet halls with the same line. "Snider is wonderful," Leo usually finished his slyly inflammatory speech. "But my boy Willie just happens to be the greatest there ever was." Old Ty Cobb was one of those who rose to Leo's bait. At a San Francisco Hot Stove League affair in January, Tyrus irritably barked, "How many years has Mays hit .300 or more for the Giants? In one season, I believe. How many years has he batted in 100 or more runs? One, I think. I also think Snider has four .300 seasons, four years of 100 runs-batted-in and something like 1,000 hits to a few hundred for Mays. Hell's bells, at this point the discussion is ridiculous!" "The whole thing is no good. I wish it would stop," Duke says frankly. "I can't walk down the street without someone choosing up sides." Apples, oranges, banana skins and lighted cigars have been thrown at Snider since the Mays situation arose. At Chicago, a fan ran into the outfield to shake a fist under Duke's nose. Police dragged him away. On the racial side of the problem, embarrassment enters -- such as the charge by a Harlem newspaper that Snider doesn't like Jackie Robinson and deliberately snubs him. "Here's Robbie, a teammate," says Duke. "We're not chummy, but we've always respected each other. Then -- on account of this Mays thing -- all of a sudden we're enemies. Everything that happens between us gets twisted and dirtied up," he said. Last September 1, at Wrigley Field, Duke hit a Hal Jeffcoat curve into the left-center-field bleachers. Rounding first, all he saw of the ball was a flash glimpse of Ralph Kiner stooping and throwing a bit too late to prevent a Snider double. Sprinting from the dugout, Robinson protested that the blow was a home run. Most witnesses agreed the ball had hit a customer before dropping onto the field, but umpire Bill Engeln ruled it a two-base hit. He ordered Robinson to leave the field. "I stood there at second, listening to Robbie holler," Duke says, "and wondering what the hell? I didn't know about any homer. I hadn't even seen the ball land. Later, Bobbie was sore because nobody on our club backed him up. He was left hanging out there all alone. I was slow to get Robbie's point, all right," he goes on. "But as soon as I did, I got on Engeln, too. After we'd squawked enough, he pulled the watch on us. That's all there was to it." Nevertheless, Duke was booed. His fan mail the next few weeks contained accusations that he'd purposely kept quiet while Robinson was fighting his battle. About all the quiet Californian can do is take Roy Campanella's advice to ignore gossip, keep a sharp ear out for flying objects and bow to the inevitable. The great Dodger catcher, however, can't resist speaking up for Duke. "Back of the plate," Roy says, "I see him get a jump on balls like no other outfielder gets. You take that catch off Jones at Philly last season -- there's nobody, Mays included, who could have caught that one." With two runners on base and the Dodgers leading, 5-4, in the 12th inning, Willie Jones drove a 405-footer up against the left-centerfield wall. Duke isn't a look-and-run outfielder, like Mays. He prefers to keep the ball in view all the time if possible, and he was judging this one every step of his long run to the wall. There it seemed he was climbing the concrete "on his knees," as awed Dodger coach Ted Lyons put it. Up and up he went like a human fly to spear the ball, give a confirming wave of his glove and fall backward to the turf. The wooden bracing on the wall showed spike marks almost as high as his head. It was such a catch that, although it saved the game for Brooklyn, admiring Philly fans swarmed the field by the dozens. Duke lost his cap and part of his shift and almost lost his belt. Some authorities on miraculous catches say the Duke outran and outdazzled even Mays' famous grab in the '54 World Series in the second game of the present season. On a gloomy, wet afternoon at the Polo Grounds, Monte Irvin of the Giants sent a screamer deep into left-center. Duke fled with the crack of the bat, and when he hit the cinders that front the distant bleacher wall at the Polo Grounds, he jumped, gloved the ball and then tumbled. In the clubhouse afterwards everyone was comparing the catch to the one Mays made on Wertz. It was pointed out that Willie caught Wertz' ball on the grass and ran onto the cinders before he got his throw off. Duke made his catch on the cinders. The ball probably would have hit against the wall if he hadn't caught up with it. "I saw both catches," Campanella said, entering the Mays vs. Snider debate. "Duke here, ran as far as he could and jumped as high as he could and he come up with the ball. What more could you ask?" Smaller, lighter off-the-wall operators, like Paul Waner, Mel Ott, Dom DiMaggio and Clyde Milan have made defensive baseball history, but among the big men there have been few with the catlike qualities of the thickly muscled Duke. "He's an acrobat, the same as Mays," Ralph Kiner says, "but with the difference that he scrambles only when it's necessary. Mays looks like a man in a revolving door. I'd say Duke covers more ground, wastes less motion and is more consistent than anyone since DiMaggio. And in playing the real tough ones, he's very close to Joe." Manager Alston, who came by his admiration for Snider slowly, as he apparently does for most things, is firmly convinced that Duke's outfield gymnastics are beyond compare. "I don't think I've ever seen an outfielder who can go so high for a ball while running at full speed," he commented after one of Spider's wall-climbing stunts at Ebbets Field. "I don't know how he does it. But he catches them, and he never seems to have trouble with the walls." A grandstand or dugout view of the Dodgers' No. 4 tells nothing, of course, of how he developed his skills and overcame trouble -- by far the most interesting part of Duke Spider's story. One way to learn something of his roller-coaster experience is to talk with his wife, Beverly. If you were to pick the most domesticated Dodger, you'd probably have to select Duke. He wants his family with him year-round, for the good reason that pretty Beverly -- a first-rate cook -- also is the person best able to handle her frequently jittery husband. "If Bev didn't stay with me from Lynwood to spring training to Brooklyn each season," states Duke, "I wouldn't hit .200. She's the kind of person you can't be around without absorbing some of her calmness." Beverly has been calming him since their 1947 marriage. Their romance has undergone only one trying period. At Compton High School, where she was Beverly Null, pretty daughter of a county sanitation engineer, she admired sports hero Duke from a distance. "When he finally noticed me, I thought he'd never ask for a date," she sighs, "and when he did, I thought he'd never propose. When he went into the Navy in 1944, we weren't even going steady. It sort of looked like everything was off." When Duke came home 18 months later, a civilian again, ("I thought about Bev all the time I was overseas and realized what a dope I was") he wasted no time. They became engaged -- the wedding awaiting Duke's discovery of some cash. With his first postwar baseball money, he led her before a preacher. "She wasn't getting much. I couldn't afford a house," remarks Duke. "Our first home was a two-room auto trailer parked in the back yard of some friends of mine. I was still a bush-leaguer. That first winter we were married, I swung a pick and shovel and worked as a jackhammer operator on a sewer project at a dollar-twenty an hour." Home today -- two homes, one in Lynwood which they own, mortgage-clear, and a rented two-story house 30 minutes from Ebbets Field, where their neighbors are the Don Zimmers, the Carl Erskines, the Russ Meyers, the Al Walkers -- is a place where Duke can flop on the sofa and relax all over his 200 pounds. Duke and his neighboring teammates have a car pool for trips to the park. The Sniders seldom are seen in a night-spot. Their money goes into bonds, annuities and college endowment funds for their two children, Kevin Bruce, six, and Pamela Denise, four. In Lynwood, they live in surprisingly modest surroundings, considering that from all sources Duke's gross income since 1949 has been about $160,000. Since 1949 they've lived in a small, stucco cottage on Carlen Street, across from Lynwood High School -- three bedrooms, one bath, single garage. The $15,000-home, on a street of economy-type bungalows, suits the Sniders fine. "We're not fancy people," they say. The delight of the Sniders in their children is a glowing thing. Little Pamela is the "crisis" member of the family. She was born in July of 1951 in Lynwood, and Duke blames his worry over the separation from his wife for his .277 average that season. Bev Snider named Pamela. Duke reserved name-selection rights for their first born, Kevin, in honor of Kevin (Chuck) Connors, and Bruce, after Bruce Edwards. When ex-Dodgers Connors and Edwards visit the Snider home, a three-man baseball clinic goes to work on the sturdy, blond six-year-old Kevin. "The first time he picked up a bat," Duke grins, "he swung it lefthanded." Small-boy pride in what he has accomplished is reflected in Duke's home-away-from-Brooklyn. The Carlen Street bungalow has one wall covered with a huge oil painting of him; a blown-up photograph of Snider making a circus catch in the World Series takes up another. Table lamps have bat-handle stems. On the walls are plaques and trophies. You're prepared for this, but not for "Toughy," a belligerent parakeet who goes uncaged much of the time and deals out sharp pecks to strangers. Toughy, Duke's pet, twice has traveled cross-country with the family. So has "Cokey," a young female poodle with a coat as black as a Giant fan's attitude toward the Dodgers. Essentially thrifty, Duke often makes large gestures where his family is concerned. One day a few years ago, he was walking down a Compton street with his mother when she idly admired a sterling silver set in a jewelry-store window. "That's the pattern I started years ago," she remarked. A bit later, on the 25th wedding anniversary of Ward and Florence Snider, there was delivered a 12-place setting of the silver. At the same time, Duke had the same setting delivered to his wife's mother and father. He has his future solidly mapped -- in Southern California. Cliff Dapper, who briefly caught for the Dodgers in 1942, interested Duke in the "green gold" business, growing avocados, and the two now own 59 acres on a cliffside overlooking the Pacific at Oceanside. This is in the heart of the most fertile avocado country in the world, and last winter Duke excitedly walked over the acreage telling how the partners plan to plant 100 trees to the acre beginning next January, up to a total of 4,000. Duke dresses fashionably and will spend $150 for a custom-made suit. But he also buys many of his sports jackets and accessories at Leonard's Men's Shop in Compton-Lynwood, where some years ago he worked as a clerk. At home he loafs around in blue denim pants, denim shoes, floppy Hawaiian sportshirts and a two-day beard. He likes to splurge on cars. Duke drives a '55 Oldsmobile "98"; Beverly has a Pontiac station wagon. They're non-country club members, playing man-and-wife golf on public links and getting "simple kicks," during the season, from family picnics at Camp Bauman, Long Island, a public resort. When the Dodgers are idle, the Sniders and Erskines like to drive out to Bauman and spend the day swimming, boating and playing with their kids. Duke and Beverly frequently play bridge with other Dodgers and their wives, although Bev says they don't score very well as partners. As first citizen of Lynwood, Duke sometimes finds his fame amusing. At Whittier, a boom-town not far from Lynwood, a visiting speaker at a Kiwanis Club dinner last winter said, "Let me congratulate you on having produced such a distinguished native son." Immediately 100 club members jumped up to deliver a whooping cheer for the Duke. The guest speaker sat down in astonishment. He had been referring to Richard M. Nixon, Vice-President of the United States, who is from Whittier. Whittier can't claim to be Duke's birthplace. Neither can Compton or Los Angeles, which, variously, are credited in the record books. He was born on September 19, 1926, at the citrus-growing crossroads burg of Belvedere, a few miles from Whittier. Duke was born at home because his mother, Florence, distrusted hospitals. Only 19 when she delivered her only child, she was shy of nature. The dominant family personality was -- and is -- Duke's father, Ward Snider. In 1926 he was an ex-Navy chief boatswain's mate turned rigger in Southern California shipyards. Ed (his mother never calls him Duke, a nickname coined by his father when the boy was five) is named Edwin Donald and has German-Dutch bloodlines on the paternal side and Scotch-Irish on the maternal side. Florence Snider's early memories of raising her son concern sicknesses -- chicken pox at three months, which settled in his eyelids and threatened his vision until an old Japanese doctor cured it; mumps; two attacks of measles. "Ed was a nervous boy," she says. "When he first started playing ball, he'd re-play the games in his sleep, crying out at night. I wasn't at all sure sports were good for him." Ward Snider had no doubts. For a hobby, he played with San Diego semi-pro teams as an outfielder. At six, towheaded Duke sat on the bench with his father, holding his own dime-store bat. He swung lefthanded, although he was naturally a righthander, because Ward insisted on it. "I thought he might be a pitcher," says Ward, "but, in any case, at bat I wanted him two steps nearer first base. I think he got the outfielding idea not so much because I played there. It was on account of Jigger Statz." Statz, a classically graceful ballhawk, had dropped to Los Angeles of the Coast League from Brooklyn in the early 1930s. When the elder Snider began taking Duke to Wrigley Field games, the eight-year-old was fascinated by the Jigger. Taken into the dugout by his dad to meet Statz, he was too tongue-tied to talk. At that point, Duke was small for his age. In sandlot games, he was too short-legged and slight to stand out. But his 12th birthday brought a change. Between ten and 12, he grew seven and a half inches and at 15 he was a stringbean of almost six feet and 150 pounds. At Compton High School, he came along so fast that by his junior year he was known to college scouts as one of the best prospects in the state. His prep coach, Bill Schleibaum, remembers Duke as shy and quiet, but fanatically competitive. "He was all bony arms and legs, a whirlwind," says Schleibaum. "Nobody could name his best sport. He wanted to play outfield, but he had such an arm that he won eight straight games for me pitching. One day he threw a no-hit, no-run game against Beverly Hills High. In football, I played him at defensive end and offensive tailback. In basketball, he was all over the floor. He won 16 letters and made all-section or all-Southern California in all three sports." It was Duke's tremendous throwing arm that entranced the college football scouts. Against Long Beach Poly, the score was 19-13 against Compton when Duke faded back and threw a 63-yard pass for a last-minute 20-19 win. Two weeks later, Compton played Long Beach Jordan for the league championship. Duke heaved a touchdown pass that carried 68 yards in the air. Although Compton lost, Duke's future was assured at any college he chose. Particularly heavy pressure came from coach Jimmy Phelan at St. Mary's, who worked on Mom Snider's preference of a college education for her boy. "My dad wasn't there to advise me -- he'd gone back into the active Navy in 1943," Duke says. "We weren't rich and I thought I should bring in some cash money for the family. The baseball scouts were talking what looked like a lot of dough. I was playing independent ball for a fellow named Lloyd Broadbent at Montebello that last high school summer, hitting about .400. It looked like I'd get about $2,500 for signing." That he didn't -- and the reason why he isn't performing today for the Cincinnati Reds -- still hasn't been explained. Pat Patterson, the Reds' scout, made eager noise about signing him. Although Duke was willing, Patterson never did make a firm offer. Duke, impatient, answered the doorbell one morning in March, 1944, to find Tom Downey, the stocky little Brooklyn talent-agent, standing there. "I've come to sign you," Downey said calmly. Well aware that Patterson hadn't bid, Downey offered Snider $750 cash and a Montreal contract at $275 per month. Duke signed -- and in so doing cost himself better than $12,000. Two years later, after an apprenticeship in the Dodger farm chain, he returned to Montebello. He was warming up with his old semi-pro team, wondering where Brooklyn would send him, when Babe Herman walked up. Herman, scouting for the Pirates, thought Snider was a free agent. "I've been watching you hit," Herman said. "I'll give you $15,000 right now to put your name on a contract." He pulled out his pen. Duke let out a frustrated whoop. He walked over to the stands, where his mother was sitting. "Mom," he said, "I think I'm going to be sick." However, he was full of boyish anticipation in the spring of '44 when Downey told him to report to Brooklyn's wartime training camp at Bear Mountain, New York. Hal Gregg, the Dodger pitcher, acted as escort for rookie Duke, who had never before been aboard a transcontinental train. Gregg's advice was, "Keep your mouth shut, hustle and just hope they don't send you to Newport News." The 17-year-old Snider, a mixture of kid cockiness and naive faith that he would make good, wasn't listening too well. He got away to a sorry start. He didn't understand that all candidates had to take field laps, and Wid Matthews, then a Dodger official, spotted him sitting down. Matthews chewed him out hard. Leo Durocher watched Duke hit a 400-foot homer against the Army team and slapped his back: "You've got it, kid?" That sounded as if he would be assigned to no worse than Montreal. Two weeks later he was told, without explanation, to report to the Class B Newport News Dodgers in the Piedmont League, a Dodger farm club managed by present Brooklyn coach Jake Pitler. Running what he called his "day nursery," Pitler was stuck with a babyfaced troupe recruited from high school corridors by the Branch Rickey wartime youth program. Pitler had his problems and one of the more conspicuous ones was young Snider. Irritated by an order not to cut at a three-and-one pitch, Duke angrily struck out one day at Norfolk. He threw his bat high and entered the dugout, kicking. The temper tantrum cost him $50. Actually, Pitler started at $10. He was goaded into the higher figure by the raging youngster. Duke left Newport News with only two credit marks. He hit .294 and led the league in doubles and home runs, with 34 and nine, respectively. But he struck out 96 times, or 20 per cent of his times-at-bat. About that time, one of Duke's closest friends, a Mexican named Zukor Palicos, who had helped him get started in sandlot ball, was killed fighting with the infantry in Europe. Duke promptly enlisted. On the U.S.S. Sperry, a submarine tender, he spent 11 months between Hawaii and Guam. It was dull, dirty, unheroic, non-combat duty. No sooner had fireman second-class E. D. Snider been discharged in May of 1946 than he was working out at Montebello, repairing his interrupted courting of Beverly Null and casting straws into the wind to learn where he stood with the Dodgers. He found out shortly, when Branch Rickey, Jr., assistant to the Old Man, arrived in Los Angeles. "Dad has been over your case," he told Duke. "We feel another year at Newport News is needed." Duke replied that he'd quit first. He demanded advancement, a chance to show his stuff in a faster league. After some wavering, Rickey said that Fort Worth in the Texas League might use him in utility -- the only spot open in Class A, what with the season already started. Duke was packed and out of town before The Twig could change his mind. At Fort Worth, manager Ray Hayworth, his lineup set, assigned the rookie to the bench. Used only to pinch-hit, he averaged under .200. A few weeks of that and, in Houston, Hayworth informed Duke he was sending him to Newport News, which, he added, the Rickeys should have done in the first place. "Did you ever feel desperate? Well, I was then. That night I hit two of the most important blows of my life," says Duke, still relishing them. "Both were homers of around 360 feet. Hayworth changed his mind and put me in as a regular." Chiefly because of added weight in his chest and shoulders, balls the 20-year-old previously had stroked for singles now lengthened into doubles. His average remained low -- .250. But the occasional bursts of power began to attract attention. Clyde Sukeforth, the Dodger coach, was sent to check him. One night in late September, during a championship playoff with Dallas, Snider gave Sukeforth a real eyeful. In six games, he smashed four home runs, pulling two over the right-field fence and clearing right-center with the others. The Duke was on his way. When the Dodgers invited him to their Havana, Cuba, spring camp in 1947, he hustled as hard as he could to catch Durocher's eye and assure assignment to, at least, a Class AAA team. Briefly, however, another impression was gained. Harold Parrott, then the club's traveling secretary, walked up to Duke in the lobby of the luxurious Hotel Nacional de Cuba to protest, "What've you been ordering. in the dining room -- pressed duck under pheasant?" The rookie was puzzled. "Nope. Just shrimp cocktail, a few vegetables and steak. Why?" Parrott displayed Snider's food bill for the first seven days: $150. "There used to be a guy in this league named Shanty Hogan," went on the secretary, "who ate a six-pound roast and drank ten bottles of beer at one sitting. Keep on like this and you're going to make baseball forget Hogan." Like any busher on trial, Duke had figured he might as well take advantage of the free-loading system, while he was still around the Dodgers, and he insists now, grinning, that he never ordered more than "a couple of filets at $8 apiece" at any one sitting. Despite the food intake and a flock of wild Snider strikeouts, Durocher kept him on the roster until July 4. Duke's first major-league base hit was a line-drive single off Si Johnson of the Boston Braves on the second day of the 1947 season. Overstocked with outfielders -- Dixie Walker, Pete Reiser, Carl Furillo, Gene Hermanski -- Durocher then forgot all about the rookie. Three weeks on the bench and Duke buttonholed Branch Rickey and asked to be farmed out. "A very enlightened attitude," said Rickey. "This is a pennant club, so you're probably giving up a World Series check. I also understand you have matrimony on your mind. Can you afford it?" Duke confessed he did, and couldn't. At which point Rickey promised, "I'll send you to St. Paul, and no matter what happens there, don't worry. I'll see you get a one-quarter share of any Series money." When the Dodgers roared in as champs, Rickey's word was kept. On the $1,020 quarter-share voted Duke, he and Beverly were married in October. At St. Paul, Duke slugged 22 doubles, seven triples and 12 homers. His average was a good .316. He might have won "rookie-of-the-year" honors -- which went to Alvin Dark of Milwaukee -- but for a summons back to Brooklyn in late season. Ineligible for the World Series by a matter of a few days, he watched from the dugout as the DiMaggio-Berra-Henrich powerhouse and Yankee relief pitching edged the Dodgers in seven games. Just why he developed into such a pain-in-the-neck to his bosses the next four years Duke isn't sure -- it can be rationalized either way. He remembers his terrible disappointment at Montreal in 1948 when Durocher broke his promise about calling him up. High-strung, quick to resent authority, he became what manager Clay Hopper called "the worst-acting .330 hitter I ever handled." With Hopper complaining that he loafed, the antagonism built. One day, with two runners on, Hopper ordered a bunt. The brooding Snider had a sore leg. So he swung from the heels and lofted a home run out of the park. At the plate, he brushed aside Hopper's offered hand -- but not the manager's sizzling, "That does it -- pay the office fifty!" When he came to Ebbets Field, finally, it is Duke's guess that his 1949 rookie season was too good. A .292 average and 23 homers for the season was capped when the Dodgers, battling through a breathtaking September pennant finish, needed one more win to nose out the Cardinals by a game. It was 7-7 in the tenth inning, and Lefty Ken Heintzelman of the Phils was pitching. Heintzelman came in with a fastball and Duke slashed it between Mike Goliat and Dick Sisler to score Pee Wee Reese with the run that meant the championship. After that, stardom for Snider was taken for granted. When he departed radically from the script in the following World Series, with eight strikeouts, some writers felt impelled to change their glowing prophecies. Along with developing patience and a thick skin, he had to learn that no one man is bigger than the team. In 1950 Shotton fined him for refusing signs, bat-throwing and talking back; as late as 1952, there were reports that Duke wasn't long for the Dodgers. Some Ebbets Field fans showed their disgust with the way the Duke reacted to a called third strike or an adverse call on the bases. He invariably froze and glared at the plate umpire after a third-strike call and then stomped toward the dugout like an undisciplined schoolboy, mad because he could not have his way. Once Shotton ordered him to bunt a pair of Dodger baserunners around and he popped up to the catcher for an easy out. He flung the bat away in disgust and afterwards, in the clubhouse, said: "The idea of ordering a .320-hitter to bunt!" Today, the grownup Snider is able to accept a called third strike with restrained disgust. If he flings his bat -- it's for a good reason. On a close call against him, Duke literally and figuratively lets off steam by puffing his cheeks and exhaling loud and long. It wasn't easy for him -- but he has tightened the lid on that once-famous temper. The loosening-up, becoming-one-of -the-gang process notable in Duke of late comes out in a new ability to horseplay -- where often, before he was busy brooding. When Don Newcombe suffered a dizzy spell during a game at Philadelphia and had to be removed for first aid, Duke made a production of it. Everywhere Big Newk went, Snider followed behind -- hands cupped to catch him if he fell. He put smelling salts in Newk's locker, bought a two-bit thermometer for checking the heat, and urged manager Alston to equip the dugout with a pulmotor. Newcombe replied briskly. He pasted a large, grinning photo of Willie Mays on Duke's locker mirror. Duke admits he has learned much in recent years. "It's an old saying, but so true, that you get from life only what you put into it. I've had it proved to me, plenty. With the help of my wife and a lot of people who didn't give up on me, I learned to stand on my own feet." Today trouble seems so far behind him that he finds it hard to believe that so much of it ever came his way. Head of a happy, healthy family and harnessing his great baseball talents as few ballplayers have been able to do, he has reached the cash-in period of his life. It is possible -- there are no probabilities in Brooklyn -- that he will become the first $60,000 Dodger. (Recently, Duke indicated that he believed he had reached his salary peak, since owner O'Malley, restricted by a much smaller park, doesn't toss around pay checks with the freedom of the Yankees, Indians, Braves, Tigers and others.) If his batting average continues to climb, he may soon be a lifetime .320 hitter. He has a good shot at the exclusive 300 Home Run Club. He sets a lofty standard in efficiency and all-around center-field play. He is a tremendous asset to baseball's most colorful team. The rewards of this and future baseball years should come as a tremendous satisfaction to the Duke. It isn't every man who can score a victory over himself.
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