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#1
05-08-2024, 08:17 AM
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Quote:
"A good chance of become the first Negro ever to play on the American league team" Amazing history. And to keep it on track with Elston. A snapshot taken of him alongside Mick, Game 3 of the 1960 World series.   
__________________
I have done deals with many of the active n54ers. Sometimes I sell cool things that you don't see every day. My Red Schoendienst collection- https://imageevent.com/lucas00/redsc...enstcollection 
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#2
05-09-2024, 04:08 AM
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Elston Howard -- Catching in Canada!
(Great photographs, Lucas! Thanks for sharing.)
Shortly before Christmas, Elston proposed to Arlene Henley, whose sister he had gone to high school with. He spent February 1954 at “Yankee Prospects School” with 28 other ballplayers in Lake Wales, Florida, and March at spring training with the big club, sharing a locker room with Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Mickey Mantle, and Billy Martin. Bill Dickey, former Yankee great, worked with him to make him a major league catcher. Some newspapers, like the Baltimore Afro-American, criticized the Yankees, claiming the move to catcher was a manufactured setback to keep Howard in the minors. When the Yankees broke camp, they took three catchers north with them: Yogi Berra, Charlie Silvera, and Ralph Houk. They didn’t want to send Howard back to the Blues, so they arranged for him to play with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the International League. Canada was a bit more welcoming to black players. Howard won the league MVP Award, hit .330, with 22 homers and 109 RBIs. At the end of the season, he gave Arlene an engagement ring, and they planned to marry in the spring of 1955.
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#3
05-10-2024, 04:16 AM
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Elston Howard -- Yanks under Pressure to Integrate!
Media reports that Howard would be a Yankee by spring increased, as did protests pressuring the Yankees to integrate. The Yankees won 103 games in 1954, but not the league pennant. Cleveland, featuring black outfielder Larry Doby, won the flag with 111 wins, a sign that the Yankees might need to integrate themselves. The Yankees decided to send Howard to winter ball in Puerto Rico.
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#4
05-11-2024, 05:06 AM
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Elston Howard -- Having a Baby!
The wedding to Arlene was rushed to December 4, 1954. Howard’s godfather, Reverend Baker, married them in Arlene’s mother’s living room. They honeymooned in San Juan, where they lived in the same building as Willie Mays and Sam Jones. Then Howard was off to St. Petersburg for Yankee camp, Arlene back to St. Louis, pregnant with the couple’s first child.
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#5
05-12-2024, 04:25 AM
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Elston Howard -- Making the Bigs!
Casey Stengel batted Howard in the cleanup spot much of the spring, prompting Arthur Daley to write in the New York Times, “He seems certain to be the first Negro to make the Yankees. … They’ve waited for one to come along who [is] ‘the Yankee type.’ Elston is a nice, quiet lad whose reserved, gentlemanly demeanor has won him complete acceptance from every Yankee.” Daley was right. Ralph Houk went to the minors, Howard was given his uniform number (32), and on March 21 general manager George Weiss announced that Elston Howard would be coming to New York.
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#6
05-13-2024, 04:27 AM
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Elston Howard -- Ed Sullivan to World Series!
His New York City debut came the Sunday night before the season, when he appeared with Stengel and two other rookies on the Ed Sullivan Show. His on-field debut followed on April 14 at Fenway Park, subbing for Irv Noren, who had been ejected for arguing with an umpire. He got a base hit and knocked in a run. Perhaps the most memorable effect of Howard’s presence on the Yankees that year, though, was that the team changed its hotel policy, staying only in hotels that would accept Howard as a guest. Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and Hank Bauer were Howard’s best friends on the team. He hit .290 in 97 games his rookie season, with another five hits in the World Series, including a home run in his first World Series at-bat. That performance was offset by eight strikeouts, and the Dodgers won their first World Series. Howard made the final out of the Series, then traveled to Japan with the Yankees for a good will tour.
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#7
05-14-2024, 03:51 AM
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Elston Howard -- Manning the Outfield!
On the 25-game tour of the Pacific, Howard hit .468 to lead the team. Meanwhile, Elston Jr. was born. Howard’s pay jumped in 1956 from $6,000 to $10,000, he bought a house in St. Louis, and then heard from Stengel that he would be doing more catching. Howard drove the family to Florida, planning to stay overnight with a friend of his godfather’s, a preacher named Martin Luther King. But that night the King house was firebombed, and they could not stay there. Almost as disastrous, Howard broke a finger in spring training. Then Norm Siebern went down, and Howard had to fill the gap in the outfield. So much for spending significant time behind the plate. He appeared in only 98 games, 26 at catcher, and finished the year with a so-so .262 batting average, 5 homers, and 34 RBIs. While he had started all seven World Series games in 1955, the team’s acquisition of Enos Slaughter kept Howard on the bench for the first six Series games in 1956. Nonetheless, Stengel started him in Game Seven, and Howard homered and doubled in the 9-0 Yankee win.
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