George Gick pitched in two games for the White Sox in 1937
and 1938 before blowing out his arm.
George was born October 18, 1915, in Hickory Grove Township,
Benton County, Indiana, near the community of Dunnington and also near the
Illinois border. He was the eighth of thirteen children (ten boys, three girls)
of farmers Andrew and Helena Gick. By the 1930 census they had moved from Hickory
Grove Township to nearby Pine Township; George was 14 and his siblings ranged
from 27 to four. Growing up he worked on the farm and played baseball whenever
he could, developing an overpowering fastball. He led his high school team to
the county championship, played American Legion ball, and played some semi-pro
ball under an assumed name while still in school.
In 1937, at age 21, George went to spring training with the
Dallas Steers of the Class A-1 Texas League, who were affiliated with the
Chicago White Sox; reportedly he was recommended by Indiana radio entertainers
the Moran Sisters. At the end of March the Steers chose their roster and
divided the remaining players among their farm teams: Longview of the Class C
East Texas League, Vicksburg of the Class C Cotton States League, and Rayne of
the Class D Evangeline League. George was sent to Longview, known as the
Cannibals and, sometimes, as the Little Steers. He pitched in five games and
had an 0-3 record and 9.86 ERA in 21 innings, with 17 strikeouts and nine
walks, then was sent down to the Rayne (Louisiana) Rice Birds in the Evangeline
League. On May 26 he pitched a four-hit shutout with 11 strikeouts, and on June
11 he again allowed four hits and had 11 strikeouts, though this time he
allowed a run. He continued to do well, and on July 24 it was announced that
his contract had been sold to the White Sox and that he would report to
them the following spring. However, on August 24 he was told he would make the
jump to the majors the first week of September. From the August 25 New Orleans Item:
Evangeline Hurler Sold to Pale Hose
RAYNE, La., Aug. 25.—A news dispatch disclosing the purchase of Pitcher George Gick of the Rayne club of the Evangeline league by the Chicago White Sox, brought both happiness and sorrow to Rayne baseball fans.
Gick, a favorite here, has been instructed to report to the Chicago team September 7. The fans were glad that George is going to have a shot at big league pitching but sorry to see him leave the Evangeline.
Latest official pitching records, which included games of August 8, showed Gick had won ten games and lost six, pitched 132 innings, allowed 42 runs and 108 hits, given up 37 bases on balls and struck out 102 batsmen.
Rayne’s season ended at the end of August and George was able
to win their first playoff game before leaving for Chicago, where he got his
first major league press attention in the Chicago
Daily News of September 14:
Most impressive of the rookies at hand is George Gick, the young right-hander from Rayne, La., in the Evangeline league. Gick was recommended to the Rayne club by the White Sox operatives and later purchased by the Comiskey team.
According to coach Muddy Ruel, who has caught the youth in practice, Gick is almost as fast as Bob Feller and has better control. At Rayne, the lad won 12 and lost 6 and averaged nine strikeouts per game. He is only 22 years old, 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighs 195 pounds.
Actually George’s final Rayne stats were: 15-10 record, 2.41
ERA, 154 strikeouts and 52 walks in 205 innings. The next day the Times ran another item on him:
GICK A ‘FIND’?
Dykes [manager Jimmie] is especially eager to have a look at George Gick, the Rayne, La., contribution, in action. Gick, a right hand pitcher, is very fast, and there is a possibility he may be proclaimed the new Bob Feller, although he is the Cleveland boy wonder’s senior by three years.
He got another mention the day after that:
This was the first visit to the big town for Bill Cox, Bob Uhle and George Gick, the trio of embryo pitchers, and they planned a field day to the various points of interest, being warned, of course, not to fall for that picture of the sweet old lady knitting on the Chinatown bus.
Of course.
It took until Sunday afternoon, October 3, for George to get
into a game. In St. Louis against the Browns, in the second game of a
season-ending doubleheader, he relieved Monty Stratton to start the bottom of
the fourth inning after Stratton had been pinch-run for in the top of the
inning. He struck out the first batter, Red Barkley, then the pitcher reached
base on an error and was erased by a double play. He had a one-two-three fifth,
and then the game was called on account of darkness, the Sox winning 7-2.
George went to spring training with the White Sox in Pasadena
in 1938, and the Chicago Daily News
reported on him on March 12:
Gick, who comes up from the Rayne, La., club where he won 15 games last season, has been so steady in what little hurling he has uncorked as to set Coach (“Muddy”) Ruel, who knows a pitcher when he sees one, thinking. In the first couple of appearances Gick has thrown hard and straight; too hard, thought Ruel, who advised George to take it a bit easier. Thereupon Gick pulled the string a little and for more than 10 minutes the Walkers, Applings, Thompsons, Kreeviches and others who constitute the Sox attack, were stumbling around the plate, helpless over a change of pace which Gick didn’t know he was throwing.
Naturally it is too much to expect that he will be a regular member of this little band next June, but he is very apt to stick around until after the season opens, especially if the continued absence of “Sugar” Cain leaves an opening on the staff…
On March 13 George pitched three innings of an exhibition
game against a Pasadena semi-pro team, and the Daily News said he “crossed a nice change of pace with a bender,
walked nobody and seemed well in hand on every toss. His showing had Manager
Jim Dykes and Coach “Muddy” Ruel smiling broadly.” On April 7th the Daily News mentioned:
George Gick, one of the younger White Sox pitchers, never was on a train before this spring…but he doesn’t count the freights he flipped [referring to surreptitiously jumping on board slow-moving freight trains].
George didn’t do so well in the exhibition games against other
major league teams, but he was on the Sox roster when the regular season began.
He pitched the eighth inning in the third game of the season, on April 21 at
home against Detroit. After striking out the first batter he hit opposing
pitcher Elden Auker with a pitch, then retired the next two, then was pinch-hit
for in the bottom of the inning.
On the same day, George’s little brother Paul (six years his
junior and child number 11 of 13) was pitching a no-hitter for Pine Township
High School, allowing just one baserunner, a hit-by-pitch.
George was then sent to the Shreveport Sports, an
unaffiliated team in the Texas League, rather than to Dallas; the Dallas Morning News said he “was
obtained by the Sports through the benevolence of the Dallas club management.” His
manager there was aging former major-league pitcher Claude Jonnard. In about
two months he made 21 appearances, 13 of them starts, and had a 5-8 record and
4.63 ERA in 101 innings, with 51 strikeouts and 53 walks. A July 1 mention that
he would be starting the game that day is the last mention I found of him in
1938—except that on October 17 he got married, in Benton County, to Anna Marie
Sanson.
George was on the White Sox off-season roster, and heading
into spring training it was said that he had a shot at making the team.
On
March 1 the Daily News said:
Schacht put the squad through the gamut of calisthenics and didn’t spare the losses. Toward the end of the session George Gick was as wet as Chicago in the prohibition era, and Johnny Whitehead was moving left whenever the command was “right.”
Throughout March there were reports of George having a sore
arm. On March 5 the Times said he “was
another minor casualty with a sore arm, recurrence of an ailment that prevented
his doing much for Shreveport last year,” and the next day the Daily News reported:
The only sore arm in camp belongs to George Gick, the young right-hander who made a hit here a year ago, but whose arm suddenly went bad after he was farmed out to Shreveport, where he won his first four starts. Gick believed he was rid of the misery, but it has come back and he can’t throw in his normal manner.
Dykes was the first to discover Gick’s ailment. The manager was taking a swing in batting practice and missed a ball which broke into the dirt. “Holy smokes,” Dykes though, “if the kid’s got a sinker that good, he’s okay.” But then he discovered Gick merely was suffering so he couldn’t get the ball up to the plate.
From the Times of
March 14:
[The pitching staff] is further reduced to 11 with the probable loss of Rookie George Gick, whose arm tightened up and was perhaps ruined for all time when a minor league manager forced him to pitch almost every day for three weeks last spring. For the first time this year, Gick tried to throw in batting practice yesterday, but was shot putting the ball in evident pain.
The Sporting News
of March 16 mentioned the problem:
George Gick might be able to make a strong bid if it wasn’t for an arm which went lame last summer and hasn’t recovered. A long vacation may be necessary to eliminate the difficulty.
A report in the March 19 San
Diego Union said that George was expected to pitch in an exhibition game
against the Pacific Coast League’s San Diego Padres, but I found no indication
that he actually did. On March 21 he was sent down to Longview of the East
Texas League, where he had begun his pro career two years earlier; Longview was
excited to get him, as shown in this article from the March 26 Dallas Morning News:
LONGVIEW, Texas, March 27 [sic].—Two pitchers who should win twenty games apiece arrived in the Longview Cannibals’ camp here Friday night, reporting from the Chicago White Sox camp in Pasadena, Manager John Fitzpatrick of the Cannibals announced Saturday.
George Gick, 21-year-old boy [actually 23-year-old boy] who pitched with Shreveport last year, is one of them, and Tom Fleming, who pitched awhile with the Cannibals last season, is the other. Both have been training with the White Sox for several weeks.
Gick had a fair season with the second division Sports last year. The Sox figured he could well spend a year in Class C ball to get a sore arm back in good condition and be ready for another trial next spring. He is a speed-ball pitcher and a blazing fast one…
But George’s arm never got back in good condition, and his
career was over. He went back to Benton County. The 1940 census shows him and
Anna Marie living in Otterbein, a town in Bolivar Township, and George’s
occupation as fireman helper, for an aluminum company, working 40 hours a week,
and his 1939 earnings are shown as $320.
Sometime after that he got back into farming; a January 1946
article in the Rushville Evening Daily
Republican on the results of the Indiana Corn Growers Association’s
official soybean yield contest shows George as one of the runners-up at 47.2
bushels per acre. The following year he won the Association’s corn contest.
During
April of 1959 a classified ad ran in the Logansport
Pharos Tribune, reading “George Gick, Otterbein, Ind., Ph. 314-F-3. PIONEER
SEED CORN dealer.” On April 7, 1967, the Terre
Haute Tribune reported:
KILLED BY BOOM
LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP)—Glenn S. Jones, 60, Newton, was killed Thursday when a boom fell and broke his neck as he was installing silo equipment on the George Gick farm 14 miles southeast of Lafayette.
By 1992 George was living in the city of Lafayette. On
January 2, 2001, he got a feature article in the Logansport Pharos Tribune:
Fowler man throws himself a twist of fate
LAFAYETTE (AP)—It’s 1937 and every Benton County boy idolizes George Gick, 21, a lanky Pine Township farmer who is pitching for the Chicago White Sox.
“He was a flame thrower,” said Jim Newell, 76, who grew up in Templeton. “All the guys wanted to be George Gick. He was a big strong, good-looking fellow, and all the girls were crazy about him.”
Gick was with the Sox from 1936 to 1939 and pitched in two big-league games before permanently injuring his throwing arm.
Now, 85, he lives in Lafayette.
In his living room hangs a photo of a smiling, handsome young man in a Sox uniform. Below, on a shelf sits a 65-year-old baseball.
The ball was used in the last game of the 1937 season, a Sox victory over the St. Louis Browns. Monty Stratton pitched six innings; Gick pitched the last three [actually three and two]. After the game, Stratton said, “Hell, Gicky, this is your ball. You take it.”
Baseball was unquestionably the American Game then, and its heroes—including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig—were kings in knee socks.
Gick was part of that world, and he remains a striking man—white haired, standing ramrod straight at 6-foot-1. His hands are enormous. They got big and strong, he said, from years of hard farm work: shucking corn, milking cows, driving horses. Throwing a rubber ball against the side of a barn taught him how to throw the field.
There were 10 boys and three girls in the family. Their father farmed 1,040 acres—a huge farm in those days.
“You went out in the field and worked from 6 in the morning until 6 at night, ate supper, then hit fly balls and chased fly balls,” he said. “We did that every day. Kids played more ball then.”
His overhand fastball led Pine Township high school to the county championship in 1933.
Gick illegally earned $25 a game as a semipro player when he was still a schoolboy. “That was a mound of money in those days. You got $17 to $25 for 100 bushels of corn.”
Gick played Legion ball and minor-league ball. In 1936 he tried out with the Sox, and they signed him.
In 1937, he won 15 games with a Sox farm team in Louisiana and was brought back to Chicago. A newspaper article from that period says that Gick “had more on the ball than anybody that year.”
In 1938, earning $250 a month, he pitched two innings in the Sox’s first game against the Detroit Tigers, allowing no hits and no runs.
The club had several good pitchers, and sent Gick to Shreveport, where he starred in the Texas League.
A 1-0 victory stands out, he said, because the winning run was scored on a ball that bounced into the “Negroes Only” restroom. None of the white ballplayers would go in after it.
Gick ruined his arm from overuse, pitching 20 games in 37 days.
For instance, two days after pitching 14 innings, he was in relief, and the next day started another game.
In a game against Beaumont, La. [Tx.], an opposing player, “School Boy” Rowe, told him, “You’re not pitching. Your arm is hurting.”
“It was the last game I ever pitched,” Gick said. “I shouldn’t have been sent down there.”
Gick attended spring training in 1939, but his arm remained sore. Today, sports surgeons would be able to mend his injury; back then, it was inoperable.
“They were sorry they had sent me down there,” Gick said. “They wouldn’t have pitched me that way in Chicago.”
Disappointed, Gick returned to the farm, worked at Alcoa, Purdue and for the state highway department. He has a wife, four children, 11 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.
He has many memories, too, and no regrets.
“Things have turned out good. You can’t think about what might have been. I have a good family and I have had a good life.”
Anna Marie passed away on February 14, 2005, and George followed
on August 12, 2008, two months short of his 93rd birthday. His death
certificate gave his occupation as farmer, his residence as in Lafayette, and
his cause of death as “cerebrovascular accident,” a stroke.
No comments:
Post a Comment