Sayin' goodbye to the Duke and Chuck

Two belated goodbyes to recent passings as Hall of Fame player Duke Snider and former player and more notably manager Chuck Tanner both recently moved onto greener diamonds.

Duke Snider was one of the more underrated players in the history of the game as he had the misfortune to spend his prime in the days of three team baseball in New York.
That would not have been so bad,had the other two teams not had two guys named Mays and Mantle patrolling their center field.
As good as Snider was,he was not the force that either of those two were and as a result,Snider was somewhat pushed to the side,despite his top notch play.
Check this link for a past post by us on the New York centerfielders...
This showed in the amount of time that Snider had to wait before his enshrinement in Cooperstown as his last season was 1964 and his HOF year was 1980..
One thing that hurt Snider and his huge drop in power was the Dodgers move to Los Angeles.
Snider fell from hitting 40+ homers for five years in a row to only hitting more than sixteen once in his final seven years in the game.
The Los Angeles Coliseum's temporary baseball configuration was a dream come true for a righthanded slugger but a stat destroyer to a power hitter from the left side like Snider.
Between age and playing in that ballpark,Snider's career would never recover,although one could make an argument that it was leveling out that Snider hit some homers in Brooklyn's smallish Ebbets Field that would have been outs otherwise.
The Duke did some announcing for the Montreal Expos after his final season that was spent with the Giants as a reserve and ace pinch hitter and was well received for his relaxed style of broadcasting.
Not all was perfect after the game as Snider was convicted for tax fraud in the 1990's for not reporting all of his income from memorabilia shows and was fined heavily,although he avoided jail time..
Farewell to one of the most underrated members of the Hall of Fame-Duke Snider.
The Duke was 84 years old.

Chuck Tanner was a journeyman player in the 50's and early 60's that was better known for his work in the dugouts managing four teams,most notably the 1979 Pirates to the franchise's last world title.
Tanner finished with an under .500 record as a manager,but looking closely at his numbers it took managing two awful clubs (85 Pirates,86-88 Braves)to drop his record that far.
Chuck Tanner also did one of the games most underrated managing jobs in keeping the 1972 White Sox in the AL West race with the powerful Oakland Athletics deep into the final month of the season with a team that basically had Dick Allen as its total offense.
Tanner was also known for a laid back style that helped him get the most out of players that had had issues with other skippers such as Allen,although this backfired on him in the early 1980's when the drug scandal hit the Pirates locker room and basically hurt many careers including Tanner's.
Chuck Tanner was also known for being one of the friendliest persons in the game to fans and media and I don't remember too many negative comments on Tanner as a result,even his teams were struggling....

Farewell to both Duke Snider and Chuck Tanner and our condolences to their families...


For a far better writer than I's thoughts on Snider and Tanner,click their names to the left.

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