Time Machine: Hal Trosky

Editor's note: This is a first in a series of Eastern Iowa sports history 'Time Machine” articles. Mark Dukes worked at The Gazette from 1973 to 1998, the last 14 years as sports editor.

By Mark Dukes, correspondent

He brushed shoulders with Babe Ruth, once was considered baseball's next great power hitter, and found himself on the front of the Wheaties cereal box.

Heady stuff for a farm boy from Iowa. But Hal Trosky Sr. lived it. In an 11-year Major League Baseball career, he compiled numbers few could claim.

A glowing example was in 1936. His numbers were as eye-popping as a high-arcing homer to the upper deck.

l Batting average: .343

l Home runs: 42

l Runs batted in: 162

That was Trosky's third full season in the bigs with the Cleveland Indians. He led the American League in RBIs, extra base hits and total bases. And, yet, Trosky was only 10th in AL Most Valuable Player voting.

Inexplicable?

Perhaps, until you consider six of the players who finished ahead of him in the voting are in the Hall of Fame - Lou Gehrig, Luke Appling, Earl Averill, Charlie Gehringer, Bill Dickey and Joe DiMaggio. And as first basemen go, Trosky was considered perhaps fourth-best behind Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx and Hank Greenberg.

Wheaties put his likeness on its cereal box in 1937. But by career's end, Trosky never played in an All-Star Game and never got a vote for the Hall of Fame. His major-league log was brilliant - .302 career average, 228 homers, 1,012 RBIs - but overshadowed by some of the game's greats.

Unarguably, Trosky is one of the best baseball players to come out of Iowa and the most successful position player from tradition-rich Norway.

He was born Harold Arthur Trojovsky in 1912, the son of second-generation immigrants from the area in Germany known as Bohemia. The family settled on a 400-acre farm in Norway in 1917. He and his siblings changed their last name after Trosky signed his first contract.

Trosky was a coveted prospect coming out of high school, drawing interest most seriously from the Indians, Cardinals and Athletics. He signed with local scout Cy Slapnicka of the Indians shortly before receiving an offer from Connie Mack and the powerhouse Philadelphia Athletics. Slapnicka signed 31 players during his career, including Bob Feller and Bob Lemon.

The Cedar Rapids Bunnies were Trosky's first professional team in 1931 at a monthly salary of $65. Signed primarily as a pitcher, he took the mound in 13 games for Cedar Rapids with a 2-2 record and 4.75 earned run average. He quickly was converted to a full-time first baseman.

Trosky, 6-foot-2 and 207 pounds, made his major-league debut Sept. 11, 1933, against the Washington Senators at age 19, going hitless in three at-bats. Only two games later, he had his first brush with greatness when the Indians visited Yankee Stadium.

Mike Trosky, one of Hal's grandsons, spent most summer weekends with his grandfather after he had retired from baseball and was operating the family dairy farm and later selling insurance.

'My grandpa and I, we spent every Saturday together when I was in elementary and junior high and in doing so, he would share stories about other men and some of the games,” said Trosky, who played baseball and football at Cedar Rapids Jefferson and coached locally for 26 years. 'He never spent any time talking about himself unless it was related to another story.

'Two stories stuck with me all my life. The first one was when he played his first game against the Yankees in Yankee Stadium. He was 19 at the time and playing first base. Babe Ruth had just got on base. Like a first baseman does, grandpa went to hold Ruth on. But Ruth said, ‘I'd back up kid. I'm not going anywhere. And if you don't this next guy is going take your head off.' The next guy up was Lou Gehrig. Sure enough, Gehrig hit a liner so hard that it took grandpa's glove into right field. Ruth got to third and gave grandpa a nod like he was saying. ‘Told you so.'”

That same season, Trosky laid his eyes on Boston's Fenway Park for the first time. He had previously been a right-handed hitter who batted cross-handed, but had converted to the left side of the plate.

'At the time, he was in a 0-for-something slump,'' Mike Trosky said. 'He saw the green monster and decided to hit right-handed. He hit a couple homers and a couple doubles that series. But when they got on the train, the manager called grandpa over and said, ‘I'm paying you to hit left-handed and you'll never hit right-handed again.'”

Trosky may well have been the AL Rookie of the Year in 1934 had there been such an award at the time (first awarded in 1949). He batted .330 with 35 home runs and 142 RBIs while playing every inning of all 154 games. He finished seventh in the AL MVP voting, behind six players who are in the Hall of Fame and ahead of four others who are enshrined.

Ruth retired after the 1934 season. Legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice penned the following: 'The dull roar of the home run remains one of the game's leading features and it is about time nominations were in order for the Babe's successor. The two leading entries at this point are Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Foxx. But there is another young challenger on the way by the name of Trosky.”

Migraine headaches, first surfacing in the 1939 season when Trosky was 26, began sapping his effectiveness and ultimately robbed him of perhaps a Hall of Fame career. His playing time declined significantly in 1941 because of the headaches and a broken thumb. Trosky resigned himself to farming until the White Sox signed him in 1944. He called it quits after that season, but again went back to the Sox for 88 games in 1946 before retiring for good.

'The migraines were so bad that they blurred his vision,” Mike Trosky said. 'Obviously at that level, the ball is coming in at 90 miles per hour and you can't play if you can't see. I'm not sure how many years later it was, but grandpa found out they were due to a milk allergy. Him being a dairy farmer, that was odd.”

Hal Trosky's legacy is that of an outstanding major league player, earning him induction into the inaugural Indians Hall of Fame in 1951. And it also is one that includes a family tree filled with outstanding baseball players and athletes. His son, Hal Jr., pitched in two games with the White Sox. The family surnames of Mattiace, Primrose, Boddicker and Freese - all well-known names in Eastern Iowa baseball history - all are traced to Hal Sr.

Years after Hal's playing career ended and his death, in 1979 at age 66, the Trosky name found its way to the Hall of Fame.

Nate Trosky, Hal's grandson by way of Lynn Trosky, was an all-American collegiate player at Hawaii Pacific University. He later coached in the minor leagues and in college, and managed teams in Europe. He started the Trosky Baseball School in Carmel, Calif., and became a country singer.

It was the guitar and voice that got the Trosky name into baseball's all-time annals. Inspired by his love of baseball and his music career, Nate Trosky composed a song titled 'Born At The Right Time” (available on YouTube). It is a tribute to Jackie Robinson and written in 2007 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Robinson breaking the baseball color barrier.

Nate contacted the Hall of Fame and it adopted the song into a permanent exhibit of Robinson in Cooperstown. The song was played in numerous stadiums in 2007 as part of the anniversary celebration.

Mike Trosky said Nate and other family members are contemplating a book about Hal Trosky Sr.

l Contact Dukes at markdukes0@gmail.com with your thoughts and ideas