{"id":23467,"date":"2021-10-06T11:50:16","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T16:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=23467"},"modified":"2021-10-06T11:56:39","modified_gmt":"2021-10-06T16:56:39","slug":"obit-watch-october-6-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=23467","title":{"rendered":"Obit watch: October 6, 2021."},"content":{"rendered":"

Eddie Robinson<\/a> has passed away. He was 100.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to snark here. He was part of baseball for 60 years<\/strong>, as a player:<\/p>\n

At 6 feet 2 inches and 210 pounds \u2014 good size for his era \u2014 the left-handed-hitting Robinson clubbed 16 home runs and drove in 83 runs to help the 1948 Indians capture the team\u2019s first pennant since 1920 en route to defeating the Boston Braves in a six-game World Series. Playing in every Series game, Robinson batted .300.<\/a>
\nHe drove in more than 100 runs and played in the All-Star Game in three consecutive seasons in the early 1950s, with the Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics, and in 1951 became the first White Sox player to drive a home run over the roof of the old Comiskey Park.<\/a>
\nThe Yankees obtained Robinson before the 1954 season in a multiplayer trade with the Athletics. He pinch-hit and played behind first basemen Joe Collins and Bill Skowron and flashed his power when 16 of his 36 hits in 1955 were home runs. He played in his second World Series when the Yankees lost to the Brooklyn Dodgers in seven games that October.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a scout:<\/p>\n

In his memoir, \u201cLucky Me\u201d (2011, with C. Paul Rogers III), Robinson wrote how the Yankee owner George Steinbrenner offered him the team\u2019s general manager\u2019s post in June 1982 and related that he \u201cconsidered George one of my real friends in baseball.\u201d But he decided to work as a Yankee scout and consultant instead, since he was well aware of Steinbrenner\u2019s reputation as a difficult boss.<\/a>
\n\u201cIt didn\u2019t take long for George and me to get crossways,\u201d Robinson recalled. He told how Steinbrenner had cooled to him after he agreed only reluctantly to be present for an October 1982 draft session; he and his wife had had a trip to Europe planned. He continued as a Yankee scout through 1985.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…<\/p>\n

After his playing days, Robinson was a coach for the Orioles, a farm director for several teams, the general manager of the Atlanta Braves and the Texas Rangers, and a scout for the Red Sox, whom he worked for in 2004, his last year in baseball, as well as for the Yankees before that.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How long was he in baseball? This long:<\/p>\n

Robinson played a role in a poignant baseball event in the summer of 1948.<\/a>
\nWhen Babe Ruth, dying of cancer, was about to take the field at Yankee Stadium on the afternoon of June 13 for a ceremony retiring his No. 3, Robinson was in Cleveland\u2019s dugout.<\/a>
\n\u201cHe looked like he needed help physically, and I took a bat out of the bat rack and gave it to him,\u201d Robinson told Major League Baseball in a 2020 interview. \u201cHe carried it up to home plate, and he used it as a kind of a crutch. When he came back, I got the bat and had him sign it.\u201d<\/a>
\nNat Fein of The Herald Tribune in New York won a Pulitzer Prize for his rear view photograph depicting Ruth in Yankee pinstripes leaning on the bat, which belonged to Feller.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Cynthia Harris<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A veteran of the New York stage, Harris joined the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Company in 1971, playing the role of Sarah originated by Barbara Barrie, and in 1993 co-founded The Actors Company Theater, where she served as artistic director and appeared in dozens of productions.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She also knocked around TV a bit: she was Wallis Simpson in the “Edward and Mrs. Simpson” mini series, played Dr. Asten’s wife on a couple of episodes of “Quincy”, and the mother of Paul Reiser’s character on “Mad About You”, among other roles<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eddie Robinson has passed away. He was 100. I’m not going to snark here. He was part of baseball for 60 years, as a player: At 6 feet 2 inches and 210 pounds \u2014 good size for his era \u2014 the left-handed-hitting Robinson clubbed 16 home runs and drove in 83 runs to help the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[150,16,80,49,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1970s","category-obits","category-sports","category-theatre","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23467"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23473,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23467\/revisions\/23473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}