Richie Ashburn
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Don Richard "Richie" Ashburn (March 19 1927 - September 9 1997) was an American center fielder in Major League Baseball. He was born in Tilden, Nebraska. From his youth on a farm, he grew up to become a professional outfielder and veteran broadcaster for the Philadelphia Phillies, and one of the most beloved sports figures in Philadelphia history.
Ashburn spent 12 of his 15 major-league seasons as the Phillies' center fielder (from 1948 through 1959, one of the famous "Whiz Kids"), during which he led the National League twice in batting average (.308 lifetime batting average) and routinely led the league in fielding percentage. He played for the Chicago Cubs in 1960 and 1961. Upon his retirement from the infamous 1962 New York Mets, he became a radio and TV color commentator for the Phillies starting in 1963, where he was paired for 27 seasons with the 2002 Ford C. Frick Award-winning broadcaster Harry Kalas, who joined the Phillies in 1971. During that time, Ashburn and Kalas became best friends. Ashburn also regularly wrote for The Philadelphia Bulletin and, later, The Philadelphia Daily News.
Ashburn was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Hall's Veterans Committee in 1995 and was inducted in the same ceremony with Phillies great Mike Schmidt. Over 25,000 fans, mostly from Philadelphia, traveled to Cooperstown for the ceremony.
Ashburn died unexpectedly in his sleep of a heart attack in New York City at age 70, after broadcasting a Phillies-Mets game at Shea Stadium. A large crowd of fans paid tribute to him, passing by his coffin in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. He is interred in the Gladwyne Methodist Church Cemetery, at Gladwyne, Pennsylvania.
The center-field entertaiment area at the Phillies current stadium, Citizens Bank Park, is named Ashburn Alley in his honor.
Trivia
- During an August 17 1957 game, Ashburn hit a foul ball into the stands that struck spectator Alice Roth, wife of Philadelphia Bulletin sports editor Earl Roth, breaking her nose. When play resumed, Ashburn fouled off another ball that struck Roth while she was being carried off in a stretcher.
- The band Yo La Tengo tooks its name from an Ashburn anecdote from the inaugural 1962 season of the New York Mets. Frequently, on short flies to center or left-center, center fielder Ashburn would collide with shortstop Elio Chacón. Chacón, from Venezuela, spoke little English and had difficulty understanding when Ashburn was calling him off the ball. To remedy matters, someone in the Mets organization taught Ashburn to say "Yo la tengo," Spanish for "I’ve got it." When Ashburn first used this phrase, it worked fine in keeping Chacón from running into him. But left fielder Frank Thomas didn’t understand the phrase, and thus slammed into Ashburn.
External links
- [Baseball Hall of Fame]
- [Baseball-Reference.com] - career statistics and analysis
- [Baseball Library]
- [The Deadball Era]
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