Word has just reached me of the death earlier this month of
Myron Nathan “Joe” Ginsberg at 86. Ginsberg’s main claim to
attention outside of his own family was that he was a catcher for
seven Major League Baseball teams (Tigers, Indians, Athletics,
Orioles, both Sox, and Mets) between 1948 and 1962.
There were few on-field highlights in the Ginsberg career, all
of which was spent as a backup. His best day in the bigs was
catching one of Virgil Trucks’ two no-hitters for the 1952 Tigers.
His final MLB game was the home opener for the disastrously inept
1962 Mets (the team that inspired a book entitled Can’t Anybody
Here Play This Game?).
Though Ginsberg played all or part of 13 big league seasons, he
had fewer than 2,000 at bats in his career, hit just 20 home runs
(I bet he could remember every one of them), and batted .241
between the Truman and JFK administrations.
Ginsberg was one of those guys — like Wayne Terwilliger, Rocky
Bridges, et al. — who used their minimal baseball talent (minimal
in relation to the stars — just making the bigs implies
considerable athletic skill) to avoid legitimate work for more than
a decade by playing baseball in the big leagues — a major league
dugout presumed to have more quotidian charm than a mine or factory
or foundry.
Outfits like Topps and Bowman made the names and likenesses of
guys like these familiar to legions of young American boys by
putting them on bubblegum baseball cards. I was a keen collector of
these during the early years of Ginsberg’s career. Many a time and
oft I peeled the wrapper off of a new card in hopes of a likeness
of Yogi Berra, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, or Duke Snider, only to
find yet another iteration of, you guessed it, Myron “Joe” Ginsberg
(or Wayne Terwilliger, or Charlie Silvera, or Rocky Bridges, or
Hobie Landrith, or…).
OK, I’m over the disappointment now. And in fairness it should
be said that any lad who wished a complete set of cards had to have
Ginsberg’s as well as those of the stars. None of the short pieces
I’ve read about Ginsberg’s passing said anything about what he did
in life during the half century between that final April game with
the dismal Mets and his death this month. Though one mentioned that
before he began his baseball career Ginsberg served the final year
of WWII with the U.S. Army in the Philippines.
I hope it was a happy life. Ginsberg may well have been
successful at something after baseball. You have to be both smart
and tough to be a catcher at the big league level, even a backup.
And he was always reliable when his number was called. Whatever
happened post-baseball, he surely was able to enjoy that American
distinction so few can claim, of being an ex-big-leaguer.
RIP Myron “Joe” Ginsberg. And God bless all those who played the
Grand Old Game in the Ginsberg/Terwilliger/Bridges division. They
too served.
