As a kid growing up you latch onto certain players.
It was easy to be a Mickey Mantle fan or a Bob Gibson fan. These guys were legendary players. But I was an Indians fan through and through. So I had to have my favorite player be an Indian, right? You know, it probably would have been Rocky Colavito but he was traded before I latched onto a favorite player. I was left-handed and owned a Bobby Shantz glove but, as I said, my heart was with the Indians. So, for some reason, maybe because he was one of their better players, maybe because he was left-handed, too, I latched onto Tito Francona as my favorite baseball player.
As I have said before I listened to Indians games on the radio and when he was traded to St. Louis I was able, after dark, to listen to him on one of the most powerful radio stations at the time, KMOX. I followed his career through Baseball America and the newspaper, including his 5 hit game with Oakland.
There is a great article about his career that you can find here and his wiki page here Looking at his career stats (Tito Francona Stats, Height, Weight, Position, Rookie Status & More | Baseball-Reference.com ) it strikes me that he often walked more than he struck out but still hit for power. He lost the batting title in 1959 as he hit .363 but only had 399 ABs, losing to Harvey Kuenn, his future teammate (arrrght, Rocky Colavito trade) because he didn't have enough ABs. He would have been 1 AB short except that the rules changes in 1957 making him 34 ABs short due to missing time with a leg injury.
It is hard to believe that his son is now the manager of Cleveland's baseball team and he has given us even more joy at being an Indians/Guardians fan than what I got rooting for his dad.
Still, here we are, over 60 years later and I can honestly say that my favorite baseball player ever is Tito Francona. He brightened the life of this Cleveland area kid and, even all these years later, those memories still brighten the hallways of my mind.
Go Guardians!
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