RetroSimba

Aaron Herr had reason to think his baseball story would have a fabled climax.

After his playing career stalled in the Braves’ system, Herr, 24, went to a Cardinals farm club in 2005 and experienced a revival. Wearing a uniform jersey with the organization’s iconic birds on the bat seemed to conjure something magical in his game. He hit for average and with power. Talent evaluators took notice.

A former Cardinals batboy, Aaron was a second baseman, same position his father, Tommy Herr, played for 1980s Cardinals clubs that won three National League pennants and a World Series title.

Now, it seemed, Aaron Herr was following in those footsteps, firmly on a path toward reaching the major leagues as a second baseman for St. Louis.

It turned out the plot line was too good to be true.

High hopes

A standout high school shortstop in Lancaster, Pa., Aaron Herr was a supplemental pick of the Braves in the first round of the 2000 amateur draft. Another first-round pick of the Braves that year was pitcher Adam Wainwright.

Receiving an $850,000 signing bonus, Herr entered the Braves’ farm system as a second baseman. He underwent reconstructive right knee surgery in 2001 and had two follow-up arthroscopic procedures. After five seasons, Herr had advanced no higher than Class AA.

In December 2004, the Mariners selected him in the minor-league draft. After seeing Herr at 2005 spring training, the Mariners informed him he’d be a utility infielder at Class AA. Stunned to be relegated to a reserve role, Herr asked for and was granted his release.

“I lay in bed every night and I just wonder,” Herr said to Jason Guarente of Lancaster Newspapers. “I think about if things could have been different.”

Herr planned to play for an independent minor-league team, the Lancaster (Pa.) Barnstormers, managed by his father, but on the eve of the 2005 season opener the Cardinals offered a one-year contract to play in their farm system.

“We thought he’d definitely be an upgrade from what we had in double-A,” Cardinals director of player development Bruce Manno told Lancaster Newspapers.

Fresh start

Assigned to Springfield (Mo.), Herr was given uniform No. 38. (His father wore No. 28 with the Cardinals.) Though the word “Springfield” was on the front of the jersey, the rest of the uniform looked similar to the one worn by the big-league Cardinals. “This is the happiest I’ve been in professional baseball … I feel like a kid again, back in Little League,” Herr told the Springfield News-Leader. “I’ve always wanted to be able to put on a Cardinals uniform, so I’m doing everything possible to impress the right people.”

A right-handed batter, Herr (whose father was a switch-hitter) struggled at the plate his first few games with Springfield. “His swing was absolutely ugly,” hitting coach Dallas Williams told Springfield reporter Kary Booher.

Williams corrected a hitch in Herr’s swing and it made a positive difference. Herr led Springfield in home runs (21), batted .298 and produced 81 RBI. It was the most successful of his six seasons in the minors. “The job he did there was very impressive,” Bruce Manno told Lancaster Newspapers.

There were things, though, the Cardinals didn’t like. Herr struck out 108 times and had a mere 15 walks. He also made 22 errors at second base. “There are times when Herr just takes too much time getting to ground balls and tries to backhand them, then ends up in trouble,” the Springfield newspaper noted.

Bruce Manno told Harold Zeigler of Lancaster Newspapers, “Defensively, I think he needs to continue to work and improve. We talked to him about what he needs to do in the offseason to try to improve his defensive skills. If he can improve defensively, he’s got a chance to play at a higher level.”

Unfazed, Herr said to his hometown paper, “Hitting is going to get you to the big leagues … My defense will be good enough. That’s something I’ll work on. I know I can play second base.”

Moving on

After his season at Springfield, Herr became a free agent and said he wanted to re-sign with the Cardinals. “I love putting on that Cardinals jersey … I think that was one of the reasons I had such a good season,” Herr told Lancaster Newspapers. “I felt more at home with them than I ever had with any other team. I was in a comfort zone. I went to the field every day happy.”

However, Herr said he wanted a promise he’d be invited to the big-league training camp in February and given a chance to show manager Tony La Russa what he could do. “That’s a must,” Herr said. “My ultimate goal is to make the big leagues, and I’d prefer the Cardinals, but, with the kind of year I had, somebody’s going to give me what I want.”

The Cardinals didn’t accept Herr’s terms. In November 2005, he signed with the Reds, who invited him to their big-league training camp. “They’re not afraid to bring young guys up and give them a chance,” Herr told reporter Jason Guarente.

Reds director of player development Tim Naehring told Lancaster Newspapers, “Aaron has some outstanding power numbers. He has been seen by multiple people in our organization who feel at some point in his career he’ll be an everyday major-league player … We don’t have anybody with comparable production in our middle infield.”

Hit and miss

Herr went to big-league spring training with the 2006 Reds, but didn’t make the team. Instead, he was assigned to Class AA Chattanooga, shifted to third base and hit .287. He was promoted to Class AAA Louisville in July but injured a wrist. When he played, there were nights manager Rick Sweet “wondered if Herr was so determined to hit that he forgot that baseball players carried gloves as well as bats,” Rick Bozich of the Louisville Courier-Journal noted.

Sweet, a former big-league catcher, got through to Herr. In 2007, when Herr returned to Louisville, he often took extra practice at third base. To help Herr enhance his potential value to a big-league club, Sweet used him at both second and third throughout the season.

Herr, 26, had a terrific 2007 season for Louisville. He and first baseman Joey Votto tied for the team lead in total bases (each with 237). Herr produced 31 doubles, 19 home runs, 83 RBI, and did well enough in the field to impress Sweet.

“Aaron is the best all-around hitter on this team, if you’re talking about hitting for average, for power or controlling the strike zone,” Sweet told the Courier-Journal. “He’s also the most improved player on this team. That’s the thing that makes me the happiest for Aaron Herr. He’s becoming a good all-around baseball player, including his defense.”

However, the Reds promoted Mark Bellhorn from Louisville instead of Herr to fill a backup infield spot late in the season. The Reds said they considered calling up Herr but opted for Bellhorn, 33, because he had big-league experience.

After eight seasons in the minors, Herr was left to wonder what it would take for him to reach the big leagues. His father told Mike Gross of Lancaster Newspapers, “He had a great year … Did everything that was asked of him … He needs somebody to vouch for him.”

Bitter end

The 2008 season was Herr’s last with a farm club affiliated with a major-league franchise. From 2009-11 he played for the independent Lancaster Barnstormers. (Aaron’s brother, Jordan Herr, also spent a season with Lancaster in 2008.)

In 2010, when Tommy Herr was Lancaster’s manager, Aaron Herr played third base and hit .321 with 35 doubles, 23 homers and 103 RBI. (The team’s center fielder was Joe Gaetti, son of former Cardinals third baseman Gary Gaetti.)

Herr’s 12th and final minor-league season was with Lancaster in 2011. The manager was Butch Hobson, the former Red Sox third baseman and manager. Herr played right field.

Before the start of the Atlantic League playoffs in September 2011, Hobson cut Herr, 30, from the team, citing insufficient fielding skills. “He’s a hitter, that’s what he is, and I didn’t see him fitting in with my team for what I wanted to do for the playoffs,” Hobson told Lancaster Newspapers.

Herr said to the newspaper, “I try not to have bitter feelings but I do. I can’t get myself not to … I really felt like I got smacked in the face.”

The Yankees thought Frank Leja was the next Lou Gehrig. The Cardinals later hoped he might be another Jim Gentile. Leja never claimed to be like anyone else. He just wanted a fair chance to show he could hit in the big leagues.

At 6-foot-4, 215 pounds, Leja was a first baseman and left-handed slugger who had major-league clubs clambering to sign him after he graduated from high school in 1953.

He was 17 years old _ too young to vote or to buy a beer in his home state of Massachusetts _ but ballclubs wanted to pay him a big bonus and bring him directly to the majors.

Paul Krichell, the scout who found Lou Gehrig for the Yankees, also got Leja for them. Krichell told the New York Times that Leja was the “closest thing to Lou Gehrig I ever have signed.”

Bidding war

Leja (pronounced Lee-juh) was from the Massachusetts town of Holyoke, once known as the Paper City because of its abundant mills. His ancestry was Polish.

Home was on the top floor of a two-family house. In 1946, when he was 10, Leja took an interest in playing first base because that’s where his favorite big-leaguer, Stan Musial, also of Polish heritage, had shifted to with the Cardinals.

A coach, former Boston Braves infielder Ed Moriarty, had a positive influence on Leja. As a prep senior in 1953, Leja hit .423 and led Holyoke to a state title. He also was an honor roll student and treasurer of the high school Latin Club.

In the summer after his senior year, Leja played American Legion baseball. To protect the integrity of the amateur game, big-league clubs weren’t supposed to attempt to sign American Legion players while their season was under way, but the Cleveland Indians, Milwaukee Braves and New York Giants couldn’t resist negotiating with a prospect as intriguing as Leja.

Ed Moriarty recommended Leja to a former Boston Braves teammate, Cleveland manager Al Lopez. When in Boston for a June 1953 series, Cleveland general manager Hank Greenberg, a former slugging first baseman, brought Leja to Fenway Park and put him in uniform for a workout. A newspaper photographer posed Leja with Lopez and first baseman Luke Easter. Lopez said Leja would be the successor to Easter, a left-handed power hitter who turned 38 that year.

American Legion officials complained to baseball commissioner Ford Frick, who fined the Braves, Giants and Indians for negotiating with Leja while his amateur league season was in progress.

In September, when American Legion play was completed, most big-league clubs joined in a hot pursuit of Leja.

He went to Chicago, where White Sox general manager Frank Lane handed him a check for $75,000, according to the Boston Globe. Leja handed it back.

The Phillies were aggressive, too. “I was willing to go up to $90,000 with him, but he turned me down,” Phillies farm director Joe Reardon told the Globe.

Cleveland officials “seemed quite certain they would get the boy,” The Sporting News reported. They met with Leja and his father in a New York hotel room to finalize a deal. “We told them what we were asking,” Leja recalled to Ted Ashby of the Globe, “and they left the room for a conference. After waiting for four hours in a room with Tris Speaker (then a Cleveland hitting instructor), we walked out.”

Leja contacted Paul Krichell and told him he would sign with the Yankees.

Yankee dandy

Krichell, 70, the Yankees’ head scout, had done a masterful job of selling Leja on the idea of wearing pinstripes.

Born in Paris, France, a son of a German cabinetmaker, Krichell grew up in the Bronx and became a catcher for the St. Louis Browns before he took up scouting for the Yankees. He signed Gehrig in 1923 and later brought Tony Lazzeri, Phil Rizzuto and Whitey Ford to the Yankees.

Krichell had Leja imagining what it would be like to follow in the footsteps of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio. The star-struck teen told United Press, “I’ve always been a great admirer of DiMaggio. I figure if I make good on Broadway I also can get lucky and find a Marilyn Monroe.”

Headed to their fifth consecutive World Series title in 1953, the Yankees had three future Hall of Famers among the regulars (catcher Yogi Berra, shortstop Phil Rizzuto and center fielder Mickey Mantle) but not at first base, where Joe Collins played. Krichell had Leja convinced he could replace Collins before too long.

In a workout at Yankee Stadium before he signed, Leja launched pitches from Vic Raschi into the bleachers and took a liking to the short distance, a mere 296 feet, from home plate to the fence down the right field line. Manager Casey Stengel grandly gestured with his hand toward the upper reaches of Yankee Stadium and said to Leja, “Son, the stadium was built by Ruth and you’ve got what Ruth had.”

Stengel’s statement “may be malarkey, and probably is, but, brother, I melted into a little lump and told my father I wanted to sign with the Yankees,” Leja recalled to Ben Epstein of the New York Mirror.

Though the Indians, Phillies and White Sox may have given him more money, the Yankees’ glamour lured Leja. He took their offer of a $45,000 bonus paid over two years _ $22,500 per year, the New York Times reported.

Major League Baseball had a rule then that any amateur who got a signing bonus of more than $4,000 had to stay with the big-league club for two full years. Leja was the first player the Yankees gave such a bonus to under those terms.

“He’s the most experienced 17-year-old I ever saw … I like the boy,” Stengel told the Associated Press.

After Leja signed on Oct. 1, 1953, he was sent to play winter ball in San Juan on a team managed by Yankees employee Harry Craft. Leja went hitless in his first 21 at-bats, but Yankees farm director Lee MacPhail said to The Sporting News, “What we wanted was for him to get plenty of batting practice and work in the field at first base under our coaches _ and he’s had lots of that.”

Inside but out

Leja arrived at the Yankees’ spring training clubhouse in 1954 and found that teammates had hung a money bag filled with phony dollar bills inside his locker, the Boston Globe reported.

With his $22,500 bonus, plus a $6,500 salary, the 18-year-old was being paid more that year than Mickey Mantle ($21,000 salary) and many other Yankees.

“The Yankees resented this fresh, young kid getting ($45,000) in bonus money,” Stan Isaacs of Newsday wrote.

Leja told the Globe, “Here I was, a year out of high school and my locker was next to someone (Hank Bauer) I’d watched on television in the World Series only a few months ago … I was in awe of everything going on.”

The first time Leja got into a game as a Yankee was as a pinch-runner in a spring training exhibition versus the Cardinals. “I was so jittery I couldn’t spit,” he recalled to the New York Mirror.

During the 1954 season, Stengel platooned a more experienced rookie, Bill Skowron, 23, who had played college baseball at Purdue and spent three seasons in the minors, with Joe Collins, 31, at first base.

Leja rarely left the bench. His major-league debut on May 1, 1954, came in the ninth inning of a game against Cleveland. Facing a future Hall of Famer, Early Wynn, Leja popped out to second. Boxscore

The teen’s first (and only) big-league hit was a single against Athletics left-hander Al Sima on a September Sunday before 1,715 spectators at Philadelphia. Boxscore

Leja’s 1954 season stats: 12 games, five plate appearances, one hit.

“The few times I came to bat I was not afraid of any pitcher I faced,” Leja said to Louis Effrat of the New York Times. “I know I can hit.”

In winter ball after the 1954 Yankees season, Leja hit .340 for Cordoba of the Veracruz League in Mexico.

At 1955 spring training, scout Johnny Neun, a former big-league first baseman, worked with Leja on his footwork. Coach Bill Dickey, a Hall of Famer, instructed Leja on hitting, but that didn’t go well. “They had Bill Dickey work with my swing,” Leja told a Springfield (Mass.) newspaper. “When he got through with it, it never was the same again.”

Stengel expressed confidence in Leja, telling Bill Keating of the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram, “I’ll play Leja, you can bet on that.”

However, Leja appeared in fewer games (seven) for the Yankees in 1955 than he did in 1954. He had a mere two plate appearances. Adding to the indignity of not playing, Leja suffered a broken nose when hit in the face by an Irv Noren liner while pitching batting practice in August. The ball struck the top of the protective screen in front of the mound and caromed toward Leja.

The Yankees won the 1955 American League pennant but the Dodgers prevailed in the World Series. Leja got a full runners-up share of $5,598.58.

Afterward, the Yankees embarked on a goodwill tour of Japan. They brought Leja along, but he felt disconnected from the team. “The loneliness was so terrible, he sometimes would sit in his room and cry,” Stan Isaacs of Newsday reported.

Cards come calling

Leja spent the next six seasons (1956-61) in the minors. In 1961, when he slammed 30 home runs, Cardinals scouts spent two months following him. On the advice of player development director Eddie Stanky, general manager Bing Devine traded outfielder Ben Mateosky for Leja in October 1961.

Leja reminded some of Jim Gentile. Like Leja, Gentile was big (6-foot-3, 210 pounds) and a first baseman with left-handed power. He spent eight years in the Dodgers’ farm system. After being dealt to the Orioles, Gentile produced 21 home runs and 98 RBI for Baltimore in 1960 and 46 homers and 141 RBI in 1961. “When you look at fellows like Jim Gentile, you wonder if lightning might not strike twice,” Bing Devine told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The Cardinals had a quality first baseman, Bill White, but needed power (St. Louis and the Phillies tied for last in the National League in home runs in 1961) and hoped Leja could provide pinch-hitting punch and insurance if White got hurt.

“Just one season. That’s all I need to establish myself,” Leja told Harold Kaese of the Boston Globe. “I’m a fair fielder and I can hit left-handers. I have confidence, experience and power.”

At 1962 spring training, Leja blasted a home run against the Phillies’ Dennis Bennett and thought he hit well overall, but Cardinals manager Johnny Keane concluded Leja “would strike out too many times to be an effective pinch-hitter,” the Post-Dispatch reported.

The Cardinals chose rookie Fred Whitfield to back up Bill White and sent Leja to the Angels on March 30, 1962.

“I sure was surprised when they told me I was leaving the Cards,” Leja said to the Los Angeles Times. “Nobody gave me any inkling that the Cards didn’t want me.”

The Angels had two first basemen _ Lee Thomas, a graduate of St. Louis’ Beaumont High School, and ex-Cardinal slugger Steve Bilko _ but manager Bill Rigney gave Leja a chance. He started at first base in four games, but went hitless and committed two errors.

In May 1962, the Angels dealt Leja to the Braves, and he finished his playing career in the Milwaukee farm system.

After baseball, Leja ran a successful life insurance agency near Boston and then was self-employed in a lobster shipping business. A son, also named Frank, played baseball for Eddie Stanky’s University of South Alabama team and became a batting practice pitcher for the Red Sox when they were managed by his father’s former Yankees teammate, Ralph Houk.