Two years before they acquired Lou Brock, the Cardinals made a blockbuster trade with the Cubs for an outfielder they hoped would ignite their offense.
On Oct. 17, 1962, the Cardinals acquired outfielder George Altman, pitcher Don Cardwell and catcher Moe Thacker from the Cubs for pitchers Larry Jackson and Lindy McDaniel and catcher Jimmie Schaffer.
Altman was the key to the deal for the Cardinals. A left-handed batter, he was a National League all-star who hit for power and average.
The Cardinals thought they were getting a run generator who would propel them to their first championship since 1946. Instead, Altman lasted one season with the Cardinals, who contended but fell short in their bid for a title. It wasn’t until June 1964, when they made another big trade with the Cubs to get Brock, that the Cardinals got the catalyst they needed to become World Series champions.
From hoops to hardball
Born and raised in Goldsboro, N.C., Altman was a standout high school athlete in multiple sports, including baseball. Tennessee State University recruited him to play basketball.
A 6-foot-4 forward, Altman had hopes of pursuing a professional basketball career, but a knee ailment his junior season made him reconsider. When Tennessee State started a baseball program his junior year, Altman made the team. Though he continued to play college basketball, he began thinking his future was in baseball.
After graduating in 1955, Altman got a tryout with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League and impressed manager Buck O’Neil, who signed him and became his mentor.
(Altman’s Monarchs teammate was pitcher Satchel Paige, 49. In his autobiography, “George Altman: My Baseball Journey From the Negro Leagues to the Majors and Beyond,” Altman recalled, “I’m not 100 percent sure that Satchel knew all of our names. He definitely called me ‘Young Blood.’ We didn’t talk to him that much because he didn’t travel with us most of the time. He had his own Cadillac and he followed the bus.”)
After the season, O’Neil joined the Cubs as a scout and recommended Altman. The Cubs signed him, and in 1959, Altman, 26, made his big-league debut as their Opening Day center fielder. In his first at-bat, Don Drysdale hit him in the thigh with a pitch. “I don’t know if he hit me on purpose,” Altman said in his autobiography, “but I would say he was trying to intimidate me.”
Unfazed, Altman singled twice in the game against the future Hall of Famer. Boxscore
Let’s make a deal
In 1961, the Cubs had four future Hall of Famers in their lineup (Richie Ashburn, Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Billy Williams) but Altman was their batting leader (.303). He produced a league-leading 12 triples, 27 home runs and 96 RBI.
The Cubs also had four future Hall of Famers in their 1962 lineup (Banks, rookie Lou Brock, Santo, Williams) but Altman again was their top hitter (.318). He clubbed 22 homers, had 19 stolen bases, ranked fourth in the league in on-base percentage (.393) and was named an all-star for the second year in a row.
To improve on their 1962 record (59-103), the Cubs determined they needed pitching and a corner outfield spot for Brock.
Brock was the Cubs’ center fielder in 1962 but was better suited for left or right. With Billy Williams entrenched in left, the Cubs opted to shop Altman for pitching and to open a spot in right for Brock.
The Cardinals, who, as St. Louis Globe-Democrat columnist Bob Burnes noted, “spent much of the summer in a state of frustrated anguish because they couldn’t come up with the big hit when they needed it,” sought a run-producing right fielder after Charlie James totaled eight home runs in 1962. When they suggested swapping their 1962 leaders in wins (Larry Jackson with 16) and saves (Lindy McDaniel with 14) for Altman, “the Cubs had to jump at the offer,” Burnes wrote.
High hopes
With Altman, the Cardinals had three of the top six finishers in the 1962 National League batting race: Stan Musial (third at .330), Bill White (fourth at .324) and Altman (sixth at .318).
General manager Bing Devine told the Globe-Democrat the Cardinals’ starting outfield in 1963 would be Musial in left, Curt Flood in center and Altman in right.
Altman “figures to be of particular value in Busch Stadium, where the close right field pavilion is an inviting home run target for left-handed swingers,” the Chicago Tribune observed.
According to the Post-Dispatch, the shortest distance from home plate to the right field wall at Busch Stadium was a mere 310 feet.
“With the short right field fence in St. Louis, I have to like the park,” Altman told the Post-Dispatch. “I’d like to top all my season highs. I’ll settle for 100 runs batted in, but I’d like to go for 150. I want to hit more than 27 home runs and bat higher than .318.”
Vision problems
In the winter months after the trade, Altman stayed in Chicago and studied to earn a stockbroker license. Altman said he believed the studying he did in the dim lighting of his basement hurt his eyesight.
Driving from Chicago to the Cardinals’ spring training site in Florida, “I had trouble seeing the road signs and the lane lines” at night, Altman said in his autobiography. “I stopped in Nashville to have my eyes examined. The doctor said, ‘Son, you need glasses and should get them as soon as possible.’ “
At spring training, Altman’s vision improved sufficiently enough that he opted not to wear eyeglasses.
He began the 1963 regular season with great promise _ eight hits in his first 16 at-bats _ but went into an 0-for-27 slump in May. Altman, 30, didn’t hit his first home run until May 10, a two-out shot in the ninth inning off the Pirates’ Bob Friend that carried the Cardinals to a 1-0 victory. Boxscore
In June, Altman produced a 17-game hitting streak, but wasn’t hitting many home runs. Cardinals consultant Branch Rickey wanted Altman to pull with power to right field and convinced Bing Devine to deliver that message to Altman.
Altman, who preferred hitting for contact to all fields, tried pulling the ball regularly, but struggled, hitting .226 in July. “I tried to pull entirely too much,” he said to The Sporting News. “It fouled me up.”
Desperate, he wore eyeglasses for a game against the Reds and went 0-for-4, bringing a quick end to the experiment. “They weren’t worth the discomfort,” Altman said to The Sporting News. Boxscore
In his autobiography, Altman said the eyeglasses “steamed up in the humid summer air. I did better without them.”
Altman gave up trying to pull the ball and did better the last two months, hitting .291 in August and .273 in September. For the season, he batted .274 with nine home runs and 47 RBI. The Cardinals, who finished six games behind the champion Dodgers, “felt that if he had performed this year as expected, the team would have won the pennant,’ syndicated columnist Red Smith wrote.
Altman said in his autobiography the causes for his drop in production were tension “with me wanting to make good and make a good first impression with the Cardinals” and his eyesight. “There were times my vision was weak enough that when I looked out everything was fuzzy,” Altman said.
In November 1963, Altman and pitcher Bill Wakefield were traded to the Mets for pitcher Roger Craig.
After an injury-plagued season with the Mets, Altman was dealt back to the Cubs. The trade was made by Bing Devine, who joined the Mets after being fired by the Cardinals. Thus, Devine was involved in three Altman trades, acquiring him for the Cardinals from the Cubs, swapping him from the Cardinals to the Mets, and then trading him from the Mets to the Cubs.
Altman went to Japan in 1968 and revived his career there. In eight seasons in Japan, Altman hit 205 home runs, including 34 in 1968 and 39 in 1971.
RetroSimba 
The George Altman conundrum. Adds to the mystery that is so much baseball. Didn’t know about him. Thanks for sharing this. With all the stats and technology and human insight to understand what goes on in the game, so much of baseball is unexplainable. This is another great example of what could have been and why it wasn’t? Eyesight? New team? Who knows. And then he goes and revives his career in Japan. Great story.
The trade immediately reminded of David Green coming from the Brewers to the Cardinals in that massive trade between the Cards and Crew in 1980. Green didn’t have the successful MLB track record that Altman had before the trade, but I think the Cardinals wanted Green in the trade, more than Sorenson and Lezcano and whoever else was in the trade or maybe it was Lezcano they wanted, but then again, I think they traded Lezcano the following year. Anyway…nice job as always
Thanks, Steve. It’s amazing to me how George Altman was able to adapt. He has to be one of the few to play in the Negro League, the major leagues and the Japan League. In addition, he played winter ball in Panama and Cuba. Quite an adventure.
George Altman is a class act. Too bad that for various reasons he couldn’t play to his potential in 1963. A healthy and relaxed George Altman might have been good enough to help us surpass the Dodgers. Let’s not forget that besides being able to adapt to the Japanese culture and have a good career there, he was diagnosed with colon cancer midway through the 1974 season. And yet came back in 1975 for one final season.
Thanks, Phillip. In his autobiography, George Altman said that after being diagnosed with colon cancer he left Japan in late August that season to have surgery at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago. “The doctors did catch the cancer early,” Altman said. “I stayed in the hospital almost two weeks, but part of that was because I contracted pneumonia. The doctors got all of the cancer.”
I think he’s resided in the St. Louis area the past several years. In 1964, with the Mets, he again had 9 homers and 47 RBI.
Thanks, yes, according to a biography by the Society for American Baseball Research, George Altman and his wife moved from Chicago to O’Fallon, Missouri, around 2002.
That would have been a bummer of a trade if not for the fact that they were able to immediately flip Cardwell to the Pirates for Dick Groat, who had an MVP-type season in 1963.
Yes, good point. Look for more to come on the trade for Dick Groat next month.
I know from experience sometimes your vision starts to “get away” from you without you even knowing it. This tale helps remind us when a player starts to struggle out of nowhere, while the cause may very well be technique, on occasion it probably makes sense to get an eye exam. I don’t know if they are automatically done by organizations annually to get a baseline of a player’s vision, but in this age of analytics vision certainly could be seen as an interesting metric to monitor.
Thank you for the insight. What you say makes good sense.
I met George Altman at a Vintage Base Ball convention in St. Louis in 2005, and talked with him for a good half hour or more. Really nice guy. He told me the same thing about the fact that the Cardinals wanted him to pull more messed him up. He also said that the season with the Cardinals was the most disappointing of his career. He loved playing for Johnny Keane and wanted to stay with the Cardinals.
And a personal memory. As a 10-year old kid in 1963, I attended my first live MLB games. In batting practice before the first game of a Sunday doubleheader against the Cubs, Altman was drilling the ball over the Pavilion in right field with amazing consistency. In fact I told him that, and that is when he said that trying to pull the ball in games was not good for him.
He had some great thoughts on other players as well. One was Jim Ray Hart – super talented, but did not take care of himself very well.
Loved reading this. I am going to look for his book.
Great stuff, Michael. I am so glad that you got to meet George Altman and to spend that time with him. Also, thanks for the story of seeing him launch those drives in batting practice.