Just as a renter seeking a good apartment wants a fair chance from a landlord, a baseball prospect looking to play regularly wants a fair chance from a manager.
Bud Zipfel was a ballplayer, then a landlord.
A left-handed power hitter who had a stint in the Cardinals’ system after two years in the American League, Zipfel’s baseball career stalled, in part, because he wasn’t in the everyday lineup.
His time as a landlord was marred by allegations of discriminatory housing practices.
Zippity-do-dah
Marion Sylvester Zipfel was from Belleville, Ill., near St. Louis. He was called Bud at home and Zip on the ballfield.
In June 1956, the Yankees signed Zipfel, 17, on the recommendation of scout Lou Maguolo. Yankees assistant general manager Bill DeWitt Sr. made four trips to the Zipfel family home to seal the deal, the Belleville News-Democrat reported.
Zipfel was an outfielder his first three seasons (1956-58) in the Yankees’ system, but his throwing arm lacked zip and he was moved to first base in 1959.
Hitting was what Zipfel did best. He produced 104 RBI in 123 games with Fargo in 1959; 28 home runs and 107 RBI with Binghamton in 1960. A pull hitter, his swing was tailored to take advantage of the short (296 feet) distance from home plate along the right field line to the outfield stands at Yankee Stadium.
“If he plays his cards right, there may be no jackpot too big for Zipfel,” John W. Fox of the Binghamton Press noted.
Some pegged Zipfel as heir apparent to Yankees first baseman Moose Skowron, but Zipfel ended up with an American League expansion team, the 1961 Washington Senators. “I’m sorry we lost him,” Yankees manager Ralph Houk told the Washington Evening Star. “… We were gambling we could sneak him through the (expansion) draft. Somebody on the Washington club had good information.”
Zinging the ball
With the Senators at 1961 spring training in Pompano Beach, Zipfel, 22, “impressed camp followers with his classic batting swing, which can be described only as gorgeous,” Morris Siegel of the Washington Daily News observed.
Among those impressed was Senators manager Mickey Vernon, a two-time American League batting champion who, like Zipfel, batted left and played first base. “I like the way he swings a bat … He has a good stroke,” Vernon told the Washington Evening Star.
Another who took interest in Zipfel at 1961 spring training was White Sox scout Bucky Harris, who had managed two World Series champions (1924 Senators and 1947 Yankees). “I like his stroke … Washington was lucky to come up with Zipfel,” Harris told the Washington Evening Star.
Though Zipfel hit .391 in spring training exhibition games, he’d never played above the Class A level during the regular season, so the Senators decided he should spend 1961 with Class AAA Houston.
While Zipfel slugged for Houston (21 homers in 378 at-bats), Senators first baseman Dale Long struggled (hitting .182 with runners in scoring position).
In late July 1961, Zipfel was called up to Washington and Mickey Vernon put the rookie in the starting lineup. Zipfel zapped his first home run, against Phil Regan in the 11th inning, halfway into the upper deck in right-center at Tiger Stadium, propelling the Senators to victory. He had two hits, two walks and three RBI in a rout of the Yankees, and two triples and four RBI at Baltimore versus the Orioles. Boxscore, Boxscore, Boxscore
Senators owner Pete Quesada, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general and former head of the Federal Aviation Administration, gushed to the Washington Evening Star in August 1961, “We paid $75,000 (in the expansion draft) for Bud Zipfel. People asked, ‘Who is Zipfel?’ I wouldn’t sell him now for $200,000.”
On their way to a last-place finish, the Senators sought any chance to create enthusiasm, but their zealousness for Zipfel was premature. He batted .200 for the 1961 Senators, with more strikeouts (49) than hits (34).
Ups and downs
After the 1961 season, Zipfel served six months with a U.S. Marines reserve unit and missed most of 1962 spring training. He was sent to the minors to get playing time, then brought back to Washington in late June 1962.
Zipfel slammed a Dean Stone pitch into the upper deck at Comiskey Park in Chicago for a home run and had a walkoff RBI-double to beat the Red Sox. Boxscore
His last big-league home run was a highlight. On Sept. 12, 1962, the Senators’ Tom Cheney, a former Cardinal, struck out 21 Orioles at Baltimore. Zipfel’s homer versus Dick Hall in the 16th inning broke a 1-1 tie and gave Cheney and the Senators the win. Cheney, who threw 228 pitches, told the Baltimore Sun, “When Zipfel homered, I was about ready for it.” Boxscore
Overall, though, Zipfel’s 1962 performance for the Senators was unexceptional. Platooning at first base and left field, he batted .239 with six homers. “If you’re playing in the little or big leagues, you are naturally going to play better when you play every day,” Zipfel told the Belleville News-Democrat.
The Senators assigned Zipfel to their fall Florida Instructional League team after the season but in the nine weeks there he showed “absolutely nothing,” coach George Case told the Washington Evening Star.
That prompted the Senators to sell Zipfel’s contract in December 1962 to the Reds, who put him in the minors.
In August 1965, the Reds shipped Zipfel, 26, to the Cardinals’ Jacksonville farm team, completing the December 1964 trade that sent Roger Craig and Charlie James from St. Louis to Cincinnati for Bob Purkey and a player to be named. The Reds first offered shortstop Francisco Obregon, but the Cardinals said no. Perhaps on the recommendation of Mickey Vernon, a Cardinals coach in 1965, Zipfel was the player St. Louis accepted.
The 1966 season was Zipfel’s last. He began the year with Arkansas, a Cardinals’ Class AA affiliate, and ended it with a Class A Phillies farm team.
Fair housing
Zipfel returned home to Belleville and operated an insurance agency and a real estate company that specialized in apartment rentals.
In 2001, Crystal Hill, 19, sought a Belleville apartment for her and a 5-month-old son. She contacted Zipfel, who told Hill he wouldn’t rent her a one-bedroom apartment because she had a child, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The federal Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to consider race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability or family status in rental sales, lending, or homeowner’s insurance decisions.
“It’s aggravating when you’re a single mom and you’re trying to get out of a certain situation, and you’re stuck, and they (landlords) don’t want to make it easier on you,” Hill told Mike Fitzgerald of the Belleville News-Democrat. “You just need to give people a chance.”
Hill sought help from the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council, a private nonprofit fair housing enforcement and education organization founded to combat illegal housing discrimination.
During a three-month investigation, the housing council’s Jamie McFarland, a fair housing specialist, sent testers posing as renters to build a discrimination case against Zipfel. According to the Post-Dispatch, Zipfel gave housing council testers posing as renters different information about the availability of apartments depending on their race and whether they had children, McFarland said.
The housing council investigation “concluded that Zipfel had discriminated against (Crystal) Hill and also had unfairly denied housing to black (testers) posing as prospective renters,” the Post-Dispatch reported. McFarland said Bud Zipfel Enterprises “offered to show apartments to white people while telling black people and single parents to look elsewhere,” the Post-Dispatch reported.
“To me, it’s clear that this is race discrimination,” McFarland told William Lamb of the Post-Dispatch. “Everyone deserves equal access to all housing.”
Zipfel and the housing council reached an out-of-court settlement. He paid $5,000 to Crystal Hill and $45,000 to the housing council, the Post-Dispatch reported.
Followup test
In 2004, two years after the settlement, the housing council sent nine testers posing as renters to Zipfel’s business, housing council executive director Will Jordan told the Belleville News-Democrat. Jordan told the newspaper that white testers were shown apartments but some black testers either were not shown an apartment or “they were shown something less than desirable.”
Housing tester R.J. Tanner reported that Zipfel said he kept the number of blacks in his apartments to about 20 percent, the Belleville newspaper reported.
In his report, Tanner said Zipfel told him “lately, since the blacks were coming up from East St. Louis like a wet sieve, problems have gotten worse.”
Zipfel told George Pawlaczyk of the Belleville newspaper, “He (Tanner) said I don’t want any bad blacks. That’s right. I don’t want bad blacks, and I don’t want bad whites … We’re careful of who we rent to _ black or white.”
In his report, Tanner concluded, “I felt that he believed he was the protector of the city … by unilaterally making these decisions.”
It was early in the 1970 season. McCovey was perhaps the most feared hitter in the National League. He won the 1969 NL Most Valuable Player Award. Led the league in home runs and RBI. Now pitchers preferred to walk him instead of challenge him, and fielders filled the right side of the diamond when the Giants’ left-handed slugger came to the plate.
Batting cleanup for the Giants in a doubleheader against the Cardinals, Mays went hitless in the opener and stranded five base runners as St. Louis prevailed, 5-4.
Musial, who hit .522 (24 for 46) at Ebbets Field in 1948, set the stage an inning earlier when he slammed a Paul Minner pitch out of the ballpark for his 36th home run of the season, tying the score at 2-2 in the eighth.
A key to their success was 
On March 24, 1967, the day after Duncan walloped a 400-foot homer to break a tie and propel the A’s to an exhibition game win against the White Sox, he was fishing from Rod and Reel Pier in Anna Maria, Fla. A family from Benton Harbor, Mich., 11-year-old Vickie Peet and her parents, were fishing there too.
