RetroSimba

At a time when St. Louis had two of baseball’s most exceptional hitters, Rogers Hornsby of the Cardinals and George Sisler of the Browns, another appeared on the verge of joining their ranks.

Cardinals left fielder Austin McHenry was a ballplayer with special gifts. He hit steadily and with authority, got on base often, generated bundles of runs and fielded with an athletic grace. He also had an easygoing likeability. The kids in the Knothole Gang program adored him and so did his teammates.

A right-handed batter with a knack for getting extra-base hits, McHenry was in his fourth year with the Cardinals when he had a season that elevated him into the top tier of his profession. He batted .350 for the 1921 Cardinals, with 201 hits, 102 RBI and an on-base percentage of .393.

He was headed for another big season in 1922 before he began experiencing intense headaches and blurred vision. He was only 27, a player entering his prime and showing signs of brilliance. How could he feel so out of sorts, he wondered?

On the rise

McHenry was born and raised in rural Adams County in southern Ohio. When he was 18, he attended a baseball camp in Portsmouth, Ohio, operated by a scout, Billy Doyle. Converted from second baseman to outfielder, McHenry blossomed and turned pro the next year, signing with a minor-league team in Portsmouth. One of his teammate on the 1915 Portsmouth club was catcher Pickles Dillhoefer.

From Portsmouth, McHenry and Dillhoefer advanced to the American Association minor-league club at Milwaukee in 1916. The Cubs acquired Dillhoefer after the season and he reached the majors with them in 1917.

A year later, it was McHenry’s turn to get a shot at the big time. Acting on the recommendation of their scout, Billy Doyle, who had been tracking him since the Portsmouth baseball camp, the Reds signed McHenry and brought him to spring training in 1918, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

In late March, McHenry’s nose got split when he was struck by a baseball bat, according to The Cincinnati Post, and Reds manager Christy Mathewson sent him back to minor-league Milwaukee.

The last-place Cardinals acquired McHenry from Milwaukee in June 1918 and made him their left fielder. Cardinals president Branch Rickey, who made the deal, told the St. Louis Star-Times, “McHenry may prove a sensation.”

A year later, McHenry was reunited with his former minor-league teammate, Pickles Dillhoefer, who was acquired by the Cardinals in January 1919.

Among the best

From 1918 to 1920, McHenry improved his hits and RBI totals each year with the Cardinals, then had his breakout season in 1921. The Giants tried to acquire him, and so did the Reds, without success, the New York Times reported.

“McHenry is without question one of the game’s greatest outfielders, and he is one of the game’s greatest hitters,” The Sporting News declared in January 1922.

According to the Star-Times, McHenry was “fast and an accurate judge of a driven ball. He was flashy on defense. At the bat, he was one of the most efficient hitters … Next to Hornsby, probably one of the hardest hitters in the league.”

Teammates called McHenry “The Airedale,” like the breed of terrier, “because of his fleetness of foot, his tenacity, courage and spirit,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

To the Knothole Gang youngsters, admitted without charge to the left field bleachers in St. Louis, McHenry “could do no wrong,” the Star-Times reported.

According to the Post-Dispatch, “Their favorite chant was, ‘Oooooh, Mack!’ ‘Oooooh, Mack!,’ with the Mack snapped out.”

As the Star-Times noted, “He was a great big boy himself _ unspoiled, unselfish and gifted with the finest of natures.”

Troubled times

On Feb. 23, 1922, McHenry and the Cardinals were jolted by the death of teammate Pickles Dillhoefer, 28, from typhoid fever.

If Dillhoefer’s death foreshadowed more dark days, it wasn’t evident two months later when the Cardinals opened the season, with Hornsby and McHenry each driving in two runs in a 10-1 drubbing of the Pirates. Boxscore

McHenry streaked on. On April 28, he had four hits and two RBI versus the Cubs. Boxscore A month later, he had another four-hit game and three RBI against the Phillies. Boxscore

On June 12, his batting average for the season reached .326.

Mysteriously, soon after, McHenry “gradually lost strength and couldn’t see a ball while he was running,” the Post-Dispatch reported. “When he stood still, he could trace the flight of a ball very easily, but the moment he ran after it, his vision immediately became blurred.”

According to his hometown Portsmouth Daily Times, during a game against the Reds on June 26, McHenry went to Rickey and said, “Branch, I can’t see the balls as they hit out my way.”

Rickey told McHenry to return to his village home in Blue Creek, Ohio, to seek treatment and rest.

A month later, McHenry informed Rickey he was ready to return to the Cardinals. He appeared in two games, but it was clear McHenry was suffering. His head ached violently and he still had eyesight problems, The Cincinnati Post reported.

Rickey advised McHenry to go home and consult with physicians. That’s when it was discovered McHenry had a brain tumor.

Final days

The scout, Billy Doyle, said he believed the brain tumor could be attributed to a pitch that struck McHenry in the temple during a minor-league game in 1916. “Doyle was in the grandstand when (McHenry) was felled in his tracks by the pitched ball,” the Portsmouth Daily Times reported. “Six years later, McHenry began to feel a sore spot over his left temple, where he was hit by the ball. It gradually became more acute and finally began to affect his eyesight.”

McHenry was admitted to Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati and doctors determined an operation was necessary. On Oct. 19, 1922, Dr. George Heur, who performed the surgery, said part of the tumor was removed  but because of its location it was impossible to remove all of it, the Portsmouth newspaper reported.

A month later, McHenry, still in the Cincinnati hospital, took a turn for the worse. When doctors informed him his condition was terminal, he was taken home to Blue Creek at his request, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

McHenry, 27, lapsed into unconsciousness on Nov. 26 and died the next morning, according to the Portsmouth newspaper. He was survived by his parents, his wife and their two children, ages 5 and 3.

At the funeral two days later, pallbearers included three members of the Cardinals _ pitcher Jesse Haines, outfielder Burt Shotton and secretary-treasurer Hi Mason. Branch Rickey couldn’t attend because of an illness in his family.

“The sorrow of the loss of a great ballplayer is overshadowed by the loss of a dear friend,” Rickey said to the Post-Dispatch.

As the Portsmouth Daily Times concluded, “It seems a queer twist of fate that so young a man and who had so much to live for must be cut down when he really was coming into the best days of his short but brilliant career.”

Nimble footwork in the field and on the bases helped make shortstop Charlie Gelbert a prominent part of Cardinals championship clubs, yet it was a stumble that nearly cost him his foot and his playing career.

On Nov. 16, 1932, during a hunting trip in Pennsylvania, Gelbert accidently shot himself just above his left ankle when he tripped over a vine in the underbrush.

Gelbert underwent multiple operations and was unable to play baseball the next two years. Undaunted, he defied the odds and returned to the Cardinals in 1935.

Three years later, in 1938, White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton accidently shot himself, resulting in the amputation of his right leg above the knee. Stratton’s determined effort to pitch professionally again inspired a Hollywood movie with Jimmy Stewart in the lead role.

No film was made about Charlie Gelbert, but his comeback was just as amazing.

Name game

When Charlie Gelbert was born in Scranton, Pa., he was christened Magnus Ott Gelbert. “Magnus and Ott were the family names of my father’s grandparents in Germany,” Gelbert later told The Sporting News.

The father, Charles, a veterinarian, had been an all-America football player at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1890s. An offensive guard and defensive lineman who was 5 feet 9 and 170 pounds, Charles “was called The Miracle Man because he did so much with so little,” according to the National Football Foundation.

From as early as he could remember, Magnus Ott Gelbert disliked his name. “The boys hung all sorts of nicknames on me,” he recalled to The Sporting News. “Maggie, of course, was one of them. So I had the name changed.”

When he was 8, Magnus Ott Gelbert became Charles Magnus Gelbert, but everyone called him Charlie.

On the rise

Like his father, Charlie Gelbert became a standout athlete, but his best sport was baseball. While excelling at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa., Gelbert was signed by Cardinals scout Pop Kelchner.

After three years in the minors, Gelbert got to the Cardinals in 1929 and became their shortstop. He helped them to consecutive National League pennants in 1930 and 1931 and a World Series championship.

A right-handed batter, Gelbert hit .304 during the 1930 regular season and .353 in the World Series. He followed with a .289 batting average in 1931. His squeeze bunt in Game 2 of the 1931 World Series scored Pepper Martin from third base with an insurance run. Boxscore

In 13 World Series games for the Cardinals, Gelbert played 113 innings at shortstop without making an error.

“I consider Gelbert one of the most brilliant shortstops in the game,” Cardinals owner Sam Breadon told the St. Louis Star-Times.

St. Louis columnist Sid Keener wrote, “He could hit, field, run and throw. He handled difficult grounders with ease. His throws from deep field were straight to the mark. He was an artist in playing a slow hopper in back of the pitcher.”

As a hitter, Keener noted, “He’d stretch singles into doubles and doubles into triples by daring running.”

Shotgun blast

About a week before Thanksgiving Day in 1932, Gelbert and four companions went hunting in the mountains near McConnellsburg, Pa., about 25 miles from the Maryland state line.

When Gelbert tripped on a vine, he lost his balance and fell backward, sending his feet into the air. As he crashed down heavily, the butt of his shotgun struck the ground and the weapon discharged. The load of pellets struck him in the left leg, about two inches above the ankle, and “left a ragged wound,” according to the Chambersburg (Pa.) Public Opinion newspaper.

“I thought my foot had been severed,” Gelbert told the St. Louis Star-Times. “Blood was streaming from my foot.”

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “At its deepest point, the wound severed muscles, nerves and blood vessels.” Part of his fibula bone also was shattered.

Responding to Gelbert’s shrieks, his hunting companions rushed to his aid and applied a tourniquet. Gelbert “was carried about a half mile before he could be placed” in a car of one of the hunters, the Chambersburg newspaper reported.

Gelbert was driven about 25 miles to the Chambersburg hospital. After five days there, he was transferred to a hospital in Philadelphia.

At some point, gangrene set in and doctors advised amputating Gelbert’s left foot. “I knew what that meant,” Gelbert, 26, told the Star-Times. “I’d be through as a ballplayer. I pleaded with my doctors to give me the last chance” to save the foot.

Gradually, the infection started to clear and amputation wasn’t necessary, the Star-Times reported, but he faced a long recovery.

“I never thought he’d play ball again,” Cardinals second baseman Frankie Frisch told the New York Times.

Moving forward

Teammate Sparky Adams, whose winter residence was about two hours from Philadelphia, visited Gelbert in the hospital several times, and most of the Cardinals sent him cards and letters, the Post-Dispatch reported.

A couple of days before Christmas, five Philadelphia Athletics (coach Eddie Collins, and players Jimmie Foxx, Jimmy Dykes, Lew Krausse Sr and Jim Peterson) came to his hospital room and brought presents. Gelbert and the Cardinals had opposed the Athletics in both the 1930 and 1931 World Series.

To replace Gelbert, the Cardinals made a trade for Dodgers shortstop Gordon Slade. The Cardinals’ Rogers Hornsby described Slade to columnist Sid Keener as “a brilliant player _ defensively, I mean. The team is strong enough in batting to carry a light-hitting shortstop.”

Slade started at shortstop on Opening Day for the 1933 Cardinals, but soon after was sent to the minors. In May, the Cardinals got a capable replacement, acquiring Leo Durocher from the Reds.

Durocher led National League shortstops in fielding percentage in 1933, and helped the 1934 Gashouse Gang Cardinals become World Series champions.

Gelbert received no salary from the Cardinals while sidelined in 1933 and 1934, the Star-Times reported. Cardinals players voted him a World Series share of $1,000 in 1934 _ a goodwill gesture Gelbert was grateful for in the Great Depression era. “It was Frisch who guided the players to make the generous action,” the Post-Dispatch reported. “He told the players, ‘Be big and the baseball world will accept you as big. Be cheap and the world will jeer and get you down.’ “

Remarkable return

In 1935, doctors gave Gelbert the green light to return to baseball, and he headed to the Cardinals’ training camp in Bradenton, Fla., hoping to earn a spot on the Opening Day roster of the reigning World Series champions.

“His presence in training camp was believed to be just a sympathetic gesture by the Cardinals’ officials,” the Post-Dispatch reported. “That he would ever again be deemed fit to become a cog for a pennant outfit was not dreamed of.”

As the St. Louis Globe-Democrat noted, “For two years he scarcely put the weight of his body on the shattered left leg.”

Gelbert, 29, had a shaky start to his comeback, then began making slow, steady progress. Frisch, the Cardinals’ player-manager, was patient and allowed Gelbert to ease back in. He gave Gelbert a spot on the Opening Day roster as a backup to Durocher at short and to Pepper Martin at third base.

One week into the season, Gelbert appeared in a game, running for catcher Bill DeLancey. Boxscore

A month later, on May 21, 1935, Gelbert got to bat. Boxscore

Gilbert’s first hit in his comeback year was a single against former teammate Tex Carleton of the Cubs on June 2. Boxscore

A week later, Frisch put Gelbert in the starting lineup for the slumping Durocher, who was batting .215.

On June 9, in a game versus the Cubs, Gelbert had four hits, including a home run against Charlie Root, drove in three runs and scored twice. Boxscore

Gelbert made 12 starts at shortstop for the Cardinals in June, hit .340 for the month and continued to play after he was spiked in the left foot during a game against the Cubs.

The sight of Gelbert producing and playing through pain seemed to snap Durocher from his slump. Reinstated at shortstop, Durocher batted .290 with 22 RBI in July and hit well the rest of the season.

Position switch

Early in August, after Pepper Martin was injured, Frisch started Gelbert at third base and he made the most of the opportunity.

“He has been fielding confidently and hitting in a timely fashion,” The Sporting News reported.

Sid Keener noted in the Star-Times, “He has fielded phenomenally at the far corner, handling torrid cracks with the utmost ease, making perfect throws to first base, prancing to short left field for difficult pop twisters, and getting his share of hits in the pinch.”

Gelbert made 30 starts at third base for the 1935 Cardinals. For the season, he hit .292, including .309 with runners in scoring position. He did this even though, as Sid Keener wrote, “Whenever too much pressure is put on the left foot, Gelbert reeks with pain.”

The Cardinals opened the 1936 season with Gelbert, 30, as their third baseman, but he hit .167 in May and got benched. After batting .229 for the season, the Cardinals traded him to the Reds.

Gelbert was a utilityman with the Reds (1937), Tigers (1937), Senators (1939-40) and Red Sox (1940).

He served in the Navy for three years during World War II, mostly in the Pacific, and achieved the rank of lieutenant commander. Afterward, he became baseball coach at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and amassed a record of 307-176.