When I interviewed Brooks Robinson for my book on Orioles history in 1999, he turned the tables at one point and asked me a question.
“Have you talked to Joe Ginsberg yet?” Brooks asked.
I had not. But I told Brooks that Ginsberg, a backup catcher for the Orioles in the late ‘50s, was on my list of former players I intended to interview.
“Good. You really can’t do this right without talking to Joe,” Brooks said. “He remembers all sorts of stuff and he’s really funny. He’ll be great for you.”
When I contacted Ginsberg and interviewed him, he delivered exactly as Brooks predicted. Among the nearly 100 former players, managers, broadcasters and front office executives I interviewed for the book, few were better than Ginsberg at depicting his Orioles era with clarity and wit.
When we spoke, he was a retiree living in Southwest Florida, a relic from an earlier age of baseball. Born in 1926, he’d grown up in Detroit, where the hometown Tigers saw him playing sandlot ball and signed him — that kind of stuff used to happen. His profile was unusual; he was a left-handed-hitting catcher without much power but with plenty of speed and a good batting eye. It took him years to reach the majors. He was in the Army for two years and mostly in the minors until his mid-20s.
His hometown team eventually gave up on him and he’d also been with the Indians and Athletics when the Orioles acquired him in a trade in 1956. He was 29 and had hit just one major league home run in the previous four years.
“When I got traded to Baltimore, I had two line drives that were caught and then I went 0-for-22. The people said, ‘Hey, what a trade; the guy literally hasn’t gotten one hit,’” Ginsberg told me, laughing. “Then we were playing Boston, and I finally got a hit. They stopped the game and gave me the ball.”
Going into the 1957 season, Orioles manager/GM Paul Richards suggested he try wearing glasses. He did. It helped. Ginsberg wasn’t a force at the plate but he produced enough to allow Richards to use him in a platoon with Gus Triandos.
“I played against right handed pitching. Gus played against left-handed pitching,” Ginsberg recalled.
His playing time decreased when Triandos emerged as a middle-of-the-order slugger, but Richards still found ways to play him. In 1957, Ginsberg appeared in 85 games and batted .274. Richards, who had been a catcher years earlier, liked Ginsberg’s solid defense, his handling of pitchers and his brain.
“Richards was more of a teacher than a manager who would get you ready to play. He liked to teach. I learned more from him about catching than anyone else,” Ginsberg said. “And he could do all sorts of things and get away with it because he was smart. Whenever he got thrown out of a game, he’d call me in from the bullpen and say, ‘You go stand there’ [at the head of the runway to the clubhouse]. Then he’d go stand in the runway and give me the bunt sign and the hit sign and the take sign. I’d turn around and give them to [coach] Luman Harris, who would turn around and give them to the guys on the field.
“One time Billy Pierce was pitching and he moved Billy to first base for one batter, brought in a guy to get someone out, then put Billy back on the mound. And then in spring training, he’d have eight guys in the order, just wouldn’t use the pitcher’s place. Trying to get his guys more bats, and the other team wouldn’t realize it for five or six innings and then they’d go, ‘Hey, your pitcher never batted.’ Paul would say, ‘What are they gonna do to me? It’s just an exhibition game.’ He did all kinds of things like that.”
The Orioles had been a last-place-caliber team when Ginsberg arrived in 1956, but they finished with a .500 record in 1957 — an indication that Richards’ rebuilding efforts were beginning to make a difference.
“We didn’t contend with the Yankees, but we didn’t finish last, either,” Ginsberg recalled.
Much of the roster was in a constant state of flux as Richards made deals, but Triandos, first baseman Bob Boyd, second baseman Billy Gardner and Ginsberg formed an enduring core along with light-hitting shortstop Willy Miranda, one of Ginsberg’s favorites.
“Miranda was a fun guy and a great shortstop. I’m afraid he didn’t hit as well as he should,” Ginsberg recalled. “I called him a switch swinger, not a switch-hitter. He didn’t hit much. But what fun he was. Richards would get on him about something and turn around and go back to his office and Willie would stand up and imitate Paul. He was a good mimic, only, of course, he didn’t speak the language too well. You can imagine this little guy from Cuba imitating a tall guy from Texas. Gosh, he made us laugh. Willie taught me how to count in Spanish and he also taught me how to swear. I knew all the swear words. I liked to tease the Latin guys. They’d be talking and I’d go, ‘Hey, I heard that.’”
Slowly but surely, a generation of young prospects began to filter in, starting with a young third baseman from Arkansas named Robinson.
“Brooks had this high speaking voice when he got here. He couldn’t have a beer with us. He was too young. We’d take him with us and he’d drink a Coke,” Ginsberg said. “And he had that high voice. I said to him, ‘How in the world are you gonna be a big leaguer with a voice like that? You’d better catch a cold or something.’
“He had this old glove he’d used in high school and he could use it better than anyone I’d ever seen. He was like one of those quick basketball players. He wasn’t fast but he was quick. He was so good even as a young player that when he missed one, we couldn’t believe it. We’d say [the ball] must’ve hit a rock.”
Life for catchers in Baltimore changed when Richards acquired knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm in 1958. Triandos and Ginsberg both struggled to corral Wilhelm’s unpredictable, floating pitches.
“Gus would catch one day and have three or four passed balls and then I’d catch and have three or four passed balls,” Ginsberg said. “It really bothered Gus. He didn’t like it, didn’t want to do it. It didn’t bother me so much. Paul would come to me and say, ‘Gus doesn’t like it, you handle it better,’ that con job. I had to go out there. He hit me everywhere with that thing. But Wilhelm was hard for every catcher. The guys in New York had passed balls when he was there.”
Always seeking an edge, Richards designed an oversized mitt for the catcher to use when Wilhelm was on the mound.
“Paul designed the big glove. We called it the elephant glove. The Wilson Company designed it,” Ginsberg said. “It worked in the sense that we could catch the ball with it. It got in there. But when guys would steal, the ball was in there and you couldn’t grab it and get it out of there. It worked one way and didn’t work another way.”
Eventually, Richards obtained another catcher, Clint “Scrap Iron” Courtney, who was built low to the ground and did a better job of blocking knuckleballs. That made Ginsberg expendable. The Orioles released him in 1960.
“I played with seven clubs in my career and Baltimore was my favorite,” he told me. “I loved the food, the atmosphere, the town, the people. A couple of offseasons, I stayed in town and worked for the Mary Sue Candy Company. I sold for them. Johnny Unitas did the commercials. I did the work.”
Brooks was right. My book was a lot better with Ginsberg’s recollections in it.
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