Norm Siebern, a solid outfielder and first baseman who was an American League All-Star three times and played in three World Series, but who may be best known as part of the trade that brought Roger Maris to the Yankees, died on Friday in Naples, Fla. He was 82.
The Yankees confirmed the death without giving a cause.
Siebern, a left-handed hitter with extra-base power — he hit as many as 36 doubles and 25 homers in a season — was seen as a potential star when he arrived in the big leagues with the Yankees in 1956, a promising candidate to fill the team’s hole in left field and play alongside Mickey Mantle in center and Hank Bauer in right.
Siebern had one at-bat in the World Series that year as the Yankees beat the Dodgers, but an injury to his knee and shoulder, sustained when he ran into a wall chasing a fly ball, slowed his progress. He spent all of 1957 in the minor leagues, playing for the Yankees’ Class AAA farm team, the Denver Bears, and was named minor league player of the year by The Sporting News.
Promoted to the Yankees again the next spring, he became the regular left fielder and hit .300. Although he won a Gold Glove, the only one of his career, his fielding in the 1958 World Series against the Milwaukee Braves proved costly.
Left field in October in the old Yankee Stadium could be tough duty: the catcher (and Yankee teammate of Siebern’s) Yogi Berra, who died in September and who played left on occasion, once famously observed about the afternoon shadows that “it gets late early” there. In Game 4 of the Series, with the Yankees down two games to one, Siebern lost a handful of fly balls in the sun or in the lights, which had been turned on to accommodate television. Although he wasn’t charged with an error, his misplays had a role in all three runs of a 3-0 Braves victory.
Manager Casey Stengel benched him for the rest of the Series, which the Yankees came back to win. The next year, Siebern played fewer games, his average slid to .271, and in December 1959 he became a key figure in one of baseball’s most consequential trades.
The Yankees had made such a habit of bolstering their roster by trading for Kansas City’s better players that the Athletics were often referred to as the Yankees’ farm team, and in 1959 the Yankees sent Siebern; the aging Bauer; Don Larsen, who had pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series but whose career was on the downslope; and the young first baseman Marv Throneberry (who would later become known for his goofy play with the expansion-era Mets) to Kansas City for Maris, then just 25, and two inconsequential players — first baseman Kent Hadley, who didn’t last the 1960 season, and infielder Joe DeMaestri, whose major league career ended in 1961.
Sports Newsletter
Get the big sports news, highlights and analysis from Times journalists, with distinctive takes on games and some behind-the-scenes surprises, delivered to your inbox every week.
Maris went on to hit 100 home runs over the course of the 1960 and 1961 seasons, including a then-record 61 in 1961, and won the A.L. Most Valuable Player Award both times as the Yankees won the league pennant both years, and the World Series in 1961.
Kansas City remained a dreadful team, never finishing higher than eighth in the A.L. in the four seasons Siebern spent with the team. But Siebern was a fine player for them, averaging close to 20 home runs a season, and in 1962, his best year, he drove in 117 runs and hit .308, with an on-base percentage of .412.
In 1964, he was traded to Baltimore, where Bauer was the manager, and before retiring in 1968 he also played for the California Angels, the San Francisco Giants and the Boston Red Sox, with whom he played in the World Series against the Cardinals in 1967. The Sox lost in seven games. For his career, Siebern hit .272 with 132 home runs.
Norman Leroy Siebern was born in or near St. Louis on July 26, 1933. He was an editor of his high school newspaper and preferred basketball to baseball, but according to a biographical sketch on the website baseball-reference.com, he was spotted by a Yankees scout when he was just 15, and the team signed him as soon as he finished high school.
For a time he attended Southwest Missouri State College (now Missouri State University) and played basketball there. One of his teammates was Jerry Lumpe, who also went on to play for the Yankees and the Athletics. Siebern played in the minor leagues and spent two years in the Army before joining the Yankees.
Baseball-Reference reported that for a time after his retirement from baseball, Siebern owned an insurance agency in Florida, and that he was married and had three daughters. Information about survivors was not immediately available.
No comments:
Post a Comment