<Archive Obituaries> Luke Appling (January 3rd 1991)
Bill Schenley
sportswriters, the late Shirley Povich of the Washington Post. If
you're a baseball fan ... don't miss it.>
Luke Appling, Ex-White Sox Star In The Hall Of Fame, Is Dead At 83
Photo: http://www.whitecleats.org/hof/appling.jpg
FROM: The New York Times (January 4th 1991) ~
By Robert McG. Thomas Jr.
Luke Appling, the sure-hitting Hall of Fame shortstop who bedeviled
rival pitchers during 20 sparkling years with the Chicago White Sox
and then astounded the baseball world by hitting a home run in an
old-timers' game at the age of 75, died during emergency surgery
yesterday. He was 83 years old and had retired two days earlier as a
minor league hitting instructor for the Atlanta Braves.
He had been suffering from an abdominal aneuryism, according to
officials of Lakeside Community Hospital in Cumming, Ga. He lived in
Cumming since joining the Braves in 1976.
Appling, who hit over .300 in all but four seasons, won the American
League batting title twice and retired in 1950 with a .310 career
average. Old Aches and Pains
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1964, and if his
hitting had not been credential enough, Old Aches and Pains, as he was
known, would have surely qualified for the Hall as baseball's leading
hypochondriac.
Among the maladies he said afflicted him over the years were
indigestion, a stiff neck, fallen arches, a sore throat, dizzy spells,
torn leg tendons, insomnia, symptoms of gout, astigmatism, a throbbing
sensation in a kneecap, and once, after taking a ferry ride, mal de
mer.
His constant stream of complaints might have become intolerable to his
teammates if Appling had not developed a novel remedy. He simply took
his misery out on opposing pitchers, rapping out 2,749 hits, all but
587 of them singles. Best When Worst
His best season was in 1936 when he led the league with a .388
average, the highest ever for a shortstop. He missed winning the title
again in 1940, when his .348 average was 4 points behind Joe
DiMaggio's, but he won the 1943 championship with a .328 average.
Appling, who suffered only one truly disabling injury, a broken ankle
that kept him out of half of the 1938 season, said he played best when
he felt worst. When his average declined to .262 in 1942 after nine
straight .300 seasons, he attributed the slump to the fact that he was
completely healthy all year. Fortunately, his maladies returned the
next year and he resumed his .300 pace with his league-leading .328 in
1943. He spent much of the next two years in the service before
returning for the end of the 1945 season.
The Appling specialty was the whistling line drive over or between
infielders, and pitchers considered themselves lucky if Appling got
his hit early in the count rather than late. That was because he was a
finicky batter who had the rare ability to foul off strikes that were
not quite to his liking. Tired Out Pitchers
As a result, he averaged an estimated 15 fouls into the stands a game,
costing the White Sox about $2,300 in lost balls a year, the club once
figured, and inordinately tiring pitchers since facing Appling could
easily turn into an inning's worth of work.
Ted Lyons, Chicago's ace pitcher during the Appling years, once
described the devastating effect Appling could have on a pitcher:
"I remember when Luke ran Charlie Ruffing of the Yankees right out of
the game. It was a steaming hot day and when Appling was up in the
first inning with two out and two on. Charlie got three balls and two
strikes on him. Then Luke stood there and fouled off 14 pitches in a
row. Finally he walked and the next batter hit one for a homer. It
wasn't long before Ruffing was taken out." Turned Professional in 1930
Lucius Benjamin Appling was born in High Point, N.C., on April 2,
1907, and raised in Atlanta, where he played football and baseball at
Fulton High School and then spent two years at Oglethorpe University.
He entered professional baseball in 1930, first with the Atlanta
Crackers and toward the end of the season with the White Sox.
During his first few seasons in Chicago he was a modest hitter and a
terrible fielder. His 55 errors were the most for a shortstop in 1933.
The next year the White Sox third baseman, Jimmy Dykes, took over as
manager, and his treatment of the moody Appling was credited with
transforming his play.
After his retirement as a player in 1950 he served as a minor league
manager and a major league coach with a series of teams, including the
Kansas City Athletics, which used him as manager for the last 40 games
of 1967. Hit Homer at 75
In 1970, Appling, the only White Sox player to win a batting
championship, was named the greatest player in the history of the
White Sox by local baseball writers.
The high point of his later career came during an old-timers' game in
Washington in 1982 when the 75-year-old Appling, who hit only 45 home
runs in his entire major league career, slammed a homer into the
left-field stands off 61-year-old Warren Spahn.
"It was a good pitch," Appling said later, "and I just swung away."
He is survived by his wife, Fay; a brother, Clyde; three sisters, Inez
Jones, Dola Campbell and Marie Shelton; a son, Luke 3d of Alpharetta,
Ga.; two daughters, Carol Tribble and Linda Sumpter of Alpharetta, and
six grandchildren.
Correction:
An obituary yesterday about Luke Appling, the former major league
shortstop, referred incorrectly in some copies to the Kansas City team
he managed during part of the 1967 season. It was the Athletics, not
the Royals.
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Photo:
http://www.authentichistory.com/audio/1930s/sports/images/luke_appling.jpg
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Hall Of Fame Shortstop Luke Appling Dies;
The Former Chicago White Sox Player Was 83
He Had A .310 Batting Average Over 21 Major-League Seasons
Los Angeles Times
FROM: The Los Angeles Times (January 3rd 1991) ~
By The Associated Press
Baseball Hall of Famer Luke Appling, remembered for a .310
lifetime average and a home run at age 75, died today of an
aneurysm at 83.
Appling was admitted to Lakeside Community Hospital, in
Atlanta's northern suburbs, Wednesday night and died in
surgery early this morning, according to the hospital.
Lucius Benjamin Appling Jr., known as "Old Aches and Pains,"
played shortstop for 21 seasons, all with the same
big-league team, the Chicago White Sox. His finest season
came in 1936, when he led the American League with a .388
batting average -- the highest average ever for a
shortstop -- and drove in 128 runs.
He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1964, and managed the
Kansas City Athletics for 40 games in 1967.
In his later years, Appling became a beloved fixture at
old-timers games and at the training camp of the Atlanta
Braves, for whom he worked as a minor-league hitting
instructor. At 75, the great singles hitter thrilled the
crowd at a 1982 old-timers game in Washington, slamming a
home run off Warren Spahn.
Appling played in 2,422 major-league games and collected
2,749 hits. He narrowly missed his second AL batting title
in 1940, when he hit .348, four points behind Joe DiMaggio.
But he did get another batting championship in 1943, hitting
.328.
In 19 of his 21 big-league seasons, he hit over .300. He
holds the major-league record for most years at shortstop,
with 20. He also played third base, second and first.
Appling was named the greatest player in White Sox history
in a 1970 vote of the Chicago chapter of the Baseball
Writers of America.
"I played with him and against him, and he was the finest
shortstop I ever saw," said Eddie Lopat, who pitched with
the Sox before going to the New York Yankees. "In the field,
he covered more ground than anyone in the league. As a
hitting shortstop, there was no one in his class."
Appling earned his nickname by consistently complaining to
teammates how awful he felt, often just before excelling on
the field.
Born in High Point, N.C., Appling grew up in Atlanta. After
becoming a star baseball and football player at Oglethorpe
University, Appling signed a baseball contract with the
minor-league Atlanta Crackers in 1930, and was sold to the
big-league White Sox before the season was over.
After retiring as a player in 1950, Appling became a
minor-league manager. His first team, Memphis in 1952, won
the Southern Assn. playoffs and beat Texas League champ
Shreveport in the Dixie Series. Memphis won the
regular-season crown under Appling a year later.
He managed Indianapolis to an American Assn. championship in
1962, and went on to coach in the American League for
Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City and
Oakland, before becoming a hitting instructor with the
Braves in 1976.
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Photo: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/media_content/m-1348.jpg
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'Old Aches And Pains' Would Have Loved It
FROM: The Washington Post (January 4th 1991) ~
By Shirley Povich
Along about noon, the news came over the radio that Luke
Appling had died at 83. Then it was added that "and Luke
Appling will probably be best remembered for the home run he
hit off Warren Spahn in that old-timers game at RFK
Stadium." The local sportscaster who delivered that belief
must now himself be best remembered as a total idiot with
bollixed priorities. A nincompoop.
Anyway, let's reconstruct that RFK scene: The stadium was
rigged for the old-timers' frolic, with all fields shortened
so that the likes of 75-year-old Appling could hit one into
the seats; especially with the fun-loving Spahn tossing up
the melons he likes to throw in old-timers games. Appling
laughed his way around the bases.
Appling, the near-immortal, best remembered for something
like that? Luke Appling, who may have been the most famous
shortstop in the 90 years of the American League -- twice
its batting champion, seven times a leader in assists -- who
was swept into Cooperstown with 84 percent of the vote;
whose .388 batting average in 1936 was unmatched by any
other shortstop, living or otherwise?
To honor Luke Appling most for hitting an old-timers home
run is equivalent to saying six-time AL batting champion Ted
Williams was distinguished mostly for his dislike of
bunting, or that Joe DiMaggio was famous for failing to hit
safely in that 57th game, or that the Johnstown flood could,
indeed, be attributed to a leaky toilet in Altoona. What
blather.
Sixty years ago when he came up to the White Sox as a kid
shortstop, it wasn't immediately apparent Luke Appling
belonged in the big leagues. He immediately fumbled his way
into such notoriety that Chicago fans dubbed him "Kid Boots"
and screamed for his removal from the lineup.
What a turnaround it became. The rookie who batted only .232
would, a couple of years later, launch a .300-plus batting
career for the next 16 seasons and play in more games,
2,599, than any other shortstop in history.
For the jittery rookie shortstop with a undependable arm and
fumbling habit, the renaissance occurred when the veteran
Jimmy Dykes joined the Sox as their third baseman. Appling
said Dykes steadied him. He remembered a day in St. Louis
when, with the bases full in the ninth, he booted a
groundball that lost the game, and then later moaned to
Dykes: "Why did they have to hit one to me in that spot?"
Appling said that's when Dykes told him: "You gotta change
your attitude. In a spot like that, get yourself to wanting
them to hit it to you."
When Appling retired in 1950, his baseball age was a number
at which Luke and his friends had been winking for years.
Luke said his draft card exposed him as two years older.
"Couldn't lie to the government," he said. "Maybe they
wouldn't like it." (The Baseball Encyclopedia says he was
81, so we'll never be sure exactly how old he was.)
Among Appling's nonadmirers were the AL pitchers. In his own
way, he wore them out. In addition to his career .310
batting average, Appling was the game's most famed
specialist at fouling off pitches, especially when the count
reached three and two. Appling said: "Put it this way. When
I saw a pitch I didn't like, I just fouled it off. It was
easy." Ted Lyons, the Chicago manager, vowed he once saw
Appling foul off 14 straight pitches against Red Ruffing.
And he always fouled to right field. Appling explained this
in his direct way. "In my first two seasons, when I didn't
hit .300, I was a straightaway hitter, so I decided to
change directions."
Around the league, they also knew him as the AL's greatest
moaner, constantly complaining of some illness or injury.
"Old Aches and Pains" they called him when Appling spoke of
his lameness or fractures or conjunctivitis, or other ills.
A Chicago writer once wrote: "An unhealthy Appling is the
best thing the Sox have going for them."
How did Appling get to the big leagues? Well, it might be
said he was a timely hitter. His Oglethorpe College team was
playing Mercer on a day when an Atlanta scout was in the
stands, and Luke simply picked that day to hit four home
runs. Atlanta signed him and sold him to the White Sox for
$25,000.
In later years, it was during a debate about the comparative
speeds of newcomer Bob Feller and Lefty Grove that Appling
delivered an opinion agreeing with that of Walter Johnson.
"I think Grove was a mite faster," he said. Having faced
both of them numerous times, he could be considered an
informed source.
After two years at Oglethorpe, Appling took early retirement
to try his luck at baseball. At a class reunion many years
later, they presented him with a plaque that may not have
been overstated when it pronounced him "the South's greatest
ballplayer since Ty Cobb." Seems he was famous for something
else besides hitting an old-timers game home run.
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Photo:
http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/cws/photo/ph_history_timeline_big2.jpg
1934 Goudey (#2) baseball card:
http://www.vintagecardtraders.com/virtual/34goudey/34goudey-27.jpg
1949 Leaf (#27) baseball card:
http://www.vintagecardtraders.org/virtual/49leaf/49leaf-059.jpg
1949 Bowman (#175) baseball card:
http://www.vintagecardtraders.com/virtual/49bowman/49bowman-175.jpg
Luke Appling in art:
http://www.dickperez.com/images/psd_bhf_LukeAppling_lg.jpg