What was dizzy dean brothers name

My forte is identifying ballplayers in old photos, and my special interest is the Dead Ball Era. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Subscribe to Baseball History Comes Alive! Pepper Martin and Dizzy Dean Dizzy Dean knocked unconscious after a beaning to the head breaking up a double play. Dizzy being carried off the field after the beaning. Dizzy on the cover of Time magazine.

Dizzy Dean colorization by Don Stokes. Like this: Like Loading Gary Livacari. Jay and Paul followed Elmer, in and , respectively. Alma died of a severe case of tuberculosis in , leaving Ab and the boys to work the fields together. The boys played ball, usually barefoot, wherever they could find an open spot, with a potato sack for home plate, a rock wound with string for a ball, and whatever kind of stick they could find for a bat.

Sometime in Elmer got separated from the rest of the family. They had traveled to Texas to visit Dizzy, who had just enlisted in the Army with a falsified birth certificate. They drove around for a while, but found no sign of Elmer. Pa had no way to contact him, with no settled residence or telephone. Mentally challenged from birth, Elmer had never learned to read or write.

But Pa did not seem very worried and never notified the police. About four years later, Elmer, now working on a farm in Arkansas, noticed a newspaper picture of Dizzy pitching for Houston in the Dixie Series of Others in the drugstore with Elmer read him the story, and the druggist sent a letter to Dizzy, who by then was barnstorming through small towns in Missouri and Arkansas with brother Paul.

Paul and Dizzy went to reclaim their older brother. They packed him in their car with his possessions stuffed in a pasteboard suitcase. Paul drove, and Dizzy sat with Elmer in the back. Dizzy promptly stopped in town and outfitted Elmer with a new wardrobe. Albert had moved to the Houston area, with Dizzy playing for the Buffaloes in , as Paul moved from Springfield, through Houston, and eventually to Columbus that year.

Elmer had played some in the Ozark League, and now saw his chance to join the Buffaloes himself. Houston team president Fred Ankenman had high hopes of finding a third Dean brother, who might keep up the Dean tradition.

Elmer signed on in , at least for a tryout, as a six-foot, pound outfielder who batted left-handed and threw right-handed. Elmer protested, and threatened to quit.

Still hoping to keep a Dean in Houston, Ankenman then offered Elmer a job selling concessions. Raised within a poor rural family, Dizzy was rich in talent, his pitching arm first noticed by St.

Louis scouts in —not surprising, since the vast Cardinals farm system Branch Rickey had set up was still miles ahead of any other major league organization. Dizzy had the goods to make the starting rotation in , but St. Louis sent him back to the minors—not to work on his mechanics, but his humility.

A year later Dizzy returned to the majors to stay, winning 18 in his rookie year before notching 20 more in But he remained a thorn in the side of St. Louis management, staging various small holdouts for more money, and at one point declaring himself a free agent because he had signed with the organization while underage. Just another day in the life of the Gashouse Gang, joined here by a member of the Chicago Cubs.

At far right is Pepper Martin , certainly the most active of pranksters on the Cardinals. Dizzy was constantly lobbying to have his brother Paul—also in the St. Louis organization—brought up to the parent club. The Cardinals finally listened after the year-old Paul won 22 games in the minors during Dizzy championed that only Paul could pitch better than he, and reporters searched for a companion nickname for the much quieter, younger Dean. The Cardinals of were loaded with characters that somehow managed to get along with each other—barely.

But Durocher was more of an event away from the ballpark than he was within it, thanks to his well-known gambling habits and consorting with questionable types—elements that would shadow his baseball life. He was also in the middle of a messy divorce proceeding, during which he admitted punching out his wife a few times. Another recent, prominent addition in St. Louis was year-old outfielder Joe Medwick, a potent slugger with an ornery disposition that frequently found him scraping with teammates.

The roster was loaded with names—Ripper, Spud, Kiddo, Wild Bill, Tex—that made opponents wonder if they were headed for a ballpark or a back alley. All in all, it seemed amazing to believe that the architect of this asylum was Branch Rickey, the deeply religious St. Louis general manager who made it a point never to attend games on Sunday.

As a team, the Cardinals ran hot and cold through the season, the brothers Dean doing all they could to keep the team strong. When Dizzy complained early on that he and Daffy each earned half the salary of pitching teammate Wild Bill Hallahan—claiming they were both twice as good—the other Cardinals pitchers stewed.

Then came an exhibition at Detroit in early August. Louis and fined the two, Dizzy and Daffy went crazy. They tore the locker room apart and ripped up their uniforms. When reporters burst in to get the scoop, the Deans, using their self-taught public relations know-how, repeated the scene for the flashbulbs. Down seven games to the front-running New York Giants in early September, the Cardinals—and more importantly, the Deans—finally got serious. In an aggressive stretch run, the Cardinals pared down the lead on September 16 as they swept a doubleheader from the Giants at the Polo Grounds; Dizzy won the first game in a relief role, and Daffy took the nightcap by outdueling Carl Hubbell.

In a more stunning display of a one-two punch five days later at Brooklyn, Dizzy won the first game of a twinbill against the Dodgers with a three-hit shutout—before Daffy one-upped him with a no-hitter in the second game.

BTW: Dizzy claimed afterward that if he knew Daffy was going to throw a no-hitter, he would have thrown one as well.