Celebrating a Life Well Lived


We lost one of baseball's best people ever on Friday. Doctor Bobby Brown was the Yankee 3rd baseman at the start of the game's greatest dynasty, then served as a military doctor in Korea.

Returning to civilian life, he finished his playing career in the Bronx before becoming a successful Fort Worth, Texas cardiologist. Baseball called him back twice more -- first for a shot stint as a Texas Rangers executive and then a decade (1984-'94) as American League president.

The West Coast native and longtime Texan never lost his Bronx connections. He was a perennial guest at Yankee Old Timers Days, reconnecting with fans and teammates such as Whitey Ford, Jerry Coleman (a boyhood pal from San Francisco) and his onetime roommate Yogi Berra.

While playing with these legends, as well as Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, it would have been easy to overlook Brown. Yet, if you go back to the numbers, you'll find he was a steady, Brosius-like contributor. And when he got to the World Series, Brown seemed to turn it up a couple notches more. In an era when the only post-season action was baseball's Fall Classic, he hit .439 with a .500 on-base percentage. And this is no small sample. We're talking 17 games over four World Series (1947, '49, '50 and '51) with five doubles and three triples. He missed the '52 Series having joined the Army during that summer. In fact, as he told the New York Times, his unit arrived in Korea the day that the Yankees and Dodgers opened their best-of-7.

Helping people, entertaining people. A very proud legacy in baseball and life in general.

Thank you, Doctor Brown.


 

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