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If you are a collector, the name “Hank Bauer” may ring a bell. If you are moreover a collector of sports cards, you know that Bauer was a vital part of Casey Stengel’s seven-time World Series winning New York Yankees baseball team through the 1950′s. In the previous decade he was a U.S. Marine lieutenant in the Battle of Okinawa, where only six out of his 64 men survived one of the worst fire fights of any war. Bauer came out of World War II with two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts and a blown-up leg. 

Still, Bauer strengthened his leg to have a long and successful career in Major League baseball.  Then in 1966 he also became the World-Series winning manager of the Baltimore Orioles.  Finally in 2007, he died at the age of 84.  Although Memorial Day is actually dedicated to those who fell in battle, this piece is about how one particular Marine never left his battleground to the end of his life.  The same can be said of many Marines.  

Bauer was unique. With left-handed outfielder Gene Woodling, the right-handed Bauer became a partner in manager Casey Stengel’s first “Platoon System” that helped the Yankees win that unprecedented number of world championships.  The Platoon System enabled Bauer to have an advantage at home plate by batting exclusively against left-handed pitchers, while Woodling would take Bauer’s place against right-handed pitchers to have the same advantage.  The batting output of the two kept steering the Yankees into World championships until all the other major league teams adopted their own platoon systems. 

Bauer batted both for high average and high home-run output, yet he never reached the high performance levels of superstar teammates like Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra.  But Bauer was crucial to the Yankees for another reason.  He was called a clubhouse manager without portfolio. 

That meant if there was some social problem among Yankee players – some player acting or talking selfishly at the expense of team harmony – Bauer would take care of it, sometimes with a single punch.   

Bauer was said to have worn World War II on his face.  So had Yogi Berra, who nearly fell at the invasion of Normandy as a gunner on one of the first practically suicidal “jet boats” to hit French soil.  In those days, the New York baseball team were not just “Yankees;” they were “Yanks.”  And so with that natural war paint of the Pacific War on Bauer’s face, he took under his protection the first African-American player to ever play in a Yankee uniform, catcher Elston Howard. 

In those days, while home-team fans generally learned to support their own African-American players, they also put the first opposing black players through hell in the ballparks.  The African-American players stood up and triumphed over it.  But the non-stop hazing and the threats took their toll. The marvelous baseball-football star Jackie Robinson died of diabetes and cardiac problems at age 53.  Another Californian African-American Major-League pioneer – Vada Pinson of the Cincinatti Reds – died of a stroke at age 57. Elston Howard died of a heart ailment when he was only 51. 

But Bauer was one of those people who made it easier for black pioneers in the ballpark.  Once when the booing against Howard around the Yankee dugout reached a crescendo,  Bauer stood in the roof of his dugout, shook his fist at the fans, and told everyone within earshot while using that World War II face, “Ellie is my friend.” 

At around the same time, Bauer went with Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra and some other Yankee players to celebrate the birthday of their team’s fiery second-baseman Billy Martin at New York’s Copacabana restaurant.  The club’s entertainer that night was an up-and-coming Sammy Davis, Jr.  A heckler kept up a steady stream of racial slurs against Davis until Bauer stepped up to the rube and clocked him.  Like others who had been clocked by Bauer in the past, the heckler made it out of the club on a stretcher and straight into an ambulance. 

There was something about Bauer’s face that neither the police nor the Yankee owner wanted to deal with. So instead of blaming Bauer for what the New York newspapers described as the Yankee “riot at the Copacabana,” the birthday boy Billy Martin was blamed. 

I sense that Bauer’s World War II experience had something to do with his practically  missionary dedication to getting Elston Howard through the years of racial hazing in the 1950’s.  Like my father – also a lieutenant in combat in World War II – Bauer had discovered that the most terrible war n history was all about racism.  It was all about German Nazism trying to become a Master Race in the West and Japanese Fascism trying to be a Master Race in the East, with all other races expected to fall over and get killed by them. 

Throughout history people have used every excuse and every pretext to go to war against each other.  But it has been the racist wars – like the Slavic vs. the Germanic conflict in World War I and the extended violent argument over racial slavery in the Civil War – that have been the most terrible recurring wars in history.  And today it is the Al Quada that has been trying to establish a master race through a jihadist war of racial destruction in particular against Americans. 

So here is a salute for Memorial Day to Hank Bauer, and the 58 men that were lost in his platoon at the Battle of Okinawa, for the work they dedicated themselves to in making our world safer against the ugliest hatreds in history. 

Chris Sharp – Commentary

Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. He has recently published a new book titled “Dangerous Learning: The New Schooling in California.” His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.