Photos of Levittowner Mickey Rutner during his baseball career, one with the fabled Connie Mack

Click on Mickey's photos to enlarge

By FRANK BARNING

Starting at the age of about 10, I wanted to be a baseball player when I grew up. By the time I was a junior at Division Avenue High School in 1959, the painful realization hit me that I needed a new goal. My varsity baseball "career" for the Blue Dragons consisted of two trips to the plate.

Through the years, my respect for good baseball players grew. Of course, those I hold in highest esteem made it to Major League Baseball, which is known in the business as "The Show". The term was popularized in my favorite baseball movie, "Bull Durham".

There was a man in early Levittown who had been to "The Show", albeit briefly. He had three sons, one of whom was in my class at Division, Toby Rutner. The other sons were Paul and Richard. Their dad was the late Mickey Rutner and if you check this blog's index (on the right hand side of this page), there are four links to stories about Mickey. Check them out.

Paul Rutner, a graduate of Levittown Memorial High School, has provided us with three photos taken during his dad's career. Except for 12 games with the Philadelphia Athletics at age 28 in 1947, Mickey toiled exclusively in the minor leagues. Our blog stories in the archives will fill you in on Mickey's career, family and his coaching of Levittown boys.

The 1947 photo posted above of him in an Athletics uniform is with fabled manager and team owner Connie Mack, who is enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Mack won and lost more games than any other manager. The others shots were taken while he played in the minor leagues for San Antonio (shown sliding) and with Birmingham (standing next to the man with a bat).

My friend Arnie Galeota, class of 1961, wrote a tribute to Mickey which closed with the line, "Mickey Rutner was a man to respect just by the way he treated everyone, the way he carried himself and boy could he play baseball!"

Comments about Mickey Rutner: dad, ballplayer and coach

Click on card to enlarge

Toby Rutner 1960: Thank you so much for the wonderful articles about my Dad.
I know that he would be so pleased to have made such a positive impression on
on so many people. He was a real character.

After he died and my Mom was preparing the funeral, she couldn't bring herself to put a suit on him, so we buried him in his golf clothes and put a golf club in there with him,
just in case he gets a chance to play.

The funeral escort was done Texas style. He got a motorcycle escort to the cemetary with lights flashing and sirens sounding. He went out, as he lived, in style.

Richard Rutner: Thank you for that wonderful homage to my dad. He was a great ballplayer, Toby and I were lucky enough to be on the road the first several years of our lives to live in the dugout and experience growing up with a professional baseball player.

Don Davidson 1960: The two years I played Pony League ball my father coached the team. He was an avid cigar smoker and decided that the best steal signs would be when he would take the damn thing out of his mouth.
Back then we played each team, if memory serves me correctly, twice during the regular season. The first time we played Mickey Rutner’s team we stole four bases. The second time we played his team the first three steal attempts were all pitchouts and each time the base runner was thrown out. l looked over at Mickey Rutner after the third one and he was laughing so hard I swear he had tears in his eyes. My father never changed the sign in two years and we never stole another base off that team.

Frank Barning 1960: One day while I was in the Levittown Pony League, Mickey Rutner came by to give us some coaching tips during a practice session. We worked on base running and how to take a proper lead off first base, even how to best take your first step toward second base.

With apologies to Mr. DiMaggio and Mr. Simes, I learned more from Mickey Rutner in his short visit than in two years of playing baseball in high school.

A player's tribute to Levittown Little League coach Mickey Rutner

Mickey Rutner (back row, far right) coached this 1955 Levittown Little League team. Arnie Galeota is in the front row, far right).
click on photo to enlarge

By Arnie Galeota
Class of 1961

I had the good fortune to play on a Little League team coached by my friend Toby Rutner's dad. Mickey Rutner knew all the proper ways to approach the sport of baseball. Hitting was more than keeping your eye on the ball, there was a discipline to hitting. He tried like hell to make a hitter out of me. He said," Arnie, you're not a big kid, (I weighed about 100 pounds) so base hitting is what we'll concentrate on, rather than long ball hitting". Little did he know that base hitting was even over my head. I was very short.. He told me to swing the bat at the ball and try to hit it back to the pitcher, BUT HIT IT HARD!. The end result was a base hit up the middle.

He demonstrated it to me and he took his stride and a level swing and crack...up the middle into center field. He did it maybe 8 out of 10 times. I step in and crack! a dribbler to the mound, some fouled tips and a few missed swings, I was 12 or 13 at the time. He never gave up on me, showed incredible patience and even showed a sense of humor about it. However, he was a no nonsense coach when it was time to work hard.

Now it came time for him to teach me how to play second base. He moved in front of a ground ball with the grace of a dancer. He taught me how to break for a ball as soon as it left the bat, how to turn and throw from different angles and what my responsibilities were when the ball was put into play. More than all of that he taught me how to think the way a ball player thinks. He always said to me, "Know what you will do with the ball if it's hit to you. What are your options?"

He spent a lot of time trying to teach me the pivot to make the throw to first base on a double play and how to run out into right field and be the cut off man. What a patient teacher he was. Eventually he molded me into a pretty decent fielding second baseman which I was able to maintain later in life when I played in a softball league in Smithtown...I was 40 at the time and 60 pounds heavier.

He tagged me with the nickname "hitless wonder" because of my fielding skills. He made it look so easy and he rarely showed any temper or frustration. He was a motivational kind of coach. I also remember Toby's mom Lee always being involved with the refreshments and other helpful things. He treated her with a lot of respect. She also seemed to love being around the kids as much as he did.

Mickey Rutner was a man to respect just by the way he treated everyone, the way he carried himself and boy could he play baseball!

PART 2: Mickey Rutner, Levittown dad, returns to baseball after the war and is the inspiration for an Eliot Asinof novel

Mickey Rutner with his sons Toby and Richard

Some of the boys who played baseball in Levittown in the 1950s had the privilege of being coached by the late Mickey Rutner, father of the class of 1960's Toby Rutner. The following story appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail shortly after his passing.

By TOM HAWTHORN

After the war, the Blue Rocks, named for the colourful granite found beneath the Delaware city, took the infielder back and he replied with one of his finest seasons. Mr. Rutner smacked 36 doubles, nine triples, and 15 home runs to knock in 135 runs, while recording a healthy .310 average.

Those 1946 numbers earned him a promotion the following season to the Birmingham Barons, where he was named a Southern Association all-star. A further promotion came in September, when, batting .348, he was at last called up to the parent Philadelphia Athletics, at age 27.

One of his new teammates was pitcher Phil Marchildon of Penetanguishene, Ontario, who had returned to the A's after spending nine months in a German prisoner-of-war camp when his bomber was shot down.

The rookie had eight hits in his first 27 at-bats, including a homer off a curve ball thrown by Earl Caldwell of the Chicago White Sox. "A very good prospect," A's boss Connie Mack pronounced after observing his newest employee's first week of work. Despite his solid debut, the third baseman would appear in just 12 games, getting 12 hits in 48 at-bats for a .250 average.

He was returned to the minors after the following spring training and would never again get to wear a major league uniform. The demotion came not because of a lack of skill or desire on Mr. Rutner's part. Rather, the A's returned him to Birmingham to save the $12,000 still due on his purchase price, The Sporting News reported.

His robust style was displayed in a 1948 playoff game, when the stocky baserunner broke up a double-play attempt by slamming into Nashville second baseman, Buster Boguskie. The winning run was scored while the two men lay sprawled on the infield dirt. Mr. Boguskie suffered torn ligaments and cartilage in his left knee; Mr. Rutner wound up with a broken right collarbone. The Barons went on to win the Dixie Series title in 1948, a championship Mr. Rutner would once again win the following season as a member of the Tulsa Oilers.

In the days before free agency, a ball player had limited control over his fate. In 1951, Toronto assigned him to the San Antonio Missions. He balked, insisting his wife was allergic to the weather in Texas, threatening to retire rather than report. He was convinced at last to show up, played well, and eventually brought his wife along. The couple would eventually retire to the Lone Star State.

His playing days ended in 1953, after he suffered a pulled leg muscle and was released by the Oklahoma City Indians. He worked briefly as a Ford salesman before opening a dry-cleaning business named Big League Cleaners at Wyandanch, N.Y.

Not long after hanging up his glove he entertained an old friend. Eliot Asinof had been a prospect who turned to writing after his baseball career ended. "He was visiting us at the house ... and he was taking notes and he asked me if it would be all right if he wrote this book about me - but he wouldn't use my name," Mr. Rutner told the New Jersey Jewish News a month before his death.

The novel Man on Spikes (McGraw Hill, 1955) featured a ballplayer who never succeeds for reasons over which he has no control. The author described the protagonist as a man "used, victimized by the system that made up its own reasons to exploit his talents. He is, then, like so many of us in all walks of life, an unsung hero." The character based on Mickey Rutner was named Mike Kutner.

The novel found a new and appreciative audience when reissued by Southern Illinois University Press in 1998, by which time the author had become one of baseball's best-known Boswells for his look at the Black Sox scandal in Eight Men Out. Both the author and his inspiration for the novel suffered from anti-Semitism in their careers. The novel makes no mention of religion, although the working-class hero wears glasses, for which he suffers prejudice.

In recent years, Mr. Rutner was celebrated by members of the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society. He was also regarded as the oldest-living Jewish former major leaguer.

The unfairness of his own limited baseball opportunities was made more evident by the alphabetical order that had him share a page of the baseball encyclopedia with the great Babe Ruth.

Mr. Rutner entered hospital earlier this month for surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, a common injury among baseball players. He died a week later from a staph infection.

MICKEY RUTNER
Mickey Rutner was born on March 18, 1919, at Hempstead, N.Y. He died on Oct. 17 (2007) at Austin, Tex. The resident of Georgetown, Tex., was 88. He is survived by Leona, known as Lee, his wife of 66 years, and by three sons, Paul, Richard, and Dr. Toby Rutner, a Winnipeg psychologist. He also leaves seven grandchildren.

Unsung hero Mickey Rutner: Levittown dad, war veteran, major league baseball player

Mickey wasn't the only star in the Rutner family; Mrs. Rutner was a Rockette

Some of the boys who played baseball in Levittown in the 1950s had the privilege of being coached by the father of the class of 1960's Toby Rutner. What set Mickey Rutner apart from other dads was that he had played in the major leagues. Toby's dad, passed away on October 17, 2007. The following story appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail s few days later.

By TOM HAWTHORN

VICTORIA, British Columbia -- Mickey Rutner was an infielder for the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball club who inspired a novel about an athlete whose dreams of diamond glory turn to dust.

Mr. Rutner patrolled third base - baseball's hot corner - for Toronto's International League team in 1950. At 5-foot-11 and 190 pounds, with ruddy cheeks and piercing blue eyes, he looked every inch the professional ball player he desired to be. Leafs manager Jack Sanford rearranged the batting lineup to have him bat fourth, the all-important clean-up position. Mr. Rutner responded by knocking in six runs in the first 11 games in which he hit in the No. 4 slot.

He had a decent campaign in Toronto, as he did on his many stops in baseball's minor leagues. The essence of the novel he inspired was that a player's wish to play in the major leagues could be thwarted by considerations other than talent.

It was Mr. Rutner's burden that he was good enough to pursue a wish of baseball glory, though not so talented as to make him indispensable. He would spend a single month in what players call The Show, the big leagues which bring with them greater acclaim, not to mention larger paycheques. He did well in his brief sojourn in the American League, but not so well as to avoid a return to the minors.

Milton Rutner was born at Hempstead, N.Y., a Long Island town in which his father owned a shirtwaist factory. He was the youngest of five children. The plant and the family soon after moved to the Bronx.

As a boy, he shagged fly balls at Crotona Park for a teenager eight years older. The neighbourhood cheered Hank Greenberg as he went on to star in the American League. For his part, young Mickey won attention as a soccer player at James Monroe High School, leading his team to championships and earning a scholarship to St. John's University in Brooklyn.

Yet, it would be on the baseball diamond and not the soccer pitch on which he would enjoy his greatest campus success. He played second base for the university's baseball team and was named captain in 1940. Just before he graduated with a degree in French, he was signed to a professional baseball contract by the Detroit Tigers.

He spent the bonus money on a blue convertible with which he eloped with Leona (Lee) Schiff, a friend's little sister. She became a Radio City Rockette dancer who also performed on Broadway and in Manhattan nightclubs. "He would be my stage-door Johnny," she said, "and I would watch him play baseball with the other wives."

In 1942, he was an all-star in the Inter-State League while playing for the Wilmington, Del. Blue Rocks before leaving in August to report to his draft board back home.
Mr. Rutner served overseas during the Second World War in the U.S. Army's 45th Infantry Division, seeing action in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany. (The Thunderbird Division had once used the swastika as an emblem, replacing one aboriginal icon for another in 1939.) He worked as a translator in France and it was his division that liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

His most harrowing experience came at the gun barrel of Japanese-American troops in France, who, warned of German infiltrators wearing U.S. uniforms, challenged the blue-eyed soldier. He proved his Americanism by correctly answering questions about pop culture, several of them with baseball, happily, as the subject. The dark irony of a Jewish-American soldier being mistaken for a German by Japanese-American soldiers went unremarked in the encounter.
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This story will conclude in our next blog entry