The Bad Judgment Hall of Fame

There are some questions that one just does not ask, ever.

The first time I sat on the dugout bench next to an actual New York Yankee baseball player I was a 10-year old kid batboy for a Yankee farm team. I had heard that he had played in Yankee Stadium, so I was impressed.

So out came the forbidden question: “Mr. Cerv, why did the Yankees send you down to Kansas City?” I seemed like a fair question at the time.

Bob Cerv had signed with the New York Yankees in 1950, after being a standout baseball and basketball player at the University of Nebraska. The Yankee teams of those years were very strong, so Cerv did not play much. He’d played in the Bronx but at one point he was sent down to the Kansas City Blues, which was a Yankee farm club. No major league player welcomes being “sent down,” and no one with any baseball sense asks a Yankee play, in particular, “How come you got sent down to the minors” and expects to live to tell the tale.

I recall Cerv replying, as he looked at the dugout floor, “Well, I guess I was not good enough...”

A hour or so later, another player (I have forgotten who) called me aside on the dugout steps. Calmly, but in tones that even an oblivious 10-year old could not misunderstand, this forgotten baseball player said, “Johnnie, never, ever, ask a baseball player a question like that. It is hard enough to get back to the Bronx without having some kid ask a question like that.” He looked at me with steel eyes for what seemed like a year, then he stood up and walked away.

It was the first big league moment for a 10-year old boy.

Cerv came out of it just fine. According to Wikipedia, following the 1956 season, he was sold to the new Kansas City Athletics, where he became a regular.

His best season was 1958, when he hit .305, hit 38 homers, and had 104 RBIs, was elected to the American League All-Star team, beating out Ted Williams for the starting spot. He also finished 4th in the MVP voting that year. He did all of this while playing injured part of the season. Cerv also participated in the Home Run Derby, where he lost to Frank Robinson.

He followed up in 1959 with 20 homers and 87 RBIs. Some say had Cerv not played back-up to such greats as Mickey Mantle he would have done so much more on the field. Cerv still holds Kansas City's major league record for home runs with 38.