Over the years, I’ve purchased baseball cards simply because they are old.
One of these cards in my collection is a 1940 Play Ball of Buddy Hassett, which I found in a Cooperstown card shop during the Baseball Hall of Fame induction weekend of 2000.
John Aloysius Hassett was born in New York City on Sept. 5, 1912. I knew nothing about him when I looked at the card. It was the cheapest and oldest available.
The main reason I still collect baseball cards is that every card has a story and a piece of baseball history attached to it. The stories could be about the player or how the card was acquired. Each collector has a different story to tell.
Hassett played in the major leagues from 1936 to 1942 with three teams.
As a first baseman, he led the National League in games played with 156 as a rookie in 1936 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. That season, he established a record for fewest strikeouts by a rookie in a season with 17.
After two more years with the Dodgers, Hassett was traded to the Boston franchise in the NL before the 1939 season. Known as the Bees during that time, he would spend three years in Boston before joining the New York Yankees in a swap before the 1942 season.
Hassett’s one season with the Yankees would be his last in the majors. He served in the United States Navy during World War II. He played and managed in the minors after the war.
It’s hard to determine a best season for Hassett because he was very consistent during his career with a batting average of .292. He had 82 RBI as a rookie and five of his 12 homers were in his final season. He also received votes for the NL Most Valuable Player award in 1938 during his first year in Boston.
During the 1942 World Series with New York, he batted .333 in three games as the Yankees fell to the St. Louis Cardinals five contests. In the opener, he had two hits and knocked in a pair of runs as the Yankees won 7-4 in St. Louis.
In 1936, he drove in five runs for the Dodgers versus the Cardinals. He had a five-hit game with Boston in 1939 also against St. Louis.
Of his dozen homers, two were off Hall of Fame pitchers. As a rookie, his second big league homer was an inside the park hit against St. Louis righty Dizzy Dean.
Detroit’s Hal Newhouser was a victim of Hassett as he hit the only walk-off homer of his career in the 13th inning of a contest at Yankee Stadium that gave New York a 3-1 over the Tigers on July 12, 1942.
Strikeouts
Perhaps the thing that Hassett was best at in his career would be something he actually didn’t do often.
In seven seasons, Hassett struck out 116 times in 3,807 plate appearances. His most ever in a season was 19, which he did twice in 1937 and 1938. His fewest in a year was 14 in 1939.
On the all-time list of strikeouts per times at bat, Hassett is 22nd has he fanned once in every 30.32 at bats. The 1939 season was his best at 42.14.
Willie Keeler, who played from 1892 to 1910, is the all-time leader in this category at 63.17. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.
Hassett in Hall of Fame
On the back of Hassett’s card pictured with this story, it states that he “has a splendid singing voice” and is a graduate of Manhattan College where he played baseball and football.
Ironically, the 1933 graduate was a three-sport star inducted into the Manhattan College Hall of Fame in 1981 where he was the captain of the basketball team. During his three years of college basketball, the Jaspers were 42-18 and they had a run of 17 wins in a row in his first season.
Buddy also wasn’t the only professional athlete in his family.
His younger brother Billy Hassett played basketball from 1946 to 1951. He was a two-time All-American at the University of Notre Dame before winning a National Basketball Association title with George Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers in 1950.