Mike Sandlock, Oldest Big Leaguer, Dies at 100

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By Timothy Dumas
Contributing Editor

Mike Sandlock with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1953. Photo courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, N.Y.
Mike Sandlock with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1953.
Photo courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, N.Y.

Mike Sandlock, the oldest former Major League Baseball player, died at his home in Cos Cob Monday night the age of 100.

“With a sad heart I wish to inform all that Dad passed away this evening at 11:18 p.m., Monday April 4, 2016,” Sandlock’s son Mike E. Sandlock announced in an e-mail. “He is suffering no longer. He is now in the starting line-up at the Field of Dreams!”

From 1942 to 1953, Sandlock caught and played a bit of infield for the Boston Braves, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. The modest numbers he compiled are perhaps misleading; in a career interrupted by the Second World War, he saw ample playing time in only one season during his prime, with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1945 under Leo Durocher. He made the most of it, averaging .282.

Sandlock broke into the Majors with Casey Stengel’s Boston Braves in September 1942, alongside his Evansville Bees friend and teammate Warren Spahn, a future Hall of Fame pitcher. Sandlock singled in his only plate appearance that season. He spent the next year in the military making ammunition at a Chrysler plant. When he resumed his baseball career he saw little action, and was traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers after the 1944 season.

“He really lit up when he talked about that era,” his friend state Rep. Fred Camillo said of Sandlock’s Dodgers years. Sandlock was able to live in his native Old Greenwich with his wife, Vicki, and take the train into Brooklyn. As he walked from the station to Ebbets Field, he would sign autographs for the kids who recognized him along the way. On the trip home, he would sometimes stop for a drink at Grand Central Terminal with popular Dodgers commentator Red Barber, who nicknamed Sandlock “the Commuter.”

The Dodgers were just beginning to come into their own as “the Boys of Summer,” whose memorable roster included Pee Wee Reese, Carl Furillo, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella, and Jackie Robinson. “He loved Carl Furillo, he liked Jackie Robinson and played pepper with him,” Camillo said.

But Sandlock stuck around only through the 1946 season. In 1947, the year Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, he was consigned to the Montreal Royals, Brooklyn’s AAA farm team. In spring training that year—before he left for Montreal—he refused to sign a clubhouse petition taking umbrage at Robinson’s presence on the team. “He treated everyone equally at a time when that wasn’t necessarily a given,” Camillo observed.

Though a solidly built 6-foot-1, Sandlock, a switch-hitter, was not known for his power. He hit only two home runs in 446 career at-bats—both off Harry Feldman of the Giants—and was chiefly known for spraying line drive singles. He was, however, admired for his defensive prowess. While playing with the Montreal Royals in 1947, he spied a young catcher wasting precious milliseconds with a big windup when trying to throw out baserunners. After Sandlock worked with him, the catcher said, “I learned to get the ball off quickly and without a windup. That’s when I started to nail some of those fast fellows.” This was Roy Campanella, who went on to become one of the greatest catchers in the game’s history.

Sandlock played two seasons for Montreal and then four—1949 to 1952—for the Hollywood Stars in California, a comparatively glitzy minor league club whose many famous investors included Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper and George Burns. (One photo in Sandlock’s collection shows him catching for the Stars with the Yankees’ Joe DiMaggio at the plate.)

At age 37, in 1953, Sandlock suddenly found himself back in the Majors, on the Pittsburgh Pirates. His nimble hands were required to catch knuckleballer Johnny Lindell, who had also been called up from the Stars. Sandlock batted .231, but made only three errors in 485 innings and threw out nearly half of would-be base stealers.

Over the parts of five Major League seasons that he played, Sandlock averaged .240 and drove in 31 runs. But his Pirates teammate Ralph Kiner—the Hall of Fame slugger who would later live in Greenwich—called him one of the best defensive catchers that he ever saw.

Michael Joseph Sandlock was born in Old Greenwich on Oct. 17, 1915—when Ty Cobb was in the prime of his career and Babe Ruth was a 20-year-old pitching phenomenon. As a boy, Sandlock and his older brother once sat in the right-field bleachers at Yankee Stadium as Ruth sent a towering drive over their heads. His older brother said, “It’s a good thing it wasn’t any lower. Your mouth was really wide open,” Sandlock told the New York Times three years ago.

After his baseball career, Sandlock worked as a carpenter, plumber and electrician. He was a superb golfer, and several times won the club championship at Innis Arden, where he also shot a hole-in-one. He is known to have golfed with Jackie Robinson, who moved to Stamford toward the end of his career.

Sandlock lived for much of his life on Fairfield Avenue, in the house where he was born. In his last decade he moved in with his son Damon on Bible Street in Cos Cob. His wife, the former Victoria Suchoki, died in 1982; Sandlock is survived by Mike and Damon, and by six grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

On the wall of his basement apartment on Bible Street he had a handwritten sign saying: “Didn’t make the Hall of Fame but enjoyed every minute.”

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