Frank Saucier had one of professional baseball’s most unusual
careers. He was a true minor league superstar who could not carry that success
into the major leagues and who is best remembered for the time he was lifted
for a pinch-hitter.
His career was never marked with a baseball card issue.
After reading about him in contemporary Sporting
News accounts, I decided to create a custom card for him.
For the 1950 season, The Sporting News selected Frank
Saucier, an outfielder in the St. Louis Browns system, as its Minor League
Player of the Year.
Saucier’s selection was based on his .343 batting average
with the San Antonio Missions, the Browns’ Class AA team in the Texas League.
Saucier’s mark was tops in the circuit.
The accompanying photo in the Jan. 3, 1951, issue was
bracketed with the headline, “Mr. Slug,” and the tagline “Missions’ Mighty
Mauler”.
TSN opined that the perennially cash-strapped owners of the
Browns, Bill and Charley DeWitt, could “put this 18-karat gold prospect on the
auction block and come away with a tidy sum. Although he has never played in a
major league game,” the paper continued, “Saucier probably would bring as much
in the open market as any player in the organization.”
In writing the player profile of the POY, San Antonio sports
writer Dick Peebles said, “If the Browns can get by for a couple of years and
not part with Saucier, they may come up with the greatest individual drawing
card they’ve had since George Sisler.”
Peebles described the 23-year-old Saucier as a “tall, handsome
lad with the boyish face and crew haircut.” He said the kid had the attention
of “everyone, all major league clubs included,” because of his “amazing ability
to sock a baseball hard, often and to distant places.”
The Browns had signed Saucier in 1948 after he graduated
with an engineering degree from tiny Westminster
College in Fulton, Mo.
As a junior, Saucier had hit .519, a record in the Missouri College Athletic
Union. The college’s baseball field is named for him.
He broke into pro ball with Belleville in the Class D Illinois State
League as a catcher. He batted .357 that season.
He jumped to Class B ball with Wichita Falls for 1949. There he led the Big
State League – and all of Organized Baseball – with a .446 average, winning the
Hillerich & Bradsby Silver Bat award. That batting mark was 60 points
higher than the runner-up.
His 1949 performance also earned him a trip to spring
training with the Baltimore Orioles in 1950. The O’s weren’t a major league
team then, they played in the Class AAA International League. Because the
Orioles were well-stocked behind the plate, they sent saucier to San Antonio.
Missions’ manager, former Browns middle infielder Don
Heffner, was also good on catchers, but he needed a left fielder, so he began
the process of converting Saucier to an outfielder.
Learning the ropes as a flychaser, as Peebles put it, Saucier’s
batting suffered and he went hitless in his first 10 trips to the plate. He
quickly overcame that slump, however, and by mid-season was belting ‘em to the tune
of a .375 average.
A couple of nagging injuries (he knocked himself unconscious chasing a line drive into an outfield fence, injuring his shoulder) caused his batting average to
drift down to .340, as well as to miss the Texas League All-Star Game, to which
he had been an overwhelming choice for left fielder.
He finished the regular season with 151 hits, including 23
doubles, 12 triples (three of them successively in one game) and nine home
runs.
In winning the Texas League playoffs and the subsequent
Dixie Series against Nashville, champions of the Southern Association, Saucier
hit .408 in 17 games.
Peebles compared Saucier physically to Ted Williams.
Slightly over six feet tall, and weighing 175 pounds, Saucier swung an
unusually light bat, generating power to all fields with a pair of strong
wrists.
In the off-seasons, Saucier was employed by the George F.
Martin Oil Co., Tulsa,
where he was being groomed for an executive position. Despite his success on
the ballfield, Saucier was quoted as saying that he wasn’t sure he wanted to
make a career of playing baseball.
Saucier was married during an off day in the Dixie Series in
1950, and honeymooned in Venezuela,
where he played winter ball.
The Browns claimed his contract for 1951, intending to bring
him to spring training, where St.
Louis manager Zack Taylor would convert him to a first
baseman.
Holding out for a significant cash bonus, Saucier refused to
report to the Browns and on April 17, was put on the suspended player list for
failure to report and sign a contract. Unlike many ballplayers in that era,
Saucier had options.
An oil well in which he had an interest came in a gusher and
Saucier was doing well working the oil fields around Okmulgee, Okla.
He kept his hand in baseball by helping coach the local American Legion team.
One of the first things on Bill Veeck’s things-to-do list when
he acquired control of the St. Louis Browns midway through the 1951 season was
to come to terms with erstwhile minor league batting champion and then-current
Oklahoma oilman Frank Saucier.
In the days just prior to and just after his assuming
ownership of the cellar-dwelling and attendance-challenged Brownies on July 5,
Veeck had circulated through the grandstand and bleachers at Sportsman’s Park
to seek fan input on what they wanted from the team.
Repeatedly he was asked about the status of Saucier. Veeck
said at least half the fans he spoke with asked what he was going to do about
the holdout.
Veeck got on the phone on the night of July 4 and at 1:30
a.m., finally tracked Saucier down at the home of his parents in Washington, Mo. Veeck
urged Saucier to hop into a car with his wife and come to St. Louis.
When Saucier demurred, Veeck told him to sit tight and he
(Veeck) would be right out. He hired a limousine and driver and an hour later
he was sitting in the Saucier’s living room. An hour after that he had
persuaded Saucier to agree to terms. By 4:30 a.m., Veeck was on his way back to
St. Louis where
later that day he dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s to formalize
transfer of the team.
Veeck had recognized that getting Saucier into a Browns’
uniform would energize the fan base and help him improve on the team’s
miserable gate showing of just 108,000 paid attendance at the all-star break.
“I like Saucier’s attitude,” Veeck was quoted, “He likes to
play ball, has a lot of confidence in himself but is quite reserved in
discussing his own ability. I’ve watched him work out and I like him more every
time I see him swing that bat.”
Bringing Saucier into the fold might not have guaranteed
that the Browns could improve on their 23.5 game deficit in the American League
but it would make the turnstiles hum.
It was the same motivation Veeck had in his stealth campaign
to bring Satchel Paige back into the major leagues. Veeck had first brought
Paige into Organized Baseball while he was owner of the Cleveland Indians in 1948.
The ageless pitcher was instrumental in the Indians’ World’s Championship that
season. After Veeck was forced to sell the team in his divorce settlement in
1949, Paige had returned to lucrative barnstorming, which baseball experts speculated
had netted him $50,000 a year.
In 1951, Abe Saperstein, who owned both the Harlem
Globetrotters and the Chicago American Giants of the Negro American League, had
convinced Paige to forsake the road for a berth on his team. Veeck was almost
certainly behind this tie-up as it gave him access to Paige’s services at a
moment’s notice. It was no coincidence that when Veeck put together his
ownership group for the purchase of the Browns, Saperstein was one of the
team’s 16 stockholders.
Saucier made his major league debut against the Yankees on July
21, grounding out as a pinch-hitter. His first start came in left field the
next day in the first game of a doubleheader. He grounded out twice, struck out
and walked in four tips to the plate; he also made two errors in left field.
Veeck appeared nonplussed, “I’m positive Saucier will hit
for us,” he said. “I saw him enough in the Texas League and he’ll hit plenty to
all fields. And don’t forget, this is his spring training period,” Veeck
alibied.
Just as often happens with phenoms in their first big league
“spring training,” Saucier failed to live up to expectations. Whether it was
because of the long holdout, the fact that his oil interests robbed him of
focus and ambition to make a mark in the major leagues, or reported nagging
injuries, Saucier went down in flames.
For the rest of the season, Saucier was used mainly as a
pinch-hitter and pinch-runner.
On Aug 7, he garnered his only major league hit, a pinch-hit
double off the Indians’ Mike Garcia in a 5-1 Browns loss.
He got only his second start in the second game of the Aug.
19 doubleheader at Detroit.
After opening the game in right field, he was due to lead off the bottom of the
first when he was lifted for a pinch-hitter: Eddie Gaedel.
Frank Saucier was the unwitting fall guy in Veeck’s most
famous stunt. In his book, Veeck, as in
Wreck, the Browns owner said, “This is the only part of the gag I feel bad
about. Frank was a great kid with great promise and all he is remembered for is
being the guy the midget batted for.”
A week later he got is third and final start. His lifetime
major league record stands at 18 games, with 14 at-bats. Besides his lone hit,
he walked three times, one of them bringing in his only RBI and leading to his
only big league run. He struck out four times and was hit by a pitch once.
Saucier’s baseball career came to an end in 1952 when he was
called back into service for two years with the U.S. Navy during the Korean
War. During World War II, Saucier had served nearly three years. At age 18 he
had been one of the youngest officers ever commissioned by the Navy. He served
on the U.S.S. Barnstable and was part of the Navy’s V-12 rocket program.
After the Korean War, Saucier returned to civilian life,
first in the oil business, then as vice president of the Amarillo
(Tex.)
Savings and Loan Assn.
Publicly, Saucier took his role in the Gaedel debacle
gracefully. Teammates, however, have since told baseball researchers that he
was not happy with that legacy.
Frank Saucier’s baseball legacy did not include any card
issues. My 1951 Bowman-style custom card is an attempt to rectify that
oversight. If the background of the card looks familiar to vintage card
collectors, it is because it was seen on teammate Ned Garver’s card in the ’51
Bowman set.
I wonder how Frank pronounced his patronym? In a 1950 article in TSN, the pronunciation was phonetically given as "saw-shay." In poking around a genealogy site, I discovered that different branches of the family pronounce it: a) so-sure, b) so-shay, and c) saw-see-yay.
