Jacob Albert Pitler (April 22, 1894 – February 3, 1968) was an American second baseman and longtime coach in Major League Baseball. Born in New York City, and Jewish,[1][2] he moved with his family to Western Pennsylvania when he was a boy, and he grew up in Beaver Falls and Pittsburgh.[3]

Baseball career

Pitler stood 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) tall, weighed 150 pounds (68 kg) and batted and threw right-handed. He began his professional playing career in 1913 at Jackson of the Class C Southern Michigan Association. When that league disbanded in 1915, Pitler was picked up by the Chattanooga Lookouts of the Class A Southern Association. He was batting a healthy .364 in 42 games when his contract was purchased by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the midseason of 1917 during the World War I manpower crisis. He played in 109 games for Pittsburgh that season, and two contests in 1918, compiling a .232 average in 383 at bats with no home runs and 23 runs batted in. Pitler holds the record for most putouts in a game by a second baseman, with 15, made in a 22-inning game on August 22, 1917. After rejecting a minor-league assignment in early 1918, Pitler left the ranks of "organized baseball" for almost a decade.[3]

During much of the 1920s, Pitler played in semi-professional or "outlaw" leagues. But in 1928, he joined the Binghamton Triplets of the New York–Pennsylvania League and became a fixture in that circuit, playing also for Elmira and Hazleton, and beginning his managing career in 1934 with Scranton.

In 1939, Pitler joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as a minor league manager, winning back-to-back pennants with the Olean Oilers of the PONY League in 1939–40. He was promoted to the Dodger coaching staff in 1947 and remained a member of it through the end of the team's stay in Brooklyn in 1957 — through six National League championships and Brooklyn's lone world title, which came in 1955.

Pitler usually served as Brooklyn's first-base coach and worked under Dodger managers Leo Durocher, Burt Shotton, Chuck Dressen and Walter Alston. He appeared in Roger Kahn's memoir The Boys of Summer as a somewhat obsequious aide to Dressen. But with his minor league managing background, he was also hailed as a fatherly figure to Dodger rookies and young players. He was cited for that role in poet Marianne Moore's paean to the 1955 champions, Hometown Piece for Messrs. Alston and Reese.[4]

Pitler retired as a coach after the 1957 season rather than move with the Dodgers to Los Angeles, but continued his association with the team as a scout. He died in Binghamton, New York, in 1968 at the age of 73.[5] In 1991, he was inducted into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Big League Jews". Jewish Sports Review. 12 (137): 20. January–February 2020.
  2. ^ Boxerman, B.A.; Boxerman, B.W. (2006). Jews and Baseball: Volume 1, Entering the American Mainstream, 1871-1948. McFarland & Company. p. 51. ISBN 9780786428281. Retrieved 2015-01-06.
  3. ^ a b Bard, Stan, Jake Pitler, Society for American Baseball Research Biography Project
  4. ^ Hometown Piece for Messrs. Alston and Reese by Marianne Moore
  5. ^ "Jake Pitler Dies Upstate at 73; Ex-Coach of Brooklyn Dodgers - Gifted Counselor and Scout Began as Minor-League Player and Manager". New York Times. February 4, 1968. p. 81. Retrieved 11 September 2016.

Further reading

External links