After watching him pitch five impressive innings in an exhibition game in 1948, Jackie Robinson sought out minor-leaguer pitcher Carl Erskine.
“You’re going to be with us real soon,” Robinson, who had broken Major League Baseball’s color barrier only a year earlier, told the 21-year-old right-hander.
Robinson’s encouraging words proved prescient. Erskine joined the Brooklyn Dodgers a few weeks later and went 6-3 in 17 appearances, most of them out of the bullpen.
The last surviving member of the “Boys of Summer,” those fondly remembered Brooklyn Dodgers teams of the late 1940s to mid-1950s, Erskine died Tuesday at a hospital in his hometown of Anderson, Indiana. He was 97.
“Oisk,” as he was known to the Brooklyn faithful, pitched 12 seasons for the Dodgers, appearing in five Word Series. He was a big part of the 1955 Dodgers, which won the franchise’s only world championship before the team migrated to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.
Overshadowed by his more famous teammates including Robinson, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella and Duke Snider, Erskine’s best season was 1953 when he went 20-6, leading the Dodgers to the World Series. While the Dodgers lost in six games to the Yankees, Erskine set what was then a World Series record by striking out 14 batters — he got Mickey Mantle four times — in Game 3 when he out-pitched Vic Raschi in a 3-2 Brooklyn victory.
Following his playing career, Erskine became very active in the Special Olympics after his youngest son, Jimmy, was born with Down syndrome in 1960. Rather than have Jimmy institutionalized, as was often the case at the time, the Erskines brought their son home and raised him the same way they raised his three older siblings. Jimmy, who died late last year at the age of 63, worked for 20 years at a local Applebee’s.
For his dedication the Special Olympics, which spanned more than 40 years, Erskine was presented with the Buck O’Neill Award at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. in last July. The award is presented not more than every three years to, in part, “honor an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball’s positive impact on society.”
Whenever Erskine was asked to give a speech as a World Series champ, he would hold up his World Series ring and tell the audience how much it meant to him. But then, he would display one of Jimmy’s gold medals from the Special Olympics.
“You tell me which is the greater achievement,” Erskine would say. “Which of these means more?”
Carl Daniel Erskine was born on Dec. 13, 1926 in Anderson, Ind. After graduating from high school in 1945, Erskine was drafted into the Navy. A year later, he asked the recreation director where he was stationed if he could join the base’s baseball team and was turned down because the team already had too many pitchers. But a few weeks later he was discharged, scouted and quickly signed by the Dodgers.
Erskine spent his final two seasons with the Dodgers in Los Angeles and, tired of being away from his young family, retired in 1959. He compiled a 122-78 record, including two no-hitters, in 335 big-league appearances. He was named to the National League All-Star team in 1954.
Following his career, Erskine returned to his hometown, started his own insurance business and coached baseball at Anderson College for 12 seasons. He later became president of a local bank.
While he was honored with a street named after him in Brooklyn in 2002, the city of Anderson erected a statue of Erskine in front of the Carl D. Erskine Rehabilitation and Sports Medicine Center. There is also an Erskine School in town, built on land Erskine donated to the community which his son, Jimmy, attended.
In addition to Jimmy, Erskine is survived by his wife, Betty, and three other children, five grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
With Don Newcombe on the mound in the ninth inning of a 1951 playoff game against the Giants, Erskine was warming up in the bullpen alongside Ralph Branca. On the recommendation of Dodgers’ pitching coach Clyde Sukeforth who thought Branca had better stuff that October afternoon, Branca was summoned to face Bobby Thomson and the rest is New York baseball history.
Thomson launched a game-winning, three-run home run to propel the Giants past the Dodgers and into the World Series.
From then on, whenever he was asked what his best pitch was, Erskine had a ready reply: “The curveball I bounced in the Polo Grounds bullpen in 1951.”
