Duke Snider | |||
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Snider in 1953
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Center fielder | |||
Born: Los Angeles, California |
September 19, 1926|||
Died: February 27, 2011 Escondido, California |
(aged 84)|||
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MLB debut | |||
April 17, 1947, for the Brooklyn Dodgers | |||
Last MLB appearance | |||
October 3, 1964, for the San Francisco Giants | |||
MLB statistics | |||
Batting average | .295 | ||
Home runs | 407 | ||
Runs batted in | 1,333 | ||
Teams | |||
Career highlights and awards | |||
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Member of the National | |||
Baseball Hall of Fame | |||
Inducted | 1980 | ||
Vote | 86.49% (eleventh ballot) |
Edwin Donald "Duke" Snider (September 19, 1926 – February 27, 2011), nicknamed "The Silver Fox" and "The Duke of Flatbush", was an American professional baseball player. Usually assigned to center field, he spent most of his Major League Baseball (MLB) career playing for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers (1947–62), later playing one season each for the New York Mets (1963) and San Francisco Giants (1964).
He was named to the National League (NL) All-Star roster eight-times and was the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) runner-up in 1955. In his 16 out of 18 seasons with the Dodgers, he helped lead the Dodgers to six World Series, helping them win two championships in 1955 and 1959.
Snider was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980.
Born in Los Angeles, Snider was nicknamed "Duke" by his father at age five. Growing up in Southern California, Snider was a gifted all-around athlete, playing basketball, football, and baseball at Compton High School, class of 1944. He was a strong-armed quarterback, who reportedly could throw the football 70 yards.
Spotted by one of Branch Rickey's scouts in the early 1940s, he was signed to a baseball contract out of high school in 1943. He played briefly for the Montreal Royals of the International League in 1944 (batting twice) and for the Newport News Dodgers in the Piedmont League in the same year. After serving in the U.S. Navy in 1945 and part of 1946, he came back to play for the Fort Worth Cats that year, and also for St. Paul in 1947.