Frank Francis Frisch , nicknamed The Fordham Flash or The Old Flash, was a German American Major League Baseball player and manager of the first half of the twentieth century.
Background
He was born in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens, New York, the son of Franz Frisch, a wealthy linen manufacturer, and Katherine Stahl. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Franz Frisch was a hard-working immigrant who liked baseball and took young Frankie to the Polo Grounds when his own favorite player Honus Wagner appeared with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Frank had three brothers: Charles, who died from appendicitis in his early twenties; and Harold and George, who both joined Franz in the linen business.
Education
Frankie Frisch was raised in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx, New York, and attended Fordham Prep and Fordham University for two years.
Career
His nickname "The Flash" derived from his speed on the gridiron and the basepaths. A natural left-handed batter, Frisch learned to switch-hit at Fordham and batted . 476 in his last season at Fordham (1919). While playing baseball, Frisch suffered a severe injury to the middle finger on his right hand, leaving him with a deformed finger. He nevertheless led Fordham to national prominence and under the tutelage of coach Art Devlin, a former third baseman of the New York Giants, signed a contract to play for the Giants in June 1919 at the age of twenty-one, without playing a single game in the minor leagues.
Frisch joined a Giants team managed by the autocratic, verbally abusive John J. McGraw, whose intense desire to win found a willing ear in the young player. Frisch, who always spoke his mind, developed a love-hate relationship with McGraw during his eight seasons with the Giants.
McGraw named Frisch team captain in 1924, and Frisch blossomed into an accomplished defensive second baseman, and an outstanding hitter and base runner who regularly finished among the league leaders in batting average, hits, runs scored, and stolen bases. Standing five feet, eleven inches tall and weighing 165 pounds, Frisch had a thick chest and powerful arms and legs. By 1923, he was an established star earning more than $12, 500, a figure believed to be the highest salary in team history.
That year he batted a career-high . 348 with a league-leading 223 hits and 311 total bases that included thirty-two doubles, ten triples, a career-high twelve home runs and 111 runs batted in.
Although the Giants won the pennant every season from 1921 to 1924 and Frisch sparkled in each World Series, with a composite batting average of . 376, McGraw became disenchanted with the "Fordham Flash. " McGraw unleashed a torrent of abuse at Frisch throughout the team's mediocre 1926 season, calling him a "cement head" at one point and blaming him for the team's lackluster performance. The two men squabbled constantly, perhaps because they were so alike--aggressive and outspoken. Frisch's anger exploded after a game in St. Louis in August 1926 when McGraw questioned his desire to win a game, even though he had played with a severe charley horse.
The next day, Frisch left the team and returned to New York. Although McGraw reinstated Frankie, the two men did not speak to each other for many years. Following the season, McGraw traded Frisch to the St. Louis Cardinals for Rogers Hornsby, the six-time National League batting champion and player-manager of the world champions. It was unquestionably the most sensational trade in baseball history up to that time.
The trade shocked fans in St. Louis and provided Frisch with the greatest challenge of his career, but one that he passed with great success. Although Hornsby continued his offensive brilliance with the Giants, Frisch's overall excellence clearly tilted the trade in the Cardinals' favor. Indeed, Frisch finished second in the voting for the league's Most Valuable Player Award, and Hornsby lasted only one season with McGraw in New York before being traded to the Boston Braves.
In 1927, Frisch set a fielding record for assists by a second baseman with 641, a record that has stood for more than forty-five years. He was named the National League's most valuable player in 1931.
The nickname Gashouse Gang caught hold in 1934 when New York Sun sportswriter Frank Graham overheard Leo Durocher, then the Cardinals' shortstop, say that American Leaguers regarded his teammates as a bunch of gashouse ballplayers because of their dirty uniforms.
As leader of the rambunctious Gashouse Gang of Cardinals, Frisch was made a player-manager in 1933, and in the following season piloted the team to the championship in a spirited seven-game series versus the Detroit Tigers. Frisch called his game-winning hit in the decisive seventh game the greatest thrill of his major-league career. Frankie retired after the 1937 season with a . 316 lifetime batting average. In seventeen full seasons, he batted over . 300 thirteen times and struck out more than eighteen times in a single season only twice.
He played in fifty World Series games, the most ever by a National Leaguer, and was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1947. Frisch's statistics, outstanding though they are, do not tell the complete story of his impact on the game. The "Old Flash, " as he referred to himself in later years, drove himself to succeed at any cost. His fierce competitive instincts antagonized opponents and umpires alike while drawing a legion of admiring fans. During ballgames, he wore his emotions on the field. Frisch's character changed dramatically off the playing field.
At home in New Rochelle with his wife Ada, he was an accomplished horticulturist and a devotee of classical music, enjoying particularly the music of Artur Schnabel, the noted pianist, and Richard Wagner. He himself played the violin and the ukulele and liked to dance. He also had a talent for mimicry that he used to bait umpires while managing the Cardinals (1933 - 1938), the Pittsburgh Pirates (1940 - 1946) and the Chicago Cubs (1949 - 1951).
While managing, he sparred frequently with umpires Beans Reardon and Bill Klem, once carrying an open umbrella to the third base coaching box to remind the umpires that the game should be halted due to rain. Reardon called Frisch "Happy" because Frisch, a hypochondriac, constantly complained about his players or his health. Frankie Frisch enjoyed a third baseball career, that of broadcast announcer.
After leaving the Cardinals, he broadcast Boston Braves games in 1939 and later worked for the New York Giants in 1947-1948, and again after he was fired as manager of the Cubs in 1951.
His humor while broadcasting made him extremely popular and his high-pitched nasal voice often lamented, "Oh, those bases on balls"--a Frisch trademark. Frisch suffered a heart attack in 1956, retired to Quonochontaug on the Rhode Island seashore, and became baseball's unofficial master raconteur. After his heart attack, Frisch quit smoking but could not resist rich food and desserts. His wife Ada died in 1971 and he married Augusta Kass in 1972.
While driving from Rhode Island to Florida to attend spring training in February 1973, Frisch suffered critical injuries in a car crash and died five weeks later in Wilmington, Del.
He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.
Achievements
Frisch was a switch-hitting second baseman who threw right-handed. He played for the New York Giants (1919–1926) and St. Louis Cardinals (1927–1937). He managed the Cardinals (1933–1938), Pittsburgh Pirates (1940–1946) and Chicago Cubs (1949–1951). He is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum.
Views
Quotations:
He once told Casey Stengel, then managing the woeful Boston Braves, "Don't room higher than the second floor on the road. You might want to jump. "
Membership
At Fordham, he was the star of the varsity football team and a member of Walter Camp's second-team all-American squad in 1918.
Personality
His wonderful sense of humor eased the pain of second-division finishes with the Pirates and Cubs.
Interests
He himself played the violin and the ukulele and liked to dance.
Connections
He married his childhood sweetheart Ada Lucy and moved to New Rochelle, New York, in Westchester County. The couple had no children.
His wife Ada died in 1971 and he married Augusta Kass in 1972.
Father:
Franz Frisch
mother
Katherine Stahl
1st wife:
Ada Lucy
2nd wife
Augusta Kass
Partner:
Leo Durocher
He also spent the first two months of the 1949 season as a New York Giants' coach, working under his old double-play partner, Leo Durocher, before leaving June 14 to replace Charlie Grimm as manager of the Cubs.
