Richie Ashburn

Career

Ashburn was born in Tilden, Nebraska, the younger of twins with his sister Donna. He began playing baseball at age eight in the Tilden Midget Baseball League, initially as a catcher on his father's advice. After playing baseball and basketball for Tilden High School, he continued as a catcher in American Legion Baseball with the Neligh Junior Legion team. At the 1944 American Legion Junior Baseball East/West All-Star game at the Polo Grounds, Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack advised him to switch positions due to his speed.

Ashburn signed with the Cleveland Indians in 1943 at age 16, but Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis voided the contract because he was still in high school. A subsequent contract with the Chicago Cubs for their Nashville farm team in 1944 was also nullified by Landis due to an illegal clause. Ashburn then enrolled at Norfolk Junior College but left after one semester to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies, a contract that stood. He made his professional debut in 1945 with the Utica Blue Sox of the Eastern League, where manager Eddie Sawyer converted him to center fielder.

Teammates there began calling him "Whitey" for his light blond hair. Drafted by the United States Army early in the 1945 season, he was allowed to finish the season, in which the Blue Sox won the Eastern League pennant and Ashburn led the team with a .312 batting average. He served in Alaska in 1946, then returned to the Blue Sox in 1947, again winning the Eastern League championship. That season he finished second in the league in batting average at .362 and set a league record with 191 hits in 137 games.

After the 1947 season, he returned to Norfolk Junior College for a second semester, where he met his future wife, Herberta Cox.

Broadcasting career

Starting in 1963, Ashburn became a radio and television color commentator for the Phillies, his original big-league team. He initially worked with Bill Campbell and Byrum Saam. Ashburn and Kalas then broadcast together for two decades and became best friends; Kalas often called Ashburn "His Whiteness". Ashburn was known for his dry humor.

On one occasion, he told Kalas about a playing-day superstition of keeping a successful bat in bed between games, remarking that he had "slept with a lot of old bats". During late innings, he would occasionally ask on-air if the staff of Celebre's Pizza in South Philadelphia was listening, and pizza would arrive 15–20 minutes later. The Phillies asked him to stop because Celebre's was not a sponsor, but Ashburn circumvented the request by sending birthday wishes to "the Celebre's twins – Plain & Pepperoni!

He also wrote columns on the Phillies and Major League Baseball for the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Daily News. After the 1972 season, Ashburn interviewed for the Phillies' vacant managerial position, which went to Danny Ozark.

Death

His mother later said Richie Ashburn had intended to retire from broadcasting after the 1997 season. He died at age 70 in his Manhattan hotel room at the Grand Hyatt, hours after calling a Phillies-Mets game at Shea Stadium on September 9, 1997, from what appeared to be a heart attack. A large crowd honored him by filing past his casket in Memorial Hall inside Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. He was buried at Gladwyne Methodist Church Cemetery in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb.

Legacy

Ashburn was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Hall's Veterans Committee in 1995 after a long fan campaign that included bumper stickers reading "Richie Ashburn: Why The Hall Not?" He was inducted alongside Phillies great Mike Schmidt, with over 25,000 fans, mostly from the Philadelphia area, traveling to Cooperstown, New York for the ceremony. He was inducted into The Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame in 1997 and posthumously into the inaugural class of the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame in 2004.

The Phillies annually present the Richie Ashburn Special Achievement Award to a member of the organization demonstrating loyalty, dedication, and passion for the game. The center field entertainment area at Citizens Bank Park is named Ashburn Alley, and the Phillies' radio broadcast booth is named the Richie 'Whitey' Ashburn Broadcast Booth. Rubén Amaro Jr., former Phillies general manager, co-founded the Richie Ashburn Foundation, which provides free baseball camp admission to 1,100 underprivileged children in the Philadelphia metropolitan area and awards grants to area schools and colleges.