Career
Sisler attended Colgate University. He was a journeyman left fielder and first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals (1946–47, 1952–53), Philadelphia Phillies (1948–51) and Cincinnati Reds (1952). In an eight-season career, he hit .276 with 55 home runs and 360 RBI in 799 games. He made the National League All-Star team in 1950.
On the closing day of the 1950 season, at Ebbets Field, he hit a tenth-inning, opposite-field three-run home run against the Brooklyn Dodgers that would give the "Whiz Kids" Phillies their first National League pennant in 35 years. Had Philadelphia lost, the Phillies and Dodgers would have finished in a flatfooted tie for the NL championship and a best-of-three playoff would have resulted. The home run made Sisler world-famous; Ernest Hemingway feted him in his novel The Old Man and the Sea.
His father, George Sr., was a scout for Brooklyn in 1950. When asked after the pennant-winning game how he felt when his son beat his current team, the Dodgers, George replied, "I felt awful and terrific at the same time."
Read more about this topic: Dick Sisler
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)