Pirates, Cubs, and Dodgers
Playing in the outfield between Lloyd and Paul Waner, Lindstrom regained his elite status as a player by finishing second on the Pirates to shortstop Arky Vaughan by four percentage points with a .310 batting average (eighth highest in the National League), hitting 39 doubles and leading the league’s center fielders with a .986 fielding average.
But after one outstanding season, Lindstrom again found himself involved with a team expected to contend for a pennant struggling with controversy. First, George Gibson was fired as manager 51 games into the season with the Pirates mired in fourth place. His replacement, Pie Traynor, moved Lindstrom to left field and then to the bench after breaking his finger in a fungo game. At season’s end, despite fielding .990 and again outhitting Lloyd Waner while playing in 43 fewer games, Lindstrom was traded to the Chicago Cubs where he quickly became what Cubs manager Charley Grimm later called “a vital asset” in the team’s 1935 league championship. Starting at third base ahead of Stan Hack, he was later shifted to fill a void in center field. There, Grimm said, as boss of the outfield he allowed only seven pop flies to fall safely during that 21-game streak. He also drove in the winning run, or scored it, in seven of the games including three singles and a double off Dizzy Dean of the St. Louis Cardinals in the pennant-clinching contest. “And why isn’t Lindstrom in the Hall of Fame?” Grimm asked in a 1968 interview.
After the Cubs lost to the Detroit Tigers in the World Series, however, the following January he was released and later signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. After only 26 games and a .264 batting average on a Casey Stengel-led team known as the Daffy Dodgers for their often inept play (Stengel was fired at season’s end), the onetime Boy Wonder turned Silver Fox at the age of 30 for his prematurely graying hair abruptly retired from baseball following a collision with infielder Jimmy Jordan while going for a routine pop fly. “I have been in this league 12 years,” Lindstrom reportedly said, “and it never happened to me until I put on a Brooklyn uniform.”
Read more about this topic: Freddie Lindstrom