Duke Snider

Edwin Donald "Duke" Snider (born September 19, 1926 in Los Angeles, California), nicknamed "The Silver Fox", is a former Major League baseball center fielder and left-handed batter who played with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers (1947-62), New York Mets (1963) and San Francisco Giants (1964). Growing up in Southern California, Duke was a gifted all around athlete and strong armed quarterback in high school who could reportedly throw the football 60 yards on the fly. Spotted by one of Branch Rickey's birddog scouts in the early 1940's, he was signed to a baseball contract out of high school. He played briefly for Montreal in the International League in 1944 (batting twice) and for the Newport News in the Piedmont League in the same year. Serving in the military in 1945, he came back to play for Fort Worth in 1946 and for St Paul in 1947. He played well and earned a shot with the Big Club (Brooklyn) later that year. He started the next season (1948) with Montreal and after tearing up that league with a .327 batting average, he was called up to Brooklyn during mid season for good.

External links

• Snider @ the Baseball Hall of Fame
• Duke's page @ Baseball Library.com
• {{baseball-reference|id=s/snidedu01}}
• Duke's page @ Baseball Almanac.com
• Best Competitor, Second to None by Steve Bisheff of The Orange County Register (free registration required)