Marvelous Marv
Olde-tyme baseball by C. Philip Francis – September 10, 2006
Prologue: Baseball, as we know it today, began when the American League joined the National League in 1903, and the game stayed that way for the next 50 years until the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953. The next year the St. Louis Browns went to Baltimore where they became the Orioles, and soon others found greener pastures. The New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers became the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers, and then came expansion, first by the American League in 1961 and the older league the following year.
In stocking a new team the established organizations gave up their least desirable players, and from there the new clubs could trade, buy, or wait for the youngsters who were learning their trade in the farm system, and was before free agency that led to high salaries. In 1997 the five-year-old Florida Marlins spent 89 million dollars on free agents, and became the youngest expansion team ever to win a World Series Championship. During that time some clubs worked with budgets of 15 to 25 million.
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As the new 1962 New York Mets bumbled their way to winning 40 games while losing 120 perhaps the most inept player on the field was Marvin Eugene Throneberry, better know as “Marvelous Marv”. The lovable bums developed a love affair with the fans as manager Casey Stengel summed up this team with this famous quip, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
Marv Throneberry was born in Collierville, Tennessee on September 2, 1933. The left-handed six-footer began his professional baseball career in 1952 when signed by the New York Yankees as a slugging first baseman to hit home runs over the short right field in Yankee Stadium. With the New York farm team in Denver in 1955 Marv hit 36 home runs with 117 RBI’s. He debuted with the Yankees on September 25 appearing in only one game when he had two hits, one single and a double, but was soon sent back to the minors where he stayed for the next three years.
When Marvin made it back to the Yankees in 1958 he became a part-time first baseman hitting .227 in 60 games with seven home runs, and had .240 and eight homers the next season. Talking about himself, “I am a sweet hitter. Not really a good hitter. Just a sweet hitter”, and although he had a Mickey Mantle hitting stance Marv struck every third time at bat. On December 11th Marv was traded to Kansas City with Hank Bauer, Norman Siebern, and Don Larson who threw the only World Series no-hitter in 1956. In return the Yankees received Roger Maris and two other players.
Within two years Throneberry was on his way to Baltimore, and then back to New York joining the fledging 1962 Mets where he had his best season hitting 16 home runs. Many of the expansion Met players were past their prime, and even manager Stengel had been fired by the Yankees in 1960 for being too old. or as Casey later commented, “I’ll never make the mistake of being 70 again.”
After Manager Stengel appeared on a float in the Macy’s 1962 Thanksgiving Day parade he said, “The Mets are going to be amazin’.” The Mets began their season with nine consecutive losses, and found many new ways to lose a game. The suffering fans kept coming back, however, and developed a love affair with the futile Mets and especially Marvelous Marvin Throneberry who became a symbol of incompetency with poor fielding and shabby base running. In one game with the Chicago Cubs Marv clubbed a three-base hit, but was called out for failing to touch second base. Manager Stengel ran out to protest, but before he said a word the umpire told Casey to forget it, the runner had also missed first base. Casey looked over at third and said, “He sure as heck touched third base as he is standing on it right now.” In the top of that same inning the Cubs’ Don Landrum led off with a walk, but was immediately picked off. The umpire’s decision, however, was negated as Marv obstructed the runner. In the bottom of the ninth the score was 8-7 for Chicago with two men on and two outs and Throneberry up to bat. It was certainly the perfect place and time for Marv to atone for his atrocious playing that day, but needless to say, Marvin struck out. .
When the team decided to have a birthday party for Marv, skipper Stengel suggested it would not be a good idea as the ballplayer would probably drop it anyway. And when another player dropped an easy fly ball, Marv yelled over, “Hey, are you trying to steal my fans away from me?”
The moniker of Marvelous Marv was coined by Mets owner Joan Payson after a Throneberry home run when she said, “Wasn’t that marvelous of Marvin!” He was an almost unknown with the Yankees, A’s, and Orioles, but with the Mets Marv went on to become one of the best known .237 hitters in all of baseball history.
Marv disagreed with the Met management regarding his 1963 salary, and so after 14 games into the season the lovable loser was unconditionally released. After his last major league game on May 5, 1963 Marv left the clubhouse for the last time to find that he had been accidentally locked in, and after 30 minutes of yelling he was finally released. The incident certainly epitomized Marvelous Marv and the 1962 New York Mets.
Twenty years later Marvelous Marvin Throneberry returned to public view as a deadpan comic in beer ads on television by saying, “I still don’t know why they asked me to do this commercial.” Marvin died of cancer on June 23, 1994 at his home in Fisherville, Tennessee at the age of 60.
Marvelous Marv summed up his career with, “I got errors as part of my reputation, but I still wouldn’t trade one moment of my career for anything else in the world. I got to do what only four hundred other guys did each year , and I did it for seven years, playing at the same time as my brother, Faye, so both of us, from one family, were luckier than millions of families out there who could only dream. We lived that dream.” (Note: Faye was a relief outfielder for three American League teams from 1953 to 1961 although the two brothers were never on the same team together.)
“CRANBERRY, STRAWBERRY, WE ALL LOVE THORNBERRY!”
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