Hacksaw Hamilton: ‘Lucky’ learned life’s hard lessons

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The best year of his life became the worst year of his life, and his life was never the same again.

Baseball history of years gone by has given us players with nicknames. “Pepper” Martin (Cardinals). Walter “Big Train” Johnson (Senators). “Vinegar Bend” Mizell (Pirates). And of course the Babe (Ruth), the Georgia Peach (Cobb), Sey Hey (Mays), Hammerin Hank (Aaron).

Jack Lohrke, a former San Diego Padre, had a nickname he never wanted, one that haunted him forever - “Lucky.”

They held a funeral service for him this week in San Jose after the longtime third baseman/outfielder passed away at the age of 85. But the memory of what he experienced, the year he starred in San Diego, had never gone away. Baseball is made up of so much history. In this case, it was sad history.

Jack Lohrke, on a fast track to the major leagues, was a slugging third baseman with the 1946 Padres in the high-powered Pacific Coast League. He spent half a season here and went on to a seven-year career as the starting third baseman with the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies.

His career stretched from 1942 to 1959, starting as an 18-year-old with the Padres prior to the war before getting to the Polo Grounds and Connie Mack Stadium. He went from riding buses to playing with the Giants in a World Series. His life experiences involved World War II combat and a baseball tragedy never forgotten.

The best statistical year of his life was the 1946 season that started in the lower minor leagues with Spokane in the Class B Western International League and ended with the PCL-Padres before his promotion to join the Giants. Lohrke hit .345 that mystical minor league season in Spokane. He hit .303 with eight homers with the Padres, called up by then-owner and baseball historian Bill Starr. Those were impressive stats. In that era, the Coast League was almost as good as the big leagues.

But his life was forever changed in a 15-minute span on the night of June 25, 1946. Lohrke was taken off the team bus by a Washington state highway officer. The Padres had called the owner of the Spokane Indians, telling him San Diego was purchasing Lohrke’s contract, and he was to report immediately. The call came hours after Lohrke had hit a 380-foot home run off a scoreboard clock.

The Indians were in the middle of a road trip. They had played a 16-inning game that day. They were headed from Salem, Oregon through the Cascades en route to their next stop on their trip. They stopped in Central Washington, near Ellensburg to have dinner that night. It was there the State Patrol got the message to Lohrke. He was to catch a ride to Spokane and then on to San Diego.

He got to his next destination. His teammates never did. He never forgot that night. The sports world wouldn’t let him either.

The Spokane Indians, a team made up of kids and grizzled World War II combat veterans, who all had hopes of playing in the big leagues, boarded that bus. Fifteen minutes later nine were dead, seven others injured. Lives snuffed out, careers shattered, families left without fathers, Indians players left without teammates. A clubhouse of empty lockers.

On a drizzly night, as the bus drove up winding roads in the mountains, a car came left of center. The bus swerved to avoid the car, hit the guardrail on the two-lane highway, and plunged 350 feet down an embankment, rolling over, catching fire. Bodies were ejected. Players were crushed. Flames engulfed one and all. It was the worst crash involving a sports team of that era.

Jack Lohrke’s roommate, San Diego native outfielder Freddy Martinez, was on the bus and perished. He had a team high .353 batting average and might have been the next player headed to the Padres to play in his hometown. Spokane’s bright young manager, 25-year old Mel Cole died. Their top pitcher, 22-game winner Bob Kinnaman, on loan from Casey Stengel’s Oakland Oaks, was killed too.

As word of the horrific tragedy spread, baseball reached out to put its arms around the franchise. Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey assigned players from his vast network of farm teams to help Spokane finish out the season. The Indians later became a vital farm team in the Dodgers Blue system. The entire league donated one day’s gate receipts to the families of Lohrke’s dead teammates, $118,000.

Eleven days later, with only two pitchers left from that staff, Spokane went back on the field and went 22-52 in a saddened season of meaningless games.

Days later Jack Lohrke made it to San Diego, but had the emotionally draining chore of driving two of his teammates widows with him here, before he joined the Padres. His best minor league season ever would be shrouded in the sadness of what happened to his friends and what could have happened to him.

Lohrke played well with the Padres, but did not do well off the field. Hounded by the nightmare of faces he remembered, he struggled. The media tagged him with the “Lucky” nickname.

He had seen a lot in life. In 1944, with the Army, he was part of the second tier that landed at Normandy. Soldiers on either side of him were hit by sniper fire, killed instantly. He survived. Lucky.

Months later, trapped in the forest in the Battle of the Bulge, under enormous fire by German artillery, his fox hole took a hit. Soldiers on both sides died. He did not. Lucky.

In 1945, awaiting exit orders from the Army, he was to fly from Fort Dix in New Jersey to California to be discharged. He was bumped from the flight by a higher officer. The plane crashed in Kansas en route, killing all twenty soldiers on board. Lucky.

And now this in 1946, on a mountain road in Central Washington. To honor his fallen friends, Lohrke wore a red warmup shirt beneath his Padres uniform for the rest of that 300-hitting season. It had been in the equipment bag he had taken from the bus as it pulled away that night. A month after the conclusion of that campaign, he was drafted by the New York Giants, becoming their starting third sacker.

I interviewed Jack Lohrke years ago while doing sports talk radio in Phoenix. I wish I had not. It was a hard interview. I felt uncomfortable asking him about that night, his Spokane teammates, and how he soldiered on. We talked about the 1951 Giants, and how he was in the on-deck circle when Bobby Thompson hit the “Shot Heard Round the World” versus the Dodgers.

Jack Lohrke stopped doing interviews in 1995, after a book was written about the tragedy surrounding his life, wishing to be left alone with his memories and thoughts. The nickname had many connotations. Lucky to be alive. Not so lucky to have to remember what he lived through and what he experienced from 1944 to 1946. The Baseball Encyclopedia lists him with that name.

Nicknames were part of baseball lore then. Harry “The Cat” Breecheen, Harvey “The Kitten” Haddix, Joe “Ducky” Medwick. I thought of what his nickname meant, and how sad the real meaning of “Lucky” Jack Lohrke was.

Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton is an SDNN sports columnist, hosts Baseball talk shows on the XM-Home Plate Channel and was a longtime talk show host on XTRA 690-1360.

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