Sad day for all baseball fans......
http://content.usatoday.com/communi...-great-hall-of-famer-duke-snider-dies-at-84/1
By Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY
Duke Snide, here throwing out the first pitch at a 2007 game at Dodger Stadium, was the
CAPTION
By Kirby Lee-US PRESSWIRE, US PRESSWIRE
Duke
Snider, a Hall of Fame outfielder who hit 407 home runs in an 18-year
career that spanned the Dodgers' final years in Brooklyn and first years
in Los Angeles, died Sunday morning. He was 84.Snider passed
away at a convalescent hospital in Escondido, Calif., following an
undisclosed illness, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Snider was
elected to the Hall of Fame in 1980, his 11th appearance
on the ballot.
He was a lifetime .295
hitter and an eight-time All-Star, with all but one of those
appearances coming as a Brooklyn Dodger, where he earned the moniker
"The Duke of Flastbush."
Snider was part of a celebrated group of
New York center fielders at the time, as his counterparts included
Yankees great Mickey Mantle and Giants legend Willie Mays -- Willie,
Mickey and the Duke, as the Terry Cashman tune "Talkin' Baseball" so deftly put it.
He was the last surviving member of the Dodgers' famed "Boys of Summer" group that won the 1955 World Series -- their lone title in Brooklyn -- and later was immortalized in a Roger Kahn book.
That
'55 season also was Snider's finest from various production
standpoints. He led the National League in both RBI (136) and runs (126)
while hitting .309. He narrowly lost the NL MVP crown that year to teammate Roy Campanella.
Snider
followed that up by hitting four home runs in the World Series against
the Yankees. He remains the only player to hit four home runs in two
Series, having done it against the Yankees in 1952, as well.