A tall tale in Brooklyn

Howie Schultz with the Brooklyn Dodgers

Lots of pressure during World War II for able-bodied athletes to enlist into the military.

Really, goes the public perception, if you can pull the trigger and swing at a fastball, then you can pull the trigger and shoot a rifle.

Howie Schultz understands this.

Schultz barely is beyond his teenage years in 1942 when he finishes the summer playing in the minor leagues for the Chicago White Sox.

After making his major league debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers midway through the 1943 season, Schultz tries to enlist that fall.

Seems like the right thing to do for a 21-year-old athlete like Schultz.

Only the military in October 1943 rejects Schultz, telling him that at 6-foot-6 he is too tall to serve.

Undeterred, Schultz tries again a few months later only to be told 80 years ago today that unless he finds a way to shrink then he still does not qualify for the military.

So, back to Brooklyn he goes.

Now, as the Dodgers’ everyday first baseman in 1944, Schultz hits .255 in 138 games with 11 home runs and 83 runs batted in.

Only a pair of 30-something outfielders, Dixie Walker and Augie Galan, hit more homers for the Dodgers in 1944 than Schultz.

Schultz then splits the 1945 season between Brooklyn and the minors before returning in 1946 to the Dodges and sharing time at first base with 21-year-old Ed Stevens.

Neither dominates, though, as Schultz hits .253 in 90 games, while Stevens bats .242 in 103 games.

Turns out both Schultz and Stevens merely are placeholders at the position, because in 1947 the position goes to a multi-sport athlete out of Pasadena, Calif.

The Dodgers’ new first baseman?

That would be Jackie Robinson, the future Hall of Famer who in 1947 becomes the major leagues’ first Black player in the 20th century.

Jackie Robinson in 1947

Both Schultz and Stevens play off the bench in Robinson’s historic Dodgers debut on April 15, 1947 with Stevens striking out as a pinch hitter in the sixth inning and Schultz later filling in for Robinson as a defensive replacement in the ninth inning.

Stevens promptly ends up back in the minors with Brooklyn’s Class AAA team in Montreal, while Schultz appears in only one more game with the Dodgers as a pinch hitter before his contract is sold to the Philadelphia Phillies on May 10, 1947.

As for Robinson, he starts at first base only for the 1947 season with the Dodgers before moving to second base to make room in the lineup for Gil Hodges, another future Hall of Famer who goes from being a backup to catcher Roy Campanella to becoming Brooklyn’s first baseman for the next decade.

“His first year, Jackie played first base,” Schultz later tells the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I’m a footnote in history – the guy who was benched to allow baseball to be integrated.”

After Schultz leaves baseball in 1948, he resurfaces in the NBA, where back then being 6-foot-6 is not an issue.

Schultz plays three NBA seasons as a power forward in a second sports career that for him ends in 1953 after helping his hometown Minneapolis Lakers win the second of three straight titles.