April 23 – Happy Birthday Duke Carmel

Carmel.jpgBack in 1964 I was an avid baseball card collector. I remember that $1.25 was enough to purchase an entire box of Topps. I would scrimp, save, beg, and borrow every penny possible and as soon as I reached that magic amount I’d run to Puglisi’s Confectionary, up the street from my house, and buy my box. I’d then take my treasure back to my house and sit on the rusting green metal porch swing we used to have on the front porch and begin the glorious ritual of opening each pack. I will never forget the day I sat on that porch swing and got six Duke Carmel cards in the same box. I saw him staring at me with that bat cocked over his shoulder so many times that afternoon that he became a friend of mine. About a week later, I’m sure five of those Carmel cards were fastened to the forks of my 20″ Rollfast two-wheeler, transforming the sound of the bike into a roaring Harley.

Duke was born in New York City and got to play in his home town when the Cardinals traded him to the Mets in 1963. He joined the Yankees two seasons later but only appeared in a half dozen games wearing the pinstripes. Carmel turns 76 years old today. Carmel shares his April 23rd birthday with this Yankee outfielder.

Here is my all-time lineup of the most skilled players who have played for both the Mets and Yankees during their careers:

1b Dave Kingman
2b Willie Randolph
3b Gary Sheffield
ss Tony Fernandez
c Yogi Berra
of Ricky Henderson
of Darryl Strawberry
of Ron Swoboda
p Dwight Gooden
rp Jesse Orosco
mgr Casey Stengel

Here are Carmel’s Yankee seasonal and big league lifetime career stats.

Year Tm G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+
1965 NYY 6 8 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 .000 .000 .000 .000 -100
4 Yrs 124 256 227 22 48 7 3 4 23 3 4 27 60 .211 .294 .322 .616 74
STL (3 yrs) 71 81 70 11 13 2 0 1 5 1 2 11 18 .186 .296 .257 .553 52
NYM (1 yr) 47 167 149 11 35 5 3 3 18 2 2 16 37 .235 .307 .369 .676 94
NYY (1 yr) 6 8 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 .000 .000 .000 .000 -100
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 4/23/2013.

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