Baseball Remembers: Dick Bartell

Dick Bartell was hardnosed. That’s the polite way of saying it.

The less polite way of saying it was that he embodied the traditional baseball term “red ass,” a guy who just seemed to play angry. The even less polite way of saying it is that he was kind of a jerk. On the field, at least.

That sort of attitude carried a lot of sway during Bartell’s career, though it was a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he wore out his welcome pretty often, and found himself bouncing between teams because of his mouth. On the other hand, there always seemed to be another team willing to take on that attitude in the hope some of it would rub off on the rest of the clubhouse.

Though he’s not discussed much nowadays, Bartell was among the best shortstops in baseball in the 1930s. Born in Chicago but raised in California, he signed with a semi-pro team in Montana right out of high school but it was really just a ruse on the part of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who didn’t want to use one of their options by signing him directly that year. They waited until he was 19, then bought his contract and sent him to Bridgeport of the Eastern League. It would be his only year of minor league ball, and they even called him late in the year, giving him a start in their final game of the season. He was still a couple of months shy of turning 20, the youngest player in the league besides Mel Ott.