Late Bloomers: Hank Bauer

If you’ve been following past editions of the Late Bloomers series, you’ve probably noticed a trend regarding the reasons why players didn’t get a chance in the big leagues at a younger age. Excluding the biggest reason, racial segregation, the reasons have typically been:

• They lived in a remote place that wasn’t scouted much.

• They had to serve in the military in one conflict or another.

• They had to go work to feed their families.

• They were trapped in a deep farm system.

• They were stuck on the bench behind veterans on good teams.

Less often, the player simply wasn’t that good at a younger age, but that hasn’t been the norm. More often than not, they bloomed later in their careers from a simple lack of opportunity when they were younger.

Hank Bauer didn’t live in a terribly remote area when he was growing up, so that reason didn’t apply to him. East St. Louis had plenty of scouts in the area. Enough, in fact, that both Hank and his older brother, Herman, signed professional deals to play in the minor leagues. In Hank’s case, that was fresh out of high school when he was still just 18 years old. It was just Class-D ball for the unaffiliated Oshkosh Giants, but it was pro baseball with a former big leaguer as his manager, Fred Schulte, so he got a shot.

But then every other thing on that list happened to him.