Fred Kipp — ‘That batter is his mortal enemy’

(Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series penned by Scott Kipp about his father, Fred, a Piqua native who played professional baseball in the 1950s and 1960s.)

By SCOTT KIPP

I wrote the 273-page book The Last Yankee Dodger with my father Fred Kipp from Piqua, Kansas. The book focuses on my father’s baseball career from when he pitched for the Piqua town team to the Major Leagues. The hook for the book is that my father is the last living player to play for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers as well as the New York Yankees. He’s the last player from the golden era of baseball of the 1950s and 60s who played with Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Don Drys-dale, Sandy Koufax, Gil Hodges, Duke Snyder, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris and so many more legendary Yankees and Dodgers.

A subplot for the book is that he was a quiet, small-town boy from Pi-qua who made it to the big leagues. This storyline seems to be true based on many articles written about him in newspapers like The Iola Register. The Register reported on my father extensively during his time playing basketball at Iola High until he retired from baseball in 1962. Bud Roberts, the sports writer of that time, knew my father personally from many visits to the newspaper or reporting in the field.

Bud wrote many editorials about my father from how he played to how he should play.

I found the articles very interesting because they were very pointed and personal. Many of the articles can be found at www.fredkipp.com/Iola-register.

One recurring theme from the many articles was that my father had to be pitch mean to play in the majors. Bud knew that Fred was a kind and reserved man and often said that he needed to fight like his life depended on it. Here’s a great excerpt from an article in the beginning of the 1957 baseball season, when the Dodgers sent my father down to the Montreal Royals in the minor leagues.

“Fred will have to set aside his modesty and burn with fire if he gets another chance. He is as competitive and confident athletically as anyone could wish, but he may need to get mad and just plain fight his way next time.”

Bud wanted to see my father fight like he was a gladiator in the Roman Coliseum.

THE BEST example of Bud’s writing was after my father almost pitched a complete game for the Dodgers on Labor Day in 1958. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, my father needed one last out to get his first complete game. On his 140th pitch of the game, my father gave up a two-run homer to send the game into extra innings. One pitch could have made the difference in the game and he would have walked off the winner. It wasn’t meant to be and Willie Mays and the San Francisco Giants went on to beat the Dodgers in the 16th inning. Bud exhorted my father to fight harder and get mean to get that win.

He needs to learn to fight. That batter is his mortal enemy, especially when the game’s tight and there’s somebody on the sacks. Right then, the batter’s a skunk, in fact. It isn’t a case of I’ll do my best and I want to win as bad as anybody. This guy up there’s my brutal foe. It’s life and death, pal. And it’s gotta be you.

Same for the batter. It’s what we’d tell even little leaguers. That fellow out there isn’t the neighbor boy you like so well. He’s your only enemy in the world right now. You gotta beat him. Baseball’s first of all a struggle between batter and pitcher, and a strenuous one with no quarter given.

And if Fred could somehow develop that momentary meanness, yeah, even beastliness, up there in the big show next year he might better impress fellows like his manager, Alston, and also (Harry) Caray.

Bud made some very good points. Baseball is a tough sport and winning the game often comes down to one pitch or one play. The battle between the pitcher and batter is the best one-on-one conflict in team sports and many players will do about anything to win. Pitchers often pitched dirty and hit players to throw batters off their game. My father saw many beastly pitchers from Stan Williams to Don Drysdale, but the meanest was Sal Maglie. Sal was known as “The Barber” for giving batters a close shave when they got too close to the plate. My father saw other players get hurt with a well-placed brush-back pitch that went too far.

MY FATHER was, and still is, a nice guy and he didn’t like it when he was asked to hit a batter or even brush them back. He’d rather fool them with a changeup or trick them with a knuckleball. My father has told me that putting a man’s life or limb in danger was a step too far for him. He wouldn’t go to that length to win because that’s not who my father was. My father was a great baseball player and is a great man who played in a kind manner all the way to the big leagues.