Editor?s note: Piqua native Fred Kipp, who pitched Major League Baseball in the 1950s for the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles and later the New York Yankees, will be in Yates Center Saturday to sign copies of his biography, ?The Last Yankee Dodger? during the Yates Center Memorial Day celebration. His son, Scott, who penned his father?s biography, was in Japan last fall to trace Fred Kipp?s journey as part of a tour of Japan while with Brooklyn in 1956. Scott Kipp?s recounting of his father?s travels follows.
Fred Kipp of Piqua traveled the world with the skill of his pitching arm. As a professional baseball pitcher, Kipp hurled in seven countries on three continents. After playing for the Piqua town team from 1946 to 1949, Kipp went on to play with the most successful baseball teams in the 1950s and 1960s ? the Brooklyn Dodgers, Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees. Kipp traveled by trains, planes and automobiles to face batters from around the world.
Kipp started pitching in Kansas until he stretched his domain to the great plains when he played in Nebraska and South Dakota leagues in 1951 and 1952. During the 1953 Easter break from Emporia Teachers College, now Emporia State, he took a 40-hour train ride to Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida. As a free agent among 700 players, he pitched well enough to get signed into the Dodger organization for $500. With that trip, his traveling career really began.
From 1953 to 1955, he mainly played for Dodger team in the South, including Asheville, N.C., Camp Rucker in Alabama, Fort Benning in Georgia and Mobile, Ala. He helped the Mobile Bears win their league and then flew to Texas where they beat the Shreveport Sports for the Dixie Series Championship. At the end of the season, his international travels began. He signed up to play winter ball in Venezuela.
To get to Venezuela, he had to go through New York to get a visa. The night he arrived in the Big Apple, the Dodgers beat the Yankees in the 1955 World Series. Kipp stayed in the Bossert Hotel where the Dodgers celebrated their first World Series victory after five losses to the Yankees. It was a night to remember and little did he know that he would be back a year later for a World Series rematch with the Yankees.
Things didn?t work out well in Venezuela, and he flew home after only a month there.
In 1956, another season started in Vero Beach. From Florida, he got sent to Montreal, Canada to play for the Royals. The International League included two Canadian cities, five U.S. cities and Havana, Cuba. With 152 games in the season, he racked up quite a few miles flying between Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean.
Kipp had a breakout year and went 20-7 to win the Rookie of the Year in the International League.
At the end of the season in Montreal, he returned to Brooklyn for the Pennant Race which the Dodgers won for the seventh time. The Yankees were waiting for the Dodgers and were ready to claim the title back. Kipp pitched batting practice for the Subway Series and saw Don Larsen pitch his perfect game. The Dodgers lost game seven and there was no big celebration in the Bossert Hotel that year.
The next day, the tired Dodgers set out on their Goodwill Tour of Japan. They left Idlewild Airport (later renamed JFK International Airport) for an odyssey that stopped in Los Angeles, Honolulu, Maui, Wake Island and finally Tokyo. The flights racked up over 9,000 miles and they were in the air over 29 hours. Bud Roberts, the sports writer for the Iola Register, reported on the journey.
Iola Register Sports Editorial
The Dodgers ? and the Japanese ? may look at Fred Kipp quite a bit on the National League Champions? tour of the Orient. In Japan, 500,000 persons are expected to greet the Dodgers Wednesday on their eight- mile motor ride from the Tokyo International Airport to their headquarters in the Imperial Hotel. The Japanese hero-worship the players much more than Americans do, so Freddy may be looked upon by them as one of Uncle Sam?s greatest citizens.
