American Valor Quarterly Issue 11 - Fall 2014 | Page 22

my worst days. When I got back from
Korea, they had a day for me at Yankee
Stadium. I got a call at 8 a.m. from
Max’s brother in law, saying that Max’s
wife would like to talk to me. Now they
had some kids, and what she wanted
to know was whether he was really
dead. She knew I was on the mission
with him. Don’t ask me how, but she
did know, and I had to tell her yes, he
was dead. It was the worst moment
of my life, period. The look on that
woman’s face was unbelievable. A lot
of people disappeared in Korea and
were captured and in war camps. Many
showed up later, but I had to tell her
that Max had died because I had seen
him go down.

When I came back [from WWII], I
started playing baseball again. I joined
A ball, and made it to AAA, and then
made the big leagues. I joined the
Yankees at the end of ’48. I didn’t get
into any games yet—that season I sat
on the bench. The next year Casey
Stengel came along, and I joined the
Yankees in 1949 and had a good year.
When playing with the great Yanks
of the ’50s, we never thought we were
going to lose. That’s all that counted.
We had great pitching with Vic Raschi,
Allie Reynolds, Eddie Lopat, Tommy
Byrne and Whitey Ford. We had guys

like Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle,
and the Phil Rizzutos and the Yogi
Berras and so forth. I look at it now,
and we had great defense and great
pitching. We had enough power to win.
DiMaggio was the man and that
was the end of it. He was from San
Francisco too, and I knew all about
him as a high school student. He came
to the Yankees in ’36, and I finally
joined the club in 1949. It was quite
an honor to be in the same uniform
with him, and of course after that, in
came Mantle. He was a kid, and he
never really grew up, but he was a great

I had trouble sleeping after missions
like that. In both wars, I lost a total
of about eight pilot friends, in the
Philippines and Korea. I had one friend
who just disappeared as his plane was
going down and he couldn’t make up
his mind on whether to bail out or
not. By the time he decided it was too
late, and he went down with his plane.
Indecision like that was just devastating.
I saw another one of my friends blow
up in his plane on the runway just north
of Guadalcanal. He had severe burns
and died after three weeks.
Being in the war, you’re young and
you feel invincible; nothing can get
you. You’re better than the world. But
you have to practice dying. You wonder
what you’re going to do if you get hit
or captured. And in those days if the
Japanese captured you, they cut your
head off. We were going from Luzon to
Zamboanga, Davao, actually, but our
base was in Zamboanga, the very tip of
the island in the Philippines. One of the
planes had engine problems above one
of the islands, there was supposed to be
a safe field to land. So the pilot going
down went in with another plane, and
later they found all four of them with
their heads cut off. That kind of thing
always worried me. I always thought,
“God, I don’t want to get captured.”
They didn’t have much patience for
prisoners.
22

SOMETIMES
OVERSHADOWED BY HIS
LEGENDARY TEAMMATES,
JERRY COLEMAN WAS AN
INTEGRAL PART OF THE
GREAT NEW YORK YANKEES
TEAMS OF THE 1950S. A
FIXTURE AT SECOND BASE,
HE WAS NAMED AMERICAN
LEAGUE ROOKIE OF THE
YEAR IN 1949, WAS AN ALLSTAR AND WORLD SERIES
MVP IN 1950. HE APPEARED
IN SIX WORLD SERIES, WITH
THE YANKEES WINNING
FOUR OF THEM.

player. He struck out too much though.
DiMaggio only struck out 360 times
in his career. Mantle struck out 1700
times—huge amount of strikeouts. At
his prime, Joe might have been the best
player that ever lived.
I haven’t kept any World Series
mementos, except one thing—a
cigarette case. I don’t smoke, but I
have it because it’s in sterling silver and
underneath in gold are the signatures
of all the players from 1951. And if you
look at that cover, it’s the only time Joe
DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle played
on the same team. That’s why I kept it.
It was baseball history, but you don’t
think about that when you’re playing.
At that time, you’re thinking about
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