Jim served in the U.S. Army during WWII and fought in The
Battle of the Bulge. He remained active in the Veterans organization and was
involved in school presentations on educating children about The Battle of the
Bulge. Jim was an avid golfer, charter member of Forest Hills Country Club and
life time member of Franklin County Country Club.
Chuck Diering, who played for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1947 to 1951, died Friday November
23 at the age of 89.
According to
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the elderly former outfielder fell in his
Spanish Lake, MO home on Thanksgiving and was later found by his son, Bob.
He passed away at a hospital a few hours later from cerebral hemorrhaging.
Diering began his professional baseball career over 70
years ago. After losing three years in the military to World War II, he still
played in over 750 major league games.
Spending over
half of his big league career with the Cardinals, Diering was a serviceable backup outfielder to the likes of Hall of Famers Enos
Slaughter and Stan Musial and reliable cog Terry Moore.
In 396 games
with the team, he hit .252 with eight home runs, 75 RBI and 127 runs scored. He
knew how to draw a walk, posting a .367 on-base percentage in his five-year St.
Louis career, with a high mark of .388 in 1949.
In fact, 1949
was the only season he received significant time as a regular while in a
Cardinals uniform. He played in 131 games that season, starting 78 of them,
with 123 of his appearances being in centerfield.
World War II
took a major chunk out of his playing career. In 1941, he began his
professional career as a Cardinals farmhand at age 18. In 1942, the
up-and-comer hit .305 with 25 doubles in 126 games with the Class-D Albany
Cardinals.
He returned to
professional baseball in 1946, spending the entire year in the minor leagues—in
his first year back, he stole 19 bases for the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings.
After that
year of re-acclimation, he made his major league debut on April 15, 1947, thus
beginning his five-year skein with St. Louis.
On December
11, 1951, Diering was traded to the New York Giants with aging pitcher Max Lanier for similarly aging second baseman Eddie Stanky. He spent a year with the Giants before
playing all of 1953 in the minor leagues. From 1954 to 1956, he was with the
Baltimore Orioles, wrapping up his big league career.
Overall, Diering hit .249 with 14 home runs, 149 RBI and 411 hits in nine major league
seasons. He played 752 games, scored 217 runs and had 76 doubles.
MSGR. SOMMER was a very congenial man with some interesting stories about being a Browns fan, one of which he wrote up for our Browns magazine Pop Flies recently. He was a regular at our players reunion luncheons and dinners until the last year or two.
ReplyDeleteCHUCK DIERING attended a Brown's luncheon a couple of years ago, without us even inviting him. Of course, when we found out he was in the room, we introduced him from the podium.
Chuck was "almost a Brownie" as we say, *twice*. A graduate of Beaumont High in St. Louis (same H.S. as Roy Sievers), he was recruited by both the Cardinals and Browns. But the Cards had the advantage "because a friend’s dad worked for the organization as a scout."
Then on November 30, 1953, he was purchased by the franchise which had only 13 days earlier changed its name to the Baltimore Baseball Club Inc. (Of course the last St. Louis shareholder suit had been dismissed by Judge Duggan on October 28, 1953 ... so everyone had been simply waiting for the other shoe to drop.)
As it was, it was small satisfaction for heartbroken St. Louis fans that the first Orioles team MVP in history ('54) ... was a born and raised St. Louisan ... and a former Cardinal on the tail-end of his career, ... Chuck!