Baseball Great Al Rosen Passes Away

Al Rosen, the muscular third baseman who won the 1953 American League Most Valuable Player award and played on the last Cleveland Indians team to win the World Series, has died. He was 91.  The Indians say Rosen died Friday night in Rancho Mirage, California. The team did not provide any other details.  Rosen played his entire career with Cleveland from 1947-56. He was a member of the Indians' 1948 World Series title team - he played only five games that season and got one at-bat in the win over the Boston Braves.  In 1953, Rosen batted .336 with 43 homers and 145 RBI. He nearly won the Triple Crown, but was beaten out in for the batting title by Washington's Mickey Vernon, who hit .337. Known as the "Hebrew Hammer," Rosen was unanimously picked as the AL's top player. A four-time All-Star, Rosen drove in 100 runs in five straight seasons. Following his playing career, Rosen became a successful front-office executive, serving as president of the New York Yankees in the late 1970s and later as  president and general manager of the Houston Astros and San Francisco Giants. Rosen helped build the Giants' 1989 National League pennant winning club. Albert Leonard Rosen was born on February 29, 1924, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where his grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, ran a department store. When he was a youngster, his family moved to Miami, where, he recalled, he was sometimes taunted over his religion. So he took up boxing and showed the grit he would later display on the baseball field. The lingering effects of his 1954 finger injury, which he sustained fielding a grounder while playing first base, and an injury from an auto accident brought on Rosen’s retirement, at age 32, after the 1956 season.