Major League Baseball’s oldest living former player, a Fort Worth resident, turns 100
A few days shy of his 100th birthday, the oldest living Major League Baseball player showed the privilege that comes with living as long as he has.
Eddie Robinson enjoys and exercises the freedom of not holding back.
Here’s the setting:
Robinson, from his home in Fort Worth, was the star of a nearly hour-long conference call last Friday in preparation of celebrating his milestone birthday.
The former Texas Rangers general manager obliged participants with keen details of events as far back as 80 years and as recent as last week.
On the call were local scribes, some national writers, Texas Rangers Hall of Famers Tom Grieve and Eric Nadel, and current Rangers television broadcaster Dave Raymond.
Robinson was quick to tell Raymond how much he enjoyed his work on broadcasts of Rangers games, and after answering some insightful questions, had these parting words for Raymond.
“Tell Nitkowski not to talk so much,” Robinson said, referring to Raymond’s partner, the (apparently) verbose analyst C.J. Niktowski.
Robinson, 38 years removed from his seven-season run as Rangers GM, turns 100 on Tuesday. It’s a big number for a man who first played professional baseball in 1939.
It’s also bigger than his four career All-Star appearances, the ball he hit entirely out of Comiskey Park in Chicago and the well-known players he acquired for the Rangers from 1976-82.
Of his 100 years, 65 of them were spent in baseball, which gave him the chance to do everything in the game, and so much more.
He appreciates the opportunities the national pastime has given him, and if not for baseball he might not have seen the century mark.
“It means that I’ve had a wonderful family support, I have a lovely wife that takes good care of me, and I feel very lucky,” said Robinson, who was born in Paris in northeast Texas. “And I feel very lucky to have had baseball.
“Baseball is something that if you’re really into it, you’ve got to go from year to year with it and you can look back and pinpoint great things that have happened to you each year.”
This year, amid the coronavirus pandemic, has been a little tougher than most, with Robinson and wife Bette, a mere 89, cooped up in their home at Woodhaven Country Club. The pandemic has prevented them from visiting their farm in Bastrop.
Robinson, though, isn’t going to complain too much. There’s a case of COVID-19 next door, and a friend across the fairway also has been stricken. Robinson has to wear a brace on his right leg, the result of a botched operation in 1945 to remove a bone tumor that instead caused nerve problems in his foot.
But he and the wife have stayed healthy, and Bette still has some pretty sharp culinary skills. Robinson also started a podcast, The Golden Age of Baseball with Eddie Robinson.
“We stay home, and Bette’s a good cook, and we enjoy each other’s company,” Eddie said. “It hasn’t been as tough for us as it has been a lot of people. We’re a little bit apprehensive about catching it. We’re laying low.”
At least Robinson had some form of a baseball season to watch, and he did watch. He recognizes that the Rangers are going through a rebuild and have a long road ahead, but he sees a nucleus to build around, which includes center fielder Leody Taveras.
But the MLB game of today isn’t the same one he played from 1942-57, minus three seasons lost from 1943-45 while serving in the Navy. Robinson served under boxing legend Gene Tunney in a unit that oversaw the formation of intramural programs at military bases.
Robinson played for seven of the eight American League teams that were in existence during his career, with the Boston Red Sox being the lone exception. But their best player, Ted Williams, might have wanted Robinson on the roster.
Williams, the last player to hit .400 and the Rangers’ first manager in 1972, frequently said that Robinson was “the most underrated and best clutch hitter I ever played against.”
In 1947, while with the Cleveland Indians, Robinson played with Larry Doby, who became the first Black player in American League history a few months after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
“You hardly ever hear of Doby,” Robinson said. “Doby went through the same things as Jackie did, and I don’t think he gets enough credit.”
Robinson was a member of Cleveland’s 1948 squad, which was the last from the city to win the World Series. During that season, on June 13, the New York Yankees honored the 1923 team that christened Yankee Stadium.
An ailing Babe Ruth, only two months shy of dying, made his final appearance in uniform, but needed help getting from the visitor’s dugout on the field. Robinson gave Ruth a bat to use as a crutch, which he needed all the way to his place at home plate and back after the ceremony.
Twenty-six years later, Robinson was the Atlanta Braves general manager and in attendance when Hank Aaron broke Ruth’s all-time home run record on April 8, 1974.
The Rangers hired Robinson in 1976, and they were a competitive team trying to reach the postseason for the first time. Robinson was behind the acquisitions of some of the franchise’s best player, like third baseman Buddy Bell and first baseman Al Oliver.
“The one I’m most proud of is Charlie Hough,” Robinson said. “He won more games than any Texas Rangers pitcher ever.”
The game has continued to change since then and since Robinson retired from baseball for good in 2004 after scouting for the Red Sox, who ended the Curse of the Bambino that year by winning their first World Series since 1918.
For a hitter who struck out only 359 times in 4,282 at-bats over 13 seasons, Robinson considers today’s all-or-nothing approach by so many hitters to be a stain on the game.
Still, though, he watched as much of the COVID-altered 60-game season as he could.
“I enjoyed it. What the hell? What you get is what you got,” Robinson said. “I just don’t enjoy baseball today like I did in the Golden Age. It’s changed so much. The home run is the big thing and the strikeout is overlooked. That’s all together different.”
Grieve, who was scouted and signed as a player by Robinson and then hired to the Rangers’ front office by Robinson, said he gets a heavy dose of baseball talk through frequent conversations with Robinson.
Grieve can’t slip much past Robinson. Even more than 15 years removed from the game, Robinson keeps up with it.
“There are not many people I’ve met who know the game better than Eddie does,” Grieve said. “The remarkable thing is that Eddie, at age 100, is still just as sharp as all of us, knows the game as well as all of us, knows the players on the Rangers as well as I do, and it’s just been remarkable to be involved in Eddie’s life and be his friend.”
That life, now 100 years of it, has been centered on baseball.
It still is, and Robinson’s not done yet.
“I give that credit for one reason why I’ve lived this long,” Robinson said. “I could say I’ve had good genes. I’ve enjoyed my life, I’ve met a lot of good people, and I hope to go on. I’d like to live 104. That’s my number.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
