Gerald Francis “Jerry” Coleman passed away on Sunday at the age of 89. He was best known as the TV announcer for San Diego Padres baseball games, a job he held for four decades.
As an announcer, Coleman was great enough to earn admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster’s wing in 2005. But as good as he was, Coleman was perhaps most beloved for being occasionally bad. He had a knack for words that were deliciously wrong. Coleman was a poet of the malaprop. His charming and humorous mistakes were legion. Some the more famous ones are:
- Rich Folkers is throwing up in the bullpen.
- Jesus Alou is in the on-deck circus.
- Winfield goes back to the wall, he hits his head on the wall and it rolls off. It’s rolling all the way back to 2nd base. This is a terrible thing for the Padres.
- (Catcher Bruce) Benedict may not be hurt as much as he really is.
- Kansas City leads in the eighth, 4-4.
- Enos Cabell started out here with the Astros and before that he was with the Orioles.
- He slides into second with a standup double.
- There’s someone warming up in the bullpen, but he’s obscured by his number.
But there was more to Coleman than met the eye, or the ear as it were. His gaffes could be sublime, reminiscent of Yogi Berra’s mangled wisdom. Two examples of his circuitously profound insights are:
- You never ask why you’ve been fired because if you do, they’re likely to tell you.
- Gaylord Perry and Willie McCovey should know each other like a book. They’ve been ex-teammates for years now.
- At the end, excitement maintained its hysteria.
Before his career in broadcasting, Coleman spent parts of nine seasons as a slick-fielding second basemen for the New York Yankees. Fittingly, he was a teammate of Berra’s during that time, as well as fellow future baseball broadcaster Phil Rizzuoto, who was also known for his lovably odd turn of words.
Coleman’s playing career featured ups and downs of a literary stripe. He earned Rookie of the Year honors in 1949, and was an All-Star and World Series MVP in 1950. He played on six pennant winning teams and and four world champions.
Yet despite his brilliance in the field and his timely hitting, Coleman was a full time player (or something close to it) for only three seasons. One reason is he was plagued by injury later in his career. Another was his substantial wartime service.
Later known for his lovable buffoonery in the broadcast booth, Coleman was deadly serious in his contributions to the U.S. military. In 1943, after a season in the minor leagues, at the age of 19 he put his baseball career on hold and enlisted to fight in World War II.
Joining the Navy’s pre-flight program, Coleman was soon assigned to the Marines. He earned his pilot’s wings in April of 1944, and as a dive bomber he flew 57 missions in the Pacific.
After the war, Coleman returned to professional baseball and soon found glory with the Yankees. But when the Korean War erupted, he returned to the Marines in 1952. In Korea he flew another 63 missions in a single-seat fighter plane. His near-death experiences included flipping his plane on the runway after his engine quit during takeoff; somehow the payload of bombs didn’t explode, though he nearly chocked to death on his helmet straps. He also saw his marine roommate get shot down, and personally confirmed the death to his the widow.
To this day, Jerry Coleman is the only Major League baseball player to see action in two wars. And it was substantial. Between WWII and Korea, he flew 120 combat missions, earned numerous medals, including two Distinguished Flying Crosses, and retired at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Jerry Coleman was a seriou
s man, yet secure enough to publicly play the jester in the broadcast booth. He was a talented, successful pro athlete, yet confident enough to twice walkaway from it so he could honor his sense of commitment and duty.
Such is the stuff of poetry.