The Man With A Million And One Alibis

NELSON, GLENN RICHARD Home: Portsmouth , Ohio . Born Nov, 18,1924. 170 pounds, 5 feet 11. Bats and throws left.
Year	Club	League	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	SB	RBI	BA
1942	Johnson City	App.	53	186	15	47	10	3	0	5	23	.253
1943-45	MILITARY SERVICE
1946	St. Joseph	West. Assn.	135	518	92	165	31	*23	5	26	93	.319
1947	Rochester	Internat.	11	18	2	1	0	0	0	0	2	.056
1947	Lynchburg	Piedmont	117	461	98	171	38	11	11	20	105	*.371
1948	Rochester	Internat.	142	485	68	147	29	12	7	11	63	.303
1949	St. Louis	NL	82	244	28	54	8	4	4	1	32	.221
1950	Columbus	AA	48	184	25	77	16	2	7	2	40	.418
1950	St. Louis	NL	76	235	27	58	10	4	1	4	20	.247
1951	St. Louis-Pitts.	NL	80	213	32	56	8	4	1	1	15	.26 3
1951	Chicago	AL	6	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000
1952	Montreal	Internat.	2	3	0	1	1	0	0	0	1	.333
1952	Brooklyn	NL	37	39	6	10	1	0	0	0	3	.256
1953	? Montreal	Internat.	154	542	117	167	33	9	34	2	*136	.308
1954	Cleveland	AL	4	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000
1954	Montreal	Internat.	141	469	107	146	26	5	*31	5	94	.311
1955	** Montreal	Internat.	154	506	*118	184	36	2	*37	11	*130	*.364
1956	Montreal	Internat.	49	165	42	65	14	0	12	2	37	.394
1956	Brook.- St. Louis	NL	69	152	13	33	7	0	7	0	23	.217
1957	Toronto	Internat.	152	555	92	163	25	6	28	4	101	.294
1958	Toronto	Internat.	114	405	*81	132	24	5	*33	1	*95	*.326
*League leader.
?Won MVP award, hit .647 in Little World Series.
**Won MVP award.

The baseball player with the belligerent turn-of-the-century stance shown in the picture on the opposite page may well be the greatest hitter in the entire history of the minor leagues. But that is not the only talent that sets Rocky Nelson , first baseman of the Toronto Maple Leafs , apart from the multitude. In this era when college-bred baseball professionals have brought an atmosphere of gentility to the dugout that would do justice to Mrs. Astor's drawing room, Rocky is the direct spiritual descendant of Ring Lardner 's brash and brazen rookie. In fact, if Rocky just wore a handle bar mustache and a box-shaped cap, they might try to gather him up and put him back in one of those old baseball daguerreotypes where he belongs.

Rocky, besides hitting .326 for Toronto this year, is one of the world's greatest living experts on food, travel and Cuban cigars, on bass fishing and card playing, on wing shooting and spitting, on handicapping horses and dogs and solving crossword puzzles, on religion and golf and pool and the modern novel, in fact, on just about any subject that happens to come up. And if he is wrong, there is always a pretty good reason which seldom involves Rocky himself. Someone else—or something else—goofed.

"At bridge," says Carl Erskine of the Dodgers , a team on which Rocky has been employed from time to time, "he could always explain how he lost. Somebody played the wrong card."

At the track, Rocky's horse never just loses. It stumbles coming out of the gate or the jockey is caught in a pocket. And at the plate it has always been a trick of fate when he struck out. "That pitch just turned over at the last minute," he used to tell Pee Wee Reese , or "it was outside all the way and then it just hit the back part of the plate."

One day at Montreal , Gino Cimoli remembers, Rocky took a second strike which brought Manager Max Macon rushing forth to beef about the call. He stormed around the box and argued with the umpire and finally, in disgust, kicked up a puff of dust before returning to the dugout. On the next pitch Rocky struck out.

"How do you expect a fellow to hit," he asked Macon , "with you out there kicking up all that dust so's he can't see the ball?"

TALK, TALK, TALK

Rocky is a nonstop, marathon talker because he is a compulsive talker—a soul mate, perhaps, of Yogi Berra . At the plate he directs a continued stream of taunts at the pitcher. If he hits, he yells, "You'll never get me out with that junk," as he runs to first base. If he makes an out, he yells, "You'll never get me out with that junk again," as he heads for the dugout. In any gathering of which Rocky is a member, sooner or later he is a sure bet to take over the talking.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that he is able to explain why he is in the minors instead of up in the big leagues where he belongs.

"The reputation you get the first time you go up," he says, "is just about the most important thing that happens to you in baseball. It sticks with you, somehow. They say, 'Well, he was with so and so for a couple of years and couldn't get the job done. We don't want him.' And that's what happened to me. I got started with the wrong organization.