Card of the Moment #70
June 14th, 2011 by slangon
Todays Card of the Moment is brought to us by the color red. And the letter Z. And circles.
1963 Topps #186 Jerry Zimmerman
Jerry Zimmerman spent 8 seasons in the Majors, serving mostly as a backup catcher. He did not fare well at the plate, compiling a career .204 average with 3 home runs and 72 runs driven in. He also spent 9 years in the Minors, floating around the farm systems of the Red Sox, the Orioles, the Red Sox again and finally the Reds, who he debuted with in 1961.
When he came up with the Redlegs, it was one of the few times in his career when he was the primary backstop, despite his .206/.252/.230 batting line. I guess when the other catchers on the team were hitting .186 and .129, that .206 looks pretty awesome. Jerry had the good fortune (or good timing) of coming up with Cincinnati just as they won the National League pennant and made their first World Series appearance since they won it in 1940. Unfortunately, they were playing the Yankees and lost in 5 games. Jerry was a late inning defensive replacement in Games 1 and 4, but did not get an at-bat in the Series.
After that 1 eventful season in Cincinnati, the Reds sent Jerry packing to frozen tundra of Minnesota, where he would play out the remainder of his career. While with the Twins, Jerry had his second trip to the World Series thanks to Minnesota winning 102 games in 1965. Unfortunately, they lost in 7 games, this time to the Dodgers. At least this time around, Jerry got 1 at-bat in which he grounded into a double play to end Game 3.
During his time in Minnesota, he served mostly as a backup to Earl Battey, with the exception of 1967 during which Earl struggled to remain healthy and was ultimately his last year in the Majors. 1967 also saw him take over the role of unofficial bullpen coach as the Twins only had 3 coaches at the time. Not only did the extra duties land him some extra cash, it also got him a private room on road trips.
After the ’67 season, the Twins traded for Johnny Roseboro and Jerry was once again relegated to back-up catcher until he was released right before the 1969 season.
After being set adrift by Minnesota, Zimmerman became the very first bullpen coach for the newly minted Montreal Expos, rejoining Gene Mauch, who had managed Jerry when he played for the AAA Minneapolis Millers in 1958 (who were a farm team for the Red Sox, not the Twins). He remained in Montreal until Mauch was fired after the 1975 season, where he followed his Skipper back to Minnesota where he was the bullpen coach until 1980.
You wouldn’t think the career of a Major League bullpen coach would have anything interesting to it, but one rather odd thing did happen to Zimmerman during the 1978 season. On August 25 of that year, the umpires went on strike (which lasted only one day due to a court injunction against the union, although they would strike again for the first month or so of the 1979 season) forcing games to be officiated by replacement umps. The Twins were in Toronto at the time and for whatever reason only 2 local amateur umpires were available at game time. Because of this, Zimmerman and Blue Jays coach Don Leppert filled in as 3rd and 2nd base umpires respectively. After an inning of play, a third local ump arrived and Jerry and Don bid farewell to their umpiring careers.
It seems mighty strange to me to have members of the 2 teams who are playing act as officials, but apparently outside of a force play at 2nd (which Leppert said was not even close) neither coach had to make any calls.
Leave a Reply