Simon Rosenthal (November 13, 1903 – April 7, 1969) was an

outfielder An outfielder is a person playing in one of the three defensive positions in baseball or softball, farthest from the batter. These defenders are the left fielder, the center fielder, and the right fielder. As an outfielder, their duty is to cat ...

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

who played from through for the

Boston Red Sox The Boston Red Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Boston. The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight ...

Biography

Listed at , 165 lb., Rosenthal batted and threw left-handed. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was Jewish, and was the first

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

player on the Red Sox. In a two-season career, Rosenthal was a .266 hitter (95-for-357) with four

home run In baseball, a home run (abbreviated HR) is scored when the ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to circle the bases and reach home plate safely in one play without any errors being committed by the defensive team. A home run i ...

s and 42 RBI in 123 games, including 40 runs, 17 doubles, five

triples TripleS (stylized as tripleS; Help:IPA/English, /ˈtɹɪpəl:ɛs/; ) is a South Korean girl group formed by MODHAUS. They aim to be the world's first decentralized K-pop idol group. The members will rotate between the group, sub-unit, and solo ac ...

, five

stolen base In baseball, a stolen base occurs when a runner advances to a base to which they are not entitled and the official scorer rules that the advance should be credited to the action of the runner. The umpires determine whether the runner is safe or ...

s and a .319

on-base percentage In baseball statistics, on-base percentage (OBP) measures how frequently a batter reaches base. An official Major League Baseball (MLB) statistic since 1984, it is sometimes referred to as on-base average (OBA), as it is rarely presented as a ...

. His big league career was hampered by a foot injury from his time in the minor leagues; Rosenthal played professional baseball until 1935, but never again reached the major leagues. Both Sy and his son Buddy (Irwin Rosenthal) joined to fight in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The elder Rosenthal was initially rejected due to loose cartilage in his knee dating back to baseball days. After being rejected, he paid for knee surgery to have the

cartilage Cartilage is a resilient and smooth type of connective tissue. In tetrapods, it covers and protects the ends of long bones at the joints as articular cartilage, and is a structural component of many body parts including the rib cage, the neck an ...

removed and had some expensive dental work done so he could pass the fitness tests, and he ultimately made the cut in spite of his age. Both Rosenthals suffered great tragedy during the war. Buddy was killed in the Pacific Ocean on Christmas Day 1943, at just 17 years old. Sy reportedly served aboard ship during the

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...

invasion of Normandy, and was later assigned to the . Sy was rendered

paraplegic Paraplegia, or paraparesis, is an impairment in motor or sensory function of the lower extremities. The word comes from Ionic Greek () "half-stricken". It is usually caused by spinal cord injury or a congenital condition that affects the neural ...

on September 25, 1944, when his ship hit a German mine off the coast of France. Rosenthal had liquidated his businesses in order to pay for his pre-war medical procedures, so the Red Sox held a "Sy Rosenthal Day" on September 13, 1947, to raise money for his care. He remained active in a number of charitable causes throughout his life. Rosenthal died at the age of 65 in his hometown of Boston.

References

External links

Baseball ReferenceSociety for American Baseball ResearchJewish Baseball Museum
1903 births 1969 deaths Boston Red Sox players Major League Baseball outfielders Baseball players from Massachusetts Jewish American baseball players Jewish Major League Baseball players People with paraplegia United States Navy sailors American disabled sportspeople United States Navy personnel of World War II Baseball players with disabilities 20th-century American Jews {{US-baseball-outfielder-1900s-stub

Biography

See also

References

External links