Richard Alan Scheinblum (November 5, 1942 – May 10, 2021), nicknamed "Shane", Whiting, Robert. ''You Gotta Have Wa'' (Vintage Departures, 1989), pp. 82-83. was an American professional

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 (A ...

(MLB) player. In 1971, he won the American Association Most Valuable Player Award after hitting a league-leading and Triple-A-record .388. In 1972 he was named to the American League All-Star team, and batted .300. He played for the

Cleveland Indians The Cleveland Guardians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland. The Guardians compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central division. Since , they have ...

, Washington Senators,

Kansas City Royals The Kansas City Royals are an American professional baseball team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Royals compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. The team was founded as an expans ...

Cincinnati Reds The Cincinnati Reds are an American professional baseball team based in Cincinnati. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) National League Central, Central division and were a charter member of ...

California Angels The Los Angeles Angels are an American professional baseball team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Angels compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) West division. Since 1966, the team ...

, and St. Louis Cardinals. He also played two seasons in Japan for the

Hiroshima Toyo Carp The is a professional baseball team based in Hiroshima, Japan. They compete in the Central League of Nippon Professional Baseball. The team is primarily owned by the Matsuda family, led by , who is a descendant of Mazda founder Jujiro Mats ...

Early life

Scheinblum was Jewish, and was born in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan, New York City to Fred and Lee (born in Ukraine; died in 1949) Scheinblum, and grew up in Fort Apache in the

South Bronx The South Bronx is an area of the New York City borough of the Bronx. The area comprises neighborhoods in the southern part of the Bronx, such as Concourse, Mott Haven, Melrose, and Port Morris. In the early 1900s, the South Bronx was orig ...

in New York City."Q/A with Richie Scheinblum: All-Star with Royals; lessons from playing for Ted Williams" - Jewish Baseball Museum
/ref> He was very proud that he was one of only (as he recalled it) six Jewish major leaguers at the time, along with Art Shamsky, Mike Epstein, Steve Stone, Ron Blomberg, and Ken Holtzman. His father remarried and the family moved to

Englewood, New Jersey Englewood is a city in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, which at the 2020 United States census had a population of 29,308. Englewood was incorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from po ...

, when he was 10 years old. He attended Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, where he played basketball and soccer, in addition to baseball. He was a 1964 graduate of

C.W. Post College LIU Post (formally, the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, and often referred to as C.W. Post) is a private university in Brookville, New York. It is the largest campus of the private Long Island University system. The campus is name ...

, now known as LIU Post, with a degree in Business Administration. There, he was a three-sport athlete, competing in baseball, basketball, and track and field.LIU Post Pioneers Mobile – LIU Post Athletic Hall of Fame
/ref> In baseball he batted .415 in 1964, and set the C.W. Post records in career triples (12) and batting average (.395). He was inducted in the college's sports Hall of Fame in 2005.

Baseball career

In 1964 he played for the Burlington Indians and hit .309 (9th in the

Carolina League The Carolina League is a Minor League Baseball league which has operated along the Atlantic Coast of the United States since 1945. Having been classified at various levels throughout its existence, it operated at Class A-Advanced from 1990 un ...

), in 1965 he played for the

Salinas Indians Salinas may refer to: People * Salinas (surname) Places Americas Latin America * Salinas (ancient lake), in the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia * Salinas, Minas Gerais, a municipality in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil * Playa Grande, Costa ...

and hit .318 (9th in the league) with a .460 slugging percentage (8th in the league) and had 21 doubles (9th in the league), and in 1965 he played for the

Pawtucket Indians The Pawtucket Indians were a minor league baseball team affiliated with the Cleveland Indians. Located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the Pawtucket Indians existed from 1966 to 1967, playing in the Eastern League. They came into existence after 196 ...

and hit .263.">"Richie Scheinblum Minor & Japanese Leagues Statistics & History" , Baseball-Reference.com
/ref> He made his major league debut with the Cleveland Indians in 1967, and hit .318, as during the rest of the season he played for the Portland Beavers and hit .291 with 77 runs (5th in the league), 25 doubles (7th in the league), and 16 home runs (8th in the league). During the 1966–67 offseason, Scheinblum played in the Nicaraguan Professional Baseball League and led his team to a championship on January 22, 1967. After the game, however, he and teammate Jim Weaver hid under the bed in Scheinblum's hotel room while bullets flew and the

Nicaraguan National Guard The National Guard ( es, link=no, Guardia Nacional, otherwise known as ) was a militia and a gendarmerie created in 1925 during the occupation of Nicaragua by the United States. It became notorious for human rights abuses and corruption under ...

killed between dozens and hundreds of anti-government demonstrators near the hotel room. In 1968 he played again for Portland, and hit .304 (9th in the league) with a .479 slugging percentage and 75 RBIs (7th in the league), but in 55 at bats batted .218 for Cleveland, followed by .186 in limited action the following year. In 1970 he batted .337 (5th in the league)/.424 (leading the league)/.576 (second in the league to Cesar Cedeno) for the Class AAA Wichita Aeros, leading the league in runs scored (79), hits (155), and RBIs (84), and second in the league in doubles (32), home runs (24), walks (72), and sacrifice flies (6). Playing for the Denver Bears in 1971, he won the American Association Most Valuable Player Award after he hit a league-leading and Triple-A-record .388 with a league-leading .490

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 ...

, 83 runs (third in the league), .725

slugging percentage In baseball statistics, slugging percentage (SLG) is a measure of the batting productivity of a hitter. It is calculated as total bases divided by at bats, through the following formula, where ''AB'' is the number of at bats for a given player, ...

(leading the league), 145 hits (third in the league), 31

double A double is a look-alike or doppelgänger; one person or being that resembles another. Double, The Double or Dubble may also refer to: Film and television * Double (filmmaking), someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character * ...

s (tied for the league lead), 10 triples (leading the league), 25

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 (second in the league), and 108 RBIs. Scheinblum played

outfield The outfield, in cricket, baseball and softball is the area of the field of play further from the batsman or batter than the infield. In association football, the outfield players are positioned outside the goal area. In cricket, baseball a ...

in the major leagues from 1965 to 1974. He was a

switch-hitter In baseball, a switch hitter is a player who bats both right-handed and left-handed, usually right-handed against left-handed pitchers and left-handed against right-handed pitchers. Characteristics Right-handed batters generally hit better aga ...

. His best year was 1972, when he hit .300 (sixth in the

American League The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the American League (AL), is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a minor league b ...

) with an

of .383 (fifth in the league), 8 homers, and 66 RBIs for the Royals. He was named to the American League All-Star team, and was the Royals' Player of the Month in August. Following the

Munich massacre The Munich massacre was a terrorist attack carried out during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, by eight members of the Palestinian militant organization Black September, who infiltrated the Olympic Village, killed two members ...

in September of that year, Scheinblum wore a black armband in memory of the slain Israeli athletes. He later said, "I wore the emblematic black band ... not only because they were Jewish athletes, but because they were human beings". Scheinblum was traded along with Roger Nelson to the

for

Hal McRae Harold Abraham McRae (; born July 10, 1945) is a former left fielder in Major League Baseball who played for the Cincinnati Reds (1968, 1970–72) and Kansas City Royals (1973–87). Utilized as a designated hitter for most of his career, Mc ...

and

Wayne Simpson Wayne Kirby Simpson (December 2, 1948), is a former professional baseball player who pitched in the Major Leagues from 1970–75 and in 1977. He played for the Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, Philadelphia Phillies, and California Angels. ...

on December 1, 1972.Durso, Joseph. "A's Send Epstein to Rangers; Scheinblum, Nelson to Reds," ''The New York Times'', Saturday, December 2, 1972.
Retrieved April 12, 2020 He batted .307 with a .402 on base percentage in 1973; after a slow start for the Cincinnati Reds, he was traded to the California Angels, for whom he batted .328 with an on base percentage of .418. He hit .263 with 13 homers and 127 RBIs in his career. In 1976, after leaving Major League Baseball, he played for Japan's

in 1976, batting .307 (8th in the

Japan Central League The or is one of the two professional baseball leagues that constitute Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. The winner of the league championship plays against the winner of the Pacific League in the annual Japan Series. It currently consist ...

) with a slugging percentage of .501 and 20 home runs.

Retirement

After his career, ended he went on to live in

Palm Harbor, Florida Palm Harbor is a census-designated place and unincorporated community in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. As of the 2016 American Community Survey, the CDP had a population of 60,236. Culture Palm Harbor is located north of downtown St. ...

. , he was working as a salesman with a promotional products company. He died May 10, 2021, after a long illness.

Family

His son, Monte Scheinblum, hit a golf ball 329 yards, 13 inches, into a 20 mile-per-hour wind to win the 1992 U.S. National Long Driving Championship, and was also the world long driving champion that year.

References

External links