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OF Frank "Hondo" Howard (NL Rookie of the Year, 4x All Star, World Series Champion, R.I.P.)

Former Buckeye great Frank Howard doing well at 68.

No Place Like Home
When the Nationals Take the Field, an Old Senator Will Be There to Cheer Them On

By Don Oldenburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 22, 2005; Page C01

Frank Howard stepped into the batter's box not knowing this would be his final at-bat in a Senators uniform, his last up at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.

The crowd of 14,460, angry and sad about the team's imminent move to Texas, let out a thunderous roar, trying to will one last thrill from their beloved Bunyanesque slugger. Howard crushed a fastball into the left-field stands that night of Sept. 30, 1971.

At 68, former Senators slugger Frank Howard still looks like he could power one into the upper deck at RFK Stadium, where he plans to attend the Nationals' opening day.

The standing ovation went on for minutes. Rounding the bags, Howard tipped his hat and flung it into the stands. And in a page ripped from baseball legend, the giant of a man stood on the dugout's top step, tears in his eyes, and blew a kiss to his cheering fans.

After the game, Howard said it was "the biggest thrill" of his baseball career. Thirty-four years later, and as he begins his 47th season in professional baseball, Big Frank says it still is.

"Oh, gawd, that stands out. An emotional moment," Howard says, sitting at the dining room table of his home in rural Loudoun County. "The last home run I hit in RFK Stadium was the last home run in that ballpark -- though there will be a few hit there this spring, so it won't be the last one."

With Major League Baseball's return to Washington next month, the shadow cast by the towering Senators slugger -- known in his heyday as "Hondo," "The Capital Punisher" and the "Gentle Giant" -- looms large again. Anyone who witnessed him denting RFK's upper-deck seats can't help but envision, on their return to the ballpark, those 24 seats, scattered from left field to straightaway center, that were once painted white to mark where Howard's shots landed.

But as the Washington Nationals try to fill Hondo's size 14D cleats this season, those monster home runs aren't their biggest challenge. The Senators, remember, were "first in war, first in peace and last in the American League." What Howard and his teammates proved was that winning games is one thing, winning hearts another.

Howard answers the phone and when asked, "Is this Frank Howard, the home-run hitter?," he quips: "What's left of 'im."

At 68, there's still plenty left.

One of the largest men ever to play major league baseball, he is 6 feet 7 1/2 inches tall and weighs 250 pounds. He looks almost gaunt compared with his Senators baseball-card photos from '69 or '70, when he tipped the scales at 275.

But it was his rawboned strength in baseball's pre-steroid days that was plain scary. Howard joining the Senators was like Goliath teaming up with David. His forearms still have the Popeye proportions that swung one of the biggest bats in baseball -- a 37-inch, 35-ounce Louisville Slugger.

Mickey Mantle used to tell about Yankee ace Whitey Ford making a stab at one of Howard's scorching line drives. He said Whitey was lucky he missed the ball because it would've carried him over the center-field fence. A lingering tale in Baltimore has Howard jacking a fastball out of old Memorial Stadium so hard it hit a house porch on one bounce.

"As time goes on, we get better and better," Howard says of his own legend.

But home runs have always been measured in feet and hyperbole. Most of Howard's feats aren't apocryphal. A .273 lifetime hitter with 382 homers, he hit an upper-deck gopher ball to win the final game of the 1963 World Series for the Dodgers. In May 1968, the Senators' most popular player went on a record-setting binge, belting 10 homers in 20 at-bats over six games. He ranks among the top five home run hitters of the '60s -- with Hank Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. "D.C. didn't seem to have many major leaguers, but Frank Howard was one," says Bob Hannah, a Sterling home inspector who grew up a Senators fan. "We'd listen to the AM radio, and when Frank came up, we'd be praying he'd hit the long ball."

Tom Goldstein owns one of Howard's bats. The publisher of the literary baseball magazine Elysian Fields Quarterly grew up in Chevy Chase devoted to the Senators. "I still dearly love all those guys," says Goldstein, now living in St. Paul, Minn. "I can remember thinking even if they were behind they could still pull it out. Frank Howard could hit a home run."

At 68, former Senators slugger Frank Howard still looks like he could power one into the upper deck at RFK Stadium, where he plans to attend the Nationals' opening day.

Those were the good old days. "Many people call it 'the Golden Era of Baseball,' " Howard says. "I don't know if there's anything to that. I always thought the good old times are today. I cherish the memories . . . but I'm not a guy who lives in the past."

Go East, Big Man

Born in 1936, Howard grew up in Columbus, Ohio, the son of "a railroader and a housewife -- good people," he says.

An all-American in baseball and basketball at Ohio State University, he was drafted in 1958 by the NBA's Philadelphia Warriors.

But baseball was his first love, says Howard, and he signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers before the '58 season. He was named National League Rookie of the Year in 1960. The Dodgers won two World Series with him on the roster.

Then in '64, the Dodgers traded Howard to Washington. "I was essentially a fourth outfielder in L.A., hitting 25 home runs a year in the biggest baseball park in America and doing it on 400 at-bats," he says, explaining why he was happy to be traded to the cellar-dwelling Senators. "I said, Jesus Christ, what could I do if I get 550 at-bats? I had my best years here."

In '69, in Ted Williams's first year as Senators manager, the club competed for third place, came in 10 games above .500 and finished in fourth.

"It was like winning the World Series," Howard says. "We drew 900,000 people in that ballpark. We just didn't have the overall team depth to compete with the good ballclubs."

But Williams took a bunch of lovable bums, guys named Casanova, Bosman, Knowles, Cullen, Allen and McMullen, and taught them a few things about the mentality of hitting.

"Awww, he was one of the most electric, charismatic guys I ever met in my life," Howard says. "You know, he's one of the true gods of baseball."

He recalls his third day in training camp that '69 season, when word came Williams wanted to see him in the clubhouse office. "I knocked on the door and said, 'Skip, ya wanna see me?'

"He said, 'Yeah, yeah, come on in here, bush.' He called everybody 'bush.' Bush leaguer, ya know. He said, 'Can you tell me how a guy can hit 44 home runs and only get 48 bases on balls?' "

Howard said he was being aggressive at the plate. Williams observed that he
knew Howard "liked that first swifty that they throw to you."

Howard got him to laugh by referring to curveballs, sliders and change-ups as "UFOs." Williams got Big Frank thinking about taking that first pitch, going deeper into the count to get a better pitch to swat. Howard gave it a try and went from 48 walks to 132 that season. He hit 48 home runs and drove in 126.

Howard played seven seasons in Washington until owner Bob Short moved the Senators to Texas, renaming the team the Texas Rangers. Ninety-five games into the '72 season, the Rangers sold him to Detroit, where he played until retiring after the '73 season. He played in Japan in '74 before tearing up his knee and beginning his coaching career.

At 68, former Senators slugger Frank Howard still looks like he could power one into the upper deck at RFK Stadium, where he plans to attend the Nationals' opening day.

The Heavy Hitter

Stories about Hondo's playing days abound. "Everybody's got a fun story on Frank. He was just one of those kind of guys," says former Senators first baseman Mike Epstein. "Rarely in the game of baseball do you come across somebody who is so truly likable because there is so much competition, but he was almost devoid of a personal ego."

Epstein remembers the time Senators manager Gil Hodges decided the team was out of shape and scheduled a mandatory weigh-in. Hondo stepped on the scale at 300 pounds, he says, and Hodges told him to lose 30 pounds by the next week.

"Nobody sees Frank all week. He shows up for the games and was striking out or hitting weak grounders," recalls Epstein, who now runs his own hitting instruction business in Denver. Next weigh-in, Howard is excited when the scale stops at 270. But Hodges pulls a surprise weigh-in the day after and Hondo is at 300 again. "He hadn't eaten and hardly drank anything for a week, lost 30 pounds, then put 30 pounds back on in one night," Epstein says.

Former Senators shortstop Eddie Brinkman, Howard's best friend and roommate on road trips, recalls the 15 feet of bald space where Howard paced in left field. "We had a lot of pop-ups between us," says Brinkman, recalling the time he ran back tracking a shallow fly, expecting Howard to call him off. He kept going and still heard nothing. Finally he caught the ball five feet in front of Howard's bare spot.

"I said, 'Hondo, Jesus, mix in an "I got it" once in a while,' " Brinkman says, laughing. "He said, 'You little [expletive]. I get paid to hit it, you're paid to catch it.' "

Check the list of Hall of Famers and you won't find Frank Howard between Rogers Hornsby and Waite Hoyt. Howard says he once watched Hall of Famer and career home run champ Hank Aaron hit batting practice. He looked over Aaron's bat. All the ball marks were a dime apart. His own bat was marked from the handle to the fat end. "So I said, 'Hammer, just out of curiosity, how many bats would you break in a year?' " Howard says. "He looked at me right in the eyes and said, 'Big Frank, I don't break bats, I wear 'em out.'

"Those guys are in the Hall of Fame for one reason and one reason only -- they excel at a level beyond us mere mortals."

Author John Holway once rated baseball's greatest home run hitters by calculating what their career totals would have been with as many at-bats as Aaron had (12,364) in hitting his record 755 homers. Howard's projected total: 728.

Hanging It Up

Howard has almost nothing from his playing days around the house: no photos on the walls, no baseballs, no bats. He shrugs, saying he gave most of it to charity. His wife, Donna, goes into the basement and finds a few photos and baseball cards.

But the full-size, gold-plated crown inlaid with large gemstones, that's in his den. It's inscribed "Babe Ruth Crown," one of baseball's most prestigious honors in his day. This award for home run champ went to Howard twice -- in '68 and in '70.

That makes it all the harder to imagine that he doesn't have any of his old bats. Not one. "You know, I really don't miss that," he says.

When it's over, it's over, he says, recalling when he knew his playing days were done. "Last series in '73, a cold, rainy, sleety night in Detroit, about 5,000 people in the ballpark, and [Orioles pitcher] Jimmy Palmer's got us shut out 7-0 on two hits going into the eighth. "[Detroit Manager] Billy Martin says, 'Frank, grab a bat.' . . . I'm up with runners at first and second and nobody out. I hit what I thought was a BB inside the bag at third. And I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, a double and a couple RBIs."

As Howard broke out of the batter's box, he took a peek figuring the ball was rattling around the left-field corner. "Here's that great third baseman, Brooks Robinson, and he backhands me on the line and goes bing, bing and bing. Three outs. Triple play. That's when I knew it was over."

At 68, former Senators slugger Frank Howard still looks like he could power one into the upper deck at RFK Stadium, where he plans to attend the Nationals' opening day.

Spring in His Step

Donna Howard says she has watched her husband of 14 years get psyched about spring training season after season -- including this one. "About a week before, you see that antsiness," she says. "And he gets excited again."

Howard has been a coach and instructor for five major league organizations -- the Brewers, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners, Tampa Bay Devil Rays and New York Yankees. He managed two last-place teams: the San Diego Padres in '81 and the Mets in '83.

The past five years he has worked as a player development instructor for the Yankees. This spring, he worked with the major leaguers for two weeks and now is with the minor-league players. In the regular season, he will roam from one Yankees minor-league club to the next. Yankees boss George Steinbrenner recently extended his contract another two years.

"Isn't that amazing, a guy my age?" Howard says.

Howard is proud of the fact that he hasn't stopped working year-round in 50 years. Though he was near the top of the pay scale in the bigs, earning $150,000 annually over five of his years in Washington, he has always supplemented his income: selling paper for a paper mill, developing real estate, owning bars in Wisconsin. For 20 years, he has been a consultant to Future Brands, a liquor distributor.

People ask him if he's jealous of today's ballplayers and their multimillion-dollar salaries, Howard says. "It just wasn't there for us," he says. "But today's guys, I think they are operating under so much more pressure than we ever did. There's so much more pressure to justify these big contracts. You know, you could butcher a fly ball 40 years ago, it's in the paper the next day and two days later it's forgotten. But now your media coverage with ESPN, CNN, Fox, whoever else, it's run and rerun and rerun. I could see where that might wear on a player's nerves a little bit."

Talk of performance pressure ends abruptly at the mention of baseball's steroid scandal. "I don't know anything about it," he says, then adds: In the late '50s and '60s, drinking was the problem in baseball, "but that got cleaned up. In the mid-'70s and '80s, it was dope and it got cleaned up. Now this, but they'll get it cleaned up."

Root, Root, Root for . . .

Frank Howard never saw the Senators' move to Texas coming until the last series that season, when word spread that the franchise was a goner.

"I was stunned," Howard says. "Hell, I had my best years here. I loved Washington, loved the fans. I always said, 'The greatest fans in the world -- we just didn't have enough of 'em.' "

When Major League Baseball decided last fall to return to the nation's capital, one longtime Senators fan, Shaun Payne, proposed that the new team erect statues at its new stadium of Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson and Frank Howard.

Nah, Howard says. "I really think this new ballclub coming in should form its own identity."

But he was excited early this month when the Nationals asked him to participate in the April 14 opening-day ceremonies.

Ask about coming home to Washington if the Nationals were to offer him a job and Howard stops any speculation cold. "Mr. Steinbrenner's been great to me," he says. "I'm under contract."

But isn't it always nice to come home?

"Damn right," Hondo says.

Frank Howard Today
 
Howard's tourney draws golf crowd for charitable cause
By DAVE BROUGHTON, Staff Writer
Published 08/18/09

IMG_4345.JPG


As a member of the Washington Senators 40 years ago, Frank Howard was one of baseball's most feared sluggers. Playing in Washington from 1965 until the team skipped town following the 1971 season, Howard led the Senators in home runs and RBIs each year. Nicknamed "Hondo,'' Howard didn't get much help from his teammates, though, as Washington enjoyed just one winning season during that stretch.

If only Howard had with the Senators the support he received yesterday during the second Frank Howard Celebrity Golf Classic held at Old South Country Club in Lothian. Presented by South River Restoration, the tournament benefits St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Twenty-five celebrities, including baseball Hall of Famers Bill Mazeroski and Phil Niekro, were joined by 100 golfers at yesterday's event played in stifling humidity.

Now a resident of Middleburg, Va., Howard, who recently turned 73, spoke passionately about his efforts to raise money to help sick children.

"This is the greatest country in the world, and the people in the United States of America have opened up their hearts and their purse strings to help these kids beat a dreaded disease and progress in their lifetime,'' Howard said. "To be associated with them, it's and honor, it's a privilege. I know one thing, anything I can do I'm going to do.''

Listed at 6-foot-8, 275 pounds during his playing days, the slender Howard is physically limited on the golf course but maintains a positive attitude.

"It's terrible,'' Howard said of his golf game. "I can hit a baseball further than I can hit a golf ball. One thing about golf, there's no foul balls. In baseball there is.''

An All-American in both basketball and baseball at Ohio State, Howard was drafted by the NBA's Philadelphia Warriors but instead signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers, making his major league debut in 1958. In addition to the Dodgers and Senators, Howard had short stints with the Texas Rangers and Detroit Tigers, playing his final major league game in 1973.

When he left baseball, Howard's 382 career home runs were the eighth-most all-time. Currently, Howard is tied for 56th on the list with Jim Edmunds and Jim Rice. A number of players ahead of Howard on the home run list have been linked to steroid use, but Howard refuses to pass any judgement.

Howard's tourney draws golf crowd for charitable cause ? Sports (www.HometownAnnapolis.com - The Capital)
 
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May 25, 1964
The Dodgers' Troubled Giant
Erratic slugger Frank Howard must come through if L.A. hopes to win a pennant this season
William Leggett

index.htm


The Los Angeles Dodgers staggered home from a road trip last week in desperate shape. They were a ninth-place team in a 10-team league and looked as if they had as much chance of winning the National League pennant as Sam Levenson has of becoming the mayor of Cairo. There were sore backs, sore elbows, sore ankles, sore shoulders, sore arms and inflamed appendixes all over the place, but the biggest sore spot of all was the Dodger bat rack. That old Dodger malady clava morbosa?sick bat, lack of power?was haunting them as never before.

Dodger fans from coast to coast were trying to pacify themselves by saying that at the end of their first 29 games last year the Dodger record was 14-15; this year it was 13-16, not much worse. There were injuries last year, too, and Dodger fans insist those injuries?to Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax and Tommy Davis?were just as serious as the injuries to Koufax, Ron Perranoski and Johnny Podres seem this year.

Behind everyone's thinking, however, is still the shadow of old clava morbosa. That is the one thing Dodger fans and the Dodgers themselves do not like to think or talk about. In 1963 Los Angeles scored only 640 runs, a bewildering drop of 24% from the year before when the Dodgers lost the pennant. Only one other team in 30 years, the 1945 Detroit Tigers, ever found itself in a World Series after scoring as few runs as the Dodgers did last year. And 1945 was a war year with a 154-game schedule. At their current rate of nonproduction, the 1964 Dodgers will score 14% fewer runs than they did last year, and it is going to be impossible for any pitching staff to carry such a team to a pennant. Although it looked for a while last week as if Los Angeles was finally going to make a move toward the first division, it was being done with those old Dodger reliables, pitching and speed, not power. In winning four games out of seven, the Dodgers had only nine extra-base hits, four of them by Howard.

The Dodgers have fewer extra-base hits than 17 of the 20 teams in the major leagues. Only the Houston Colt .45s and the New York Mets in the National League have hit fewer home runs. The Dodgers have just 21, and 12 of them have come from the bat of one man?Frank Oliver Howard (see cover), the 27-year-old, 6-foot-7, 258-pound outfielder who is the most powerful-looking man in baseball and, on certain well-spaced days, the game's most powerful slugger.

Frank Howard has been compared to Babe Ruth, Paul Bunyan and Swat Milligan, who became a legend in the early 1900s because when he hit a baseball '"there was a puff of smoke and a thin, blue streak of flame." Sandy Koufax says, "Frank Howard leads all leagues in eating," and Wally Moon, Howard's roommate, says, "I don't know that much about the American League, but I do know that Frank leads the National League in sleeping." There have been other descriptive superlatives, including a Los Angeles wit's paraphrase of Lord Tennyson's lines from Sit Galahad: "Frank's strength is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure." Frank Howard himself is certainly big, strong and ravenous, but also hardly a complete ballplayer, and a mighty confused young man besides.

Erratic slugger Frank Howard must come through if L.A. - 05.25.64 - SI Vault
 
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Dad coached baseball at Columbus North High when Frank Howard played for Columbus South. As a kid I saw Frank blast a liner into the left field stands (actually the football stands) at North High. Don't know what the actual distance was, but it was more than a normal home-run fence. I did not know the significance of that blast at the time, nor the significance of Frank Howard, but both my dad and my grandpa made sure I learned of it as I grew. Heckuva slugger.
 
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Things in yur life that you'll never forget.

It must have been 1969 or 1970 I'm guessing. Went to a tribe game vs. Washington with my uncle. Frank Howard hit a ball up the ramp in left-center that separated the bleachers, probably about 450 feet. The sickening thing was, is that this ball probably never got more than 10 feet off the ground. Seriously, when he hit it, it looked like a line drive to the shortstop that basically ended up clearing the fence by 100 feet.

Absolutely amazing power.

Peace.
 
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Q: I know that current New York Yankee Nick Swisher is a former Buckeye. How many players has Ohio State sent to the major leagues? Who would you say had the most successful career in the big leagues? - Jamra Baugha, Pikeville, Ky.



A: The Baseball Almanac website lists 49 Buckeyes as having played at least one game in the major leagues. Pitcher Cory Luebke was the most recent player to reach the majors, in 2010 with San Diego. Frank Howard has been the best Buckeye by far. He hit 382 home runs and drove in 1,119 runs from 1958 to 1973 playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Washington Senators and Detroit Tigers. "Hondo'' played in four All-Star Games and led the American League in home runs in 1968 and '70. He graduated from South High School, by the way.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/conten...5/15/experts-5-15-art-gficlnp8-1.html?sid=101
 
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Columbus boy....special powers

Frank Oliver Howard (born August 8, 1936), nicknamed "Hondo", "The Washington Monument" and "The Capitol Punisher", is a former All-Star outfielder, coach and manager in Major League Baseball who played most of his career for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Washington Senators/Texas Rangers franchises.

One of the most physically intimidating players in the sport, the 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m)/235 lb. Howard was named the National League's Rookie of the Year in 1960, and went on to twice lead the American League in home runs and total bases and in slugging average, runs batted in and walks once each. His 382 career home runs were the eighth most by a right-handed hitter when he retired; his 237 home runs and 1969 totals of 48 HRs and 340 total bases in a Washington uniform are a record for any of that city's several franchises. Howard's Washington/Texas franchise records of 1,172 games, 4,120 at bats, 246 HRs, 1,141 hits, 701 RBI, 544 runs, 155 doubles, 2,074 total bases and a .503 slugging average have since been broken.





Howard with the Dodgers in 1962.
An All-American in both basketball and baseball at Ohio State, Howard was drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors of the NBA. Listed in college at 6'8" and 275 pounds, he instead signed with the Dodgers organization, and after a handful of appearances in 1958 and 1959 he succeeded Carl Furillo as Los Angeles' right fielder in 1960; he was named the Minor League Player of the Year in 1959 by The Sporting News after hitting 43 homers in the Pacific Coast League. He was named the NL's Rookie of the Year after batting .268 with 23 home runs and 77 RBI, and was nicknamed "Hondo" by teammates after a John Wayne film.[citation needed] He belted 98 homers in the following four seasons, most prominently in a 1962 campaign in which he batted .296 with 31 home runs and finished among the NL's top five players in RBI (119) and slugging (.560). He won the NL Player of the Month award in July with .381 average, 12 HR, and an incredible 41 RBI. The season ended with the Dodgers and San Francisco Giants tied for first place, necessitating a three-game pennant playoff; Howard had only a single in 11 at-bats and struck out three times against Billy Pierce in the first game, including the final out; but he had a run and an RBI in the second contest, an 8–7 win. The Giants took the pennant in three games, but Howard would later finish ninth in the MVP voting......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Howard_(baseball)
 
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One of the most physically intimidating players in the sport, the 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m)/235 lb.
An All-American in both basketball and baseball at Ohio State.

If he played today he would be called a "freak" athlete. I'm guessing that he could potentially have been an All American football player at TE too; however, the problem would have been to get some passes thrown his way. As you might recall Woody Hayes had a reputation of not emphasizing the "passing game" all that much.
 
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If he played today he would be called a "freak" athlete. I'm guessing that he could potentially have been an All American football player at TE too; however, the problem would have been to get some passes thrown his way. As you might recall Woody Hayes had a reputation of not emphasizing the "passing game" all that much.

I would think so - he's 81 for Christ's sake.
 
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