He led the American League in Runs Batted In with 162 in 1936. He is listed (by The Sporting News) as the unofficial (because the award did not exist until after World War II) American League Rookie of the Year for 1934. In his first three seasons, he posted offensive numbers that rival those of Mike Trout in the latter’s early campaigns. Yet his story has largely been consigned to the dark closets of baseball history.
Trosky was born in tiny Norway, Iowa, in 1912, and grew up on a farm just outside the hamlet. He was signed by local scout Cy Slapnicka, and went on to an abbreviated-yet- terrific career with the Indians and the Chicago White Sox. He left baseball for good in 1946, and returned to Iowa to raise his family and sell agricultural real estate. His story, of battling an array of the giants of the game’s history that included fellow first-basemen Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, and Hank Greenberg, is the classic baseball tale. Trosky was the farmboy-made-good.
McFarland and Co. (Jefferson, NC) will be publishing Trosky’s biography later this year (2016), and it is worth a read by anyone with an interest in the golden age of baseball.
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