Tony Kubek Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Baseball Career:
First Game: April 20, 1957; Final Game: October 3, 1965
Bat: Left Throw: Right Height: 6' 3" Weight: 190

Awards and Achievements:
Named AL Rookie of the Year by Baseball Writers' Association of America (1957)
Named AL Rookie Player of the Year by The Sporting News (1957)
Named shortstop on The Sporting News AL All-Star Team (1961)

Tony Kubek
This article was written by Joseph Wancho and is presented in part, courtesy of the Society for American Baseball Research

Tony Kubek was a bit anxious. Not just because he was the starting left fielder for the New York Yankees, or that he was a rookie who was participating in his first World Series. But the series had shifted to his hometown of Milwaukee.    For the first time, his family would see him play in a major-league game.   The Braves had moved from Boston to Milwaukee after the 1952 season, and his family and friends were big supporters of the home team.    For the Series, he was able to fulfill the ticket requests that came his way from family and friends, and it seemed to him that everywhere he looked around County Stadium, he saw a familiar face.

The Series had begun in New York, with the teams splitting two games before heading west. In the first game in Milwaukee, with one out in the top of the first inning, Kubek, who was one week shy of his 22nd birthday, stepped in against Braves starter Bob Buhl. He hit a home run off of Buhl; the baseball just cleared the fence in right field. As he rounded the bases, Kubek paused at second and glanced out at right field as if he had doubts that the ball had gone over. “I guess I just looked because I was surprised,” he said later.

In the fourth inning Kubek singled and scored on a Mickey Mantle blast. Then in the seventh Kubek went deep again, stroking a three-run homer off Bob Trowbridge. “I was shaking with excitement as I trotted around the bases (after his first home run), and to my amazement there was the most deafening silence I had ever heard,” he said. “In the seventh inning, again I went around the bases. I couldn’t hear a sound coming from the crowd of more than 45,000. It was as if nothing happened.   And the stands were filled with relatives and friends who had known me all my life. Not a peep.”