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Edwin Donald " Duke" Snider (September 19, 1926 – February 27, 2011), nicknamed " the Duke of Flatbush", was an American professional baseball player. Primarily a center fielder, he spent most of his Major League Baseball (MLB) career playing for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers (1947–1962), later playing one season each for the New York Mets (1963) and San Francisco Giants (1964).
Snider was named to the National League (NL) All-Star roster eight times and was the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) runner-up in 1955. In his 16 seasons with the Dodgers, he helped lead the team to six World Series, with victories in 1955 and 1959. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980.
In 1950, he hit .321 and led the National League with 199 base hits and 343 total bases, earning his first All-Star Game appearance. When his average slipped to .277 in 1951 (a season when the Dodgers lost a 13‑game August lead and finished second to the Giants after Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World"), Snider was roundly criticized in the newspapers. Snider recalls, "I went to Walter O'Malley and told him I couldn't take the pressure", and, "I told him I'd just as soon be traded. I told him I figured I could do the Dodgers no good." The trade did not happen.
Usually batting third in the lineup, Snider established impressive offensive numbers. He hit 40 or more home runs in five consecutive seasons (1953–1957), and between 1953 and 1956 he averaged 42 home runs, 124 RBI, 123 runs, and a .320 batting average. He led the National League (NL) in runs scored, home runs, and RBI in separate seasons. He appeared in six post-seasons with the Dodgers (1949, 1952–53, 1955–56, 1959), facing the New York Yankees in the first five and the Chicago White Sox in the last. The Dodgers won the World Series in 1955 and in 1959.
Snider's career numbers declined when the team moved to Los Angeles in 1958. Coupled with an aching knee and a right field fence at the cavernous Coliseum, Snider hit only 15 home runs in 1958. However, he had one last hurrah in 1959 as he helped the Dodgers win their first World Series in Los Angeles. Duke rebounded that year to hit .308 with 23 home runs and 88 RBI in 370 at bats while sharing fielding duties in right and center fields with Don Demeter and rookie Ron Fairly. Injuries and age would eventually play a role in reducing Snider to part-time status by 1961.
In 1962 when the Dodgers led the NL for most of the season (only to find themselves tied with the hated Giants at the season's end), it was Snider and third-base coach Leo Durocher who reportedly pleaded with manager Walter Alston to bring in future Hall of Fame pitcher (and Cy Young Award winner that year) Don Drysdale in the ninth inning of the third and deciding playoff game. Instead, Alston brought in Stan Williams to relieve a tiring Eddie Roebuck. A 4–2 lead turned into a 6–4 loss as the Giants rallied to win the pennant. Snider was subsequently sold to the New York Mets. It is said that Drysdale, his roommate, broke down and cried when he got the news of Snider's departure.
Snider was sold to the San Francisco Giants on Opening Day in 1964. Knowing that he had no chance of wearing number 4, which had been worn by Mel Ott and retired by the Giants, Snider took number 28. In 91 games played with the Giants, he batted a line of .210/.302/.323 while having four home runs and 17 RBIs. He had no triples for the first and only time in his career. He had 40 strikeouts and 22 walks. He appeared in three different positions for the Giants, playing 26 games in right field and 18 in left field for a combined total of 288.2 innings. He made 44 putouts, two assists with one error for a .979 fielding percentage. He retired at the end of that season.
He finished his major league career with a lifetime .295 batting average, 2,116 hits, 1,259 runs, 407 home runs, and 1,333 RBI. Defensively, he posted a .985 fielding percentage playing at all three outfield positions.
Sportswriter Joe Posnanski, however, has suggested that this story is not entirely true. Posnanski writes that there was a writer who did leave Snider off his ballot and write in Campanella's name twice, but it was in first and sixth positions, not first and fifth. Had Snider received the sixth place vote, the final tally would have created a tie, not a win for Snider. Additionally, the position wasn't discarded — everyone lower on the ballot was moved up a spot, and pitcher Jack Meyer was inserted at the bottom with a 10th place vote.
Snider did win the Sporting News National League Player of the Year Award for 1955, and the Sid Mercer Award, emblematic of his selection by the New York branch of the BBWAA as the National League's best player of 1955. The Duke of Flatbush by Duke Snider and Bill Gilbert
Snider occasionally took acting roles, sometimes appearing in television or films as himself or as a professional baseball player. He played himself in "Hero Father" (1956) in the Robert Young television series Father Knows Best, made one guest appearance on the Chuck Connors television series The Rifleman, and played Wallace in The Retired Gun (1959). Other appearances include an uncredited part as a Los Angeles Dodgers center fielder in The Geisha Boy (1958), the Cranker in The Trouble with Girls (1969), and a Steamer Fan in Pastime (1990). As recently as 2007, he was featured in .
In 1995, Snider and Willie McCovey pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud charges after they had failed to report income from sports card shows and memorabilia sales. Snider admitted to intentionally failing to report $100,000 of income between 1984 and 1993, and said he did it because he needed the money after failed investments depleted his savings. Snider paid $30,000 in back taxes and a $5,000 fine, and was sentenced to two years of probation. McCovey also paid a fine and was sentenced to probation. In 2017, President Barack Obama issued pardons for Snider and McCovey.
Snider was featured, along with Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, in the 1981 song "Talkin' Baseball" by Terry Cashman.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980. That same year, in a ceremony at Dodger Stadium, Snider's jersery number 4 was retired by the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 1999, The Sporting News placed Snider at number 83 on their list of "100 Greatest Players". He was a nominee for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
Snider married Beverly Null in 1947; they had four children.
Snider died on February 27, 2011, at age 84 of an undisclosed illness at the Valle Vista Convalescent Hospital in Escondido, California. He was the last living Brooklyn Dodger who was on the field for the final out of the 1955 World Series.
In 2013, the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award honored Snider as one of 37 Baseball Hall of Fame members for his service in the United States Navy during World War II.
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