Carl Furillo – the Reading Rifle

When I was growing up as a budding Dodger fan in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada, I had the good fortune to be part of the Boys of Summer saga. My connection with the Dodgers began in 1952 one evening when by pure chance I turned my radio dial and there it was – the golden voice of Vin Scully. Before the game ended Duke Snider – the Silver Fox – hit a home run and sealed the deal for me. My dial never again left that station during the summer. I believe it was WMGM.

During those years I followed and learned much about so many great Dodger players. As mentioned Duke Snider became my all-time favorite player. Jackie Robinson became the player I respected the most although I only learned in 1954 that he was black when baseball cards arrived in Lunenburg.  I waited for Duke to come to bat but when the Dodgers really needed a key hit I was very happy to have two other members of the team step up to the plate – Roy Campanella and Carl Furillo. Campy was a three-time MVP whose career was cut short by that fateful accident in January 1958. Furillo, on the other hand, was an almost unknown Dodger when fans in our area were discussing Dodger and Yankee players. However, to me, he was a clutch hitter getting hits when really needed.

Roy Campanella and Furillo mugging for the cameras in the off-season. Campy and Carl were best friends off the field as well.

Furillo was born on March 8, 1922, in Stony Creek Mills, a suburb of Reading, Pennsylvania. Of Italian descent, he was the son of immigrants Michael and Filomena Furillo. He didn’t attend high school dropping out of school after completing the eighth grade, a decision he apparently regretted as he began his baseball career. However, life was not easy for his family, a closely-knit family, and he worked at various jobs such as picking apples and working in a woolen mill. At the same time, he did what he loved doing the most, playing baseball.

His mother died when Carl was only 18 and he then began his career as a baseball player. In 1940 he played with the Class D Pocomoke City Chicks in the Eastern Shore League. He played center field and also pitched. His pitching career came to an abrupt end because of control problems and perhaps the danger to opposing hitters not wearing batting helmets. With a .319 batting average, it became evident his future was as an outfielder. He also played eight games for the unaffiliated Reading Brooks of the Class B Interstate League. The Dodgers apparently were impressed with Furillo as following the season they purchased the entire Reading team plus two sets of uniforms.

Carl Furillo’s climb to major league baseball was on a fast track. In 1941 he again played with the Reading Brooks hitting .313 as a 19-year-old. In 125 games he displayed his outfield arm by recording 25 assists. In 1942 he was called up to the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers farm club in the International League. The Royals were not classified as AAA until 1946 so technically he was not playing at a Triple-A level but nevertheless as the second-youngest player on the team he hit .281.

Like many baseball players of his era, Furillo answered the call and spent the next three years, 1943-45, in the army. He saw active duty in the Pacific Theater where he was wounded and received three battle stars. His war service gave the Dodgers an early glimpse that Furillo seemed to be uncomfortable in social situations and perhaps almost a lone wolf. Peter Golenbock in his book “Bums” writes that Carl Furillo turned down a Purple Heart medal for his wounds, saying that he hadn’t been sufficiently valiant.

Furillo made his debut with the Dodgers on April 16, 1946. The 24-year-old started in center field and went 2-4 in his first game as a major league player. On the season he hit .284. He struck out 20 times and walked 31 times beginning a pattern that lasted throughout his career. In his 15 seasons at the major league level, he struck out 436 times and walked 514 times. The most strikeouts he recorded in a season was 43 in 1955.

He played on seven Dodger pennant-winning teams and on two World Series championship teams – 1955 and 1959. He played for 15 years, all with the Dodgers. His career batting average was .299 with 1910 hits and 1058 runs batted in. With one more hit his batting average would have been rounded up to .300.

Nicknamed “The Reading Rifle” after his home town of Reading, PA, Furillo came to play. His claim to fame was his incredibly strong throwing arm (hence the ‘Rifle’ part of his nickname). During his career, he recorded 151 outfield assists with a high of 24 in 1951 and nine seasons with ten or more assists. He participated in 34 double plays while throwing out seven runners at first base who most likely made a turn too wide. He once fielded a clean line drive hit by pitcher Mel Queen of the Pirates and threw him out at first base in the eighth inning to preserve a no-hitter on which Ralph Branca was working.

Roger Kahn in “The Boys of Summer” writes that fans came to Ebbets Field early to watch Carl Furillo warm-up: “Others came out, thousands of others, long before the formal competition started, to watch the warm-up throws. You could hear gasps at Ebbets Field and sometimes, an hour before game time, bursts of applause.”

Roger Kahn covered the Dodgers in Brooklyn. He wrote one of the best books ever written on the Brooklyn Dodgers, The Boys of Summer

Catcher Roy Campanella who had asked Furillo not to skip the ball so close to home plate as he couldn’t handle it described his arm: “He had the best throwing arm of any right fielder I ever played with or against.”

Although he was not part of any of the cliques on the Dodgers, Furillo earned the respect of his teammates who knew how hard he played. He gave his all, all the time. The legendary Vin Scully said of Furillo: “He was basically a no-nonsense, blue-collar player who played hard and played every day. He was very strong and I can’t stress enough how hard he played.”

There was another side to Furillo not always seen by the public eye but seen by those around him. Another Carl – Carl Erskine – spoke highly and often of the “Reading Rifle”.

Carl Erskine and his harmonica.

“All that was ever portrayed about Carl was his strength and ruggedness,” said Erskine, a pitcher, and teammate who delivered the eulogy. “We players all saw his sensitivity and tenderness.

He was not very fast but Furillo knew exactly how to play the right-field wall at Ebbets Field. Roger Kahn: “That wall, a mystery of dead spots, bounces, angles, and planes, was a wonder of baseball before the dream-destroyers wrecked it. Furillo never attended high school. Plane geometry remained a mystery to him. But he knew every angle, every carom. The way Furillo played the wall describes an art form.”

He knew if he was to go back for a ball that would drop down or come in on one that would hit the wall and bound back towards the infield. He didn’t rely on speed but on instinct and hard work to conquer the wall. Vin Scully also commented on Furillo’s running speed or lack of it: “I guess you’d call him a cautious base runner,” Scully said. “That’s why his nickname among his teammates was Skoonj, which was short for the Italian word meaning snail.”

Carl Furillo’s most memorable year for me was 1953. I recall it so vividly because Duke Snider was having a monster year, perhaps the best ever by a Dodger, and I was pulling for him to win the National League batting title. However, he didn’t. He finished third with a .336 batting average behind Red Schoendienst of the Cardinals with his .342 batting average and Carl Furillo the 1953 National League batting champion with a batting average of .344. At the beginning of the season who could have guessed or would have bet Furillo would win a batting championship?

Perhaps Corey Seager has taken a page from Carl Furillo’s playbook. They both love the first pitch in an at-bat. Carl Erskine says Furillo was a ”Bible hitter.” First pitch, anywhere, in the dirt or at the eyes, Furillo took his mighty swing. Why was he, then, a Bible hitter? Erskine says, ”Thou shalt not pass.”

Carl Furillo is almost an unknown Dodger. However, as quiet as he was, he made his mark on the Dodgers and on baseball. unfortunately, his career did not have a happy ending and might be noted as a dark day in Dodger history. On May 12 in the 1960 baseball season, suffering from persistent pain in his legs, the Dodgers released him unconditionally. By the time he was released, he had received only $12,000 of his $33,000 contract for the season. He sued the Dodgers on the grounds that he was released while injured. The suit was settled in May 1961, with Furillo being awarded the $21,000 remaining from his 1960 salary.

Furillo contacted every major league team, some more than once, but received no job offers as either a coach or scout. He had been blacklisted by MLB, unofficially of course, because he stood up for what was rightfully his.

After leaving the game Furillo became another part of history – not baseball history but American history. He worked for Otis Elevator Company and helped install the elevators in two of America’s most famous buildings – the north and the south towers of The World Trade Center.

Carl Anthony Furillo died at age 66 on January 21, 1989.

How should we remember him? Roger Kahn, in his book, “The Boys of Summer,” provides a perfect epitaph. Kahn wrote: “I cannot imagine Carl Furillo in his prime as anything other than a ballplayer. Right field in Brooklyn was his destiny.”

UPDATE

This article has 33 Comments

  1. Thank you DC for the extremely interesting story of Carl Furillo. I did not know, and was amazed, that he was so humble that he turned down a purple heart because he felt that he was not valiant enough. His assists at first base seem awesome. I only wish I could have seen him play and throw and hit in person. Love his nickname. Please keep the stories coming for the little, sometimes unknown or remembered things in a player’s background or as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”

  2. I confess to knowing little about Carl Furillo, other than his name. Thank you DC for this marvelous post introducing me to a wonderful man and baseball player.

    Shame on the Dodgers for not paying him his due and shame on MLB for blacklisting him. More walks than strikeouts and no more than 43 in any season. That speaks volumes about his abilities!! 43 strikeouts is a good month for some players today.

  3. Furillo contacted every major league team, some more than once, but received no job offers as either a coach or scout. He had been blacklisted by MLB, unofficially of course, because he stood up for what was rightfully his.

    I don’t hate but I hate that. Absolute power corrupting absolutely in action.

    1. It was definitely wrong, and there were rules about releasing a player when he was injured. I put a lot of the blame on Buzzie Bavasi who was the Dodger GM at the time. And it sure did not jive with the so called family friendly atmosphere that O’Malley was supposedly trying to build. To me it was an ignominious end to a fine ball player. And just think, Clemente was originally a Dodger. The tried to hide him and the Pirates picked their pocket. In fact the Dodgers at one time have had 4 of the best RF arms in baseball history. Furillo, Clemente, Mondesi, and Puig.

  4. My Dad was one of those fans who went early to games at Ebbets to watch Furillo take fielding practice and throw strikes from the base of wall in RF. While the Duke was his favorite Dodger, (not only in that era but ever), he used to talk a lot about Furillo and Billy Cox as 2 of the best defenders that he ever saw play – for him it was Furillo and Clemente as the best RFs he ever saw and Cox and Brooks Robinson as the best at the hot corner.

  5. Carl Furillo. # 6. Before Fairly or Garvey wore it Carl did it proud. My earliest memories of Furillo all have to do with the 1959 Championship Team. He had played in 122 games in 1958, hitting a solid .290 with 18 homers and 83 RBI’s. But injuries sidelined him for a large part of the 59 season and he appeared in only 50 games. He hit .290 with no homers and 13 RBI’s. But the biggest RBI of the year came in game 2 of the playoff against the Braves. In the 12th inning with the game tied at 4, Hodges was on 2nd base and Furillo hit a hard ground ball up the middle that Felix Mantilla could not handle cleanly, and his throw to first was a bit offline, and Hodges scored the winning run sending the Dodgers to the World Series against the White Sox. Heard the whole thing on my transistor radio. Carl only had one hit in the 1959 World Series, but again, it was an important hit. In the 7th inning of game 3, the first World Series game ever in Los Angeles. Furillo hit a 2 run pinch single up the middle again to put the Dodgers up 2-0. Neal drove in another in the 8th that made the score 3-1. Sherry got the save and Big D got the win. The win put them up 2-1 in the series. It would go to 3-1 when they won the next game 5-4. Sherry getting the win this time in relief of Roger Craig. They lost the next game 1-0 when Koufax pitched maybe his best game of the year and lost, Then on the 8th of October in Chicago, they won the series with a decisive 9-3 win. Snider hit his 11th, and last WS HR. Moon hit one, and Chuck Essegian, a mid season pick up from the Cardinals hit his 2nd pinch hit HR of the series. Sherry won his 2nd game, and also had 2 saves in the series. He won the MVP award for the series and was given a Corvette by Sport Magazine. One of my best memories ever.

    1. I just love hearing about the boys of summer. Thanks for the story on Furillo DC. Baseball was so different in that era. The players stayed together for so long. You’re right about Furillo. He did seem to be in the back ground a lot. I guess that’s the way he liked it but Dodgers fans know what a good player he was.

      Hey Bear, in that 5-4 WS win you mentioned above, It was Hodges that hit the 8th inning HR that gave them the win….lol.. I just had to sneak that in there. But, better yet, It was Hodges who knocked in the 2 runs that gave Podres the 2-0 win in the 7th game of the ’55 series against The Yankees. Ah-h-h. The good old days.

    2. My father took me to that game, a wonderful experience and memory. Somehow he got tickets, and then he drove me to his office where he worked as a freelance advertising artist and cartoonist. I sat there while he worked for a while, and then we went to lunch and to the game. 93,000 fans in mid-day for the first World Series game ever played in Los Angeles. I kept my ticket stub for many years before mislaying it, though it might be there somewhere. A cherished memory, not just the game, of course, but spending it with my father. I can still visualize Furillo grounding that ball up the middle off Dick Donovan with the bases loaded and two out.

  6. Furillo also had a running feud with Ruben Gomez, who was a Giant’s pitcher, and at another time, Sal Maglie. They just did not like each other.

  7. Duke Snider had a great arm also and he is on that list Mark posted. He would have been rated higher, but he had an arm injury that cut down his ability to throw runners out a lot. Then in 58 when the Dodgers moved to LA he injured it again trying to throw a ball out of the coliseum.

  8. Cool trivia contest on MLB.com. Name all the members of the Hall of Fame. I got around 150 out of 264. They want players, not managers. Only manager on the list was Durocher.

  9. If my memory serves me right, Furillo batted 8th in the lineup most of the time the year he batted .344. Says something about the Dodger lineup in those days. I was in high school at the time arguing with my classmates who were Cardinal fans. (Remember Solly Hemus? Al Brazel? Stan Musiel? Harry Carey? and the St Louis Browns?)

    1. I have a funny story about Hemus..at least it is funny to me. I went to a Cardinals-Dodgers game at the coliseum, 59 I think. Hemus was managing the Cardinals. Big D was pitching for the Dodgers. Do not remember which inning it was, but Drysdale plunked Cardinal 1st baseman Joe Cunningham right in the ribs. Visitors dugout at the coliseum was on the 3rd base side. So, Hemus comes out to check on his player and make sure he can continue. As he is leaving the field, instead of walking around behind the umpire, he crosses the infield right in front of Big D. Never found out what he said, but the next thing anyone knows, Drysdale has him in a headlock and the melee is on. Fight lasted for about 5 minutes. Can’t remember if Drysdale was ejected or not. But it was so funny so see Hemus, who was maybe 5’9″ flailing around in Big D’s grip. Drysdale was 6’5″

        1. Oh he did that once in a while….9 straight years of 10 or more, and did that 10 times in his career. 154 in his career, which means he averaged hitting 11 guys a season. Here is the kicker. In 7 post season games, he hit 1. Against the Yankees in game 3 of the 63 series. I think most of that had to do with him pitching sidearm, and the fact that Big D did not like hitters crowding the plate.

  10. I just posted an update above.

    Check it out. Neil Diamond has a word for us.

    Neil is 79 years old and has stopped performing due to Parkinson’s’ Disease, but this is just what we need!

  11. Hard to believe Carl batted 8th. You had Campy catching, Hodges at 1st., Robinson at 2nd., Reese at SS, Cox at third, Furillo in RF and Duke in center. Who was in left? What a line up.

    1. Pafko, Shuba, Gionfriddo, Hermanski, Reiser, Edwards, Lund, Robinson, Rackley, Amoros,Vaughan, Abrams, Brown, McCormick, Olmos, Whitley, Russell, Thompson, Dick Williams, Antonello, Hodges, Furillo, Gilliam, Moryn, Borkowski, Cimoli, Mitchell, Kennedy, and Elmer Valo. That is a complete list of the players who played LF at some point or another between 1947 and 1957, the Dodgers last year in Brooklyn. The only one of those players who played more than 100 games in a season out there was Andy Pafko who played 108 games in LF in 1952. No one else comes close.

  12. 2020 Olympics officially postponed until 2021. Nice article about Cody Thomas in The Athletic. New Rams logo is whack.

      1. Mark, let’s hope we see a 2020 Season first. and hopefully the ASG in LA will still be played. If it’s cancelled, then Dodgers should get the ASG in 2021, with the other scheduled places being moved ahead past that. No way should Dodger Stadium be left out of hosting the game. As far as Betts goes, your OF assumes Betts will be re-signed and Thomas would be a good fit for LF but i got the feeling he would be platooned with a RHB but wss.

    1. With a little due diligence it could have been, Clemente, Snider and Furillo. That would not have been bad either. Here is another story that was told, Campy when he came to the Dodgers told them there was a kid playing down in the Negro leagues At Birmingham. They sent a scout down, and the scout came back and said, kid can’t hit a curveball. The Dodgers had someone else scout the kid, and were prepared to make him a deal, but they were too late, the Giants signed him for 4,000.00. The Braves had also tried to sign him, and were prepared to offer close to 15,000.00. But the Barons owner wanted to keep him for the balance of the season. Kid went on to have a pretty decent career. His name was Willie Mays. Still the best all around player I have ever seen play.

  13. New York Mets starter Noah Syndergaard has a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow and is expected to undergo Tommy John surgery in the near future, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

    The procedure will keep him out until at earliest April 2021 and likely into the summer months.

  14. Noah Syndergaard to have Tommy John surgery. I wonder if this is an existing injury or did he injure it during the the work stoppage?

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