Ernie Lombardi

Lombardi started his professional baseball career for his hometown Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. He hit over .350 with power in 1929 and 1930 and had a strong arm. His talents were soon noticed by the Brooklyn Robins, who purchased his contract for $50,000.[3]

Lombardi played his rookie season for the Robins in 1931 and hit .297. However, Brooklyn had too many quality catchers at the time and Robins' manager Wilbert Robinson contemplated using the strong-armed Lombardi as a pitcher. Instead, he was traded to the Cincinnati Reds shortly before the start of spring training for the 1932 season. Lombardi flourished in his first year for Cincinnati, batting .303 with 11 home runs and 68 runs batted in. In 1935, he hit .343, but was not selected as an All-Star until 1936, when he hit .333 that season. In 1937, he hit .334 and made the All-Star team. In 1938, he was selected as an All-Star again, and hit a league-leading .342 with 19 home runs, drove in 95 runs, and won the National League (NL) Most Valuable Player Award. Lombardi became one of the Reds' most productive and popular players. He was the catcher for left-hander Johnny Vander Meer's back-to-back no-hitters, accomplished on June 11 and June 15, 1938. He was again an All-Star the next two seasons, and his hitting skills and leadership helped the Reds to the National League pennant in 1939 and 1940, and the World Series title in 1940.

Baseball card of Lombardi

While Lombardi played for the Reds as the starting catcher, three-year teammate and backup catcher Willard Hershberger became the only major league player to commit suicide during a season. Hershberger, who thought he had been having difficulties playing as a replacement for an injured Lombardi for a few games in 1940, told manager Bill McKechnie in private that "my father killed himself, and I'm going to do it, too!" After failing to appear at the stadium the next day, the Reds checked Hershberger's room at the hotel on August 3 to find that he had slit his throat and wrist.

In 1942, the Boston Braves (NL team) purchased Lombardi's contract, and he became an All-Star and led the NL and Braves that season with a .330 batting average (albeit, in only 309 at-bats); the next batting title to be won by a catcher came more than 60 years later when Joe Mauer won the AL batting title in 2006. As of 2017, Lombardi remains only one of three NL catchers to win a batting title (the others are Cincinnati Reds catcher Bubbles Hargrove in 1926 and SF Giants catcher Buster Posey in 2012). His final All-Star selection was during the 1943 season (MLB cancelled the 1945 All-Star Game and no All-Stars were named that season[4]), before Boston traded him to the New York Giants before the 1944 season began. He enjoyed three productive if unspectacular seasons with the Giants before seeing his playing time diminish over the next two seasons. Lombardi retired after the 1947 season, having compiled a .306 career batting average, 1,792 hits, 277 doubles, 27 triples, 190 home runs, 990 RBI, 601 runs and 430 walks.

The six foot, three inch, 230-pound Lombardi was legendarily slow-footed, and during the course of his major league career he grounded into 261 double plays. Aside from being the leader in grounding into double plays during four seasons, he also holds the MLB record for grounding into a double play once in every 25.3 plate appearances. An opposing manager once jokingly said that Lombardi was so slow, he ran like he was carrying a piano — and the man who was tuning it. Defenses would often position all four infielders in the outfield when Lombardi came to the plate. Despite this, he became an outstanding catcher on the basis of his strong, accurate arm and his ability to "call" a game.

Lombardi began the 1948 season with the Sacramento Solons. In May 1948, Sacramento sold Lombardi back to the Oakland Oaks.[5]