Baseball legend Lopez dies
Al Lopez managed Chicago and Cleveland teams to pennants in the 1950s. "El Senor" was Tampa's first native to play in the major leagues.
By CRAIG BASSE
Published October 31, 2005
TAMPA - Days after seeing his former team, the Chicago White Sox, win its first World Series since 1917, Al Lopez, a Tampa Bay legend and baseball's oldest living Hall of Famer, died Sunday (Oct. 30, 2005). He was 97.
"He was a very noble man, very nice," said Charlie Miranda, a former Tampa City Council member and mayoral candidate. "He was a true gentleman, that's why they called him "El Senor.' I never saw him raise his voice."
Mr. Lopez had been hospitalized since Friday, when he suffered a heart attack at his son's home, said Al Lopez Jr.
Mr. Lopez, whose name adorned a local spring training ball park and is on a Tampa recreational park, was Tampa's first native to play in the major leagues. He managed the Cleveland Indians and the White Sox to American League pennants in the 1950s. He played the game for 19 years and managed for 14.
Appreciative local fans immortalized him in October 1992. Tampa's Horizon Park was renamed Al Lopez Park and a life-sized statue of the former catcher chasing a foul tip was unveiled in the park at Himes Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
"I'm delighted," Mr. Lopez said in anticipation of the event. "I don't know of anybody who had a statue built of them while they were living. It's a great feeling."
Decades after his retirement, he remained closely in touch with the game. In July 1990, he went to Chicago to be the honorary captain of the American League All-Star team.
"Al was a Hall of Famer in every sense of the term," said Jeff Idelson, spokesman for the Hall. "He carried himself with great class and he was an incredible contributor to the game."
With Mr. Lopez's death, former New York Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto, 88, becomes the oldest living member of the Hall.
Mr. Lopez was born Aug. 20, 1908, in Ybor City to Spanish immigrants who married in Spain and spent several years in Cuba. He began his baseball career in 1925, when the Washington Senators hired him at 15 to catch batting practice for $45 a week.
Mr. Lopez broke into the major leagues in 1928, catching for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The two-time All-Star's first full season in the majors was 1930, and he played for Brooklyn, Boston, Pittsburgh and Cleveland. He managed the Indians from 1951-56 and the White Sox from 1957-65 and 1968-69.
He held the record for most games caught - 1,918 - until 1987. The record was broken by Bob Boone, then Carlton Fisk.
Mr. Lopez was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1977 as a manager with a .581 winning percentage.
Al Lopez Field, Tampa's link to major-league baseball for 35 years, was dedicated to him in 1954, 23 years before he was elected to the Hall of Fame. The Cincinnati Reds trained there and at the adjoining Redsland Complex until 1987, sharing the stadium with the White Sox from 1954 to 1959.
Mr. Lopez recalled the time as a manager that he was thrown out of an exhibition game in Tampa after umpire John Stevens blew a call on the first day of spring training.
"He said, "One more word out of you and you're gone.' I said, "You can't throw me out of this ballpark. This is my ballpark - Al Lopez Field.' He said, "Get out of here.' He threw me out of my own ballpark."
Cincinnati switched its spring training site to Plant City in 1988 and in 1989 the Al Lopez ballpark on N Dale Mabry Highway was demolished, supposedly to clear the way for a domed stadium that would lure major-league baseball to Tampa. It was at the south end of Raymond James Stadium.
Demolishing the namesake ballpark "wasn't very disappointing," Mr. Lopez said in an interview published Oct. 2, 1992. "I saw a diagram of the new stadium, and I didn't feel bad because I thought they were going to build a bigger one and a better one.
"After that, something happened, and they never built the ballpark. Then it was a disappointment," he said.
"I hope people still remember me," he said in 1989. "I'm getting older and a lot of younger ones are coming out of Tampa. Great players like (Dwight) Gooden, (Lou) Piniella and (Steve) Garvey. I was fortunate enough to be the first of that group."
As a manager, Mr. Lopez's teams finished first or second 12 times in 17 years and went to two World Series. His 1954 Indians were swept in four games by the New York Giants in a series that included Willie Mays' famous catch; his 1959 White Sox were beaten in six games by Los Angeles. He managed five All-Star teams.
At his home in South Tampa on Tampa Bay, plaques and other memorabilia acquired as a player and a manager captured an aura of Cooperstown: yellowing photos of Mr. Lopez with American presidents, bats and baseballs, including one he hit for a ninth-inning home run at Chicago's Wrigley Field in the 1930s.
Mr. Lopez remained active in his retirement, frequently shooting his age in golf; he also closely followed the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, his son said.
In 1989, 20 years after he retired, the University of South Florida awarded an honorary degree to Mr. Lopez, who never graduated from high school.
--Information from Times wires was used in this report.