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A Permanent Chip. The belligerent Stanky temperament is the result of both heredity and environment. He was born in the workingman's Kensington section of Philadelphia on Sept. 3, 1917, of German-Russian parents. His father, a leather glazer, was a frustrated semi-pro ballplayer. By the time Eddie could sit up, he was rolling a baseball on the floor. His mother recalls a pickup game on a nearby sandlot, when Eddie was still only a shaver. He was the catcher, and, overeager as usual, he crowded so close to the plate that he was knocked cold when the batter swung. Mother Stanky, an unperturbed spectator, said: "Just throw a bucket of water on him. He'll be all right." Eddie got up and finished the game.
Eddie grew up with a permanent chip on his shoulder. One schoolmate recalls that "he would fight at the drop of a hat —just for the hell of it." Another remembers: "I never saw him in the summer without a baseball glove, or in the winter without a soccer ball." (He was the high-scoring star of Northeast High School's championship soccer team.) Lester Owen, Eddie's high-school gym teacher, was impressed by the Stanky single-mindedness: "It was baseball that Eddie came to high school for. He said he was going to be a pro baseball player. That was that. No one doubted him. He wasn't conceited. He was an ordinary boy with extraordinary ambition."
Ups & Downs. His driving ambition got him a contract with Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics. He was 18, cocky and confident. But after a few weeks on the Greenville (Miss.) Class C farm club, Infielder Stanky was not so sure he wanted to be a major leaguer after all. Homesick and desperately unhappy, he wrote to his parents for money to come home. After ten anxious days he got a terse refusal from his mother. The letter ended: "We don't want any quitters in our family."
So Stanky stuck it out through eight years in the minors. Three of them, happily, were spent under Manager Milton Stock, now a Pittsburgh Pirates coach, who was part owner of the Macon, Ga. team in the Sally (South Atlantic) League. Stanky recalls his minor-league experience as an unending series of brawls (35 fist fights) and rows with umpires ("I got tossed out of 15 or 20 games a year"). Stock, Stanky now says, "taught me to control my temper." This may be giving Stock too much credit, but he did teach Stanky that being thrown out of games hurts the team's chances.
Stock also appraised Stanky's natural talents at the plate—a wondrously accurate eye but no power—and taught him to be a lead-off batter. Appraising Stanky's future, Stock even consented to let Eddie marry his only daughter, Dickie, even though Eddie's baseball earnings that year were exactly $1,500. Dickie, a striking brunette, turned out to be quite an inspiration. Eddie was sold to Milwaukee of the American Association and hit the jackpot with a .342 batting average. He ended the 1942 season by being voted the A.A.'s most valuable player.