An American Journey

Highly decorated Marine Corps pilot, six-time World Series Champion, major league manager, and hall of fame broadcaster Jerry Coleman, has become one of American’s quiet, unsung heroes. Coleman’s new autobiography offers a revealing recollection of his life in An American Journey: My Life On the Field, In the Air, and On the Air.

In Coleman’s early years, baseball and basketball were his passion. He had dreams of attending USC, but decided to be a naval aviator once he heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In the meantime, he signed with the Yankees minor league team. Coleman has had, and continues to have, an amazing life, and An American Journey captures many memorable moments such as:

• His rough childhood, including how he survived during the Depression
• His military training and time in World War II and Korean War as a pilot and dive-bomber
• His first time at second base for the Yankees in 1949
• The Mayday call from Ted Williams when he barely escaped a crash landing
• His World Series and pennant victories, including one of his favorite wins

Not only is Coleman revered as a good man and a good marine because of his first departure to war, but also his second. Finding out he must return to active duty during the middle of his baseball career, with a wife and two children at home, was not the best situation to be in. Yet, because of his love for his country, he went to Korea. After returning, he played through the 1957 season before starting his broadcast career in 1960. The only time he left the booth in 45 years was to coach the 1980 Padres.

Coleman was inducted into the broadcasters’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005. An American Journey is a heart-warming story of a soldier, a ball player, a broadcaster, and a hero. Once dubbed Rookie of the Year by the Associated Press, Coleman has decided to dedicate his life to baseball, and the fans couldn’t be happier

About the authors

Jerry Coleman played on eight pennant-winning Yankee teams before going on to broadcast for CBS, the Yankees, and the Padres. He lives in San Diego with his wife, Maggie, and is still broadcasting for the Padres.

Richard Goldstein writes for The New York Times. His previous books include America at D-Day, Desperate Hours, How Baseball Survived the Second World War, Mine Eyes Have Seen and more.

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An American Journey
From a life of despair to triumph

Sunday, March 30th 2008, 4:00 AM by Bill Gallo

I've just read, "An American Journey," a most fascinating book filled with one surprise after another. It's a story of the eventual triumph of a man who was able to shed an unhappy, traumatic childhood, and with uncommon perseverance, became the man he is today - a successful, caring human being who should be an example for every struggling, young American who may've felt he wasn't dealt the right cards going into the world.

You want to face this well-known baseball man and stand up and cheer him for what he's done with his life and give him the snappy salute of admiration.

Think about what this man went through: He lived his early life during The Depression with its bread lines, soup kitchens and labor strife while always wary of a father with a harsh temper who drank too much, making life even more miserable for him, his mother and sister.

The only good memories he treasures in his childhood have to do with his mother, Theresa Viola Pearl Beautoin, whom this boy saw as the salt of the Earth. She was a lovely woman, who tried to make a better life for her children, despite being wounded by life and nearly being killed by an abusive husband and the father of her two children.

The author tells how growing up with his father in San Francisco wasn't exactly peaches and cream for him. You see, the father, a frustrated pro baseball player not having the right stuff to make it to the bigs, was a drunk and not a very happy one.

The old man was not regarded as an alcoholic because he always had a steady job. But, the booze made him mean and an enemy to others around him, including himself. He was the typical "angry, unfulfilled, unhappy father" in the house.

After years of tolerating her husband's abuse, the mother left the man, taking her 8-year-old boy and his sister to live in a one-room apartment.

The boy tells of how his mother loved to dance and of how once she was separated from her spouse, she would spend nights dancing at a club called "El Capitan."

The father, still feeling he had a hold on the mother, evidently thought she was "playing around." He had been drinking, and he got a gun. He waited for her to leave the dance club, and when she started to come out, he shot her four times.

She was rushed to the hospital, where for days she fought for her life.

The day after the shooting, the 8-year-old boy read about it in the local newspaper.

Luckily, the mother survived, and to the surprise of everyone, didn't press criminal charges against her former husband, who then left town.

The angry father never went to jail, got work in another place and was temporarily out of the picture.

The boy's mother, in the hospital healing from her bullet wounds, was released after nine months. She went home with injuries that would affect her for the rest of her days. But now she was home with her two children and she would try to make a life for them.

There was plenty of tough sledding for this family of three. The money was so scarce, they were forced to go on relief in San Francisco. The state supported them with lodging and food and they lived skimpily from day to day.

Two years after the shooting, the father came back to San Francisco. The mother had divorced him, but because things were so desperate for the family, she married the father again. You might say that this time, it was an arrangement rather than a love marriage. Like the boy said, "How can you love a guy who shot you?"

I could leave you here to read the rest of this gripping book, but I can't do that - I must tell you what happened to this boy:

He grew up to be a fine second baseman for the Yankees, and topping that, the man was a patriot. He was a highly decorated Marine Corps dive-bomber fighter pilot who served in WWII and the Korean War. He was a major league manager and a Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster for 40 years.

He is Jerry Coleman, that handsome man we all admired but knew little about.

One more thing: If you feel sorry for yourself because you've been dealt a lousy hand in life, read "An American Journey" by Jerry Coleman, and you will soon get over it.

Available at NY Daily News

Oh doctor! Padres' Coleman lays out his life in the Marines, baseball in new book

By JIM TRAGESER (4/5/08)

It's a story that certainly has all the ingredients for a whopping good tale: a decorated combat pilot in two wars; American League rookie of the year; World Series most valuable player; teammate to Yankees greats such as Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle; induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. And yet it's taken Jerry Coleman every one of his 83 years to finally tell his story in book form.

As fans of the San Diego Padres well know, the longtime radio voice of the team is as modest as his achievements are legend. To hear him tell it, his life has been nothing special: just a very lucky guy getting to do what he loves.

But his autobiography belies his modesty.

"An American Journey: My Life on the Field, In the Air and On the Air" (Triumph Books, $24.95) was published last week. The book's 224 pages trace Coleman's life from his youth in the Bay Area to his World War II service as a Marine Corps dive bomber pilot, to stardom with the New York Yankees ---- and then back to the Marines as a ground attack pilot in Korea. The book follows his post-military career through his return to the Yankees and subsequent Hall of Fame career as a broadcaster for the Yankees, CBS and finally (since 1972) the Padres.

Given the richness of his story, why did it take so long to write?

"I had other offers through the years, but I wasn't interested," Coleman said during an interview at a La Jolla diner on Friday. "Then my wife got involved ---- she said, 'You should write what you've done to give to your daughter.' "

At about the same time, Coleman said he was approached by co-author Richard Goldstein, who writes for The New York Times. What sold Coleman on working with Goldstein was that "he's a military and sports writer ---- he writes about both."

Coleman said he sat down and met with Goldstein in person for three sessions, putting his recollections down on tape for Goldstein to work from in writing the book in Coleman's voice. Follow-up sessions were done by phone.

The book lays out some discomfiting sides of his private life that not everyone would necessarily share. Coleman said his older sister was taken aback when he told her he was including the fact that his father had shot their mother when they were kids, leaving their mom a nine-month recuperation and a lifetime in a leg brace.

But he said there was no other way to tell his story.

"If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it," he said firmly. "I'm not going to avoid it. My mother was an angel in my life; what she went through is more than anything I went through. You can't hide from it."

The years he spent on active duty with the Marines remain another defining moment of his life.

"The biggest part of my life is the military, even though it was only five years," Coleman said of the lengthy portions of the book devoted to his wartime experiences.

He pointed out that his first stint in the Marines took him from 18 to 21 years of age.

"Those are your formative years; my time in the service at that time of my life made me who I am today."

New to the book-writing business, Coleman said he'd had his first book-signing event the night before at Warwick's in La Jolla. When asked how it went, he said, "It went OK."

When asked whether the turnout was good, he said, "Yes, there were some people there."

When pressed further (and he was visibly squirming by this point) as to whether any of his fans had bought books for him to sign, he finally admitted, "They sold every copy they had in stock."

But who's to say this will be the final word in Coleman's life story? Still very fit and youthful at 83, Coleman is back to working full time for the Padres after a 2006 season where he was platooned with former Padre Tim Flannery (who has since left the broadcast booth to coach for the San Francisco Giants). Coleman said he has another season left on his contract with the Padres, and "then who knows?"

He made clear, though, that he'd love to continue working.

"I can't stand to sit around doing nothing; I don't know how anyone does that."

As to what he hopes people take away from his book, he said the theme of his life is simple:

"Only two things are important in life: the people whom you love and who love you, and your country. Where else can you go from nothing to something, and everyone has the same chance?"

Day 21: 30 baseball books in 30 days of April

by Tom Hoffarth, Farther Off the Wall, 4/21/08

The scoop: Jerry Coleman has always been one of our favorite guys in baseball, and if you're only aware of him by his Hall of Fame career as a broadcaster with the San Diego Padres since 1972 (he also did two years prior to that with the Angels), then it's time to catch up.
As the cover indicates, he's proud of his time in Marines during World War II and the Korean Conflict -- the only big-league player to serve in combat during both those wars as a dive-bomber and fighter-attack pilot, which interrupted his career as an All-Star second baseman with the Yankees (1949-57, a career that nearly spanned the entire career of Jackie Robinson's playing days with the rival Brooklyn Dodgers). Trivia: Coleman also wore No. 42.

A former Rookie of the Year (by the Associated Press) and World Series MVP with players such as Mantle, Berra and Ford, Coleman was hardly the one who stood out.
In the first chapter, entitled "A Bittersweet Day," he recalls coming back to the Yankees in Sept., 1953 after serving in Korea, feeling very awkward about having a day in his honor after so many of his friends would never get that opportunity for doing what they felt was right for their country.
"I always hated this idea I was a hero, something that was written very casually about my service as a pilot in two wars. I'm indebted to Red Barber, one baseball's broadcasting pioneers and a magnificent professional who taught me a lot when I became his broadcast partner on Yankees games in 1960s. But I still remember how he always wanted to lean on 'the heroic Coleman.' On a TV program one time, I said, 'Red you ask me a question about the military, I'm going to leave.' My god, he did. I hated that."
The book, with the help of the New York Times' Goldstein (who has written about sports and the military), also gives Coleman a chance to talk about that one crazy year -- 1980 -- when he was asked to come out of the broadcast booth to manage the Padres through a miserable 73-89 season, worst in the NL West. The players wouldn't listen to him, still thought of him as the broadcaster, and it wasn't until later that more teams considered former broadcasters to be their managers.
In an interview earlier this month with the North County Times, the 83-year-old Coleman is as modest about the book as he is about his life. "Only two things are important in life: the people whom you love and who love you, and your country. Where else can you go from nothing to something, and everyone has the same chance?"

How it goes down in the scorebook: Classic Coleman, even better than: "Winfield goes back to the wall. He hits his head on the wall -- and it rolls off! It's rolling all the way back to second base! This is a terrible thing for the Padres."

Full Article

Gaslamp Ball, 6/17/08

Hi Everybody, my name is the jbox.  I just learned about a great American and baseball player that played a long time ago. You can read about him in this book...

It's called An American Journey: My Life on the Field, In the Air, and On the Air by Jerry Coleman with Richard Goldstein.  Illustrations by... unfortunately there are no illustrations.

It's a book about Jerry Coleman's life growing up in the depression in San Francisco, playing baseball for the Yankees, Flying Bombers for the Marines and Broadcasting for the San Diego Padres.

Last night I stayed up to 2 a.m. finishing this book because my book report was due today.  I really enjoyed Jerry's stories and had a hard time putting the book down because it was entertaining, informative and easy to read.

My favorite story was when a cop at Yankee Stadium asked Jerry to put his pants back on, while he was broadcasting a game.  Jerry was running between studios in a suit without pants, to find out why you'll have to read the book.

I like this book because it is chock full of many more interesting stories, you'll like this book because it's fun to read. I can't tell you anymore stories so you'll have to head down to your local library or bookstore to read them all.