Gus Zernial: Major League Baseball Slugger (1923–2011)

Gus Edward Zernial, Major Leage Baseball player, was born on June 27, 1923, in Beaumont, Texas, and grew up there. He was one of the American League’s most feared sluggers in the 1950s. Only Mickey Mantle (with 280) and Yogi Berra (256) hit more home runs than Zernial (232) during that period. Zernial, however, was the league’s dominant right-handed home run hitter in the 1950s.

Early Life

Zernial was the youngest of ten children (three did not survive to adulthood) born to Gustave (or Gustavius) Emile Zernial, a carpenter and contractor, and Emma Caroline (Alexander) Zernial. His paternal grandparents had emigrated from Prussia prior to the Civil War. Coming of age during the Great Depression, Zernial was a fan of the Beaumont Exporters (affiliated with the Detroit Tigers) of the Texas League. During the 1930s Zernial got to watch future Tiger stars such as Hank Greenberg, “Schoolboy” Rowe, “Dizzy” Trout, and Hal Newhouser. At the same time, he was playing baseball on Beaumont sandlots and starring in baseball (as a first baseman), football (as an end), and basketball (as a forward) at Beaumont High School. Named captain of the basketball team during his senior year, he was offered scholarships to multiple universities but chose instead to sign a professional baseball contract. At that time, baseball offered the best career prospects of any sport.

Minor League Career and Military Service

In 1942, at age nineteen, Zernial made his professional debut at the lowest level (Class D) of the minor leagues with the Waycross Bears of the Georgia-Florida League. Batting leadoff, he hit a respectable .286 but with little power (just three home runs in 367 at bats). As was the case with almost all draft-eligible ballplayers of this period, Zernial’s career was interrupted by military service during World War II. Working as a Radioman Petty Officer Third Class (RM3) on battleships, he had little opportunity to play baseball, but he took up weight-lifting and bulked up to 210 pounds on his 6’2” frame. When he returned to professional baseball after the war, his offensive statistics improved dramatically. On April 30, 1946, he married his first wife, Gladys Elizabeth Hale. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1959.

At age twenty-three in 1946, while playing for the Class C Burlington Bees, Zernial led the Carolina League with forty-one home runs and 111 runs batted in (RBIs). He was acquired by the Cleveland Indians, who assigned him to their highest minor league affiliate, the Triple-A Baltimore Orioles of the International League. After just three games, however, he was sold to the Chicago White Sox, who assigned him to their Triple-A affiliate, the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League.

Zernial responded with a .344 batting average but with less power (twelve home runs). In 1948 he hit for power (forty home runs plus a league-leading 156 RBIs) and had a batting average of .322. During the season, broadcaster Fred Haney (who would manage the Stars in 1949) gave him the nickname “Ozark Ike,” based on Ray Gotto’s comic strip character Ozark Ike McBatt, a backwoods sports hero. Against the San Diego Padres (then a minor league franchise) he hit two home runs in his last plate appearances on May 18 and began the next day’s game with two more home runs, thus becoming the first Pacific Coast League player to hit four consecutive home runs. For good measure, he had another two-home run game during the week-long Padres series.

Chicago White Sox (1949–51)

In 1949 the White Sox made Zernial, age twenty-five, their starting left fielder (his primary position for the rest of his career). Zernial had to take a pay cut in order to play major league ball. After earning $1,000 per month with the Stars, he earned only $5,000 for the season as a White Sox rookie. One of fourteen White Sox rookies that season, he made his debut on April 19, 1949, in front of an opening day crowd of 53,435 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. The Tigers prevailed 5–1, but Zernial got two hits off Tiger ace Hal Newhouser, the former Beaumont Exporter star he had witnessed in his adolescence. On May 28 Zernial broke his right collarbone while making a diving catch in a 3–2 loss to the Indians in Cleveland. For the season, he managed to hit .318 but made only 213 plate appearances.

If there were any doubts about his ability to rebound from the injury, Zernial allayed all fears in 1950 by hitting twenty-nine home runs, a White Sox record, surpassing the old mark of twenty-seven set by Zeke Bonura in 1934. The franchise record was tied by Eddie Robinson in 1951 but was not surpassed until Bill Melton hit thirty-three in 1970. Zernial secured his home run record with three homers in the last game of the season, the second game of a double-header on October 1 in Chicago against the St. Louis Browns. He had hit a home run in the first game of the double-header, and his power surge that day also tied a record for most home runs in a double-header (broken by Stan Musial with five on May 2, 1954). Zernial’s 1950 home run record came with a price, however, as he led the league in strikeouts with 110. He also led the team in RBIs with ninety-three. Finishing second and third were two fellow Texans, Dave Philley with eighty and Eddie Robinson with seventy-three.

Having made a name for himself in 1950, Zernial attracted even more attention during the White Sox 1951 spring training camp in Southern California. Along with teammates Hank Majeski and Joe Dobson, Zernial appeared in a photo shoot with actress Marilyn Monroe—Monroe was promoting the Kiwanis Club’s twelfth annual Hollywood benefit game for crippled children. Zernial hit two home runs in that game. After seeing the photo spread, Joe DiMaggio, then in his last season with the Yankees, asked Zernial how he could contact Monroe. Zernial passed on the name of David March, the press agent who arranged the photo shoot. Monroe and DiMaggio met up in 1952 and married less than two years later.

Philadelphia Athletics/Kansas City Athletics (1951–57)

Despite Zernial’s outstanding 1950 season, on April 30, 1951, he was traded to the Philadelphia Athletics along with Dave Philley in a seven-player, three-team deal. Though initially disappointed by the trade, Zernial was pleased to be reunited with manager Jimmy Dykes, who had managed him during his stint with the Hollywood Stars.

Two weeks after the trade, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Zernial tied the records for most home runs in three consecutive games (with six) and then in four consecutive games (seven). He went on to hit another twenty-six to lead the league with thirty-three. He also led the league with 129 RBIs (and in strikeouts with 101). Showing he was not purely an offensive player, he also led the league in outfield assists with eighteen.

In 1952 Zernial enjoyed another solid season (twenty-nine home runs and 100 RBIs), and in 1953, his only All-Star season, he clubbed a career-best forty-two home runs and drove home 108. On July 11, 1954, in a game the Athletics lost 18–0 to the Boston Red Sox, Zernial again broke his collarbone, this time on the left side. The Athletics moved to Kansas City in 1955. Healed from his injury, Zernial led the relocated A’s with thirty home runs and eighty-four RBIs in 120 games. Though his batting average dipped in 1956 and 1957, he managed to hit twenty-seven home runs the latter year.

Detroit Tigers (1958–59)

At the end of the 1957 season Zernial, at age thirty-four, was traded to the Detroit Tigers, but his career was not rejuvenated. In 1958 Tiger outfielders Al Kaline, Harvey Kuenn, and Charlie Maxwell were coming off All-Star seasons, so Zernial was relegated to part-time duty. He hit .323 in 124 at bats. Of his forty hits, fifteen were pinch-hits, which led the league. Three of those pinch-hits were home runs, allowing him to tie the then-record of ten career pinch-hit home runs. Nevertheless, when Zernial’s average dipped almost 100 points in 1959, he was released after the season, thus ending his playing career with 1,093 hits, including 237 home runs.

Life after Playing Career

After retiring as a player, Zernial returned to California and went into the auto leasing business. He married his second wife, Marla Jean Sims, on January 27, 1961, and the couple settled in Clovis, a suburb of Fresno.

In 1964 Zernial began to do play-by-play broadcasts on the radio for Fresno State University athletic contests. Later he was a sports anchor on KFSN-TV (Channel 30). He also did commercials for car dealerships and even started his own advertising and marketing agency. Described as “a hulking blond grizzly of a man,” Zernial was telegenic and became a media celebrity in Fresno. In 1990 he was diagnosed with cancer.

After the Fresno Giants/Suns, the local minor league team in the Class A California League, moved to Salinas in 1989, there was no professional baseball in Fresno for almost a decade. Having a background in baseball and a prominent profile in the Fresno area, Zernial spearheaded efforts to acquire a new minor league team. As a result of these efforts, the Tucson Grizzles relocated to Fresno for the 1998 season. Pete Beiden Field, the home field of Fresno State, was their initial home. Eventually, Zernial and other influential locals managed to persuade the Fresno city council to approve building a new ballpark downtown. Grizzlies Stadium, later dubbed Chukchansi Park, opened in 2002. Zernial did color commentary on the team’s broadcasts through the 2003 season.

Death and Legacy

A lifelong non-smoker and non-drinker, rare among men of his generation, Zernial survived his cancer diagnosis but died of congestive heart failure on January 20, 2011, in a Fresno hospice. He was buried in Clovis Cemetery in Fresno County. His wife, Marla Jean, was buried alongside him in 2020. They had two children together, son James and daughter Lisa.

In 2001 Zernial was added to the Philadelphia Baseball Wall of Fame, and in 2002 he was named to the Philadelphia Athletics All-Century Team. He was also inducted into the Fresno Athletic Hall of Fame, though he never played an inning of baseball in that city. His autobiography, Ozark Ike: Memories of Fence Buster Gus Zernial, was published in 2007. Only 237 copies were printed, one for each of his major league home runs.