Ping Bodie Essentials
Positions:
Bats: R Throws: R
68 Weight: 195
Born: 10 8, 1887 in San Francisco, CA USA
Died: 12 17 1961 in San Francisco, CA USA
Debut: 4/22/1911
Last Game: 7/24/1921
Full Name: Frank Stephen Bodie
Francesco Stephano “Ping” Bodie swung a 52 ounce bat. The sound the ball made when it met his bat would earn him the nickname he would carry throughout his career. Ping made his major league debut for the White Sox on April 22, 1911 after hitting 30 home runs for the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League in 1910.
Ping was one of the very first Italians to play in the bigs, opening up baseball to players like the DiMaggio brothers, Phil Rizzuto and Tony Lazzeri among other greats. When Ping first arrived in Chicago, he would ride the bench. Sox owner, Charles Comiskey, dissatisfied with the lack of hitting on his team, would be outspoken in public about needing some hitters. Ping, even though he was a rookie and should have known his place, would go to the Old Roman and tell him “You want some hitting? Put me in the lineup!” Comiskey, pleased with his rookie’s gumption would tell his skipper, Hugh Duffy to do just that, play the kid. It would be the beginning of four straight seasons that Bodie would be a regular in the Sox lineup.
In 1915, Ping would have regular confrontations with his new manager Jimmy Callahan, and it seemed to affect his play and he would be sold back to the Seals.
Again, Ping would return to the majors with the Philadelphia A’s in 1917 and hit well, posting a .291 average in 148 games. In 1921, he would hit .295 for the New York Yankees and felt that he deserved a 1/2 share of the World Series money, but it would be denied him. He would be sent back to the minors where he would plug along for the next seven seasons, jumping from team to team, from Vernon to San Francisco to Des Moines, Wichita Falls and San Antonio.
Married for 17 years to his wife Anna, they would divorce in 1925 when she allegedly began spreading rumors that Ping was a drunkard and alcohol bootlegger. She even went so far as to write the Baseball Commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis and his manager, Miller Huggins telling them that he was a crazy man.
After leaving baseball, he would work in Hollywood on movie sets as an electrician for 32 years, and would also get bit parts in movies, hob-nobbing with such stars as Carole Lombard, Charles Boyer and horror film star, Lon Chaney Jr.
Once, in his later years, Ping would be interviewed when he was 73 years of age and was asked if he thought that even at his advanced age if he could still hit a baseball. His feisty reply would be “Give me the mace and I’ll drive the pumpkin down Whitey Ford’s throat!” Ping loved to reminisce and anyone who took the time to listen to his stories, he would tell them repeatedly, “Boy, how I used to wail on the old apple and smack that old onion!”
Ping was a playful jokester, one that harbored no ill will toward anyone, always smiling and pulling playful pranks. After operating a gas station even later in life, Bodie would pass away in 1971 at 74 years of age at his home in San Francisco from lung cancer.
