Forrest E. "Frosty" Kennedy
Birth: Mar. 21, 1926
Death: Jun. 5, 1998
Minor League Baseball Player. On September 6, 1956, while a 30-year-old first baseman for the Plainview (Texas) Ponies of the Class B Southwestern League, he blasted his 60th home run of the season against the San Angelo Colts. He was the last of three minor leagers to hit 60 in 1956.
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´Frosty´ Kennedy hits a homer for hype
By Danny Andrews
Herald Editor
Anyone who lived in Plainview in the mid-1950s probably knows the name “Frosty” Kennedy, even if they never saw him play a game for the Plainview Ponies.
That was the minor league team that moved here in 1953 when the Lamesa franchise folded in the old West Texas-New Mexico League.
Twenty-seven-year-old outfielder Forrest Kennedy, who hit .403 for Lamesa, came along in the package and was an instant hit - no pun intended.
Many folks enjoyed summer evenings at Jaycee Park, watching the local team which finally folded after the 1961 season, briefly having an association with the Kansas City Athletics.
“He was a real character,” longtime Plainviewan Luther Bain recalled with a hearty laugh, echoing the remembrance of many others about Kennedy who died June 5 in Covina, Calif. at the age of 72.
Frosty sported massive arms and showed them off by wearing cutoff sleeves as did another more famous slugger of the day - Cincinnati first baseman Ted Kluszewski.
He always had a big chaw of tobacco, which liberally stained his uniform, and former Plainviewan Tom Locke recalls Frosty removing his chaw, wadding it up and rolling it toward the opponents´ dugout when he´d hit one out of Jaycee Park.
Discretion being the better part of valor - and arrogance - he probably didn´t do that on the road.
Those hometown homers earned him a wad of money stuck in the wire mesh screen by appreciative fans - he said he collected $269 for a game-winning shot against Clovis in the 13th inning of a playoff game.
Walt McAlexander, a 1962 PHS grad who served as the Ponies´ bat boy one season, says he used to listen to veteran KVOP sports announcer Tut Tawwater do the games - “live” here and by “re-creation” from the Western Union wire for road games. Walt recalls Frosty rumbling toward the mound after striking out his last time up on a night where he already had three or four hits.
Rather than fighting, Frosty wanted to congratulate the pitcher on finally getting him out.
Walt, who was a sports writer for the Lubbock paper for 14 years, then worked in sports information at Texas Tech, was excited about seeing Frosty´s name and picture at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. for being one of the 11 men to ever hit 60 or more homeruns in a season.
Of course, the first to do it was Babe Ruth, the legendary “Sultan of Swat,” in 1927, the year after Frosty was born.
Tut Tawwater alleges the league´s pitching in 1953 and again in 1956 when Frosty hit 60 round-trippers in the restructured Southwestern League, “was pathetic. . . about like high school.”
Former Herald Sports Editor Bob Carroll said Frosty took advantage of “invitingly close” fences at Jaycee Park (358 feet to center compared with about 400 now) for a number of “cheap” homeruns.
When I mentioned that to Frosty in a feature story I did back in 1985, he snorted, “Hell, I didn´t hit no cheap ones.”
He claimed he could have hit 120 homeruns in a well-lighted major league stadium.
Frosty recalled that he hit his Babe-matching 60th homer in San Angelo on the last evening of a 144-game season. Trying to help him, the San Angelo catcher was telling him what pitches were coming, but Frosty says he went 1-for-8 in a doubleheader the night before and it really didn´t help him.
His history-making homer in the third inning hugged the leftfield foul line and the umpire called it fair on a close decision.
In 1953 Frosty hit .410 with a 40-game hitting streak, 224 hits and 169 RBIs. Three years later (he played in Amarillo in 1954 and Yuma, Ariz. in 1955), he batted .327 with 184 RBIs (the major league record is 190) and scored 151 runs.
Playing for 12 different teams, Kennedy averaged .342 during a 10-year minor league career that began in 1948, hit 228 homers with 1,083 runs batted in and 1,572 hits.
Although he signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, he never made it to the majors in an era when there were more than 400 minor league teams in America - soon to greatly dwindle with the popularity of television.
Frosty also said something else pretty brash in that 1985 interview: “I´m the greatest player ever. Babe Ruth hit 60 homers but never batted .400. Ted Williams and a lot of other guys hit .400 but never hit 60 homers. I did both.”
Considering that Joe Bauman hit an all-time record 72 homeruns and batted over .400 for Roswell in 1954, Frosty might have been just a bit, shall we say, off base about being “the greatest.”
But give him a homer for hype - and no cheap shot either.
(Danny Andrews is editor of The Herald.)
