Richie Scheinblum


Richard Alan "Richie" Scheinblum is a former professional All Star Major League Baseball player.
In 1971, he won the American Association Most Valuable Player Award after hitting a league-leading and Triple-A-record.388. In 1972 he was named to the American League All-Star team, and batted.300. He played for the Cleveland Indians, Washington Senators, Kansas City Royals, Cincinnati Reds, California Angels, and St. Louis Cardinals. He also played two seasons in Japan for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.

Early life

Scheimblum is Jewish, and was born in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan in New York City to Fred and Lee Scheinblum, and grew up in Fort Apache in the South Bronx in New York City. He was very proud that he was one of only six Jewish major leaguers at the time, along with Art Shamsky, Mike Epstein, Steve Stone, Ron Blomberg, and Ken Holtzman. His father remarried and the family moved to Englewood, New Jersey, when he was 10 years old. He attended Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, where he played basketball and soccer, in addition to baseball.
He is a 1964 graduate of C.W. Post College, now known as LIU Post, with a degree in Business Administration. There, he was a three-sport athlete, competing in baseball, basketball, and track and field. In baseball he batted.415 in 1964, and set the C.W. Post records in career triples and batting average. He was inducted in the college's sports Hall of Fame in 2005. After his career ended he went on to live in Palm Harbor, Florida.

Baseball career

In 1964 he played for the Burlington Indians and hit.309, in 1965 he played for the Salinas Indians and hit.318 with a.460 slugging percentage and had 21 doubles, and in 1965 he played for the Pawtucket Indians and hit.263. He made his major league debut with the Cleveland Indians in 1967, and hit.318, as during the rest of the season he played for the Portland Beavers and hit.291 with 77 runs, 25 doubles, and 16 home runs.
In 1968 he played again for Portland, and hit.304 with a.479 slugging percentage and 75 RBIs, but in 55 at bats batted.218 for Cleveland, followed by.186 in limited action the following year. In 1970 he batted.337 /.424 /.576 for the Class AAA Wichita Aeros, leading the league in runs scored, hits, and RBIs, and second in the league in doubles, home runs, walks, and sacrifice flies.
Playing for the Denver Bears in 1971, he won the American Association Most Valuable Player Award after he hit a league-leading and Triple-A-record.388 with a league-leading.490 on-base percentage, 83 runs,.725 slugging percentage, 145 hits, 31 doubles, 10 triples, 25 home runs, and 108 RBIs.
Scheinblum played outfield in the major leagues from 1965 to 1974. He was a switch-hitter.
His best year was 1972, when he hit.300 with an on-base percentage of.383, 8 homers, and 66 RBIs for the Royals. He was named to the American League All-Star team, and was the Royals' Player of the Month in August. Following the Munich massacre in September of that year, Scheinblum wore a black armband in memory of the slain Israeli athletes. He later said, "I wore the emblematic black band... not only because they were Jewish athletes, but because they were human beings".
Scheinblum was traded along with Roger Nelson to the Cincinnati Reds for Hal McRae and Wayne Simpson on December 1, 1972. He batted.307 with a.402 on base percentage in 1973; after a slow start for the Cincinnati Reds, he was traded to the California Angels, for whom he batted.328 with an on base percentage of.418.
He hit.263 with 13 homers and 127 RBIs in his career.
In 1976, after leaving Major League Baseball, he played for Japan’s Hiroshima Toyo Carp in 1976, batting.307 with a slugging percentage of.501 and 20 home runs. He now works as a salesman with a promotional-products company.

Family

His son, Monte Scheinblum, hit a golf ball 329 yards, 13 inches, into a 20 mile-per-hour wind to win the 1992 U.S. National Long Driving Championship, and was also the world long driving champion that year.