Corky Withrow, who played briefly for the St. Louis Cardinals after being drafted into the NBA, died April 22. He was 88.
Withrow was promoted from the Denver Bears of the Pacific Coast League to St. Louis in September 1963. He went 0-for-9 with an RBI groundout over a six-game span, then never played in MLB again.
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The month Withrow spent in the big leagues was the high point of an 11-year career in professional baseball that included many twists and turns.
Most notably, Withrow was the player to be named later in a June 1964 trade that sent him and Lew Burdette to the Chicago Cubs for pitcher Glen Hobbie and another player to be named later (minor leaguer Bob Will, a bespectacled outfielder who never made it back to the majors).
A three-time All-Star, Burdette would make 28 appearances for the Cubs in 1964 and another seven in 1965. Hobbie made only 13 appearances for the Cardinals in 1964, and was left off their World Series roster.
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As for Withrow, his vagabond career hummed right along. In total, he played more than 1,100 games in the minors, according to Baseball Reference. Besides the Cardinals and Cubs, he played for affiliates in the Milwaukee Braves (1956-63, 1965), Chicago White Sox (1966), Detroit Tigers (1966) and Los Angeles Angels (1961) organizations.
Although his time in the big leagues was brief, it hardly left Withrow bitter. In a 2016 interview, he said, “just meeting my hero, Stan Musial, that was enough for me.”
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Withrow was talented enough in basketball at Georgetown (Ky.) College to be drafted into the NBA, by the Philadelphia Warriors in 1961. He reportedly attended one training camp with the Warriors, bumping elbows with Wilt Chamberlain, before calling it quits after one week.
It made for a good prelude to a long (if undistinguished) career in baseball — and a good chapter in his memoir, “Uncorked!” which was published in 2016.
Withrow is survived by his wife, Barbara; three children, five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.
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