The expectations for Duke Snider were high, but none were higher than the ones he placed on himself.

After one season in minor league baseball, Snider's combination of speed, power and grace led the Brooklyn Dodgers to sign him to a contract when he was 17 years old.

He was considered a can't-miss prospect.

"(Snider's) swing is perfect, and this young man doesn't run on mere legs. Under him are two steel springs," reported Brooklyn General Manager Branch Rickey.

Snider, who will turn 81 Wednesday, wrote in "The Duke of Flatbush" with Bill Gilbert, "I always felt convinced I would make it in the majors, but I was fighting not just to make it, but to make it big.

"I was always reading and hearing about how great I was destined to be, how I had the potential to become one of the greatest baseball players of all time. That puts a lot of extra pressure on an athlete, and what pressure wasn't already on me I managed to add myself. I fought a lot of lonely battles with myself, telling myself that it wouldn't be enough just to be a major leaguer — I had to be a great one."

Snider's place in baseball lore was secured with his play in "The Boys of Summer," the Roger Kahn book that glamorized the 1950s Dodgers. Snider jumped off Kahn's pages as the team's most prolific hitter and wonderful glove man in center field.

During that decade, Snider led all major leaguers in home runs (326) and runs batted in (1,031).

He hit 40 or more homers five straight times — and was clutch for the pennant-clutching Dodgers. He's still the only player to slug four homers in two different World Series, 1952 and 1955, when Brooklyn won its only world title.

His 11 World Series home runs are the most ever by a National League player. In four of the six World Series he played in, Snider hit .345, .320 twice and .304.

For his career, he hit .295 with 407 homers, leading to his 1980 induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

"No player contributed more to our team both offensively and defensively," Carl Erskine, who pitched on those Brooklyn contenders, told IBD. And "no player agonized more when he didn't perform well."

"(Snider) was a perfectionist," said Gil Hodges, the late Dodger first baseman, as quoted in "Mays, Mantle, Snider: A Celebration," by Donald Honig.

Edwin Donald Snider first fell in love with baseball while growing up as the only child of his supportive parents in Compton, Calif. When he wasn't playing ball, he was listening to games of the area's two Pacific Coast League teams, the Los Angeles Angels and Hollywood Stars.

Snider's father, Ward, directed his son to learn to hit left-handed, even though he was naturally right-handed. Ward's logic was that many big league ballparks had short right field fences and that righties dominated big league pitching staffs.

In addition, a left-handed hitter had the advantage of already being two steps closer to first base. Still, Duke, as he was nicknamed by his father, didn't buy the idea at first.

"We argued about the switch loud, long and often because it was awkward at first, but he insisted. When our backyard arguments reached their loudest, Mom would call out, 'You two children behave out there,' " Snider wrote.

He eventually followed his dad's advice and became one of the most dangerous lefty sluggers in the game, ideally suited for Ebbets Field's short right field porch.

Snider has always credited his parents a great deal for his success.

"Ward and Florence Snider never had a surplus of cash in those years of the Depression, even with only one child," Snider wrote. "Dad didn't make much money working in the pits of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., handling hot molding equipment. He used to come home with his hands burned and blistered from handling that equipment, but he was always willing to go right back outside and play ball with his son. And Mom somehow was always able to find another couple of pieces of cardboard to stick into my sneakers until she could save enough to buy another pair."

From the time he discovered he could be a special player to when he completed his 18-year career, Snider took good physical care of himself. He didn't smoke or consume alcohol and did practice good nutritional habits. Those decisions paid dividends.

"Duke was always ready to play and play hard," former Dodger General Manager Buzzie Bavasi told IBD. "He gave you 102% and never took a day off."

He says much of hitting is mental and a matter of self-control in terms of mastering the strike zone. So he studied his craft hard. For a mentor, Snider relied on the Dodgers' veteran shortstop, future Hall-of-Famer Pee Wee Reese.

The two would drive to Ebbets Field together and arrive an hour or two earlier than required just to talk baseball. They also would stay late after the game doing the same.

Snider wrote: "Pee Wee used to say, 'If you rush in and out of the clubhouse, you rush in and out of baseball.' . . . When you're a professional athlete you must have a strong commitment to your career and to your success. You won't be a great ballplayer, or a great anything else, just by wanting it. You have to work hard at it, devoting your mind and body to becoming the greatest player your ability will allow."

Starting out, Snider's most difficult opponent was himself. In an effort to be one of the best, he let his emotions beat him. He took failure hard, such as when he hit only .143 in the 1949 World Series, or when he felt he was striking out too much.

Eventually Reese helped him gain perspective that his strikeout total was normal for a power hitter, and it was an acceptable trade-off for his home runs and runs batted in.

"If you give 100%, getting yourself mentally and physically prepared to play the game, if you look in the mirror and can say you gave everything to win, that's it. . . . You're not going to win every time," Snider wrote.

Kahn told IBD: "What Duke had to work on was not getting down. . . . (He) learned to be his own person and get the most out of his game and not worry that Stan Musial might be hitting eight points higher."

Snider says people ask him if he regrets missing out on today's multi-million dollar salaries that a player of his stature would have garnered.

"I never made more than $42,000 a year as a player," Snider wrote, "but I wouldn't trade the biggest salary today for the fun we had then and the memories and friendships we have now."


BY MICHAEL MINK