Johnny Blatnik's Merry Month of May 1948

With many fine young players, the Phillies were a team on the rise in 1948. In spring training two new outfielders were impressing Phillies manager Ben Chapman and major league scouts from every team in both leagues. The 21-year-old Richie Ashburn was impressing with his speed and defensive prowess, The 26-year-old Johnny Blatnik was impressing with his power bat. When asked to rate the best of the crop of young players, the scouts praised infielder Granny Hamner, pitcher Curt Simmons, catcher Stan Lopata, and the high-flying Ashburn, but they reserved special praise for Blatnik. 

Discussing potential rookies of the year, St. Louis Cardinals manager, Eddie Dyer  told Frank Yeutter of Baseball Digest, that while there were many candidates, including Ashburn and his own first baseman, Nippy Jones, he thought Blatnick was the best of them all. "There's a kid (Blatnik) who looks like an old-time ballplayer. He's a good fielder, he can throw well enough, but that bat of his is dynamite." Ben Chapman compared Blatnik favorably to Phillies slugger Del Ennis. "He has the fastest wrists I have ever seen," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer's Stan Baumgartner.

Expert predictions, especially in baseball, often do not pan out. Ashburn, of course, went on to be a key member of the pennant winning Whiz Kids of 1950, and to a Hall of Fame career as a centerfielder for the Phillies, Cubs, and Mets. Meanwhile Blatnik is little more than a footnote on a long list of promising Phillies players who never quite made the grade.

Blatnik, a husky 200 pound six-footer, began his professional baseball career in 1939 with the Washington Senators minor league system, but quickly moved to the Cleveland Indians chain. Blatnik was making steady, if not spectacular, progress through the low minors when his career, like so many ballplayers', was interrupted by World War II. Blatnik lost four years to the war, but when he returned, to Cleveland's Harrisburg affiliate, he showed great improvement in both batting average and power. In 1946 he hit .346 with 19 homeruns and 108 RBIs. Promoted to Class A Wilkes-Barre, he hit .334 with 10 homeruns in 1947. Despite these numbers, Blatnik was left unprotected by the Indians and the Phillies snapped him up for the waiver price of $10,000 dollars.

After impressing the Phillies in the spring, Blatnik made the team as a reserve outfielder. Ashburn had won the job in centerfield, so 1947 centerfielder and batting champion Harry (The Hat) Walker was moved to left. Ennis was in right. Blatnik was restricted to just five pinch-hitting appearances in the month of April. Those at bats resulted in 0 hits, 1 walk and 1 run scored. In early May, however, Walker came down with a case of the flu, and Blatnik took over as the starting left fielder.

In his first major league start on Sunday May 2, Blatnik, batting third, cracked out three singles and drove in two. His first major league hit came off the Brooklyn Dodgers' Rex Barney. The Phillies lost the game 9-6. One week later he had six hits, including his first double and first triple, and five RBIs in a doubleheader sweep of the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field, Cincinnati. On May 12 at Pittsburgh he went 4 for 4 with a double and 2 RBIs in a 5-0 Phillies victory. Blix Donnelly pitched the three hit shutout.

The hits kept on coming. He had three hits at Shibe Park on May 17 against the New York Giants in a 7-1 Phillies victory and another three hit game on May 22 in a 9-2 home loss to Cincinnati. Blatnik's first career homerun came the next day in the first game of a doubleheader at Shibe Park, a two-run shot against the St. Louis Cardinals, Red Munger. His second homerun came in the second game of that doubleheader and was the only run the Phillies scored in that 4-1 loss.

For the month of May 1948, Johnny Blatnik came to bat 99 times and banged out 38 hits for a .384 batting average. The hits included nine doubles, five triples, two homeruns and 18 RBIs. From May 5 to May 19, he hit in 11 straight games. By the end of the month, Blatnik was fourth in the league in hitting. It was a merry month of May indeed for Johnny Blatnik.

It looked like Phillies fans had a new hero to root for, but the good times did not last. According to Blatnik's biographer, John Wickline, Blatnik suffered heatstroke during a game at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, missed a few games and struggled to regain his form. He hit .261 in June, .242 in July. .205 in August, and just .180 in September. Perhaps it was the heatstroke or perhaps it was the major league pitchers figuring out Blatnik's weaknesses, but Johnny never regained that May 1948 form. An early scouting report, recounted in the Baseball Digest article provides a clue to Blatnik's inability to sustain his hitting pace: "He swung hard enough, but too often. He cut at inside and outside pitches, he lunged, he hitched." 

Before the 1949 season, the Phillies traded Harry Walker for veteran Cubs outfielder, Bill "Swish" Nicholson and Blatnik found himself the odd man out. Optioned to the Phillies Triple-A affiliate in Toronto, Blatnik hit well (.290, 15 HRs, 80 RBIs), earning a September call-up, but he appeared in only two games after being recalled. In 1950, Blatnik did not figure in the Whiz Kids plans. Traded to St. Louis in late April for pitcher Ken Johnson, Blatnik appeared in just seven games for the Cardinals before he was again sent down to the minor leagues. Blatnik played in the International League for the next six seasons, before retiring from professional baseball and settling with his family in Lansing, Ohio. 

Johnny Blatnik is one more Phillies' tale of what might have been.