Post Time: Florida State baseball’s Dick Howser left his mark on MLB

Readers: This time of year brings that aroma of leather and the sweet sound of bat on ball. With the arrival of spring training, we harken back to last year’s World Series, when the Kansas City Royals came within a batter of accomplishing one of the great worst-to-first feats in baseball history. It had been three decades since the Royals’ last trip to the fall classic. Their skipper: a son of West Palm Beach whose life soon would take a tragic turn.

Richard “Dick” Howser, born in Miami in 1936, played baseball and basketball at the old Palm Beach High, graduating in 1954, and was an All-America shortstop at Florida State University.

He was an All-Star his rookie year with the old Kansas City Athletics in 1961. He later played for the Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees before retiring in 1968, with a career batting average of .248, and setting his sights on managing.

He coached third base for a decade for the Yankees, then became head coach back at his alma mater in 1979, guiding the Seminoles to a spot in the College World Series.

The following year, contentious Yankee manager Billy Martin got into a fight with a marshmallow salesman at a Minnesota bar. Soon Billy was out and Howser was in charge of the Yankees. He’d lose in the playoffs to the new Kansas City team, the Royals, who promptly hired him the following year.

Howser would manage the Royals from 1981 to 1986, including in the great “Show Me Series” of 1985, when, in what should have been the winning out for the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Six, the runner was called safe in what’s been acknowledged as a bad call, breathing new life for the Royals, who would go on to win Game 7 and the series.

Just after Howser managed the American League in the 1986 All-Star game, he was discovered to have a malignant brain tumor. He valiantly tried to start spring training in Fort Myers in February 1987, but was too weak and resigned after just two days.

Even as his battle wound down, the state renamed FSU’s baseball stadium for him. He already had been installed in the Palm Beach County Sports Hall of Fame in 1978.

Howser died June 17, 1987. He left a wife and twin daughters. In a game whose heroes always seem forever young, Dick Howser was only 51.

Marjorie Howser lived a mother’s greatest tragedy, burying a child. She said of her son: “I don’t think he would want us to be sad or grieve a long time. He enjoyed life. He got the fullest out of every day.”

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Post Time: Florida State baseball’s Dick Howser left his mark on MLB