The Amazing Story of Jack “Lucky” Lohrke!

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The Amazing Story of Jack “Lucky” Lohrke!

“You were thinking of doing what??…Haha!…Don’t make me laugh!”

I made this quote up for the featured photo below, but it pretty well sums up the defensive prowess of the great catcher, Roy Campanella. Judging by the grimace on the face of the Giants base runner, Jack Lohrke, I have a hunch he regretted trying to score against Campanella. I’d say Campy literally “flattened” him. He was out by the old “country mile!”

But the reason I reposted this pic was not to comment about the great Campanella. Rather, it was to turn the spotlight on the base runner, Jack “Lucky” Lohrke. This play may have been one of the few times in his life when “luck” wasn’t on his side. By the time he was 22, Lohrke was known to have escaped death on at least six separate occasions – by sheer good luck!

In a rather unremarkable seven year major league career (1947-’53), third baseman Jack Lohrke played for the Giants (1947- ‘51), and the Phillies (1952- ’53), posting a .242 average with 22 home runs and 96 RBIs.  

Here’s some of his “close shaves” with death:

• As a member of the 35th Infantry Division, he fought in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, and saw extensive combat throughout Europe. Reportedly, on four occasions solders on either side of him were killed in combat while he emerged unscathed.
• Also during World War II, he survived a troop train crash that killed three soldiers and injured dozens more,
• On his way home from the war in 1945, he was bumped at the last moment from a military transport scheduled to fly from Camp Kilmer, New Jerseyto his home in Los Angeles. This was to make room for a higher ranking military “big shot.”  The plane crashed 45 minutes after takeoff, killing everyone on board.
• Traveling at dusk in light rain on Washington’s Highway 10 en route to Bremerton, eight Spokane Indians players and their manager were killed when their team bus veered off a Cascade Mountain pass road to avoid an oncoming car. Lohrke, a passenger on the bus, had left it at its last stop, 15 minutes before the accident because he had just received orders to report to San Diego.

In a 1994 interview with Sports Illustrated, Lohrke looked back on the tragic bus accident and said, “When you’re the age I was back then, you haven’t got a worry in the world. And then…well, sometimes those names spring back at me. I’ll tell you this: Nobody outside of baseball calls me Lucky Lohrke these days. I may have been lucky, but the name is Jack. Jack Lohrke.” 

Jack Lohrke lived with the nickname Lucky,” but he never liked it, never wanted to be reminded of how close he had come to riding in that bus…or that plane.

Gary Livacari

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Information: Excerpts edited from the Jack Lohrke Wikipedia page.

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