Visiting with Former Yankee Oscar Gamble

While having breakfast recently with our friend and former New York Yankees star Oscar Gamble, he mentioned that his first World Series was in 1976 while playing for the Yankees. Interestingly, that was also the first World Series DeLeal Wininger and his dad David Wininger attended. However, the lawyers attended as paying customers not starting for the Yankees. Our favorite team had experienced a long drought while absolutely dominating the game of baseball for the first 60 years of the century.

Oscar was born in Alabama at the end of 1949 and played 17 years of Major League Baseball. His greatest success was with the Yankees and the Chicago White Sox. When he broke into the big leagues, he weighed 165lbs but yet one year, hit 31 home runs. While with the Yankees he wore a tremendously large afro (perhaps the largest in Major League history) and we still kid him about that fact because he is now as “bald as a gourd”. In addition to the pennant-winning year of 1976, he helped the Yankees to another division title in 1980 and another World Series appearance in 1981.

Over the years he has been a good friend to baseball both in Birmingham and his present home area of Montgomery, AL. He has honored us with his appearance at many of our American Baseball Foundation banquets and we always enjoy visiting with him during Spring Training in Tampa.

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