Step Forward

Al Rosen learned to throw a punch long before he learned to hit a big league curveball, and he had his reasons.

He grew up in a hardscrabble Miami neighborhood, an asthmatic kid raised by his mother and grandmother after his father left. He was Jewish, and the taunts at school came early. So he took up boxing, and he got good at it. Good enough to win a Florida high school middleweight title and earn a boxing scholarship to Florida Military Academy.

He carried that composure into the big leagues. When someone in the White Sox dugout directed an antisemitic slur at him, Rosen walked over, calmly asked whoever said it to step forward, and waited. Nobody moved.

The same steadiness showed up at the plate. In 1953 he led the American League with 43 home runs and 145 RBIs, missed the Triple Crown by a single point of batting average, and was the unanimous MVP.

Rosen never went looking for trouble. He just never backed away from it either, in the ring, in the dugout, or in the batter's box.