A more than a decade ago, I found an intriguing book at the Seattle Library Book Sale that caught my eye for several reasons. It was called, “The Tall Mexican: The Life of Hank Aguirre, All-Star Pitcher, Businessman and Humanitarian.” The cover art featured a beautiful painting of a brown pitcher in a Detroit Tigers uniform. As a Chicano baseball historian, the appeal is pretty obvious. What’s cool is that I had never heard of Hank Aguirre and was not aware of his work on the diamond, or life after baseball.
The book breaks down into two parts, the first covering his life in baseball, and the second part addresses his life in the business world. Both sections paint an incredible image of a great guy, to which I found great pride. It’s not that often that Mexican-American ballplayers craft such successful careers for themselves that galvanize many communities over one lifetime.
With that pride buoying my heart, I went in search of more info on Hank Aguirre, and surprisingly found very little. Aside from the book, and an obituary, there was not much on Hank. The basics were this: over the course of a 16-year pitching career with the Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs, Aguirre went 75-72 with an ERA of 3.25 in over 1,375 innings pitched over 447 games and two All-Star Game appearances. The bulk of his career, of course, was with the Tigers.
At some point, I’ll write a SABR BioProject article on Hank, but in the meantime, I satisfied myself with obtaining every one of his Topps baseball cards, beginning with his 1957 Cleveland Indians card (#96). I have 14 cards, indicating that his first two season with the Tribe, where he played a total of 10 games did not warrant a baseball card.
I had never amassed the total collection of any one player before. But Hank seemed to resonate with me. He was a southern California Mexican-American like me, and a tall, brown dude, like me. Though Hank has a couple of inches on me, his 6-4 to my 6-2. Regardless, over the years I have sifted through the 14 cards looking at the styles of cards over the years, looking at his poses, and how he had aged over the years. His 1957 card (#96) has a similar pose to his 1961 card (#324). His 1969 card (#94) pretty matches up with the 1968 card (#553), both indicating his affiliation with the Dodgers, while obviously sporting his Tigers uniform. Topps recycled numerous photographs from the 1968 series, and cropped the photos differently for use in the 1969 set. Though, Hank is sporting a blacked out ballcap in his 1969 shot. It’s unfortunate that the Southern Californian never had a card in his Dodgers uniform. That would have been pretty cool! In the book, though, there is a great shot of him in a 1969 Dodgers uniform posing next to Willie Mays.
The majority of his cards depict a smiling Hank. The smile is infectious, and you think, wow, he looks like a nice guy. In other years, he is pictured in a serious, albeit thoughtful demeanor. Flipping though the cards also provided me the opportunity to refresh my knowledge and instant recall of the card style of the vintage era.
Hank’s last card is with the 1970 Chicago Cubs (#699), though he makes a cameo appearance on the 1973 Topps Whitey Lockman card (#88). Lockman was the Cubs manager that year, and Hank was the pitching coach, and was pictured along with other Cubs coaches including Ernie Banks and Pete Reiser.
For now, Hank’s cards will stay tucked in their plastic pocket pouch until I decide what to do with them next. Maybe matte them in a single collage or something along with his photo. To me, he will always be the tallest Mexican!
SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee 
Great post. The story is a poignant example of how cards can be a conduit to something personally meaningful.
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Linking to my post about Atlee Hammaker since these kind of “players I identify with—or wish I had known to identify with” stories are are one of those things where a simple hobby ends up being so much more. I didn’t know Atlee was mixed race when I was a kid. I wish I had.
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I never realized Aguirre was Chicano. The name had me fooled. Great post!
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I’ll never forget seeing Aguirre hit his one and only career triple at Yankee Stadium in 1967. I was there, as almost always, with my father. It was remarkable in that Hank was a terrrrrible hitter. The Yanks walked RAY OYLER(!) to load the bases and face Aguirre. I remember it so well because Aguirre sat down on the third base bag laughing his azz of after the feat. My ’59 blog post has some google links to the game and his hit.
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Tops in the AL with that 2.21 ERA in ’62. I, too, didn’t realize he was Chicano, or that he was so tall. I like his pose on the his ’63 card.
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Hank Aguirre tended to get lost on the very deep Cleveland and Detroit pitching staffs of the 1950s and 1960s, but those of us who saw him pitch will tend to remember him as a guy who always seemed to know exactly what he was doing & why he was throwing the pitch he did, while enjoying doing it. If he had spent his career with teams that didn’t have half a dozen strong candidates for the starting rotation at all times, Aguirre might have become a multi-time 20-game winner.
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I seem to remember that Hank went 0 for 3. Zero hits for 3 years. When he got the hit, they gave him the first base.
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Thank you for this beautiful article. Very happy to have stumbled upon it. My Grandfather was amazing, and was always very humbled by those who sought his autograph, card, etc. He played his favorite game, and knew he was blessed to be able to use his popularity to change the lives of many. I miss him every single day.
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Hank made those of us who were Chicano very proud of him! I think the mispronunciation of his last name as “A-GEAR-ee” threw people for a loop… Even the great Vin Scully butchered Spanish words, names and places. Now the Dodger commentators kill Urias’ name as “YER-ius”, as in furious…!
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