Carl Anthony Furillo was one of the indispensable members of the great Brooklyn Dodgers teams remembered as the “Boys of Summer.” A powerful, accurate-throwing right fielder and a remarkably dependable hitter, he spent his entire 15-year major-league career with the Dodgers, accompanying them from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. He was less celebrated than Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, and Gil Hodges, but the Dodgers’ extraordinary success during his prime is difficult to imagine without him. He is the only member of the core of great players who led the Brooklyn Dodgers to six pennants in 10 years – 1947 to 1956 – not in baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Furillo was born on March 8, 1922, in Stony Creek Mills, near Reading, Pennsylvania, the son of Italian immigrants Michael and Filomena Furillo. He left school after completing the eighth grade and worked at such jobs as picking apples and laboring in a woolen mill. After his mother died, the 18-year-old Furillo began his professional baseball career in 1940 with Pocomoke City of the Class D Eastern Shore League, earning $80 a month. He also played briefly for Reading, whose franchise was soon purchased by the Dodgers. Furillo advanced to Montreal in 1942 before his baseball career was interrupted by the Second World War. He served for three years in the United States Army, saw combat in the Pacific, received three battle stars, and was wounded.
Returning from military service, Furillo made the Brooklyn Dodgers’ roster in 1946. He opened the season as the Dodgers’ center fielder and batted .284 as a rookie. When Duke Snider later established himself in center field, Furillo moved permanently to right field, where his powerful arm and mastery of the peculiarities of Ebbets Field made him one of baseball’s outstanding defensive outfielders.
His nickname, the Reading Rifle, referred to both his Pennsylvania origins and one of the strongest and most accurate throwing arms of his era. He recorded 18 outfield assists in 1950 and a career-high 24 in 1951. Yet even those imposing totals understate his defensive value. Once opposing runners learned the danger of challenging him, many declined to try for an extra base. In effect, Furillo prevented advances without having to make a throw; the reputation of his arm reduced the very opportunities from which assists were recorded.
The most celebrated demonstration of his arm occurred on August 27, 1951. Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Mel Queen hit what appeared to be a routine single into right field, but Furillo charged the ball and threw Queen out at first base. I was at that game. Furillo threw the ball to Hodges on a big bounce that just beat Queen to the bag. During his career he also threw out seven runners who ventured too far around first base, firing behind them before they could return safely.
Furillo was equally famous for his ability to play the high, irregular right-field wall at Ebbets Field. Its concrete surfaces, wire screen, scoreboard, and numerous angles produced caroms that baffled visiting outfielders. Furillo studied those angles until he seemed to know instinctively whether a ball would drop near the wall or rebound sharply toward the infield. His command of that difficult territory turned many potential extra-base hits into singles and made right field in Brooklyn uniquely his own. When any other right fielder was playing at Ebbets Field, a ball off the fence was a double. With Furillo, it was a single.
He was also a formidable hitter. Furillo was aggressive at the plate, seldom walked, and struck out only 436 times in more than 7,000 plate appearances. He hit .322 with 18 home runs and 106 runs batted in for the 1949 pennant winners and again drove in 106 runs in 1950. His finest season came in 1953, following cataract surgery. He won the National League batting championship with a .344 average, hit 21 home runs, drove in 92 runs, and was selected to his second consecutive All-Star team.
That season ended violently. On September 6, after being hit on the wrist by a pitch from Giants pitcher Rubén Gómez, Furillo charged the Giants’ dugout and fought manager Leo Durocher, with whom he had maintained a long and bitter feud. During the struggle, Furillo suffered a fractured bone in his hand. He missed the remainder of the regular season, leaving his league-leading .344 average safely intact, but returned for the World Series and went 8-for-24 with a home run.
Between 1947 and 1956 (as mentioned above), the Brooklyn Dodgers won six National League pennants—in 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, and 1956. Furillo was a regular on every one of those teams. While the Dodgers possessed several more famous stars, he supplied the sustained combination of hitting, run production, durability, defense, and competitive intensity without which it is hard to see how they could have dominated the National League for so long. He batted .295 or better in six of those ten seasons and drove in at least 88 runs six times. The Dodgers’ six World Series appearances during that period were not simply the work of their Hall of Famers; they were also the product of Furillo’s steady excellence.
The emotional high point of his career came in 1955, when Brooklyn finally defeated the New York Yankees to win its first and only World Series championship. Furillo had one of his finest regular seasons, batting .314 with a career-high 26 home runs. He hit .296 in the Series and played flawlessly in right field. He later remembered the victory not merely as an accomplishment for the players but as something they had achieved for the long-suffering people of Brooklyn. The Dodgers won another pennant in 1956, with Furillo contributing 21 home runs, a .289 average, and 10 outfield assists.
When the Dodgers moved west in 1958, Furillo went with them. At the age of 36, he batted .290, hit 18 home runs, and drove in 83 runs during the club’s first season in Los Angeles. Injuries reduced him largely to pinch-hitting duties in 1959, but he still delivered two important hits. His infield single helped produce the run that clinched the National League pennant against Milwaukee, and his pinch single in Game Three of the World Series drove in the first run of a 3–1 victory over the Chicago White Sox. The Dodgers won the Series in six games, giving Furillo his second championship.
His career ended unhappily in 1960. Suffering from persistent leg and back problems, Furillo was placed on the inactive list and then released in May. The timing deprived him of part of his expected pension and left $21,000 of his salary unpaid. He sued the Dodgers because he had been released while injured and eventually received the money owed to him. The men behind Furillo’s rough treatment were general manager Buzzie Bavasi and owner Walter O’Malley.
Despite applying throughout the major leagues, he was unable to find work as a coach or scout, a circumstance he believed resulted from his action against the Dodgers. Not only did organized baseball shun him, but he was also never elected to the Hall of Fame, an honor he richly deserved. Being the best right fielder in the game for more than a decade should have been enough.
After leaving baseball, Furillo operated a delicatessen and later worked in construction, helping install elevator doors at the World Trade Center. He subsequently worked as a night watchman near his Pennsylvania home. Diagnosed with chronic leukemia, he died in his sleep from heart failure on January 21, 1989, 46 days before his 67th birthday.
Furillo finished his career with 1,910 hits, 192 home runs, 1,058 runs batted in, and an official lifetime batting average of .299. His precise average – 1,910 hits in 6,378 at-bats – was .29947. Had just one more of his at-bats resulted in a hit, he would have finished at .29962, which would have rounded officially to the coveted .300. He was, quite literally, one hit short of being remembered as a lifetime .300 hitter.
Statistics alone, however, cannot fully measure Furillo’s importance. They do not record the runners who stopped at second rather than challenge his arm, the extra-base hits he prevented by anticipating the bounce off of the Ebbets Field wall, or the stability he provided through six Brooklyn pennants. He was a fierce, proud, sometimes combative player whose line drives, defensive skill, and famous right arm were essential parts of one of baseball’s greatest teams. Carl Furillo may not have received the acclaim accorded some of his teammates, but the Brooklyn Dodgers of their golden decade would not have been the same without the Reading Rifle.
