Fred Hutchinson, who died of cancer in 1964 at age 45, and his brother, Dr. Bill Hutchinson, are recalled fondly more than 50 years later by a Seattle baseball fan.
Fred Hutchinson.
The name and the face on the faded, scuffed baseball card of my youth still evokes both sweet memory and sorrow.
In the late summer of 1964, I was 9 years old. One evening, I was pacing around the backyard of our Bellevue home waiting for my dad to get down in his catcher’s crouch so I could hurry up and pitch. After all, I had Willie Mays coming up to bat and I had to strike him out.