{"id":39158,"date":"2014-01-06T06:13:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T11:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=39158"},"modified":"2014-01-06T20:19:24","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T01:19:24","slug":"rip-ltcol-jerry-coleman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=39158","title":{"rendered":"RIP, LtCol Jerry Coleman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/sportsillustrated.cnn.com\/mlb\/news\/20140105\/jerry-coleman-padres-broadcaster-dies.ap\/\">baseball icon has passed<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Jerry Coleman \u2013 former MLB second-baseman with the New York Yankees and longtime broadcaster for the San Diego Padres \u2013 has died.\u00a0 He passed away yesterday at 89.<\/p>\n<p>Coleman\u2019s career in MLB was interrupted \u2013 like Ted Williams, when recalled to the USMC for service in Korea.\u00a0 However, unlike Ted Williams Coleman had flown in combat previously.\u00a0 Prior to his career in baseball, Coleman had flown combat missions for the USMC in World War II, and did so again in Korea.\u00a0 He was reputedly the only MLB player to see combat in both wars.\u00a0 He retired from the USMC Reserve as a Lieutenant Colonel, giving rise to his nickname \u201cThe Colonel\u201d among his professional colleagues within the San Diego organization.<\/p>\n<p>Coleman\u2019s military awards included two Distinguished Flying Crosses, 13 Air Medals, and 3 Navy Citations (I&#8217;m pretty sure this was the forerunner of the Navy Commendation Medal; Navy types, correction please if I&#8217;m wrong).\u00a0 He was no slouch as a ballplayer or broadcaster either; he was the MVP of the 1950 World Series, and received the Ford C. Frick Award in 2005 for his contributions to baseball as a broadcaster.<\/p>\n<p>Coleman was honored by the San Diego Padres with a statue near PETCO Park in 2012.\u00a0 When interviewed about his military career shortly before the statue was unveiled, he remarked: &#8220;Your country is bigger than baseball.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Truly a life well-lived.\u00a0 Rest in peace, my elder brother-in-arms.\u00a0 Rest in peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A baseball icon has passed. Jerry Coleman \u2013 former MLB second-baseman with the New York Yankees &hellip; <a title=\"RIP, LtCol Jerry Coleman\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=39158\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">RIP, LtCol Jerry Coleman<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,75,184],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball","category-blue-skies","category-marine-corps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}