Beloit to honor former big leaguer Jerry Kenney

Jerry Kenney is a lot of things, but a complainer sure isn’t one of them.

No one would blame him for being miffed that his professional baseball career came along a few decades before multi-million dollar salaries were commonplace.

Or he may be angry that many fellow Beloiters are unaware he ranks among the best all-around athletes this city has ever produced.

Finally, he could be depressed about having a stroke which has put his active lifestyle on hold.

Kenney, though, always prefers a glass half full approach.

Ask him about regrets for missing a big payday in pro sports and he’ll tell you he was fortunate a ballplayer named Jackie Robinson blazed a trail so he could even have the career that saw him collect an inside-the-park home run at Yankee Stadium for his first big league hit.

He’s never needed to hear accolades about his exploits as an athlete. When he returned to his hometown and became American Legion coach his players never heard him boast about the big leagues. Many didn’t even know they were being taught the fundamentals by someone who’d played alongside Mickey Mantle.

He even accepts his current health issues as bothersome, since he can’t golf anymore, but he isn’t accepting anything without a fight.

“I’m on my way back,” he said. “I’m getting around with a cane. But I have to be careful. If somebody bumps into me and knocks me down, I’m starting from scratch.”

That’s the Kenney that former nextdoor neighbor Cheryl Caldwell remembers and hoped her hometown would honor.

“Back in April I called Councilman Kevin Leavy and asked him how we could get Jerry Kenney recognized,” Caldwell said in a telephone interview. “(Leavy) told me the process I needed to go through so I wrote a letter and Jim (her husband, the former NFL head coach) got 10 signatures to add to the letter. People like Charlie Tubbs, LaMont Weaver and Jerry’s pastor signed it and then I waited. The city voted to name a street near the (ABC Supply) Stadium in his honor. It really is awesome.”

Leavy recently called Kenney to give the Beloit Historical Society’s Elliott-Perring Sports Hall of Famer the good news.

“I couldn’t believe it; I thought I was being pranked,” Kenney said with a laugh. “It really came out of left field.”

Cheryl Caldwell says the honor for Kenney, who she knew as “Junior” growing up, is appreciated by everyone.

“Our families were close,” she said. “Until Jerry had his (health issues), Jim and I would golf with him every time we came home. I am so happy this is happening for Jerry. After Kevin Leavy called him, Jerry called Jim the next day and he was so overwhelmed, so thankful, so full of gratitude that this is happening.”

There will be a proclamation concerning Kenney at Monday’s 7 p.m. City Council meeting. A program involving the street naming will be held on Friday, June 21, with details to be announced at Monday’s meeting.

“I hope a lot of people show up for that ceremony on Friday,” Cheryl Caldwell said.

Word of the honor has been plastered on social media and Kenney has already started his own celebration.

“A lot of my former teammates have been calling me and I just had breakfast with some friends,” he said. “I am just enjoying the moment. I’m seeing and hearing from people I haven’t seen in a long time, reminiscing about the good old days.”

There’s a lot to talk about. At Beloit Memorial High School, Kenney stared in football and basketball as well as baseball. He helped the Purple Knights reach the state basketball tournament in 1963 where they fell to Milwaukee North. He scored 21 points three times in the tourney, finishing as its second-leading scorer and earning All-State honors.

“A lot of people have no clue what a great all-time athlete Jerry was at the high school,” Cheryl Caldwell said.

1973 alum Jim Caldwell said while playing a round of golf with Bernie Barkin, he asked the Hall of Famer who he thought were the top athletes he’d ever coached.

“Bernie said he had a lot of good ones like LaMont (Weaver), Bill Hanzlik and Tony Carr, but No. 1 and No. 2 were Jerry Kenney and Jimmy Lindsey,” Caldwell said. “Jerry was tremendous in baseball, but he was probably just as good in basketball.”

Caldwell said he grew up knowing about Kenney’s exploits.

“I’m not sure when I first met him, but people would talk about what he’d accomplished at Beloit Memorial,” Caldwell said. “I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with him until after he got back to Beloit and I started coming back and we’d go out golfing with some former teammates of mine like Horace Jones, Leon Peterson and a few other guys. I really got to know him better then. He’s just a great guy and this is a fitting honor. When you cross over from Illinois into Wisconsin one of the first names you’re going to see is Jerry Kenney. He has been a great ambassador for the city and he set a remarkable standard as far as his prowess in athletics.”

Coaches at Beloit Memorial learned early on that Kenney was a leader rather than a follower. His competitive fire caused him to take charge of games.

Born June 30, 1945 in St. Louis, Mo., Kenney moved to Beloit with his family in 1946, the year before Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier.

“Junior” learned from Gerald Kenney Sr. that competing in sports meant giving it your all and nothing less.

“You have your ups and downs, but when things go bad you have to show your real character,” Kenney said he learned from his father. “You cannot buckle to defeat. You have that little voice inside you saying you’re going to fail, but you can’t give in.”

As far as baseball is concerned, Kenney’s big break came in the summer of 1961. He was just 16 years old when the state champion Beloit Legion team took a 14-hour train trip to Minot, N.D., for regional competition.

Beloit had played a tuneup game after winning state and star outfielder Jim Buroker broke his leg. That opened the door for Kenney to take over in center field.

His first game in North Dakota, he hit a pair of triples, putting him on the radar of pro scouts and by the time he graduated from Beloit Memorial, the New York Yankees came calling with an offer. His parents tried steering him toward a basketball scholarship from Central State in Pella, Iowa, but when the Yankees upped the ante “to a five-figure bonus” Kenney went ahead and signed.

Assigned to a minor-league team in Shelby, N.C., he experienced the opposite of Southern hospitality.

“I remember seeing three brown doors,” he said. “They were identical except one said ‘colored men only’, one said ‘colored women only’ and the third said ‘whites only.’”

Kenney said he focused his anger on proving he belonged as a pro player, much as Robinson had done years before. He hit .291 that year and .312 the following year in Binghamton, N.Y. After hitting .292 in Double A in 1966 in Columbus, Ga., he was promoted to Triple A Syracuse and batted .294 with 27 stolen bases.

In September, 1967, he debuted against the Chicago White Sox and drew a walk. The inside-the-parker for his first hit came against the California Angels at Yankee Stadium.

His parents saw him play professionally for the first time against the Twins in Minneapolis and he had two hits off Dean Chance. The 22-year-old rookie hit .310 in 58 at-bats over 20 games.

His pro career was interrupted when Navy Reservist Kenney was called up to active duty during the Vietnam war in 1968. He spent much of that year at a submarine base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Kenney returned in 1969 and on opening day the 6-foot-1, 170-pounder put the Yankees ahead to stay with a homer off the Senators’ Camilo Pascual, ruining the managerial debut of Ted Williams at RFK Stadium. The audience included President Richard Nixon.

A shortstop when he began his career, Kenney was playing center field to start 1969 due to the sudden retirement of Mantle. When Bobby Murcer proved erratic at third base, he and Kenney switched positions. Kenney played in 130 games in 1969, batting .257 with 25 stolen bases and seven triples. He said he got a raise to $20,000.

He slumped to .193 in 1970, but still stole 20 bases. He rebounded to hit .262 the following year. A knee injury limited him to 50 games and 119 at-bats in 1972. He was traded to the Cleveland Indians and after a season there, he was going to be traded to the San Diego Padres, but requested his release instead.

“You make a decision, you have to live with it,” he said. “You know your career is going to end sometime.”

Kenney then worked for a New York-based record company, but eventually tired of the “concrete, no grass, no trees and the bee-hive atmosphere.” So he returned to Beloit in 1987 and it wasn’t much later that boyhood friend Russell Anderson lured him to coach a Colt League baseball team. Not surprisingly, the Orioles won a title that summer.

Soon he found himself managing the American Legion team to a 57-25 record over three seasons. He was a fountain of knowledge, learning the fundamentals from Harry Pohlman and fine tuning his craft with the Yankees. He’d had Olympian Jesse Owens as a running coach in spring training, and Joe DiMaggio, Mantle and Elston Howard teaching him hitting and fielding.

“He had played the game at the highest level and his players just thought he was another coach,” Jim Caldwell said. “That says a lot about his humility and his willingness to give back to his community.”

Apparently it’s time that community says thanks.