Frank Howard, Towering Slugger Whose Homers Were, Dies at 87

Frank Howard, the Bunyanesque slugger who hit some of baseball’s greatest home runs for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Washington Senators while also racking up a prodigious strikeout total, can’t shake his penchant for chasing bad balls to overcome, died Monday in Aldie, Va. He was 87.

His death at a hospital was caused by complications of a stroke, his daughter Catherine Braun said.

At 6-foot-4 and 255 pounds (although sometimes well over that weight), Howard played 16 seasons in the major leagues and hit 382 home runs. He twice led the American League in that category. Many of his home runs – and even some hits that didn’t reach the fence – were unforgettable.

As a Dodger in 1960, he hit a ball over the left field wall at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, which was found next to a parked car about 500 feet from home plate.

While batting against Whitey Ford in Game 1 of the 1963 World Series, at the original Yankee Stadium, he hit a drive that, in fair territory, landed just left of the monuments to Yankee greats in center field, about 450 feet from home plate. . He only trudged as far as second base in what was mentioned the longest double in Yankee Stadium history.

In Game 4, he hit a 400-foot home run off Ford on the left field mezzanine of Dodger Stadium, in a 2–1 victory that completed a Dodger sweep of the Series.

Howard drove in 1,119 runs in his long career. But he also struck out 1,460 times.

Howard was an unassuming power forward who was beloved by teammates and friendly to the fans. He could laugh at his shortcomings. He once told how big hitter Ted Williams, who became manager of the Senators in 1969, helped him show more patience at the plate. Still, Williams couldn’t contain his frustration.

“Someone explained to a visitor that some of the seats in RFK Stadium had been painted white to indicate where some of my long home runs had landed,” Howard told The New York Times in 1981. Ted turned to the man and said, ‘All the green seats are for the times he crashed.’

Howard was a basketball and baseball star at Ohio State University before signing for a $108,000 bonus with the Dodgers in 1958 (almost $1.2 million in today’s currency). He became known as Hondo, after Hondo Lane, the tough cavalry scout played by John Wayne in the 1953 Hollywood western “Hondo.” When he played for the Senators, he was called the Capital Punisher.

Howard was the National League’s rookie of the year in 1960, when he hit 23 home runs for the Dodgers after playing briefly for them in the previous two seasons.

His best years came with the Senators, who acquired him in a multiplayer trade before the 1965 season. He hit an American League-leading 44 home runs in 1968, buoyed by a surge in May when he hit 10 in a six-game span.

“The right type of power pitchers went against me,” he said, recalling the barrage on the website of the Nationals, Washington’s third major league franchise in the modern era. “My balance at the plate was good. I saw the ball well. I wasn’t involved on the field too early.”

Howard hit a career-high 48 home runs in 1969 and the following year he led the AL in home runs, with 44, and runs batted in, with 126.

He was an All-Star for four consecutive seasons as a Senator, usually on losing teams. On September 30, 1971, he hit the Senators’ last home run at RFK Stadium before the team left Washington and became the Texas Rangers.

But he wasn’t a complete player. Although he wore glasses, his fielding, usually as an outfielder and sometimes at first base, was mediocre. He couldn’t shake his strikeout woes. His career batting average was just .273.

Frank Oliver Howard was born on August 8, 1936 in Columbus, Ohio. His father, John, was a machinist. His mother, Erma (Denny) Howard, was a homemaker. Frank was an All-American basketball player at Ohio State as a junior in the 1956-57 season, when he averaged 20.1 points per game.

He was drafted by the NBA’s Philadelphia Warriors but eschewed professional basketball.

Howard hit 123 home runs for the Dodgers, but they decided he was surplus to requirements after the 1964 season, in which his batting average dropped nearly 50 points to .226, and his 24 home runs represented a decline for the second straight year.

Concerned that two of their starting pitchers, Sandy Koufax and Johnny Podres, might not recover from arm ailments, the Dodgers sent Howard to the Senators in a multiplayer deal that netted them Claude Osteen, who had won 15 games for a Washington team that finished in ninth place. (That Washington ballclub was founded in 1961 as an expansion team when the previous Senators left for Minnesota to become the Twins.)

After his time in Washington and Texas, Howard was sent to the Detroit Tigers midway through the 1972 season. He retired after the 1973 season. He managed the San Diego Padres in the strike-shortened split season of 1981 and the Mets in 1983, succeeding George Bamberger during the season. Both teams finished last. He also coached for several teams, including the Mets and the Yankees.

In 2009, the Nationals erected three statues at their ballpark, representing a timeline of baseball in Washington. Howard was honored along with Walter Johnson, the great pitcher of the early decades of the 20th century, and Josh Gibson, star catcher for the Homestead Grays of the Negro Leagues, who played their home games in both Pittsburgh and Washington.

Howard married Carol Johanski in 1959. They divorced in the mid-1980s. He and Donna (Scott) Howard were married from 1990 to her death in 2016. A few years ago, Howard and his first wife remarried.

In addition to his daughter Catherine, he is survived by his wife, along with their five other children, Tim, Daniel, Mary and Mitch Howard and Rebecca Thomas; a sister, Grace Rocci; eight grandchildren; two step-grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and several step-great-grandchildren. He lived in Aldie, west of Washington.

For all his long home runs, one of Howard’s cruelest drives, in a 1958 Dodger game in Cincinnati, went just 100 feet.

Duke Snider was the runner on third when Howard came to the plate.

“I had my protective helmet on in case he hit one on me, and he did,” Snider told Sports Illustrated in 1964. “The ball looked off the shoulder and hit under the bottom of my helmet. Blood started flowing from my ear. They picked me up and I was dizzy for three, four, five days.”

As Snider told it, from firsthand knowledge, “Frank Howard has more raw power than anyone in baseball.”

Alex Traub reporting contributed.