Vernon Fred Rapp (born May 11, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri) is a retired American manager and coach in Major League Baseball. A career minor league catcher and a successful skipper in the minors, Rapp had two brief tours of duty as a big league pilot, with the 1977-78 St. Louis Cardinals and the 1984 Cincinnati Reds.
Rapp signed his first playing contract out of high school in 1945 with his hometown Cardinals. A right-handed batter and thrower, ...
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Vernon Fred Rapp (born May 11, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri) is a retired American manager and coach in Major League Baseball. A career minor league catcher and a successful skipper in the minors, Rapp had two brief tours of duty as a big league pilot, with the 1977-78 St. Louis Cardinals and the 1984 Cincinnati Reds.
Rapp signed his first playing contract out of high school in 1945 with his hometown Cardinals. A right-handed batter and thrower, he reached the AAA level with the Columbus Red Birds in 1948, but rose no higher. After missing two seasons due to military service during the Korean War, Rapp was released by the Cardinals in 1955 and signed with the independent Charleston Senators club of the American Association. The experience provided him his first managing job, when, at age 27, he succeeded Danny Murtaugh as field boss of the last-place Senators. A catcher-manager, Rapp guided his club to only 19 victories in 59 games that season, and he was strictly a player, or a...
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