Near the end of his life, relief pitcher Clarence “Cuddles” Marshall of the 1949 world-champion New York Yankees was asked if he wanted a do-not-resuscitate order. He said it all depended, saying he was against CPR unless it was, of course, baseball season.
Canyon Country resident Barbie Marshall Housel, the 67-year-old daughter of “Cuddles” Marshall, said her dad never flaunted the fact that he roomed with baseball legend Joe DiMaggio when the Yankees were on the road. Nor did he brag about being the first pitcher to throw a baseball over home plate in the first game under artificial lights at Yankee Stadium on May 28, 1946.
Sure, the newspapers used to compare Cuddles’ good looks with those of romantic swashbuckler Tyrone Power, star of the 1940 film “The Mark of Zorro.” But, Housel told The Signal in her Canyon Country home last week, even though her dad loved baseball and often talked about it, he wasn’t one to just tell you about his career and celebrity.
“He would talk about it if it was brought up,” she said, “but he was not the one to bring it up.”
According to both Housel and her 69-year-old sister, Margie Marshall, who was visiting from Simi Valley, their dad was really a shy guy.
Shy? With a nickname like “Cuddles”?
The two daughters fondly shared stories about their dad, but they’d tell them together, finishing each other’s sentences as if they were an act.
Take, for example, that very story about how their dad got his nickname. A number of claims on the internet about where “Cuddles” came from have gone down in the annals of Major League Baseball lore. However, the real story, Marshall said, goes like this:
“Basically, he (their dad) would get a lot of mushy letters from girls — young girls,” she said.
Housel jumped in, adding, “And the girls used to surround him after the games —”
“And since there were no major league teams this side of the Mississippi,” Marshall continued, “they used to take trains everywhere. The press would always go on the train rides to get scoops. Well, ‘Clarence’ was not a name that rolled off your tongue. So, they were looking for —”
“Everyone on the Yankees had a nickname,” Housel pointed out. “Not everyone knew what those nicknames were. Well, there was a sportswriter on the train, and — I forget which player — but he used to tease my dad and say, ‘Oh, all the girls always want to cuddle you.’ The sportswriter heard that, and the next day, in the paper, there it was: ‘Cuddles’ Marshall.”
Many of the newspaper stories from their dad’s career were collected in several photo albums that Housel had in a special room of her home.
As you walk into that room, a sign hangs over the doorway that reads, “Stadium entrance.” Inside, it’s all baseball. Well, all baseball except for one wall that’s dedicated to the University of Southern California, her dad’s favorite university. Not that he attended USC, because, his daughters said, he went straight into baseball. But both Housel and Marshall went to USC. And both continue to go to USC football games as spectators, just like their dad used to do when he was alive.
Their dad was born on April 28, 1925, in Bellingham, Washington. He was a major-league baseball player from 1946 to 1950, ending his career with the St. Louis Browns, now the Baltimore Orioles. He served in the United States Army and later played baseball in other leagues. In 1953, he suffered a hand injury in a traffic collision — his throwing hand — and he left baseball and eventually got into aerospace in Southern California.
But before that, on June 30, 1951, he married Margaret Zuzow, and the couple started a family with the birth of Housel and Marshall a few years later. The girls’ mom died in 1976, and then a few years after that their dad moved to Saugus.
According to Housel, sports was a big part of the household growing up.
“He loved baseball,” she said. “He talked baseball, he watched baseball, but he watched all sports. He was such a sports fanatic.”
She added that her dad taught her how to pitch underhand and overhand and how to swing a bat. Housel played a lot of softball growing up. Marshall said her dad indirectly taught her about sports when he’d comment on the games on TV. Their mom was often in awe when she heard Marshall talk about the games with such knowledge.
Housel would become a financial analyst and Marshall a Realtor. Both have since retired, but Marshall still has an active real estate license. Even as adults, though, sports played a big part in their lives, regularly following their favorite teams with their dad and, of course, attending USC football games with him.
Their love of USC was on full display with Housel’s USC wall, filled with autographed pictures, shadow boxes containing USC cups and figures, hats, signs and cheerleader pom-poms. The rest of the room presents all baseball memorabilia that had previously been with their dad when he was alive, even though he never had it all out for anyone to see. It had been packed away in steamer trunks.
“We were going to do this at his place,” Housel said, “but he suffered some strokes and he couldn’t walk up the stairs anymore. He ended up having to move in here for a while,” she said, referring to her own home. “My son was in this room, and he (her dad) was in the other room.”
But Housel’s dad’s health only got worse, and he ultimately had to move into a senior home in Saugus with 24-hour care. He’d live the rest of his days there and would never get to see the room that his daughters wanted to make for him, a room of his favorite things, a room that paid tribute to him. Though, Marshall insisted that her dad has seen the room in spirit.
“After he passed away,” Housel said, “I thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to do it.’ And I just started pulling out all of his stuff and going through it. I got all new cases for all of his baseballs.”
Housel showed off a wall of baseballs, each signed by baseball legends of the past. One ball was signed by her dad’s fellow teammates from the 1949 world-champion New York Yankees. The room also displayed a baseball bat behind glass with that same team’s signatures on it.
His two baseball gloves were there, too. Yes, he had just two gloves throughout his professional career. And only one pair of cleats, which were hung on a wall in the room. They seemed pretty small for a man who was 6 feet, 3 inches tall.
Both Housel and Marshall went through the room, pointing out items, each piece of their dad’s history prompting a fond memory and cherished anecdote, like the story that came after Housel showed off her dad’s Seattle Rainiers jersey. After her dad graduated in 1943 from Bellingham High School in Bellingham, Washington, he signed with the then minor league Rainiers.
But he knew he’d play in the major leagues sooner or later, Housel said. He’d been telling his parents he would do so since he was about 10 or 11 years old.
“He said, ‘I’ll be with the Yankees in the World Series one day, and you both (his mom and dad) will be there,’” Housel recalled.
Her dad predicted it accurately. Housel said both of her dad’s parents were there during that 1949 World Series.
In addition to the signed baseball and baseball bat, among other items, Housel also had a framed 1949 World Series illustration from a 50th-anniversary event that included signatures of surviving players from that Yankees team and signatures of surviving players from their opponent in the series, the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Other decor in the room Housel bought herself, like Yankees pillows and blankets, and a baseball-themed decorative ceiling border that wrapped the room. Two of the walls in the room were painted Yankee “away gray,” accented by a Yankee navy blue wall. Of course, the USC wall was painted Trojan red, or as the school has called it, cardinal.
Then there were those scrapbooks containing pictures and newspaper clippings from their dad’s career. He didn’t collect the contents of the books himself, nor did his daughters. Fans put them together, his daughters said, and those fans presented them to him when he was alive.
And as the two women continued to speak about their dad, neither got teary-eyed. They retold each story about him with great joy, showing items from their dad’s past with pride and enthusiasm.
The one piece of memorabilia that was missing from the collection in the room was their dad’s Yankees uniform. His two daughters buried him in it after he died on Dec. 14, 2007, when he was 82 years old. However, Housel does have his World Series ring, which she brought out to share. She doesn’t display that in the baseball room. That stays somewhere else for safe keeping.
