Career WAR, -0.1

Most every day I check on eBay for White Sox photos, especially from the 1930s and ’40s. I like to imagine my father as a young man rooting for his favorite baseball team. Pictures give faces to names. Last week, I came across what looks to be a “real photo postcard,” autographed by the player shown. That would be Val Heim, who in his only major-league season of 1942 batted .200, with nine hits in 45 at-bats with 7 RBIs. The 21-year old Heim was a Wisconsin native playing in the Sox system since 1940. Maybe my father took notice of Heim, maybe not. Ed Bukowski turned 29 in August 1942; earlier that month, he’d become a father for the first time. He was also in a kind of limbo with the draft during WW II—married, not particularly young or educated (seventh grade), with a child on the way. The way he told the story, the day he went down to the draft board, they changed the eligibility rules, and he wasn’t called. So, instead of risking life and limb for his country over the next two to four years, my dad took a job with the Chicago Fire Department. He spent the next thirty-five years running in and out of burning buildings, instead. It was Heim who ended up serving; he joined the Navy following the ’42 season. According to his online obituary, early on Heim did what ballplayers often did in the service, play ball, but he also spent two years in the Pacific working with the Seabees, the Navy’s construction arm. A case of rheumatic fever in 1945 seems to have taken a toll on Heim’s baseball career; he played in the minors for another two years but never made it back to the majors. The opportunity to be a player-manager for a semi-pro team brought him to Nebraska, where he spent the rest of his life. He worked for a cement company; had a farm where he raised cattle; and lived to the age of 99 before dying in November of 2019. Heim had considerably more descendants than I do fingers and toes. The cake for his 99th birthday featured a period White Sox logo in frosting. Another obituary noted that the Sox invited Heim to spring training into his 90s. Val Heim earned himself a WAR rating of -0.1. I can only imagine what it would’ve been for Ed Bukowski, with even fewer stats that matter.