The World Series was the perfect stage for Bauer to shine on. In the final game of the 1951 Series against the New York Giants, Bauer’s bases-loaded triple broke a 1-1 tie to give the Yankees a 4-1 lead. After the Giants narrowed the margin to 4-3 in the ninth, with the tying run on second base, Bauer made a sliding catch of a sinking line drive for the last out. He hit safely in a record seventeen consecutive World Series games — all seven in the 1956 and 1957 classics and the first three games in 1958. After the Milwaukee Braves’ Warren Spahn ended his streak in Game Four, he homered off Spahn in the sixth game. It was his fourth home run in that Series, a record he shared at the time with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Duke Snider.

In January 1942, seven years before he reached the Yankees, Bauer enlisted in the Marine Corps and took basic training at Mare Island, California, where he also played for the camp baseball team. But the easy life came to an abrupt halt. In a 1964 interview with “Time,” Bauer explained his earliest days in the Marine Corp. “One morning,” Bauer told the reporter, “This sergeant came up to me and said, ‘Why don’t you volunteer for the Raider battalion?’ I said okay. But the first thing they told me was, ‘You’ve got to swim a mile with a full pack on your back.’ I said, ‘Hell, I can’t even swim,’ and they turned me down. I told the sergeant what happened. He said, ‘You gutless SOB, go back down there.’ So, I told them I knew how to swim.”

Gary Bedingfield’s “Baseball in Wartime” website has the full account of Bauer’s World War II experience. Bauer came down with malaria almost as soon as he landed in the South Pacific. “My weight dropped from 190 pounds to 160 pounds,” he said. “I was eating atabrine tablets like candy.” Temporarily recovered— over the next four years, Bauer had twenty-four malarial attacks— he fought on New Georgia and was hit in the back by shrapnel in Guam. Next came Emirau Island off New Guinea, then Okinawa. Sixty-four men were in Platoon Sergeant Bauer’s landing group on Okinawa; six got out alive. Hank himself was wounded again on June 4, 1945. “I saw this reflection of sunshine on something coming down. It was an artillery shell, and it hit right behind me.” A piece of shrapnel tore a jagged hole in Bauer’s left thigh. Also wounded that day was Richard C. Goss, who was serving with Bauer. “There goes my baseball career,” Bauer told Goss as they were evacuated together. Bauer’s part in the war was over —after 32 months of combat, eleven campaign ribbons, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. Bauer carried bits of shrapnel in his back for the rest of his life.

After four seasons in the minors where he averaged .303, the Yankees called Bauer up in September 1948. Batting third between Tommy Henrich and Joe DiMaggio, Bauer singled in his first three plate appearances. When Casey Stengel took over the management duties in 1949, Bauer flourished and because of his hard-nosed play, became “the Ol’ Perfessor’s” favorite. Little wonder. During the Yankees’ five-year championship streak from 1949 to 1953, Bauer batted .298 with an OPS over .800. In 1953, Stengel installed Bauer in the leadoff spot; his on-base percentage topped .350 for his first ten full seasons. He was the American League’s starting right fielder in the 1952, 1953 and 1954 All-Star Games. The Yanks won nine pennants and seven World Series in Bauer’s first ten full years.

Bauer’s most infamous moment came off the field at Billy Martin’s May 15, 1957 birthday party celebrated at the Copacabana nightclub where Sammy Davis Jr. was performing. When a group of drunken bowlers shouted racial slurs at the black entertainer, Bauer told them to shut up. The loudest drunk bowler wound up on a bathroom floor with a broken nose and bloody face. He said Bauer had slugged him, but Bauer insisted, “I know it was not me, and it was not Billy Martin.” The truth remained a mystery for six decades, until a former Copa bouncer, 88-year-old Joey Silvestri, claimed he had thrown the punches.

As Bauer’s productivity diminished, in 1959 he was traded to the Kansas City Athletics for another right fielder, Roger Maris. Two years later, owner Charles O. Finley named Bauer as his new Manager mid-game. After two unsuccessful seasons piloting a talentless squad, Bauer quit the Royals and landed a job as the Baltimore Orioles coach. By 1964, Bauer took over as the Orioles skipper and inherited a star-studded cast that eventually included sluggers Boog Powell, Frank and Brooks Robinson, and Curt Belfry, as well as hurlers Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, and Wally Bunker. The Orioles won the pennant going away and swept the Los Angeles Dodgers, anchored by Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, in the World Series. Sore arms and injuries took their toll on the Orioles which led to Bauer’s dismissal and Earl Weaver’s ascension. Bauer had one more managing shot, a short-lived stint under Finley’s Oakland A’s firm hand.

After failing to get another MLB offer, Bauer spent a year managing the Class A Norfolk Tides, then scouted for the Yankees, owned a liquor store, did baseball card shows, and played golf—poorly. About golf, Bauer said “Only time I ever hit to right field in my life was on that golf course.”

At age 84, Bauer passed away from lung cancer. Looking back on his career, Bauer admitted that he wasn’t blessed with Mantle’s or the Robinsons’ natural talent, but he always “worked like hell.”