Lonny Frey Passes Away

Posted by Steve L. on September 18th, 2009 · Comments (2)

Lonny Frey, who played 14 seasons in the major leagues and in three All-Star games, died Sunday, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Frey, the oldest surviving Pacific Coast League baseball player and the second-oldest major-leaguer, was 99.

Frey, whose full name was Linus Reinhard Frey, finished his professional career with the Seattle Rainiers in 1950, then moved his family from St. Louis to Seattle after that season. The family settled in Bellevue, then Frey and his wife, Mary, moved to Snohomish in the late 1960s.

When Mary Frey died in 1982, Frey moved to Coeur d’Alene.

“He was a warm, very down-to-earth guy,” said Pacific Coast League historian Dave Eskenazi. “He shared a number of entertaining baseball anecdotes, mainly about his old teams and teammates. I remember him telling me that Ernie Lombardi hit the ball harder than anyone else he’d seen, and he’d seen them all.

“He was modest, but rightly proud of his terrific major-league career.”

For more on Frey, see this at Misc. Baseball (Gathering Assorted Items of Baseball History and Trivia).

This is just 8 months after Bill Werber’s death.

Tommy Henrich is now on the clock…