Author’s Flashback — Nick Testa: Portrait of a Baseball Success
By Stephen Hanks,
Published on March 29, 1987 in New York Daily News Sunday Magazine
Author’s Note: Additional text added that had been edited out of the original manuscript for space considerations.
Nick Testa is a baseball immortal? Never heard of him? Well, his name is etched firmly in the Bible of the National Pastime — MacMillan’s Baseball Encyclopedia — with the Ruths and the Aarons and the Berras and the Seavers, which only means that he will live forever.
Testa’s stats are listed between those of second baseman Al Tesch, who played eight games for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1915, and Dick Tettelbach, an outfielder for 29 games with the New York Yankees and Washington Senators from 1965–67. In April 1958, Nick Testa, then a 30-year-old journeyman catcher, played his first and last major league game for the San Francisco Giants. Career line in the Baseball Encyclopedia? Games Played: 1. Everything Else: 0.
Nick Testa began his professional baseball career in 1946 at the age of 17 with the Class D Newburgh (New York) Hummingbirds. As a 5-foot-8-inch right-handed hitter, he was one inch taller than another Italian catcher named Yogi Berra. After playing in eight different minor league cities over the next 11 years (batting over .300…
