Bert Shepard-Baseball Hero

Bert Shepard, the only player to appear in a major league game with an artificial leg, died of natural causes over the weekend. He was 12 days short of his 88th birthday.

Shepard was a fighter pilot during WWII. His Lockheed P-38J Lightning was shot down near Ludwigslust, east of Hamburg on May, 21 1944.

First Lieutenant Ladislaus Loidl, a physician in the German Luftwaffe, rescued Shepard. From Baseball In Wartime.

Loidl, with the aid of two armed soldiers, drove the farmers away and checked to see if the pilot was still alive. “He was unconscious, his right leg being smashed, and he bled from a deep wound on his head,” recalled Loidl in 1993. “I recognized that the man could be saved only with an urgent operation. My emergency hospital was not equipped for that. So I drove the wounded man to the local hospital that was headed by a colonel. When he refused to admit the ‘terror flyer’ as he called him, I telephoned the general on duty at the Reich’s Air Ministry in Berlin and reported the case. Whereupon the general called the colonel and settled the matter. Lieutenant Shepard was admitted and operated on. A few days later I inquired about his condition and was told that he was doing fine.”

Shepard’s leg was amputated below the knee but, he started to play catch while at a German prison camp. His goal was to play baseball again.

After a stay a Walter Reed he tried out for the Washington Senators. The Sens hired him as a pitching coach. On August, 5th 1945, during a string of five double headers, he was called on as a relief pitcher, going 5 1/3 innings, giving up three hits and one run. It was his only Major League appearance but he pitched and coached in the Minors until 1954. He went on to work as a safety engineer for I.B.M. and Hughes Aircraft.

In 1993 Shepard was reunited with Dr. Loidl and the event was featured on an episode of This Week In Baseball.