Van Lingle Mungo

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Van Lingle Mungo (June 8, 1911 - February 12, 1985) was a Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher known for his long career with the Dodgers team, 1931 - 1941, then based at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York. At the end of his baseball career, he played with the Giants team, then based at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, in 1942, 1943, and 1945. The Dodgers and Giants are historic sports rivals.

Mungo's early career was successful, averaging 16 wins per season from 1932 through 1936 and leading the National League in strikeouts with 238 in 1936. He was named to the All-Star team in 1934, 1936, and 1937. However, following an arm injury in 1937, he only won 13 Major League games over the next six seasons. He completed his Major League career with a 120-115 won-lost record over 2113 innings pitched, with a 3.47 earned run average.

Stories and anecdotes about Mungo tend to emphasize his reputation for combativeness, including episodes of drinking and fighting. The most widely told story concerns a visit to Cuba where supposedly Mungo was caught in a sexually compromising position with a married woman by her husband, who was punched in the eye by Mungo, leading the husband to attack Mungo with a butcher knife or machete, requiring Dodgers executive Babe Hamberger to smuggle Mungo in a laundry cart to a seaplane waiting off a wharf in order to escape the country.

Mungo was largely forgotten after he ceased to play baseball after 1945, but was brought back into considerable notoriety in 1969 because of the use of his prosodic name as the title and opening words of a novelty song by Dave Frishberg. The song lyrics consist entirely of the names of baseball players of the 1940s, strung together with a bossa nova beat, but Mungo is the only player mentioned more than once and his name functions as a kind of refrain. According to Frishberg, The Dick Cavett Show arranged to have him sing the song to Mungo in person, and Mungo asked him backstage if there would ever be any financial remuneration for the use of his name in the song. Ironically, today Mungo is remembered primarily because of the song.

Mungo's place of birth was Pageland, South Carolina, where he also died. During his retirement in Pageland, he owned and operated the Ball Theatre until it burned down in the fifties. During its time, the theatre played such films as The Outlaw, starring Jane Russell, and was a popular entertainment center for the town. Since this was before integration. V.L. Mungo provided balcony seating for the African American population, then referred to as 'colored'. This was an innovation, since the other small movie theatre in town was segregated.

The Sporting News reported on September 13, 1961, that Van Mungo's son, Ernie Mungo, was signed as a player by the Washington Senators organization.