​3/18/1953- Gene Woodling, NY Yankee baseball player. Closeups. UPI color slide. It’s hard to win five straight World Series rings and still wind up relatively forgotten by baseball history, but somehow, Gene Woodling managed to do that. Then again, he was teammates with Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Phil Rizzuto, and Billy Martin, so perhaps it’s understandable that he didn’t end up with top billing in the history books.Even so, in an era filled with larger-than-life characters, Woodling certainly held his own, and more than that, he was an integral part of the Casey Stengel squad that won seven championships in a decade, including five straight.Gene WoodlingBorn: August 16, 1922 (Akron, Ohio)Died: June 2, 2001Yankees Tenure: 1949-1954Born and raised in Akron, Ohio, Woodling was an exceptional athlete in his youth, playing football and basketball for Akron East High School and training to be a competitive swimmer. In his senior year of high school, his swim coach was tasked with managing the school baseball team, convinced Woodling to grab a glove, and well, the rest is history. Despite playing fewer than 20 games due to the cold Midwestern weather, Cleveland scout Bill Bradley saw more than enough, inking him to a deal ahead of the 1940 season.Woodling steadily climbed the Cleveland farm system, making his Major League debut on September 23, 1943. He remained up for the final few days of the season, slashing .320/.346/.600 with a home run in eight games. Immediately after the season, however, another team came calling, one with a bit more priority than any Major League squad: the United States Navy. While his SABR biography says he enlisted, other sources quote Woodling saying, “I was drafted into the Navy in the fall of 1943.” Either way, Woodling was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago, where he joined a team organized by Mickey Cochrane and which included Bob Feller, Johnny Mize, “Schoolboy” Rowe, and Billy Herman. He spent the next two years in the Pacific, touring with the Navy’s All-Star teams as part of the entertainment for the enlisted sailors and marines, before finishing his service by seeing combat in Saipon.When he returned home in 1946, Woodling rejoined the Cleveland starting lineup. However, for the first time in his life, he struggled, batting just .188 in 61 games. The following year, he was traded to the Pirates, who then traded him to the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League after the 1947 season. While there, he adjusted his stance, hit 22 home runs, 22 doubles, and 13 triples. He caught the attention of Oakland manager Casey Stengel, and when Stengel was hired by the Yankees that winter, he orchestrated a deal to bring Woodling to the Bronx, sending four players and $100,000 to San Francisco for his rights.Woodling spent six seasons in the Bronx, during which time he posted a .285/.388/.434 slash line as part of a “not quite a full platoon” with Hank Baue