Glenn Mickens

Glenn Roger Mickens

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 0", Weight 175 lb.
• School University of California, Los Angeles
• High School John C. Fremont High School
• Debut July 19, 1953
• Final Game July 30, 1953
• Born July 26, 1930 in Wilmar, CA USA
• Died July 9, 2019 in Kapaa, HI USA

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Biographical Information

Glenn Mickens pitched four games for the supremely successful Brooklyn Dodgers of 1953, who won 105 games. All of the pitchers on the staff who appeared in more than 10 games had winning records that year, with six of them winning at least two-thirds of their games. It was a tough team on which to win a spot on the pitching staff.

Mickens had just come out of UCLA, where he attended from 1949 to 1953. He pitched for the Montreal Royals from 1953-1956, at a time when Don Drysdale and Tommy Lasorda also pitched there.

Mickens became one of the first former major league players to play in Japan, going there in 1959 and playing for five seasons. Six years earlier, Leo Kiely had been the first ex-MLB player to play in Nippon Pro Baseball. One observer (baseballguru.com) names Mickens to his "all-time foreign-born team" in Japanese baseball.

Mickens was interviewed for, and his comments appear in, Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game (Robert K. Fitts, 2005).

After his playing days, he coached baseball for many years at UCLA. His counterpart at USC, Rod Dedeaux, had appeared in only two games in the major leagues, also with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In his later years, he moved to Hawaii. That's where he passed away in 2019, at the age of 88.