Strange Details About Kurt Russell's Actor Father Are Catching Fans Off Guard
“He died 126 times,” said Kurt Russell. The Hollywood A-lister was talking about his own acting-legend dad, Bing Russell. And by “died”, he means on-screen deaths. “His numbers are ridiculous,” the Tango & Cash star told Dartmouth alumni magazine in 2016. “He died more times than I’ll ever work in my life.” So it’s fair to say that Bing’s acting legacy is huge. But the truth is, he was famous for something just as big as his on-screen career. It was pretty wild, too — and it nearly changed the course of his son’s life for good.
Love of baseball
Clearly, a passion for acting is in the Russell blood. But that wasn’t all that fired up the family. Baseball was one of Bing — and Kurt’s — biggest loves, too. Even as a kid growing up in St Petersburg, Florida, Russell Senior was all about the game. As per website Newsner, every spring, the New York Yankees would visit the city for training, and young Bing always made sure to bag himself a front-row seat.
Yankee favorite
Yes, he became a sort of mascot for the Yankees; it led to hm making buddies of the likes of legends such as Joe DiMaggio. That in turn got the baseball-mad lad a gig running errands for the team when they played in New York or in other cities. Rumor has it, according to Newsner, that Bing even got Lou Gehrig’s bat after his final, triumphant home run against the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1939.
Lou Gehrig’s bat
“My grandfather would bring out that bat every time we had people over, and the conversation turned to baseball,” Kurt’s nephew and former major-league player, Matt Franco, told The Post Game website. “He’d pass it around the table, and he’d tell stories about all the guys on those teams,” recalled Franco. The beloved bat was later sold at auction for a whopping $400,000.
Big dreams
Such was Bing’s love for the game that he attended six World Series games, sitting among the players in the dugout. According to Newsner, Yankees legend Lefty Gomez once said, “Bing was the only person who took it harder than I did when I lost.” Kurt’s dad even tried to make it into the big leagues, getting as far as playing for the Carrollton Hornets in the Georgia-Alabama League.
