Blond, powerful, and oozing potential, Fred Van Dusen looked like a callow Mickey Mantle when the Phillies signed him in August 1955, a week after his 18th birthday.
In a memorably brief career, Van Dusen learned baseball's vices but never its secrets to success. Now, if anyone remembers him at all, it's as a baseball bust who became a historical footnote.
Yet among the game's legion of spectacular flameouts, Van Dusen remains an oddity. The failures and foibles that doomed this phenom ultimately did not define him. The New York City native, who died in June at 80, led a long, happy, and successful life, a rarity among those whose baseball dreams are crushed so emphatically.