“If I’m emperor, the first time, 50 games, the second time, 100 games, and the third strike, you’re out,” he said.

Major League Baseball adopted that penalty structure by the end of the year.

Gerald Francis Coleman was born Sept. 14, 1924, in San Jose, Calif. He attended Lowell High School in San Francisco, playing in an elite league with Bobby Brown and Charlie Silvera, both of whom went on to be parts of a new Yankees era after the war.

Coleman joined the war effort after playing in 83 games in the low minors in 1942. He enlisted in the Navy’s preflight program and was later assigned to the Marines. He once told Michael Kay of the Yankees’ YES Network that the proudest day of his life was April 1, 1944, when he was given his pilot’s wings. He flew 57 missions in the Solomon Islands and the Philippines in a two-seat Dauntless dive bomber.

When the war ended, he returned to the Yankees’ farm system before making it to the big leagues in 1949. In 1952, as the Korean War expanded, Congress pushed to draft or recall major league players like Coleman. Ted Williams was sent to the war, and he gained an even higher profile after crash-landing his burning fighter.

Coleman was also activated.

“Speaking only for myself, the reason seems simple enough,” Coleman told The New York Times in 1952. “For an experienced flier, it takes only about two months to get back in harness. Starting with a youngster who has never flown before, it would take about two years before he would be ready for combat duty.”

Coleman played 11 games early in 1952 and went off to fly 63 missions in a Chance Vought F4U Corsair, a single-seat, carrier-based propeller fighter that had been named “Whistling Death” by Japanese soldiers in World War II because of the eerie noise it made when the wind rushed through its engine vents.

He averted death when a Sabre jet narrowly missed him as they headed for the same runway. Another time, his plane flipped over after the engine quit on a runway during takeoff, with his bomb load still intact, and he was nearly strangled by his helmet straps. He also saw his Marine roommate shot down and later had to confirm the death to the pilot’s wife in person.