Toward the end of his life, relief pitcher Clarence “Cuddles” Marshall of the 1949 World Series champion New York Yankees was asked if he wanted a do-not-resuscitate order. He said it depended and that he was opposed to resuscitation unless it was baseball season.

Barbie Marshall Housel, 67-year-old daughter of “Cuddles” Marshall and a resident of Canyon Country, said her father never bragged about living with baseball legend Joe DiMaggio when the Yankees were on the road. Nor did he brag about being the first pitcher to throw a baseball across home plate in the first game played under artificial lights at Yankee Stadium on May 28, 1946.

Naturally, newspapers compared Cuddles’ good looks to those of romantic swashbuckler Tyrone Power, star of the 1940 film “The Mark of Zorro.” But Housel told The Signal last week at her home in Canyon Country that while her father loved baseball and talked about it often, he wasn’t the type to just talk about his career and fame.

“He would talk about it if it came up,” she said, “but he wasn’t the one bringing it up.”

According to both Housel and her 69-year-old sister Margie Marshall, who was visiting from Simi Valley, her father was a really shy guy.

Shy? With a nickname like “cuddly toy”?

The two daughters told each other loving stories about their father, but they told them together, finishing each other’s sentences as if they were a play.

Take, for example, this very story about how her father got his nickname. There are numerous claims online about where “Cuddles” came from that have gone down in the annals of Major League Baseball. But the real story, according to Marshall, goes like this:

“Basically, he (her father) got a lot of sentimental letters from girls – young girls,” she said.

Housel interjected, adding: “And after the games the girls always surrounded him –”

“And since there were no major league teams on this side of the Mississippi,” Marshall continued, “they took the train everywhere. The press always rode the train to get the news. Well, ‘Clarence’ wasn’t a name that rolled easily off the lips. So they looked for -”

“Everyone on the Yankees had a nickname,” Housel pointed out. “Not everyone knew those nicknames. Well, there was a sportswriter on the train, and – I forget which player – he used to tease my dad and say, ‘Oh, all the girls always want to hug you.’ The sportswriter heard that, and the next day it was in the paper: ‘Hug’ Marshall.”

Many of the newspaper accounts of her father’s career were collected in several photo albums that Housel kept in a special room in her home.

When you enter this room, there is a sign above the door that says “Stadium Entrance.” Inside, it’s all about baseball. Well, all baseball, except for one wall dedicated to the University of Southern California, their father’s favorite university. Not that he attended USC, because, his daughters said, he went straight to baseball. But both Housel and Marshall went to USC. And both continue to attend USC football games as spectators, just as their father did when he was alive.

Her father was born on April 28, 1925, in Bellingham, Washington. He played major league baseball from 1946 to 1950 and finished his career with the St. Louis Browns, now the Baltimore Orioles. He served in the U.S. Army and later played baseball in other leagues. In 1953, he suffered a hand injury – his throwing hand – in a traffic accident and gave up baseball, eventually entering the aerospace industry in Southern California.

But before that, on June 30, 1951, he married Margaret Suzow, and the couple started a family a few years later with the birth of Housel and Marshall. The girls’ mother died in 1976, and a few years later their father moved to Saugus.

According to Housel, sports played a big role in his childhood.

“He loved baseball,” she said. “He talked about baseball, he watched baseball, but he watched all sports. He was a real sports fanatic.”

She added that her father taught her how to make underhand and overhand throws and how to swing a bat. Housel played a lot of softball growing up. Marshall said her father taught her about sports indirectly by commentating on the games on television. Her mother was often amazed when she heard Marshall speak with so much knowledge about the games.

Housel became a financial analyst and Marshall became a real estate agent. Both are now retired, but Marshall still holds a valid real estate license. But even as adults, sports played a big part in their lives. They regularly followed their favorite teams with their father and, of course, went to USC football games with him.

Her love for USC was evident on Housel’s USC wall, which was filled with signed pictures, shadow boxes of USC trophies and figurines, hats, signs and cheerleading pom-poms. The rest of the room is home to all the baseball memorabilia her father had during his lifetime, although he never unpacked it for everyone to see. It was stashed in steamer trunks.

“We wanted to do this at his house,” Housel said, “but he suffered several strokes and could no longer walk up the stairs. Eventually he had to move in here for a while,” she said, referring to her own home. “My son was in this room and he (her father) was in the other room.”

But Housel’s father’s health only continued to deteriorate, and he eventually had to move into a nursing home in Saugus with 24-hour care. He spent the rest of his life there and would never see the room his daughters wanted to create for him, a room filled with his favorite things, a room that paid tribute to him. Marshall insisted, however, that her father saw the room in his mind.

“After he died,” Housel said, “I thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to do it.’ And I just started taking out all of his stuff and going through it. I kept all of his balls in new cases.”

Housel showed a wall of balls, all signed by baseball legends of the past. One ball was signed by her father’s teammates on the 1949 World Series champion New York Yankees. The room also featured a baseball bat behind glass with the signatures of the same team.

His two baseball gloves were there too. Yes, he only had two gloves during his entire professional career. And only one pair of cleats, which hung on a wall in the room. They seemed pretty small for a 6’3″ man.

Housel and Marshall both walked around the room, pointing at items. Each piece of their father’s story brought back a fond memory and a cherished anecdote, like the story that came after Housel showed her father’s Seattle Rainiers jersey. After her father graduated from Bellingham High School in Bellingham, Washington in 1943, he signed with the Rainiers, who were then playing in the minor leagues.

But he knew he would play in the major leagues sooner or later, Housel said. He had been telling his parents he would do that since he was about 10 or 11 years old.

“He said, ‘I’m going to be in the World Series with the Yankees one day and you two (his mother and father) are going to be there,'” Housel recalled.

Her father had predicted it correctly. Housel said both of her father’s parents were at the 1949 World Series.

In addition to the signed baseball and bat and other items, Housel also owned a framed illustration of the 1949 World Series from a 50th anniversary event that included signatures of living players from that Yankees team as well as signatures of living players from their opponent in the series, the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Other decorations in the room were purchased by Housel himself, such as Yankees pillows and blankets and a decorative baseball-themed ceiling border that surrounds the room. Two of the walls in the room were painted Yankee “away gray,” accented by a wall of Yankee navy blue. Of course, the USC wall was painted Trojan Red, or as the school called it, Cardinal Red.

Then there were those scrapbooks filled with pictures and newspaper clippings from their father’s career. Neither he nor his daughters collected the contents of the books themselves. Fans put them together, his daughters said, and those fans gave them to him while he was alive.

And as the two women continued to talk about their father, neither of them had tears in their eyes. They told each story about him with great joy and showed off items from their father’s past with pride and enthusiasm.

The only memorabilia missing from the room’s collection was her father’s Yankees uniform. His two daughters buried him in it after he died on Dec. 14, 2007, at age 82. However, Housel does own his World Series ring, which she dug out to share with others. She doesn’t display it in the baseball room. It stays elsewhere for safekeeping.