LaPointe was born on January 8, 1922, in Winooski, Vermont. He attended Winooski High School and then matriculated at the University of Vermont in 1941 after a summer playing independent baseball. He was a three-sport star for the freshman teams in baseball, basketball, and football, earning All-American honors in the fall of 1942 for the last. He joined the military during World War II and served stateside until 1945, undertaking specialized linguistic training at Haverford College and serving three years at Camp Ritchie in Maryland.\n', '

The Philadelphia Phillies signed LaPointe as an amateur free agent in February 1946 and assigned him to the Wilmington Blue Rocks, their class-B affiliate in the Interstate League. He led the 1946 team in at-bats (572), and was second in batting average (.320, behind Ed Murphy) and doubles (34, behind Mickey Rutner). On May 28 of that year, LaPointe was involved in an incident in a game between the Blue Rocks and the Cleveland Indians-affiliated Harrisburg Senators, in which he ran into second baseman Dale Lynch after several players had been ejected for arguing with umpire Max Shindler. LaPointe also played a key role in the season\'s playoffs, where the Blue Rocks faced the Senators again; he hit a two-run home run with the Blue Rocks behind in the bottom of the ninth inning to score Joe Scheldt and give the Rocks the walk-off victory on their way to the 1946 league championship.\n', '

LaPointe made the Phillies\' Opening Day roster in the 1947 season, entering Philadelphia\'s first game of the year as a defensive replacement for starting second baseman Emil Verban. He notched his first major-league hit in his second appearance, a 5–2 loss to the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 23. His first major-league start, run scored, and run batted in (RBI) all came in the same contest, an 11–4 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates on April 30 wherein LaPointe led off for Philadelphia and reached base once, by means of a walk. He played five games for the Phillies in May, including both halves of doubleheaders on May 4 and 8, but the Phillies demoted him to the minor league Baltimore Orioles on May 14. He batted .277 for the Orioles during his minor league stint, hitting five home runs, including one in his first at-bat in Baltimore. On June 2, he tied an International League record with six errors against the Rochester Red Wings —before hitting a walk-off home run in the ninth inning—and followed with four more errors against the Red Wings on June 25.\n', '

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