In our younger days, my brother and I used to play softball for a bar called Shorty’s Tavern. Shorty’s was a great hangout and was run by a friendly ex-boxer named Carmen “Shorty” Persico.  Back then, most of the bar’s regulars were either retirement age like Shorty or college age like my brother, me and our friends.

The two generations would drink Schlitz on tap together for twenty-five cents a glass, watch sporting events and old movies on Shorty’s television, and argue politics, religion and sports. My favorite of Shorty’s older generation was Nick Fusella. He had retired from Sears, was still single, loved to read, philosophize and watch Yankee baseball. My buddies knew Nick could be easily goaded into an argument by telling him that a modern day Yankee was much better at his position than the player who started there for the Bombers back when Nick was our age. You know, Munson was better than Berra, Mantle was better than DiMaggio, etc. etc.

The reason we loved to get into these arguments with Nick was because his passionate rebuttals always included classic, expletive-filled clichés and phrases like, “Munson couldn’t carry Berra’s jock strap,” or Babe Ruth would show Reggie where the hen sh#@ freezes.”

One day we were all in Shorty’s watching a Yankee game and some Yankee starter was pitching pretty good and somebody tried to get Nick going by saying that the guy was the best starter in the team’s history. Nick quietly took a sip of his draft, smacked his lips and stared back at us and said, “You guys obviously never saw the f*@#&ng Indian pitch.” He was referring to the Superchief, Allie Reynolds.

To be accurate, Reynolds was only three-sixteenths Indian but Nick Fusella was right, he was one of the most skilled and effective pitchers in Yankee history. What made him especially valuable to the Yankee teams that won five straight World Championships from 1949 through 1953 was his ability to both start and relieve. Reynolds, Vic Raschi and Eddie Lopat combined to give the Yankees one of the most successful trio of starters on one team in the game’s history.

The Yankees got Reynolds in a post WWII trade with Cleveland by giving up their future Hall of Fame second baseman, Joe Gordon.  He went 131-60 during his eight seasons in Pinstripes, saving 41 games and throwing 27 shutouts along the way. He was 7-2 in the six World Series in which he appeared and collected six championship rings. Reynolds was born on this date in 1917.

This Hall-of-Fame Yankee hurler shares today’s birthday with Superchief. So does this much more recent addition to the Yankees’ starting rotation and this one-time Yankee DH.