Results tagged ‘ waite hoyt ’
September 9 – Happy Birthday Waite Hoyt
Today’s Pinstripe Birthdays Blog celebrant is the New York Yankee Hall of Fame pitcher, Waite Hoyt, born in Brooklyn, NY, September 9, 1899.
Another gift from the Red Sox, the Yankees obtained this right-hander in 1920 in a seven- player deal a year after they purchased Babe Ruth from Boston. The Yankees also were able to steal Hall of Fame hurlers, Herb Pennock and Red Ruffing and five-time 20-game winner Carl Mays from the Red Sox during the same ten-year period.
In his very first season in Pinstripes, Hoyt won nineteen regular season games and then pitched three complete games against the Giants in the 1921 World Series winning two and not allowing an earned run in any of them. He pitched for New York for ten seasons, winning 157 games, which places him in ninth place on the Yankees All-Time victories list. Hoyt pitched a total of twenty seasons in the big leagues including stints with all three of the New York City teams, retiring in 1938. He then became the first ex big-leaguer to make the move into the broadcast booth. He spent 21 years doing Reds’ games and became an institution in Cincinnati.
A huge drinker who beat the habit, the colorful Hoyt was also a great storyteller and had plenty of stories to tell. During the off-season he worked in both a funeral parlor and in Vaudeville. He had one of the closest relationships with the great Ruth of any ballplayer and his stories about the Bambino were considered classics. Hoyt’s ability to entertain Reds’ fans with tales of his past during rain delays were so entertaining, recordings of the sessions became best-selling records. Hoyt died in 1984.
Both this former Yankee outfielder and this one-time Yankee manager share Hoyt’s September 9th birthday.
September 9 – Happy Birthday Jerry Mumphrey
Jerry Mumphrey was a speedy, singles-hitting outfielder with the Cardinals during the first six years of his big league career. He got traded to San Diego in 1980 and had his best big league season for Manager Jerry Coleman’s Padres, hitting .298 and stealing 52 bases for a team that led the NL in thefts that season. George Steinbrenner had become convinced that his Yankee team needed to employ more of a small-ball strategy so his front office engineered a six-player swap that exchanged New York’s 1980 starting center-fielder, Ruppert Jones for Mumphrey. Mumphrey hit .307 for the Yankees in the strike shortened season of 1981 but played poorly in the postseason. In fact, his failure to hit got him benched for the fourth game of that year’s Fall Classic with the Yankees holding a two games to one lead over LA. With New York leading by three runs, Manager Bob Lemon had the opportunity to insert Jerry Mumphrey in center when Bobby Brown pinch ran for Oscar Gamble late in the game. Instead, Lemon put Brown out there and he misplayed a ball that led to three Dodger runs and an eventual Yankee defeat that changed the momentum of the Series to the Dodgers’ favor. Jerry had his best season in pinstripes in 1982, leading the team with a .300 batting average and driving in what was then his career high of 68 runs. But when he slumped at the plate during the first half of 1983, the Yankees sent him to Houston for the Astros’ center fielder, Omar Moreno. Mumphrey finished his fifteen year big league career with two good years in Houston and three more with the Cubs.
This former Yankee pitcher and this one-time Yankee manager both share Mumphrey’s September 9th birthday.
May 24 – A Tree grew in Brooklyn and so did some great Yankees
With the exception of starting pitcher, catching is baseball’s most physically demanding position. That’s true today and it was true when the Yankees, then known as the Highlanders, played their first game in the Big Apple during the first decade of the twentieth century. Even back then, most teams carried backup catchers on their roster. The only member of the Yankee’s all-time roster to celebrate his birthday on this date was Fred Jacklitsch, a Brooklyn-born back-up catcher who played close to 500 games in the big leagues but only one of them in a New York uniform and that was during the 1905 season. Jacklitsch may have been the only Yankee born on May 24th but he’s one of several to have been born in Brooklyn. Here’s my list of the five most famous Brooklyn natives to have ever worn the pinstripes:
1 – Phil Rizzuto
2 – Waite Hoyt
3 – Wee Willie Keeler
4 – Joe Torre
5 – Joe Pepitone
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