Should The Yankees Retire Gil McDougald's Uniform Number?
Should The Yankees Retire Gil McDougald's Uniform Number?
ALSO: BABY BIRDS ARE SHOWING MATURITY BEYOND THEIR YEARS
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
All-Star closer Josh Hader has been a bust since joining the Padres in a surprise Aug. 1 swap from the payroll-purging Brewers. Hader, a 28-year-old lefty who throws heat, went 1-1 with a blown save and a 16.20 ERA in his first 3.1 innings pitched since joining the Padres and lost his late-inning job — at least temporarily . . .
Switch-hitting slugger Josh Bell posted All-Star caliber numbers prior to his trade from the Nationals to the Padres but hit just .121 in his first 16 games with the Pads before recapturing the stroke he left in Washington . . .
The first three pitchers with 15 wins this year were Justin Verlander, Tony Gonsolin, and Kyle Wright . . .
Orioles assistant pitching coach Darren Holmes walked over to the stands during a game to watch the official engagement of his daughter Courtney . . .
The father of Boston manager Alex Cora founded the Little League team in his hometown in Puerto Rico . . .
Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde has met five presidents, including George W. Bush at the Little League Classic last Sunday . . .
By the time the Braves play the Mets again, they’ll probably have Ozzie Albies at second base, Vaughn Grissom in left field, and Mike Soroka on the mound . . .
Mets closer Edwin Diaz has emerged as a serious NL Cy Young Award contender.
Leading Off
The Most Forgotten Yankee?
If they must retire another number, let it be Gil McDougald’s.
By Jeff Kallman
When Paul O’Neill stood in Yankee Stadium for the retirement of his uniform number 21 last Sunday afternoon, he gestured to five former teammates at his side—Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera plus Tino Martinez, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Bernie Williams—and spoke of winning.
“The fans remember the teams that win,” the former right fielder now a Yankee commentator for their YES Network said. “And we won a lot.” They’ve also retired a lot of uniform numbers. To be precise, 22 of them. (If you’re scoring at home, they haven’t retired number 22. Yet.)
Few baseball organizations are as conscious of their own history as the Yankees. Few fans are as steeped in that history as Yankee fans. But no one more than the Yankees have made the number retirement almost meaningless. The time may not be too distant when you see mostly triple-digit numbers on Yankee backs.
If O’Neill wanted to say (accurately) the fans remember the teams that win, there was a generation of Yankees who won a third more than O’Neill’s generation. Those were the teams of Casey Stengel on the bridge, Hall of Famer Yogi Berra behind the plate, Hall of Famer Whitey Ford on the mound, and Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle launching baseballs into the next state when not fighting his body and his demons.
They were also the teams of maybe the most forgotten but truly most valuable Yankee other than Berra, the arguable greatest team player of the 20th Century in any sport. This forgotten Yankee wore number 12 his entire Yankee career. The very thing that made him the second-most valuable team-play asset behind Yogi might be the very thing that kept him from being a star, never mind a Hall of Famer.
Gil McDougald was a genuine Yankee jack of all trades. He was a fine hitter (including one American League leadership in triples), an American League Rookie of the Year (1951, though Hall of Famer Minnie Miñoso should have won the award), but most of all a defensive virtuoso at the three toughest positions in the infield.
Stop laughing. McDougald finished his career in double figures on the positive side for defensive runs above his league average at all three. (Second base: +46. Shortstop: +16. Third base: +13.) “McDougald . . . was versatile,” wrote Stengel biographer Robert W. Creamer.
He was Stengel’s third baseman, second baseman, and shortstop in different seasons, and he led the league in making double plays at each position. Of all the players Stengel managed in New York, none better exemplified the kind of team he was trying to develop than the talented, professional McDougald.
O’Neill played for five Yankee pennant winners and won four World Series rings out of the five. McDougald played for eight Yankee pennant winners—including the final three of Stengel’s unprecedented five straight as a manager—and won five Series rings.
For all his versatility, McDougald wasn’t exactly one of the Stengel Yankees’ big stars, which probably suited the quiet man from San Francisco just fine. But he may also get too-short shrift because of a Cleveland pitching legend named Herb Score.
To this day there are probably people who believe McDougald destroyed Score’s promising career with a line drive right back to the box and off Score’s face in 1957. Not quite. Score returned in 1958 and, took a short spell to find his proper form again. Once he did, alas, he did he had the misfortune to blow his elbow out pitching on a damp night.
That—not the McDougald liner—turned Score from comer to mediocre. As it happens, while McDougald was blocked from visiting Score in the hospital, no less than Score’s mother told Score’s sister, “You need to go down to the church and say your prayers for Herb, but more than that to pray for Gil McDougald. That man is a hurting man.”
Little did she know. Two years earlier, McDougald suffered a similar injury in spring training. Chatting with a Yankee coach, McDougald took a batting practise line drive behind an ear. (“The blow had broken a hearing tube,” he once said) The injury would leave McDougald completely deaf by the mid-1970s.
That story would be told by New York Times sportswriter Ira Berkow in 1994, in “McDougald, Once a Quiet Yankee Star, Now Lives in a Quiet World.” Not long after, as McDougald himself would say through happy tears, “They’ve turned the music back on”: the former infielder received a cochlear implant that restored his hearing for the final fifteen years of his life. (He died at 82 in 2010.)
Berkow’s essay plus his happy followup, “For McDougald, the Miracle of Sound,” were republished in the Berkow anthology Summers in the Bronx: Attila the Hun and Other Yankee Stories.
Long before, after the heartbreak of the 1960 World Series loss and the dismissal of Stengel, the Yankees left McDougald open to the first American League expansion draft. The incoming Los Angeles Angels selected him, but McDougald chose to retire, instead. At 32.
It’s not that I want to encourage further Yankee uniform retirements to deepen the lack of meaning in the honour. But retiring number 12 for McDougald wouldn’t be truly meaningless. Role player? McDougald was a third of the cast for the price of one and enhanced, not eroded the scenes.
“The way that Stengel used him,” Bill James wrote in due course (in The New Historical Baseball Abstract) “kept him from becoming a star . . . But then, Gil McDougald wasn’t born to be a star. He was born to be a Yankee.” A dirty job, but somebody had to do it.
Jeff Kallman is an IBWAA Life Member who writes Throneberry Fields Forever. He has written for the Society for American Baseball Research, The Hardball Times, Sports-Central, and other publications. He has lived in Las Vegas since 2007, where he plays the guitar and writes music when not writing baseball. He remains a Met fan since the day they were born.
Cleaning Up
Bad-News Birds Wreak Havoc With Rivals In American League East
By Dan Schlossberg
Joaquin Andujar was right.
Asked for a one-word description of baseball, he said, “Youneverknow.”
The 2022 Baltimore Orioles are living proof.
They have a no-name manager (Brandon Hyde), a bunch of kids nobody ever heard of, and a reputation for anchoring the depths of the division for so long that even the most experienced prognosticators picked them to retain their role as bottom-feeders.
But hey, not so fast.
Even after trading their top slugger (Trey Mancini) and leading closer (Jorge Lopez), the O’s are far from pushovers. A week ago tonight, for example, they pounded the far more experienced Boston Red Sox, 15-10, in a game that featured 37 hits. Five of those were Oriole homers.
“We don’t have any boring wins,” said relief pitcher Joey Krehbiel. “We’re getting hits when we’re supposed to, getting strikeouts when we’re supposed to. It’s never just another win. It’s always something exciting, which makes it very fun to watch.”
Although the Baby Birds nearly landed on the wrong side of no-hitters twice this month, they avoided that embarrassment with timely shots. They are a team of kids that doesn’t take no for an answer.
“It kind of reminds me of 1966,” said one-time Oriole hero Boog Powell, who keeps up with the O’s from his home in Key West, Florida. “A couple of years ago, I was sitting there watching and wondering what they were doing. Then all of a sudden, everything came together.”
After three straight 100-loss seasons, this year’s O’s started as if they would produce more of the same. But then the kids got a chance.
In their 15-10 win over the Red Sox, the Birds got big contributions from Cedric Mullins, Anthony Santander, Ryan Mountcastle, Adley Rutschman, and Jorge Mateo, among others.
It was the first time since 2015 they finished with at least 11 extra-base hits.
“I was uneasy until two outs in the ninth inning,” said manager Brandon Hyde, who has made a habit of exchanging text messages with highly-respected Ravens football coach John Harbaugh after games.
No longer considered spoilers in the tough American League East, the Birds are considered contenders. Dark-horse contenders maybe but nobody is ruling them out.
With playoffs expanded to six entries per league, the Baltimore Orioles are creating chaos — and even wearing T-shirts with that word on the front.
With eight walk-off victories, it’s obvious the team’s on-the-job training is paying off.
“They’re relentless,” said Boston manager Alex Cora of the Orioles. “They hit everything. They have some good hitters over there. They’re a really good club.”
And they’re one of the 2022 season’s most memorable feel-good stories.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is on a book-signing tour. He writes for Latino Sports, forbes.com, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, Sports Collectors Digest, Here’s The Pitch, and a bunch of other outlets. E.mail Dan via ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
“I definitely love to live up to those moments late in the game, where I need to do my job or execute in certain situations.”
— Braves centerfielder Michael Harris II, at 21 the youngest active player, after hitting .419 with a 1.358 OPS in late and close situations
Tampa Bay shortstop Wander Franco, still plagued with a sore hand, has stopped rehabbing, delaying the timetable of his return to the majors . . .
On the other hand, the Los Angeles Dodgers reactivated starter Dustin May and plan to welcome back lefty ace Clayton Kershaw (bad back) in mid-September . . .
Atlanta catcher Travis d’Arnaud, never known for his speed, hit his first triple of the season in the ninth inning at Truist Park Sunday and scored a run but the Braves still lost a 5-4 decision to the Houston Astros . . .
Philadelphia got a fine season from reliever Corey Knebel but he’s now down for the season with a tear in his shoulder capsule — an injury that will deflate his value as he hits the free-agent market again . . .
Mets rookie reliever Nate Fisher worked as a commercial lending analyst at First National Bank of Omaha after being released by the Mariners in May of 2020.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Brian Harl [bchrom831@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.