Heroes Come In All Sizes
Today, we take a look back at the life and career of Chicago White Sox pitcher Dickey Kerr.
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Pregame Pepper - Kerr’s The Word
Leading Off
Heroes Come In All Sizes: The Outsized Impact Of “Little” Dickey Kerr
By Bill Pruden
Almost a century ago today, on August 15, 1925, after almost four full seasons away from the major leagues, 32 -year old Dickey Kerr, wearing a Chicago White Sox uniform, received a hero’s welcome from the crowd of 20,000 as he took the mound to start the third inning against the Detroit Tigers. While the intervening years had not been easy for Dickey Kerr and the game of baseball had changed, no White Sox fan, indeed no true baseball fan, would ever forget what Dickey Kerr had done in 1919.
Heroes come in all sizes. And heroic deeds take on all forms. And more often than not the heroes do not see themselves that way. That was certainly true of White Sox rookie pitcher Dickey Kerr, whose left arm and dogged determination kept his team, the 1919 White Sox, in the World Series longer than any of his teammates, especially the ones who were looking to throw the series, expected or intended.
Richard Henry Kerr was born on July 3, 1893. Not long before his death, he told sportswriters that he always spelled his name “Dickey” but that the newspapers had always spelled it “Dickie.” That was, in fact, the way it appeared when the 25-year-old rookie, made his major league debut on April 25, 1919. By season’s end, he had earned a regular spot in the rotation, finishing with 13 wins and 10 complete games in 17 starts for the American League pennant winners.
After the team lost the first two games of the series after aces Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams were both unexpectedly sent to early showers by the National League pennants winners, the Cincinnati Red, Kerr kept the White Sox alive by throwing a masterpiece, a three-hit shutout in which only two runners even reached second base. Four days later, with the Reds up 4-1, and the White Sox on the brink of elimination in the best of nine series Kerr went 10 innings to secure a 5-4 victory that kept his team alive. In the end of course his heroic, if futile efforts, would not be enough as the full story of the Black Sox would be revealed.
Over the next year and a half, the Black Sox scandal unfolded and while the legal process ended in a string of acquittals, the newly installed Commission of baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis issued a lifetime ban on the players forever labeled the “Black Sox.” Meanwhile, Dickey Kerr continued to toil for the White Sox, winning 21 games in 1920 and 19 in 1921. But when Kerr tried to get a sizable raise after the 1920 season it raised the ire of Sox owner Charlie Comiskey and while they ultimately reached an agreement, it did not endear Kerr to Comiskey.
After Kerr won 19 in 1921 and finished the season with a shut out of the Cleveland Indians on what had been proclaimed "Dickey Kerr Day," Kerr again asked for a raise, and this time things got ugly. Comiskey deputized the team secretary to negotiate with Kerr, but the two sides were unable to reach an agreement and after Kerr appeared with another, semi-pro team, first the White Sox and then the Commissioner suspended him. The stalemate continued through the whole of the 1922, 1923, and 1924 seasons.
Finally, he stopped playing semi-pro ball, and after serving a probationary period was made eligible again, allowing him to sign a new contract, which he did prior to his appearance on August 15, 1925. But in the end, it was all bittersweet, for during that three-season period, when he was banned from the major leagues and bouncing around the minors and semi-pro circuit trying to make a living, the one-time World Series hero was also wearing out his arm. Consequently, when peace was finally declared the 32-year-old Dickey Kerr who returned to the White Sox was not the same one the one who left. The drive was still there, but Kerr struggled to get batters out and while his last efforts were appreciated, he made his final big-league appearance on October 4, 1925.
Like heroism, character is measured in many ways and Kerr’s integrity—indeed, his courage--had been admirably displayed in 1919. But even though he was later quoted as saying, “It always did seem funny to me that so much fuss could be made about a man‘s being honest,” Dickey Kerr, in fact, had a second act in baseball that would offer no less exemplary an example of his humanity and empathy, while arguably having a greater impact on the game of baseball than even his World Series efforts.
Following the end of his big-league career, he toiled for a few more years in the minors before turning to managing. He got his first taste as a coach of the Rice Institute (later Rice University) team in Houston. After a couple of years at Rice, he moved into the pro ranks. Slowly building a career as a minor league manager, he did stints in Wausau, Wisconsin and Huntington, West Virginia, before landing in Daytona Beach in 1940. There he helmed the Islanders, a farm team of the St. Louis Cardinals whose roster included a left-handed pitching prospect named Stan Musial who was also a party good hitter, good enough that he sometimes played in the field to get his bat in the line-up. Under Kerr's watchful eye and guidance Musial blossomed, winning 18 games with a 2.62 ERA, while also hitting over .300. But on August 11, everything came crashing down when Musial, playing the outfield caught his spikes chasing after a low line drive and fell, landing hard right on his left, his pitching, shoulder. The early diagnosis said the arm was “dead.” It was not a clinical one assessment, simply a real-world one that could only be seen as the end of a pitching career.
The seeming career-ending injury left Musial despairing of working in the mines of his hometown of Donora, Pennsylvania for the rest of his life. But Kerr would not hear of it, refusing to allow Musial to see it that way. Recognizing the hitting talent that had been evident from the start, Kerr, in Musial’s words “gave me the pat on the back I needed—and just at the right time.” Indeed, in taking him under his wing, Kerr refocused and encouraged him, convincing him to stay with the game and to focus on his hitting.
In some respects, he recreated the young Stan Musial, helping turn him into one of the greatest hitters the game has ever seen. But it was not an isolated bit of professional support. In fact, before the season had even started, Kerr and his wife Cora had welcomed the 19-year-old Musial and his pregnant girlfriend Lillian into their home so the young couple could save money before the birth of their child. Dickey and Cora served as witnesses at the couple’s May 25, 1940 wedding, and when Lillian had the baby just a week before Musial’s injury, it was Dickey who drove the five minutes “against [the] red lights” to the hospital. And when their baby boy was born, he was named Richard in Kerr’s honor.
Kerr and Musial would go their separate ways after the 1940 season, but the bond was forever. Kerr would continue to manage for most of the 1940s before becoming a scout for the Cardinals in the early 1950s. He eventually retired from the game and worked as an office manager for an electric company in Houston. Musial, of course, went on to a historic career, one that included three National League MVP awards, seven national league batting championships--the list goes on--before culminating in a first ballot selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969.
But before that, before the baseball community had offered its validation of all he had done, Musial, whose moniker "Stan the Man" was as much a testament to his character as his baseball skills, had made his own statement about his one-time mentor. In 1958, Musial bought a house in Houston and quietly turned the deed over to Dickey Kerr. In typical fashion, neither man said anything about it, but when a Houston Post sports writer learned of the gift he could not resist the urge to highlight the generous gesture as well as the special bond and history it represented.
Three years later on June 28, 1961, Dickey Kerr was honored with a night a Houston’s Busch Stadium. With MLB Commissioner Ford Frick in attendance and declaring, "Baseball owes an eternal debt to Dickie Kerr," the diminutive lefthander, who was only 5-7 and 155 pounds when he thrilled baseball fans across the country in the 1919 Series, was awarded the Key to the City and a silver tray inscribed “To Dickie Kerr, a great baseball hero.”
The following year he was diagnosed with cancer, dying on May 4, 1963, just months shy of his 49th wedding anniversary. Dickey Kerr was buried in Houston’s Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery with Stan Musial in attendance, a reminder to anyone who needed it, of Kerr’s special and multi-faceted place in baseball history.
Bill Pruden is a high school history and government teacher who has been a baseball fan for six decades. He has been writing about baseball--primarily through SABR-sponsored platforms, but also in some historical works--for about a decade. His email address is: courtwatchernc@aol.com.