WAITE HOYT
A SUIT THAT WAS TRUMP
"They tell about the time Waite Hoyt was pitching for the Pirates against the Cubs, who had quit to the Yankees in a World Series. The Chicago bench was abusing him. Hoyt called time and sauntered over to the Cubs' dugout.
'If you guys don't shut up,' Waite said, 'I'll put on a Yankee uniform and frighten you to death.'
They shut up."
-Jimmy Cannon in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, June 1948)
THIS HOYT!
"Umpires are continual targets for the jockeys, although they have the last word in that they can thumb all offenders out of the game. However, an arbiter with a sense of humor- such as Billy Evans was- occasionally will let an athlete get away with more than he's entitled to. Billy loves to tell one story on himself.
Waite Hoyt was pitching, and he always had a mind as sharp as his curve. Hoyt continually shaded the plate, firing at the corners and making it very tough on the umpires. Evans called too many of the close ones balls instead of strikes to Waite's growing wrath. At the end of one inning he asked Evans in an unnecessarily loud voice: 'How many do you umpires miss in a game and still consider it a good day?'
Feeling very smug and superior, Billy swallowed the bait and replied just as loudly: 'With the limited stuff you have, Mr. Hoyt, we shouldn't miss over a dozen.'
To the vast chagrin of Evans, the quick-witted hurler then bellowed: 'You've already taken three times your limit today and we've only played five innings.'
The crowd roared. Hoyt grinned mischievously. And, believe it or not, Billy himself joined in the laughter.'
-Arthur Daley in the New York Times (Baseball Digest, October 1948)
HERB PENNOCK
BASEBALL MOURNS THE MAN WHO LOOKED EASY TO HIT - BUT SOMEHOW NEVER WAS
"Bennie Bengough was warming up Herb Pennock one day when the Yankees were playing the Indians in old League Park in Cleveland and a fan sitting in a box directly in a line with them called out to Bennie:
'Hey!' he said. 'Hey! Can I ask you a question?" Bennie walked back to the box.
'Sure,' he said. 'What is it?'
The fan nodded toward Pennock.
'How does he do it?' he asked.
'How does he do what?'
'How does he get anybody out?'
'What's the gag?' Bennie asked.
'No gag,' the fan said. 'From here it looks as though I could take a bat and go up there and hit him myself.'
'Wait,' Bennie said. 'I'll get you a bat and you can try it.'
'Oh, no!' the fan said. 'I'm too smart for that. But, as I was saying, he looks easy to hit from here.'
'Talk to some of the hitters,' Bennie said. 'He looks easy to hit from where they stand. But he ain't.'
The Yankees were going into St. Louis for an important series and Pennock got up on the train in the morning to find that he couldn't raise his left arm as high as his shoulder.
'You'll have to help me, Bob,' he said to Bob Meusel, who was his roommate and, with Waite Hoyt and Joe Dugan, one of his great companions.
'Help you,' Bob asked. 'Help you do what?'
'Comb my hair,' Herb said. 'Button the collar of my shirt. Tie my tie.'
'What's the matter with you?'
'My left arm hurts when I try to lift it and you know I'm no good with my right.'
Meusel was scared.
'What happened to your arm?'
'Muscular cold, I guess,' Pennock said. 'Come on. Get busy.'
It was Pennock's turn to pitch that afternoon, so he said nothing about the condition of his arm to Miller Huggins. He would make a stab at pitching and, if he failed- well, there was always Wilcy Moore to come in to check the Browns. And the Babe, Lou Gehrig, Meusel and Tony Lazzeri to get back the runs he might yield.
Pennock had sidearm curves, and- maybe his best pitch- an overhand curve. He teased the Browns with his sidearm curves. One this big, one a little bigger, one not quite so big. They went for them, missed them, topped them and went down on called strikes. They were waiting for that overhand curve with the zip on it. They were still waiting for it when the game was over. Pennock had yielded about five scattered hits and one run. The Yankees had made seven.
As a kid right up from Atlanta with the White Sox, Blondy Ryan went to bat for the first time against Pennock and hit a home run.
'It was the first and last hit I ever got off him as long as I was in the league,' Blondy said. 'I wasn't in the league very long, but if I had been in it for fifty years I never would have got another hit off him. All he needed was one look at me.'
One of Pennock's greatest admirers was Stanley Harris, who was managing the Senators when Pennock was at his peak.
'Nicest fellow in the world,' Stanley would say. 'Off the field, that is. On the field, he just stands there and looks at you ... and tugs on the bill of his cap ... and winds up and lets go. The ball never is where you think it's going to be. It was- just a split second before. But when you swing at it, the best you get is a piece of it. You fuss and fume and sweat and holler and he stands out there and looks at you ... and tugs on the bill of his cap and- aw, what's the use?'
The Tigers had a big right-handed-hitting outfielder named Bob Fothergill who was no gazelle in the field, but could hit the ball a mile.
'Left-handers,' he said, 'are milk on the cat's saucer for me.'
The first game in which he faced Pennock he struck out a couple of times and didn't hit a ball out the infield in four trips to the plate. That night he was disconsolate.
'Four-for-O for me against a left-hander,' he said to Harry Heilmann, his roommate- and one of the greatest right-handed hitters of all time. 'A left-hander doing that to me.'
'He's done it to me, too, Bob,' Harry said. 'That wasn't just another left-hander. That was Herb Pennock.'
In the World Series of 1927, the Yankees moved in against a Pirate team that had slaughtered all the left-handers in the National League. Pennock held them to three hits.
'I thought you said,' Meusel growled at a reporter in the clubhouse after the game, 'that no left-hander could beat the Pirates.'
'I didn't say that,' the reporter said. 'I said no left-hander in the National League could beat the Pirates. But they don't have a left-hander like Pennock in the National League.'
Pennock, to a greater degree than perhaps any other pitcher who ever lived, made a science of pitching. He didn't do it easily. As a kid breaking in with the Athletics, he was so wild that he seriously considered quitting baseball. Reconsidering, he made up his mind that, no matter how much of an effort it required, he would make a pitcher of himself. And so, the hard way, he learned control. Learned to pace himself. Learned to relax during the most critical ball game. Learned, from watching the top pitchers on other teams, how to pitch to enemy hitters. Connie Mack traded him to the Red Sox before he became a pitcher, and it was not until he joined the Yankees in 1923 that he became a great pitcher.
He was a great pitcher, a great competitor- and my friend. The news of his death was shocking."
-Frank Graham, condensed from the New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, April 1948)
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