"One of the big reasons that the Redlegs finished in the first division last year was Jerry's fine hitting. He was the top Cincinnati batter. Before coming up, he led the Piedmont League in almost every hitting department.
Jerry collected eight pinch hits including a home run in 1958."
-1959 Topps No. 97
SWINGINGEST GUY IN THE MAJORS
"There were more than 600 men, ranging in age from 18 to 42, training for the current season in 16 major league camps this spring. You couldn't name one who was happier than Cincinnati's Gerald Thomas Lynch.
Lynch was happy to be known as a regular for the first time in six major league seasons. He was happy to be playing ball at all. He was even happy to be alive and healthy.
For the first time in his life, Jerry Lynch achieved starting status late last year. In the Yankee farm system and later with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was an outfielder who performed atrociously on defense. He moved uncertainly after fly balls. He wasn't adept at fielding ground balls. He had just a fair arm.
What kept him in business was his bat. Even when he wasn't hitting for an average, he swung with an authority that was recognized by all who saw him. Of him, it was said, 'He will never be cheated at the plate. He takes his swings. He doesn't look at strikes. He is no a waiting man.'
On the debit side, however, this sweet left-handed swinger picked up a reputation for being a weakling against left-handed pitching.
And then, in 1956, came Illness when Lynch came down with phlebitis of the right shoulder. This is a disease that has to do with clotting of the blood in the bloodstream. It usually occurs in the legs, rarely in the upper extremities. The last ball player of distinction to suffer from phlebitis was Jim Greengrass, former Cincinnati outfielder, whose doctor advised amputation.
Lynch believes he can trace the beginning of his own phlebitis problem to the spring of 1955, when, training with the Pirates, he was asked to try catching by Branch Rickey, then general manager of the Buccaneers. It was a reasonable request. Rickey, who had drafted him out of the Yankee organization after Jerry won the Piedmont League batting title with a .333 mark in 1953, could not stomach the boy's 'butchery' in the outfield.
Lynch, realizing his defensive shortcomings, was glad to try anything. 'Throwing from the strange, squatting position put something out of kilter in my right shoulder,' Jerry tells you now. 'I know it never quite felt right after I failed to make it back of the plate and went back to the Pittsburgh outfield. Then, in the spring of 1956, I felt this severe pain in my shoulder when I tried to lift a trunk out of the back end of my car. That did it.'
Doctors diagnosed his problem as phlebitis. Lynch tried to come back in June, stayed in uniform for a month, appeared in parts of 19 games (for a total of 19 times at bat) and then had to go on the disabled list again. The shoulder was killing him with pain.
This writer recalls visits to the Pittsburgh club when Lynch, normally a happy-go-lucky Irishman, sat glumly in street clothes on the bench before games. 'The doctors gave me no hope of ever playing again around that time,' Jerry was saying recently.
At the end of the season, Pittsburgh assigned Lynch's contract to the Hollywood farm. To the surprise of most people, the Cincinnati club drafted him for $10,000.
Why take a cripple? General manager Gabe Paul took the gamble on the recommendation of his field pilot, Birdie Tebbetts. Birdie admired Jerry's swing. In particular, Tebbetts remembered a three-run pinch homer in 1955 that beat the Reds in the ninth inning.
Lynch's hopes were buoyed because Cincinnati had expressed faith in his comeback. Someone recommended a new doctor in Pittsburgh. This medical man was the first to mention the possibility of complete physical recovery. His prime prescription was rest. Treatment, medication and relaxation dissolved the clots. To the amazement of everybody, Jerry showed up at the Reds' camp in 1957, announcing he was ready to play.
That first year Birdie used Lynch sparingly, starting him now and then against right-handed pitchers. There is a memory of Lynch trying to surround a fly ball at Chicago's Wrigley Field, actually running in circles and winding up several feet away from where the ball landed. Everybody laughed. The guy wasn't easily discouraged, though.
That summer Tebbetts suggested he try catching again. 'I was willing to try anything. I really enjoyed putting on the tools. Birdie watched me for several days and said, 'Jerry, you can warm up the guys in the bullpen, but the outfield is still the spot for you.' '
Coming to bat 124 times in 67 games, Jerry batted .258 and drove in 13 runs, four on homers.
Last spring Birdie said he would be platooned, swinging against right-handed pitching only. 'Then he let me play against certain left-handers,' Jerry recalls, 'but not against the better ones like (Warren) Spahn and (Johnny) Antonelli. Playing every day is a treat. You have to improve. You go 0-for-4 in a platoon system and maybe you don't play for three, four days. You have another day like that and your average goes kerplunk. Playing every day you get a chance to dunk a couple of lucky hits that bring you up again.
'Look, I believe in the theory that most left-handers can't hit left-handed pitchers as well as right-handers. I'd be goofy to say the ball looks alike from either side. It doesn't. Even pitches that come from the same spot by different right-handers look different.' Lynch doesn't try to kid himself or his interviewers.
Jerry would strike out often, but the rarest thing in the book for him was a called strike- especially a called third strike. 'That Spahn tricked me. You know how smart he pitches. He makes you reach. He's in and out. He's got two strikes on me and I'm looking for some kind of breaking pitch, and darned if it doesn't come straight down the middle. I was so surprised I couldn't move my arms. I took it.'
That was his only called third strike of the season.
Regular every day, makes-no-difference-who 's-pitching assignments came early in August, about ten days before Tebbetts resigned as manager. Jimmie Dykes let him stay in there, too. One strange thing happened: Lynch began to draw occasional bases on balls. 'I had to,' he explains. 'Word got around I'd hit at anything, even pitches in the dirt. I had to keep those pitchers honest.' The records show he walked only 18 times and fanned 54 times in 420 official at-bats.
Jerry finished among the league leaders with a .312 average. He got his hits when they counted after he was finished platooning. He would up with 68 runs batted in, 16 homers, 20 doubles and five triples.
Now he is the established right fielder on Mayo Smith's club and is anxious to do something about improving his fielding. 'I work at it every day,' he says. 'Every hour of every day when I'm in uniform. I know I got better the more regularly I played. I can still do better but I admit I will never be a Willie Mays.'
Jerry won't be, but not for lack of trying."
-Si Burick, Dayton News (Baseball Digest, May 1959)
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