Whitey Ford, 91, pitcher who epitomized mighty Yankees, dies
NEW YORK (AP) — Whitey Ford, the street-smart New Yorker who had the
best winning percentage of any pitcher in the 20th century and helped
the Yankees become baseball’s perennial champions in the 1950s and ’60s,
has died. He was 91.
A family member told The Associated Press on Friday that Ford died at his Long Island home Thursday night.
Ford had suffered from the effects of Alzheimer’s disease in recent years.
Nicknamed
“The Chairman of the Board,” Ford was a wily left-hander who pitched
from 1950-67 in the major leagues, all with the Yankees. He was among
the most dependable pitchers in baseball history.
He won 236
games and lost just 106, a winning percentage of .690. He would help
symbolize the almost machinelike efficiency of the Yankees in the
mid-20th century, when only twice between Ford’s rookie year and 1964
did they fail to make the postseason.
“Whitey earned his status
as the ace of some of the most memorable teams in our sport’s rich
history,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “Beyond the Chairman
of the Board’s excellence on the mound, he was a distinguished
ambassador for our national pastime throughout his life.”
Ford’s death is the latest this year of a number of baseball greats: Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock and Bob Gibson.
Ford’s
death occurred in a month when he for so long soared on baseball’s
biggest stage, and hours before his Yankees played Tampa Bay in a
decisive Game 5 of the AL Division Series.
“He would have been the
starting pitcher in this game for the Yankees in years past,” former
teammate and World Series MVP Bobby Richardson told The Associated
Press.
The World Series record book is crowded with Ford’s
accomplishments. His string of 33 consecutive scoreless innings from
1960-62 broke a record of 29 2-3 innings set by Babe Ruth. Ford still
holds records for World Series games and starts (22), innings pitched
(146), wins (10) and strikeouts (94).
Ford was in his mid-20s when
he became the go-to guy in manager Casey Stengel’s rotation, the
pitcher Stengel said he would always turn to if he absolutely needed to
win one game. Ford was Stengel’s choice to pitch World Series openers
eight times, another record.
Ford’s best seasons came in 1961 and
1963, in the midst of a stretch of five straight AL pennants for the
Yankees, when new manager Ralph Houk began using a four-man rotation
instead of five. Ford led the league in victories with 25 in 1961, won
the Cy Young Award and was the World Series MVP after winning two more games against Cincinnati. In 1963, he went 24-7, again leading the league in wins. Eight of his victories that season came in June.
He also led the AL in earned run average in 1956 (2.47) and 1958 (2.01) and was a six-time All-Star selection.
Ford
did have his World Series disappointments. He spoke bitterly of the
1960 championship, when he shut out Pittsburgh twice but was used by
Stengel in Game 3 and Game 6 and so was unavailable for the finale, won
10-9 by the Pirates on Bill Mazeroski’s home run in the bottom of the
ninth. In 1963, Ford was outmatched twice by Sandy Koufax as the Los Angeles Dodgers swept the Yankees.
Unlike
Koufax, Ford was not an overpowering pitcher. Instead he depended on
guile and guts, rarely giving hitters the same look on consecutive
pitches. He’d throw overhand sometimes, three-quarters other times,
mixing curves and sliders in with his fastball and changeup.
Ford
would also acknowledge using some special methods to add movement to his
pitches, including saliva, mud and dirt and cutting the ball with a
ring.
“If there are some pitchers doing it and getting away with
it, that’s fine by me,” Ford told sports writer Phil Pepe, in 1987. “If
it were me and I needed to cheat to be able to throw the good stuff that
would keep me in the major leagues at a salary of about $800,000 a
year, I’d do whatever I had to do”
After his retirement, Ford
briefly worked as a broadcaster and opened a restaurant in Garden City,
“Whitey Ford’s Cafe,” that closed within a year. In 2001, actor Anthony
Michael Hall played Ford in the Billy Crystal-directed HBO movie
“61(asterisk),” about the 1961 season and the quest of Mickey Mantle and
Roger Maris to break Babe Ruth’s single-year home run record.
Ford
and Mantle were cultural opposites, an odd couple who became
inseparable off the field, Ford the fast-talking city kid, Mantle the
shy country boy from Oklahoma. They enjoyed the attraction of New York
nightlife along with rowdy, wise-cracking infielder Billy Martin and
Stengel called the trio “whiskey slick.” Mantle shortened that to just
“Slick” for Ford, who proudly used the nickname as the title of his 1987
autobiography, co-written by Pepe. (Ford in turn would coin one of
baseball’s most famous nicknames, “Charlie Hustle,” for Pete Rose).
Typical
of their adventures was an episode during a trip to Japan where they
hooked up with a 400-pound sumo wrestler, who was accompanied by a
translator. Through the evening, the wrestler never spoke, just smiling
and nodding.
Then it occurred to Martin that it might be fun to
sling some insults at the wrestler. Their new friend continued to nod
and smile. Then, when the evening was over Martin said good night in
Japanese and the wrestler nodded and said, “Thank you very much for a
nice evening,” in perfect English.
It was a lesson in international diplomacy.
After
Martin was traded in the aftermath of a 1957 brawl at the Copacabana
night club, Ford and Mantle remained centerpieces in the Yankees dynasty
and were elected together to the Hall of Fame in 1974.
Ford often
called his election the highlight of his career, made more meaningful
because he was inducted with Mantle, who died in 1995.
“It never
was anything I imagined was possible or anything I dared dream about
when I was a kid growing up on the sidewalks of New York,” he wrote in
his autobiography. “I never really thought I would make it as a kid
because I always was too small.”
Edward Charles Ford was born on the East Side of Manhattan, about 100 blocks south of Yankee Stadium. H e grew up playing sandlot ball in Astoria, Queens,
a section of the city that produced major leaguers Sam Mele and Tony
Cuccinello and singer Tony Bennett. The blond-haired Ford was nicknamed
“Whitey” while still in the minor leagues.
The Yankees signed Ford
in 1947 and three years later he was called up in midseason. At just
5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, Ford was viewed as a marginal prospect. But he
won nine straight games and nailed down the 1950 World Series sweep of
Philadelphia by winning the fourth game, coming within one out of a
complete game.
After two years away for military service during
the Korean War, Ford returned to the Yankees in 1953 and, along with
Mantle became the core of a team that won 10 American League pennants
and five World Series in the next 12 years. Ford won 18 games in his
first season back and never won fewer than 11 for 13 straight seasons.
Mantle summed it up: “He was the best pitcher I ever saw and the greatest competitor. Whitey won seven out of every 10 decisions and nobody in the history of baseball has ever done better than that.”
This story was principally written by former AP Sports Writer Hal Bock. AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed.