Bill Dickey

Sport: Baseball

Induction Year: 1981

Induction Year: 1981

Observes of major league baseball in the first half of the 20th century generally considered Bill Dickey of the New York Yankees and Mickey Cochrane of the Philadelphia Athletics to be the best catchers.

William Malcolm Dickey was the Yankee’s catcher in 1,789 regular-season games, plus 38 more in the World Series—and he had the broken fingers to prove it.

Dickey, who was inducted into the Cooperstown Hall of Fame in 1954 and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 1961, was selected for the first major league All-Star Game in 1933. But he didn’t get into the game because Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics stuck with his starting lineup.

“I was going to start if the National League started a right-handed pitcher,” Dickey recalled in 1982. “But they started Bill Hallahan, so I stayed on the bench—along with Mickey Cochrane, Jimmy Foxx and a few others.”

Dickey played in many other All-Star Games, posting a lifetime batting average of .313 and driving in 1,209 runs.

One of his few regrets was that he didn’t strike out in the 1934 All-Star Game.

When he came to the plate, Carl Hubbell had struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin in succession. Dickey broke the string with a single before Hubbell completed his historic stint by fanning Lefty Gomez.

“I kinda wish I had struck out, too,” Dickey recalled. “That would’ve made it even more incredible, and given people something to remember me for.”

Dickey gave them plenty to remember him for, hitting .310 or better in all of his first six full seasons with the Yankees and driving more than 100 runs four years in a row. He bridged the gap from Ruth and Gehrig to Joe DiMaggio, leading the 1936 world champs in hitting with a .362 average. That was third in the American League behind Luke Appling of Chicago (.388) and Earl Averill of Cleveland (.378).

Dickey also hit 22 home runs and drove in 107 runs that year. His salary was $12,500.

“I had to hold out for two weeks the following spring to make $15,000,” he recalled. “The players today make a lot more money, but they don’t have as much fun as we had. I think I played at the right time.”

In 1937, Dickey hit .322 and had career highs with 29 home runs and 133 runs batted in—and finished a distant third on the Yankees in all three categories behind two other Hall of Famers, DiMaggio and Gehrig.

Dickey also had a couple of cameo appearances in baseball movies, playing himself in “Pride of the Yankees” (in which Gary Cooper played the role of Gehrig) and “The Monty Stratton Story,” in which Jimmy Stewart played the role of Stratton.

“Those were my only tow movies,’ Dickey recalled. “They couldn’t make a thoroughbred out of a donkey.”

Even in the movies, Dickey was too much of a competitor to leave the bat on his shoulder. In one scene in the Stratton story, he was supposed to take a called third strike from Stewart. “No way,” he protested. “I might miss it, but I’m gonna take a cut at it.”

In real life, Dickey was Gehrig’s roommate on road trips.

“Lou Gehirg was the strongest man I’ve ever seen,” he recalled. “Whenever I had something I couldn’t open, I handed it to him and he’d twist it off without even straining. H hit line drives past outfielders like mine went past infielders.”

When Gehrig handed Dickey a ketchup bottle during spring training of 1939 and asked him to open it for him, Dickey knew something was wrong. A few weeks later, after snapping his record streak of 2,130 consecutive games, Gehrig learned that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a rare disease that claimed his life two years later.

A great hitter, Dickey was just as good behind the plate. In 1929, he set a record that can’t be broken by throwing out three base-runners in one inning. In 1931, he went through an entire season without a single passed ball. H caught 100 or more games in 13 consecutive seasons.

In his final appearance in a World Series as a player, Dickey hit a two-run homer off the Cardinals’ Mort Cooper for the only runs in the final game of the 1943 Series.

Dickey rated the 1932 Yankees, with Gehrig, hitting .349 and Ruth .341, as the best he played on. The Philadelphia Athletics, who had won three straight American League pennants, finished 13 games behind that club.

“Babe enjoyed his role as the superstar,” Dickey recalled. “But that was fine, because he WAS the superstar.” (That was the year Ruth “called his shot” against cubs pitcher Charlie root as the Yankees scored a four game sweep in the World Series.)

Dickey was born in Bastrop, La., but his family moved to Arkansas when he was 15 years old and that is where he launched his baseball career—playing catcher for the first time as a high school senior. He played semipro ball for $10 a game and spent one year at Little Rock College before he signed a pro contract with the Little Rock Travelers of the Southern Association in 1925.

He played with the Yankees until 1946, when he was manger of the team for part of the season, and stayed with the club as a coach until 1960. He took part in 18 World Series—eight as a player and 10 as a coach—before going to work for a Little Rock investment firm.