11 Days Until Spring Training: Lefty Gomez

Yankee history is teeming with all-time great offensive forces: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, Mantle. But its history of hurlers is a little less prolific. There are several former Yankee pitchers in the Hall of Fame, most of them there primarily for what they accomplished in pinstripes. But the Yankee pitchers in the Hall of Fame lack the "inner circle" status of their offensive brethren.

The earliest Yankee pitcher in the Hall is Jack Chesbro. Poached from the Pirates when the Highlanders began play in 1903, Chesbro pitched for the club during their first six seasons of existence. He led the AL with 41 wins, 48 complete games, and 454.2 IP in 1904, but notoriously uncorked a ninth inning wild pitch on the season's final day, costing the Highlanders the back end of a double header against the Boston Pilgrims and handing the pennant to their future arch rivals by a game and a half.

Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock led the pitching staff through the 1920s, as the team won their first pennants and World Series titles. But both were acquired from other organizations, as was Red Ruffing, a Hall of Famer himself, who joined the club in 1930. For the next thirteen years Ruffing would team the Yankees first homegrown ace to lead the team to seven pennants and six World Series championships.

Vernon Louis Gomez was adorned with the same nickname virtually every southpaw pitcher answered to in that era: "Lefty". Purchased from the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League in 1929, Gomez followed Tony Lazzeri from the same talent-rich northern California pipeline that the Yankees would later use to acquire Frank Crosetti, Joe DiMaggio, Gil McDougald, and Billy Martin. Gomez was of Mexican descent, but he was fortunate to be fair skinned enough to play in the Majors in the years before integration.

He made his Major League debut early in the 1930 season but also spent part of the year at the Yankees' AA affiliate in St. Paul. His Major League line wasn't pretty, just 2-5 with 5.55 ERA over 60 innings, most of them coming in relief. Gomez rebounded in a big way for his sophomore campaign, becoming the staff ace and leading the club in IP, wins, strikeouts, and ERA. His ERA slipped slightly below league average the following year, but he still led the club in wins and ERA, and finished fifth in MVP voting as the Yankees won their first World Series in four years. In post season play for the first time in his career, Gomez went the distance in Game Two of the Series, allowing just ten baserunners and a lone earned run on the way to a sweep of the Cubs.

Lefty turned in another solid campaign in 1933, again leading the Yankees in wins and ERA, falling just a third of an inning shy of tying Ruffing for the club lead, and leading the AL in strikeouts for the first of three times in his career. He followed that with the best season he would ever have. He led the American League in wins, winning percentage, ERA, ERA+, complete games, shutouts, strikeouts, and WHIP, earning him a third place finish in the MVP voting.

Gomez' record slipped below .500 in 1935, but his peripheral numbers were still excellent as he and Ruffing again fronted the pitching staff. The two would combine to carry the staff to an unprecedented four straight World Series titles from 1936-1939. Gomez went 64-38 (.627) over that stretch, with a 138 ERA+. He led the league in wins, ERA, and strikeouts in '37, marking the second pitching Triple Crown of his career. He also led the League in shutouts in '37 and '38. He won five World Series games over that run, leaving him with 6-0 record and 2,86 ERA in seven starts in the Fall Classic.

Gomez began to fade a bit towards the end of that historic run, falling just under 200 IP for the first time in his career in 1939. He was limited to just nine games in 1940, but rebounded pitch on pennant winners in 1941 and '42. He didn't see any action in those World Series, and was sold to the Braves in early 1943. Gomez never appeared for them, landed in Washington for one last start, and called it a career.

At the time of his retirement, Gomez was likely the best pitcher the Yankees ever had. A seven time All-Star, Gomez got the start in the first three All-Star games in history, five overall, and earned three wins in the Mid-Summer Classic. He had three top ten MVP finishes in the days before the Cy Young Award, and retired second to Ruffing on the Yankees all time wins, innings, strikeouts, games started, complete games, and shutout lists. His ERA+ of 125 bettered Ruffing (119) and still ranks ninth on the team's all-time leaderboard.

Always a quick thinker and quipster during his playing career, Gomez became a favorite on the off-season banquet circuit after his retirement. He remained in the Yankees organization as a manager, skippering the AA Binghamton squad in the late forties. Whitey Ford would go on to replace Gomez and Ruffing as the best pitcher in franchise history. Both Gomez and Ford were honored with plaques in Monument Park in August 1987. Ruffing would join them there in 2004. Gomez was unanimously elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1972, five years after Ruffing and two years before Ford.

Ain't Superstitious

Well, these are slow times in the Hot Stove League, and even slower times on the Fack Youk factory floor. Unfortunately, things like "real work" sometimes get in the way of semi-coherent content. Or we just got an early start on the weekend....

A few things before we go:

• AL Silver Sluggers were announced yesterday and both Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter picked up some additional hardware to add to their Gold Gloves. Silver Sluggers, Gold Gloves, what's next for these two? Bronze Cleats?

• Earlier this week we touched on former Yankee closer John Wetteland. Emergency personnel were summoned to his Texas home yesterday. Depending upon which story you read it was for something as simple as an elevated heart rate, or something as serious as him being suicidal. The good news is he's home now and all appears to be well. We certainly wish him the best. Eerily, fellow 1996 World Series hero Jim Leyritz had a similar incident at his Florida home earlier this year.

• Check out Walkoff Walk's classic TV post from earlier today. Some cool stuff there with The Mick, Hank Bauer, Billy Martin, Joe D., Lefty Gomez, and Tommy Henrich.

• We're a little late on this as it's made the rounds throughout the blogosphere already, but check out No Mas' excellent video about the notorious Doc Ellis LSD no-hitter.

• Big college football game on ESPN2 at 8:00 tonight, as #25 West Virginia visits undefeted #5 Cincinnati. The Big East will likely come down to Cincy and Pitt, but the Mountaineers are hanging close with just one conference loss. They need to win tonight to have any realistic shot at the conference title, and if they do, maybe they can screw Pitt's season in two weeks in the Backyard Brawl, just as Pitt did to them two years ago.

That's it for today. We'll be back in the AM with far, far more college football, though perhaps some would prefer that we do nothing again rather than do that. Anyway, sorry about the lack of content today. It certainly had nothing to do with it being Friday the Thirteenth.

Old Timers' Day Ruminations

As I mentioned this morning, Old Timers' Day is probably my favorite day of the regular season. This was the fourth consecutive one I've attended, and for me, they don't get old. The Yankees were not a very good team in my early years of following them. But part of what I really enjoyed about the franchise was their history. My family had a copy of the 1987 documentary New York Yankees The Movie, detailing the team's history. I watched it until the tape wore out.

My father has a library of books on Yankee history, from the Bronx Zoo years, back to the Dynasty era, to the Ruth and Gehrig years. Once I devoured all of them, the local library was an excellent source of other books on Yankee and baseball history.

So for me, I really enjoy seeing the Old Timers come back. And while the Hall of Famers and the players from the most recent dynasty get the biggest pops, I enjoy knowing who "Bullet" Bob Turley and Luis Arroyo and Hector Lopez are when they're introduced.

I can appreciate why outsiders may be somewhat disgusted by it. It's highly self-congratulatory and self-indulgent, and that appearance isn't helped at all by twin blowhards John Sterling and Michael Kay continually trying to one-up each other introduction after introduction. But baseball, perhaps more than any other sport, is built on its own history. To my knowledge, the Yankees are the only franchise that still celebrates Old Timers' Day anually, a tradition that dates back to 1946. And as a fan of the team, I'm happy that the franchise gives the fan a day each year to bring back the heroes of the past. It's something that I wish fans of other teams had the opportunity to experience.

Last night, Mike at RAB linked to post from NBC's Circling the Bases blog, that criticized the Yankees' annual tradition. Yes, there is a sense of overkill following the closing of the Old Stadium and the opening of the New Stadium, but those are rare, once in a lifetime experiences. Old Timers' Day is 60+ year tradition. It should not be ended; it should be duplicated throughout baseball. Yes, Mantle and DiMaggio and Scooter and Murcer have all passed on. Outside of Yogi and Whitey, who are certainly on in years, Old Timers' Day doesn't really have any of the top tier Yankee Legends any more. But it's not just about the all time greats, it's really a day to celebrate anyone who contributed through the years, anyone who ever gave the fans cause to cheer.

In Peter Golenbock's Dynasty, an account of the 1949 through 1964 Yankees that won 14 pennants and 9 World Series, there's an interview with Johnny Blanchard, a Yankee platoon player from 1959 through 1965. I don't have access to the exact quote at present, but essentially Blanchard spoke of how important it was to him to go back to Old Timers' Day each year - to see his old friends and teammates, to relive the memories of years past. I think he may have even said he would die if they wouldn't let him come back anymore.

Blanchard was a fixture at Old Timer's Day. He passed away just prior to the start of this season and was remembered Sunday in the list of baseball deaths from the past year. I hope the other former Yankees in attendance yesterday remembered him, and remembered why it was an important day for all of them. In the aforementioned documentary there's a great quote from Hall of Famer Lefty Gomez: "Once a Yankee, always a Yankee". I'm grateful we have Old Timers' Day to remind us of that.