RAYS TOPPLE YANKEES
Pitcher owns the most wins in franchise history and many World Series marks
Diego Castillo and the Tampa Bay Rays hold off the Yankees 2-1 in Game 5 of the ALDS to advance to the AL Championship Series against Houston./
During an era when the Yankees won the World Series so routinely it was joked that rooting for them was like rooting for General Motors, their ace pitcher owned the most fitting nickname: “The Chairman of the Board.”
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, died Thursday night. He was 91.
The team said Friday the Hall of Famer died at his Long Island home in Lake Success, while watching the Yankees in a playoff game. His wife of 69 years, Joan, and family members were with him.
Ford had suffered from the effects of Alzheimer’s disease in recent years. His death was the latest this year of a number of baseball greats — Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock and Bob Gibson.
On a franchise long defined by power hitters, Ford was considered its greatest starting pitcher. Not big and not overpowering, the wily left-hander played in the majors from 1950-67, all with the Yankees, and teamed with the likes of Mickey Mantle, Joe Dimaggio and Yogi Berra to win six championships.
Ford’s 10 wins are still the most in World Series history.
“If you were a betting man, and if he was out there pitching for you, you’d figure it was your day,” former teammate Bobby Richardson said Friday.
Ford won a Yankeesrecord 236 games and lost just 106, a winning percentage of .690. He would help symbolize the almost machine-like 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 World Series.
“This is one of the guys that’s a Mount Rushmore guy in the Yankee organization,” manager Aaron Boone said.
The blond-haired Ford was nicknamed “Whitey” while still in the minor leagues, and quickly reached the mound at Yankee Stadium.
His death occurred in a month when he for so long soared on baseball’s biggest stage, and hours before his former team played Tampa Bay in a decisive Game 5 of the AL Division Series. The Yankees planned a patch with Ford’s No. 16 on their uniforms.
“He would have been the starting pitcher in this game for the Yankees in years past,” Richardson said.
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 292⁄ innings set by
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Babe Ruth. Ford holds records for World Series wins, games and starts (22), innings pitched (146) and strikeouts (94).
Ford died on the 64th anniversary of the single greatest pitching performance in Yankees lore — Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Larsen died on New Year’s Day this year.