Yankees Hall of Fame pitcher dies

NEW YORK — Whitey Ford, the cocky and cunning, street-smart lefty who honed his pitching skills on the streets and sandlots of Queens and went on to win more games than any Yankee in history, died Thursday night at his Long Island home after a long battle with dementia. He was 91.

“The Yankees are incredibly saddened to learn of the passing of Hall of Famer Whitey Ford,” the team wrote in a statement. “Whitey spent his entire 16-year career as a Yankee. A 6x WS Champion and 10x All-Star, The Chairman of the Board was one of the best lefties to ever toe the rubber. He will be deeply missed.”

Ford is the fifth Hall of Famer to die in 2020, joining Al Kaline, Lou Brock, Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson.

In mourning his passing, his fans might want to take a moment to hoist a drink in his honor — to celebrate a life of achievement and fun. It’s what he would have wanted.

They called him “The Chairman of the Board” mostly because when it came to Yankee pitchers, especially in the World Series, Ford was at the head of the table. His 236 career wins are the most of any Yankee in history and his .690 winning percentage (236-106) is the highest of any pitcher in the 20th century. His 10 World Series victories and 94 strikeouts are likewise the most by any pitcher. In addition, his record 33 consecutive scoreless innings in the World Series has stood since 1962 while, on the Yankee charts, he stands atop in career strikeouts (1,956), innings ( 3,173), starts (438) and shutouts (45).

All of those lofty achievements were more than enough to get Ford elected to the Hall of Fame in 1974 along with his best friend and off-the-field “running mate” Mickey Mantle, but, in retrospect, probably didn’t surprise him. Almost from the time the Yankees signed him to a $ 7,000 bonus in 1947 following his graduation from the Manhattan

School of Aviation Trades and a stint with Astoria’s 34th Street Boys in the Queens-Nassau high school league, Ford was always supremely confident in his ability. That was more than evidenced after his 1949 season with Binghamton (in which he was 16-5 and led the Eastern League in strikeouts and a 1.61 ERA) when the then 20-year old Ford telephoned the Yankees’ chief scout Paul Kritchell and volunteered his services to the big club for the last couple of weeks of the season.

“I wasn’t bein’ cocky or anything,” Ford said. “It was just that our season was over and I wanted to keep pitching. I knew Kritchell had had his scouts watching me all that season and that they’d told him I was a real prospect.”

Still, it wasn’t until June of the next season that

Ford got his call to the Yankees — and lived up to both his own promise and theirs, going 9-1 with a 2.81 ERA and playing a key role in their winning of a second straight world championship under manager Casey Stengel.

It was Ford’s complete game, 8-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers on Sept. 16 that put the Yankees in first place to stay in 1950, and in the World Series that year, he was on the verge of pitching a 5-0 shutout over the Philadelphia Phillies in the clinching Game 4 when Yankee leftfielder Gene Woodling lost a two-out, ninth-inning fly ball in the lateafternoon Yankee Stadium shadows, allowing a pair of baserunners to score. One batter later, Stengel removed Ford to thunderous booing, although the rookie still got the victory when Allie Reynolds came on to retire the last Philadelphia batter.

“At first,” Ford said, “I thought they were booing me — and I said to myself: ‘I shoulda had a shutout! How can they boo me?’ Then I realized they were booing Casey. I’d left about 60 tickets for that game for all my friends and family in Astoria.”

Ford spent 1951 and ’52 in the military service and returned to the Yankees in 1953, compiling an 18-6 record with a 3.00 ERA. From there began a string of 13 consecutive seasons in which he achieved doubledigit victories, including league-leading totals of

18-7 in 1955, 25-4 in 1961 and 24-7 in 1963.