Скачать или смотреть Bill Dickey - One of Yankees Greatest Catchers

He roomed with Lou Gehrig and taught Yogi Berra how to become a better catcher. He set the record by catching 100 games or more in 13 consecutive seasons. He won seven World Series as a player and six more as a coach. Who was this 11 time all-star catcher nicknamed, The Man Nobody Knows?


We’re talking baseball, next on Marking History!


This is the historical marker for Bill Dickey. Located here in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas on their historic baseball trail.

So who was Bill Dickey? Well, he played alongside some pretty famous New York Yankees ballplayers like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra. So Let’s play ball!


Bill Dickey was born on June 6, 1907 in Bastrop, Louisiana. There definitely was baseball in his family blood. His father, John Dickey, played baseball for a semi-professional team, Bill's older brother, Gus, was a second baseman and pitcher in a Semipro League, and his younger brother, George, would go on to play in the Major Leagues as a catcher.


Dickey made his major-league debut at Yankee Stadium on August 15, 1928, subbing for Yankee catcher, Benny Bengough. He broke into the hit column nine days later, with a triple off George Blaeholder of the St. Louis Browns. That year the Yankees won their third straight pennant and swept the Cardinals to take their second World Series in a row.


As his future protege would say, “Bill was amphibious.” I think Yogi Berra meant that Dickey was “ambidextrous” because he threw right-handed and batted from the left side.


Often the young left-handed batter would try to emulate his teammates Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Yankee Manager Miller Huggins had to advise Dickey. “We pay one player here for hitting home runs and that’s Babe Ruth. So choke up and drill the ball. That way, you’ll be around here longer.” Dickey soon stopped trying to pull every pitch; instead he settled for making solid contact.


Bill Dickey would go on to break many baseball records during his stay as a ballplayer with the “Bronx Bombers.” Like his .313 career batting record while blasting 202 home runs and driving in 1,209 runs.


In 1933, Dickey became road-trip roommates with Lou Gehrig. “I was a close friend of Gehrig’s long before I was his roommate,” said Dickey. “Lou and I liked to do the same things. We liked movies, same foods, same hours. We liked to talk baseball, we had similar ideas, we looked at life much in similar ways.”


Sadly, it was Dickey who first knew that Lou Gehrig wasn’t in a slump, but was sick with ALS in 1939. Gehrig died in 1941 at age 37 and Dickey represented the Yankees at his funeral.


While still an active ballplayer in 1942, Dickey appeared as himself in the film “The Pride of the Yankees”, which starred Gary Cooper as first baseman Lou Gehrig. Late in the movie, when Gehrig was fading due to the disease that would eventually take his life, a younger Yankee grumbled in the locker room, "the old man on first needs crutches to get around!"—and Dickey belted the young player, because he was standing up for his sick friend.


Dickey was drafted into the US Navy on June 3, 1944, even though he was 37 and suffered from a bad sinus condition. Against his wishes, Dickey served as an athletic officer in the Pacific and managed the US Navy team that won 1944 Service World Series in Hawaii.


At war’s end, Bill was thirty-eight years old, and decided to return to the Yankees one last time as a player and manager. He retired after the 1946 season, but was asked to return as a coach in 1949 where he taught Yogi Berra the finer points of catching. Yogi was assigned Bill Dickey’s old number 8 in an effort to induce him to pattern himself after his esteemed predecessor.


During Dickey's playing career, he was named to 11 All-Star Games. The Yankees went to the World Series nine times, winning eight championships. As a manager and coach, the Yankees won another six World Series titles.


Bill Dickey was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1954. And in 1972, the Yankees retired Number 8 in honor of both Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra.

Bill Dickey died in 1993 in Little Rock at age eighty-six. Bill Dickey was a man of quiet dignity, intense determination, intellectual acumen, and genuine class. He was also one of the greatest baseball players in the history of our National Pastime.