Dizzy Dean
Dizzy Dean | |
---|---|
Pitcher | |
Born: Lucas, Arkansas, U.S. | January 16, 1910|
Died: July 17, 1974 Reno, Nevada, U.S. | (aged 64)|
Batted: Right Threw: Right | |
MLB debut | |
September 28, 1930, for the St. Louis Cardinals | |
Last MLB appearance | |
September 28, 1947, for the St. Louis Browns | |
MLB statistics | |
Win–loss record | 150–83 |
Earned run average | 3.02 |
Strikeouts | 1,163 |
Teams | |
Career highlights and awards | |
| |
Member of the National | |
Baseball Hall of Fame | |
Induction | 1953 |
Vote | 79.2% (ninth ballot) |
Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean (January 16, 1910 – July 17, 1974), also known as Jerome Herman Dean (both the 1910 and 1920 Censuses show his name as "Jay"), was an American professional baseball pitcher.[1][2][3][4][5] During his Major League Baseball (MLB) career, he played for the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, and St. Louis Browns.
A brash and colorful personality, Dean is the last National League (NL) pitcher to win 30 games in one season (1934).[6] After his playing career, Dean became a popular television sports commentator. Dean was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953.[7] When the Cardinals reopened the team Hall of Fame in 2014, he was inducted in the inaugural class.
Early life
Dean was born on January 16, 1910, in
Dean made his professional debut in 1930 and worked his way up to the major leagues that same year, throwing a complete game three-hitter for the Cardinals.[9]
Ace of the Gashouse Gang
Dean made his major league debut on September 28, 1930, the final day of the 1930 regular season. The 20 year-old earned a complete game win against the Pittsburgh Pirates, allowing only three hits and one run. He did not pitch in the major leagues the following year. Dean pitched his first full season in 1932 and turned in a stellar rookie campaign, leading the major leagues with 191 strikeouts and four shutouts. He improved again the following year, when he pitched a 3.04 ERA and again led the league with 199 strikeouts. Perhaps his finest game of the 1933 season came on July 30, when he set a modern-era record by striking out 17 batters in the first game of a doubleheader against the Chicago Cubs.[10]
Dean was best known for winning 30 games in 1934 while leading the "Gashouse Gang" Cardinals to the National League pennant and the World Series win over the Detroit Tigers. He had a 30–7 record with a 2.66 ERA during the regular season. His brother, Paul, was also on the team, with a record of 19–11, and was nicknamed "Daffy", although this was usually only done for press consumption. Though "Diz" sometimes called his brother "Daf", he typically referred to himself and his brother as "Me an' Paul." Continuing the theme, the team included Dazzy Vance and Joe "Ducky" Medwick.
St. Louis was the southernmost and westernmost city in the major leagues at the time, and the Gashouse Gang became a de facto "America's Team." Team members, particularly Southerners such as the Dean brothers and Pepper Martin, became folk heroes in the Depression-ravaged United States. Americans saw in these players a spirit of hard work and perseverance, as opposed to the haughty, highly paid New York Giants, whom the Cardinals chased for the National League pennant.
Much like later sports legends
Dean was known for antics which inspired his nickname. In time, perception became reality. In Game 4 of the 1934 World Series against Detroit, Dean was sent to first base as a pinch runner. The next batter hit a potential double play ground ball. Intent on avoiding the double play, Dean threw himself in front of the throw to first. The ball struck him on the head, and Dean was knocked unconscious and taken to a hospital. The storied (and possibly apocryphal) sports-section headline the next day said, "X-ray of Dean's head reveals nothing."[11] The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Detroit Free Press merely stated that the X-rays "revealed no lasting injury." However, Dean was reported saying his head was too hard for a baseball to hurt it.
Although the Tigers went on to win the game 10–4, Dean recovered in time to pitch in Game 5, which he lost. After the Cardinals won Game 6, Dean came back and pitched a complete-game shutout in Game 7 to win the game and the Series for the Cardinals. The Dean brothers accounted for all four wins, with two each.[12]
Injury-shortened career
While pitching for the NL in the 1937 All-Star Game, Dean faced Earl Averill of the American League Cleveland Indians. Averill hit a line drive back at the mound, hitting Dean on the foot. Told that his big toe was fractured, Dean responded, "Fractured, hell, the damn thing's broken!" Coming back too soon from the injury, Dean changed his pitching motion to avoid landing as hard on his sore toe enough to affect his mechanics. As a result, he hurt his arm, losing his great fastball. At the time Dean was injured he sported a 12–7 record. He finished the season 13–10.[13]
By 1938, Dean's arm had not recovered. Hopeful it would, Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley ordered scout Clarence "Pants" Rowland to buy Dean's contract at any cost. On April 16, Rowland obtained Dean in a trade for three players (pitchers Clyde Shoun and Curt Davis and outfielder Tuck Stainback) plus $185,000 in cash - an enormous sum then.[14] In limited use Dean proved exceptional - going 7-1 and posting a 1.81 ERA, by far the best of his career - helping the Cubs win the 1938 National League pennant. The Cubs had been in third place, six games behind the first place Pittsburgh Pirates.[15] By September 27, with one week left in the season, the Cubs had battled back to within a game and a half of the Pirates in the National League standings as the two teams met for a crucial three-game series.[15]
Dean pitched the opening game of the series and with an ailing arm, relied more on his experience and grit to defeat the Pirates by a score of 2–1.
Returning to the Cubs in 1939, Dean made 19 appearances (13 starts) resulting in a 6–4 record with 7 complete games, 2 shutouts, and a still well above league average 3.36 ERA.[1] The team finished fourth in the NL.[18] Beginning to fail badly, he was limited to just 10 games (nine starts) in 1940 and posted a 3–3 record with a 5.17 ERA,[1] as the Cubs finished fifth in the league.[19] He appeared in a single game during the 1941 season, pitching just one inning while allowing three runs.[1] In mid-May, he announced his retirement as a player.[20]
In 1942, Dean appeared in one game for the
Semi-professional appearance
In July 1943, Dean agreed to pitch in a
One-game comeback
Dean made a one-game major-league comeback on September 28, 1947.[25] After retiring as a player, the still-popular Dean was hired as a broadcaster by the perennially cash-poor St. Louis Browns to drum up some badly needed publicity. After broadcasting several poor pitching performances in a row, he grew frustrated, saying on the air, "Doggone it, I can pitch better than nine out of the ten guys on this staff!" The wives of the Browns pitchers complained, and management, needing to sell tickets somehow, took him up on his offer and had him pitch the last game of the season versus the Chicago White Sox. At age 37, Dean pitched four innings, allowing no runs, and rapped a single in his only at-bat. Rounding first base, he pulled his hamstring. Returning to the broadcast booth at the end of the game, he said, "I said I can pitch better than nine of the ten guys on the staff, and I can. But I'm done. Talking's my game now, and I'm just glad that muscle I pulled wasn't in my throat."
Broadcasting
Following his playing career, Dean became a well-known radio and television
While doing a game on CBS, Dean once said, over the open mic, "I don't know why they're calling this the Game of the Week. There's a much better game, Dodgers and Giants, over on NBC." Every so often, he would sign off by saying, "Don't fail to miss tomorrow's game!" During rain delays, he was famous for off-key renditions of the "Wabash Cannonball". These manglings of the language only endeared Dean to fans, being a precursor of such beloved tongue-tangled ballplayers-turned-broadcasters as Ralph Kiner, Herb Score, and Jerry Coleman.
An English teacher once wrote to him, complaining that he shouldn't use the word "ain't" on the air, as it was a bad example to children. On the air, Dean said, "A lot of folks who ain't sayin' 'ain't,' ain't eatin'. So, Teach, you learn 'em English, and I'll learn 'em baseball."
In the 1950s, Dean appeared in guest roles on Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town on CBS and on The Guy Mitchell Show on ABC.
Accomplishments
- Four time All-Star selection (1934, 1935, 1936, 1937)
- Four consecutive strikeout titles (1934–1937)
- Led National League in complete games four consecutive years (1934–1937)
- World Series champion (1934) – starter and winner of two games
- Three time 20-game winner; won 30 games in 1934
- Elected to the Baseball Hall of Famein 1953
- MVP in 1934
- Inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame[26]
- Despite having what amounted to only half a career, in 1999, he ranked Number 85 on "The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players",[27] and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
- St. Louis Cardinals retired his number 17 on Sunday September 22, 1974, 67 days after his death.
- In January, 2014, the Cardinals announced Dean among 22 former players and personnel to be inducted into the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum for the inaugural class of 2014.[28]
- Dean was inducted into the Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals in 2014.[29]
Later life and death
In October 1961, Dean announced that a company with which he was associated as vice-president, Dizzy Dean Enterprises, would construct a $350,000 charcoal briquette plant in Pachuta, Mississippi shortly after the beginning of 1962.[30] The plant was anticipated to use $200,000 worth of low-quality hardwood scraps each year in the production of 10,000 tons of briquets annually when fully on line.[30]
After leaving sportscasting in the late 1960s, Dean retired with his wife, Patricia, to her hometown of Bond, Mississippi.[31]
After retiring to Mississippi, Dean was investigated for his role in an interstate gambling ring but was ultimately not charged. The indictments handed down in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1970 named him and his nephew, Paul, as co-conspirators but not defendants. He denied any wrongdoing and cooperated as a witness.[32]
Dean died July 17, 1974, at age 64 in Reno, Nevada, of a heart attack, and was buried in the Bond Cemetery.[33] Dean's home in Bond was named Deanash, a combination of his name and his wife's maiden name (Nash); it was willed by Dean's wife to the Mississippi Baptist Convention, which operates foster homes for children in a rural setting.[34]
Recognition
The Pride of St. Louis, a motion picture loosely based on Dean's career, was released in 1952. Dan Dailey portrayed Dean. Chet Huntley, who would later gain fame as an NBC News anchorman, played an uncredited role in the movie as Dean's radio announcing sidekick.
A Dizzy Dean Museum was established at 1152 Lakeland Drive in Jackson, Mississippi. The Dean exhibit is now part of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame & Museum, located adjacent to Smith-Wills Stadium, a former minor-league baseball park.[35]
In the 1971
Dean was mentioned in the 1949 poem "Line-Up for Yesterday" by Ogden Nash:
D is for Dean,
The grammatical Diz,
When they asked, Who's the tops?
Said correctly, I is.
—
Dean was referenced in the classic TV sitcom
Dean was parodied in the 1936 Merrie Melodies cartoon Boulevardier from the Bronx with a character named Dizzy Dan.
Dean was also referenced in the 1939 Laurel and Hardy film A Chump at Oxford, when Oliver Hardy unknowingly called the character of the actual dean at the famous Oxford University a "dizzy dean".
Dean is also featured prominently in some versions of
Actor
The United States Congress designated the U.S. Post Office in
In Morrison Bluff, Arkansas, about 2 miles (3.2 km) south of Clarksville, there is a restaurant, Porky's, with Dizzy Dean memorabilia.[citation needed]
In 2015, author Carolyn E. Mueller and illustrator Ed Koehler published an animated book titled Dizzy Dean and the Gashouse Gang (
Dizzy Dean in one of the characters of Mr. Vértigo, the novel written by the American author Paul Auster in 1994.
Branch Rickey, who was the Cardinals' general manager during Dean's time with the club, had a high regard for both Dean's talent and his character, while remaining bemused by Dean's casual interpersonal skills. After one of their talks, the well-educated Rickey said, "Tell me why I spent four mortal hours today conversing with a person named Dizzy Dean."[1]
Career statistics
W | L | ERA | G | GS | CG | SHO | SV | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | Win Pct. | ERA+ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
150 | 83 | 3.02 | 317 | 230 | 154 | 26 | 30 | 1,967 | 1,919 | 661 | 95 | 453 | 1,163 | .644 | 130 |
Dean was an effective hitting pitcher. He posted a .225
See also
- List of St. Louis Cardinals team records
- List of Major League Baseball annual saves leaders
- List of Major League Baseball annual strikeout leaders
- List of Major League Baseball annual wins leaders
- Major League Baseball titles leaders
References
- ^ a b c d e f "Dizzy Dean statistics". baseball-reference.com. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
- ^ Broeg, Bob (July 17, 1974). "Colorful Dean is dead". Spokane Daily Chronicle. (Washington). Associated Press. p. 17.
- ^ "Dizzy Dean dies after heart attack". Eugene Register-Guard. (Oregon). Associated Press. July 17, 1974. p. 1C.
- ^ "Gas House Gang's Dizzy Dean dies". Pittsburgh Press. UPI. July 17, 1974. p. 30.
- ^ Durso, Joseph (July 18, 1974). "Dizzy had his own way". Eugene Register-Guard. (Oregon). New York Times. p. 5C.
- ^ a b "1934: Dizzy, Daffy and Ducky". thisgreatgame.com. Archived from the original on January 7, 2012. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
- ^ "Dizzy Dean at the Baseball Hall of Fame". baseballhall.org. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
- ^ "Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854–1972, March 24, 1935, Image 79". March 24, 1935. p. 5.
- ^ "Dizzy Dean".
- ^ Wolf, Gregory H. "July 30, 1933: Dizzy Dean fans 17 Cubs for new modern strikeout record". SABR. Retrieved September 26, 2021.
- YouTube
- ISBN 978-0670821419
- ^ a b c "1938: A Rockier Road". thisgreatgame.com. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
- Baseball Reference. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
- ^ a b c "1938 Chicago Cubs Schedule". Baseball Reference. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
- ^ "Homer In The Gloamin'". mlb.com. Retrieved February 12, 2011.
- ^ "To win World Series, Cubs must reverse history of Wrigley Field in Fall Classic | Sports Illustrated".
- ^ "The 1939 Season". Retrosheet. Retrieved May 21, 2023.
- ^ "The 1940 Season". Retrosheet. Retrieved May 21, 2023.
- ^ "Curtain Falls". Akron Beacon Journal. May 15, 1941. p. 35. Retrieved May 21, 2023 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ "Dizzy Dean Minor Leagues Statistics". Baseball-Reference.com. Retrieved May 21, 2023.
- ^ "Diz to Outfield". The Cincinnati Enquirer. AP. July 21, 1942. p. 13. Retrieved May 21, 2023 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ "Cubs to Play in Toledo, O." Ypsilanti (Michigan) Daily Press, July 24, 1943, p. 3.
- ^ "Green Sox Beat Cubs 14-5 Before 4,500 at Toledo," Fremont, Ohio News-Messenger, July 26, 1943, p. 7.
- ^ "Chicago White Sox 5, St. Louis Browns 2". Retrosheet. September 28, 1947. Retrieved May 21, 2023.
- ^ St. Louis Walk of Fame. "St. Louis Walk of Fame Inductees". stlouiswalkoffame.org. Archived from the original on October 31, 2012. Retrieved April 25, 2013.
- ^ 100 Greatest Baseball Players by The Sporting News : A Legendary List by Baseball Almanac
- ^ Cardinals Press Release (January 18, 2014). "Cardinals establish Hall of Fame & detail induction process". www.stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com. Retrieved January 29, 2014.
- ^ "Shrine of the Eternals – Inductees" Archived September 19, 2020, at the Wayback Machine. Baseball Reliquary. Retrieved 2019-08-14.
- ^ a b "Dizzy Deal Enterprises to Build Charcoal Plant in State," The Conservative [Carrollton, MS], vol. 97, no. 29 (Oct. 5, 1961), pg. 2.
- ^ "Dean, Dizzy - Dictionary definition of Dean, Dizzy - Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary". www.encyclopedia.com.
- ^ Nelson, Jack (July 15, 1970). "Dizzy Dean, Accused Biloxians Tell How It Was". Los Angeles Times. p. 21. Retrieved October 22, 2022.
- ^ The Baseball Necrology
- ISBN 9780962202605– via Google Books.
- ^ Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame & Museum Archived September 15, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Baseball Almanac". Retrieved January 23, 2008.
- ^ "Public Law 106-236" (PDF).
- ^ "Mississippi DOT Announces Dedication Ceremony for Dizzy Dean". Federal News Service. October 16, 2007. Archived from the original on November 2, 2012.
Further reading
- Gregory, Robert. (1992). Diz: The Story of Dizzy Dean and Baseball During the Great Depression. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-670-82141-9.
- ISBN 978-1-586-48419-4.
- Shapiro, Milton J. (1963). The Dizzy Dean Story. New York: Julian Messner.
- ISBN 978-0-827-20014-2.
- Staten, Vince. (1992). Ol' Diz: A Biography of Dizzy Dean. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-060-16514-7.
External links
- Dizzy Dean at the Baseball Hall of Fame
- Career statistics and player information from MLB, or ESPN, or Baseball Reference, or Fangraphs, or Baseball Reference (Minors), or Retrosheet
- Dizzy Dean at the SABR Baseball Biography Project
- Dizzy Dean Baseball, Inc. Archived February 26, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
- Pride of St. Louis Film info at IMDb.com
- Dizzy Dean at Find a Grave
- Dizzy Dean at The Deadball Era