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This is one of what will be an extended series of posts that will run over the summer. I will do one post covering the top 5 Yankees by WAR (Wins Above Replacement) at each position, plus a second profile piece on one player at each position. At the end of the summer, I’ll put together a post ranking the top 60 Yankees of all time. I will be using the career WAR found at baseballprojection.com, with only WAR garnered as a Yankee being included in the calculations.
Bill Dickey is a bit of a forgotten man in Yankee lore, as he was followed behind the plate by the great Yogi Berra and was therefore overshadowed by the sheer force of Yogi’s fame and skill. Even Dickey’s number was usurped by Berra, leading the team to retire the number #8 twice. Dickey is the only Yankee with a retired number to not be featured by YES Network’s Yankeeography, which is illustrative of his status of something of a forgotten man in Yankee lore. Dickey was a fantastic player even by Yankee standards, and he deserves greater recognition.
Dickey had a cup of coffee with the Yankees at in 1928 at 21, but first became an everyday player in 1929. Bill hit .324 in his rookie season, putting up an OPS of .832 and emerged as a strong defensive presence behind the plate. Dickey had his best stretch of seasons from , as he was worth at least 5.3 wins in each year and helped the Yankees win the title in every year during that span. 1937 was likely his best year, as he hit 29 homers and notched 133 RBI while putting up an amazing .332/.417/.570. He had a fantastic .313/.386/.484 line for his career, and garnered MVP votes in 9 different seasons. He made 11 All-Star teams, was among the top 10 among position players in WAR 6 times, and never struck out more than 37 times in a season. In all, he played in 8 World Series, and the Yankees won 7 of them, and he later coached on 6 additional champions. Dickey never played any position at catcher, which likely contributed to his decline at age 33. His 1943 season seemed to represent a recovery for him, but he got called to military service and only played 54 games after the war.
Dickey was known for having an intense on-field persona, and was suspended in 1932 after breaking the jaw of Carl Reynolds after a collision at home plate. He was also a close personal friend of Lou Gehrig, and took Yogi Berra under his wing as a coach for the Yankees in 1949. He is often credited with turning a raw defensive product in Berra into one of the top defensive catchers in the game. He also managed the club for a brief time in 1946 while wrapping up his playing career, but retired from both roles after the season, and coached for the club under Casey Stengel from .
Although Dickey was a great offensive player, his most highly regarded skill during his playing days was his game-calling ability, as the following anecdote illustrates:
Once, after the 1943 World Series, he found himself in an elevator with a soldier. The serviceman said to Dickey that he’d bet Bill didn’t remember him. Bill Dickey looked at the man and said, “Sure I do. We used to pitch you high and inside. If we pitched you outside-WHAM! – it was the ballgame”. Indeed, the fellow was an infielder who had played years before for the Athletics.
Dickey was a great Yankee, and is likely one of the top 10 catchers of all time. As his plaque in Monument Park reads, he was the first in the line of great Yankee catchers, and he should be recognized as such by the fanbase and the organization.
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4 Responses to Profiling Great Yankees: Bill Dickey
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TIQ IQ
Nice work!
When I was a kid and Yogi was in the the back end of his career (late 50′s), Dickey was still considered one of the greatest Yankees and greatest catchers in the history of Baseball.
It is true you don’t hear much about him now though, having Yogi, Elston Howard (1963 MVP) Munson and Posada after him but DIckey was arguably the best all around catcher of the lot.As guys retire and their fans die out, history is often rewritten based only on statistics and those Stats are often out of context to the reality.
I never saw him play but most old timers who did see them play said he was truly a greeat Hall of fame type player and right there if not ahead of Yogi and Roy Campenella the 2 great cathers of that time period in NY.
Both Yogi and Campy won 3 MVP”S during their runs in NYC.Pretty good!
Keep in mind also, Catchers didn’t have all the protection they have now and didn’t often get days off either, maybe the 2nd game of a doubleheader occasionally.Had small mitts and were constantly banged up on their hands, arms , shoulders and feet, with no whirlpools, trainers & good drugs, played injured more too, with broken fingers, so DIckey’s lifetime batting everage is simply amazing.
When Dickey baseball was at its offensive peak. His Yankee teams averaged well over 900 runs a year.
When Berra played they averaged under 800 runs a year.
Berra was a much better player, but his numbers suffer from playing in an era that saw offense already well on the way down to what it would become in the mid 60s.
I think Dickey was as good as some of the people he’s been rated lower than from his own era, (especially by Bill James, who’s hatred for all things Yankee is pretty plain to see.) But Yogi’s probably the best catcher to ever play, and then there’s a lot of guys fighting for the 2-7 slots.
Terrific stuff, Mo. Really enjoyed it. The jaw breaking story is the stuff of Yankee legend, I’ve read about it in detail in a few Yankee books. It shows what a hard-nosed player he was, the type that fans love and remember forever.
Yogi is not the best catcher ever to play.He wasn’t as good as Johnny Bench defensively or offensively and he was a left handed hitter in Yankee Stadium on amazing hitting teams.Campanella was equally great and greater statistically some seasons when healthy.Better overall defensively too.
It’s always a fool’s errand to try to rate one era’s best players over another era’s anyway.Gabby Hartnett, Mickey Cochrane and Dickey were amazing also.Yogi was very good but Bench was clearly the most dominant catcher ever.