The Player Who Didn't Make It to Cooperstown

Last week, baseball's 12-man Committee on Veterans resurrected three oldtimers from the dusty record books of the deadball era, and elected Amus Rusie, Joe Sewell and Al Lopez to the Hall of Fame.

The three will be enshrined in the hallowed corridors of Cooperstown on August 8 along with Ernie Banks, who was elected in the regular poll of sportswriters.

The new inductees are all deserving of their plaques. Rusie, the famed "Hoosier Thunderbolt" of the 1890s, died in 1942. He won more than 30 games a season three times and has a winning percentage of .603. Rusie was also the first major leaguer ever to sit out a season over a contract dispute, as he refused to sign with the Giants in 1896.

Sewell and Lopez also hung up their spikes as seasoned journeymen. Lopez played for 19 years but made his reputation as a manager. Sewell played 1,103 consecutive games in pinstripes, the fourth longest streak of all time.

There's one titan from that bygone heyday, however, who's still waiting for his hallowed berth in Cooperstown. His name is William Ellsworth Hoy and, in spite of a career that spanned three decades and 14 seasons, the baseball sages on the committee have allowed another year to pass without inducting him.

Hoy's credentials for admission are impeccable, but what makes his a true baseball legend is his pugnacious attitude toward his life and the game that consumed it.

In every box score and record book, he is listed as Dummy Hoy, a perpetual recognition of his lifelong handicap. He was born deaf and dumb on May 23, 1862 in Houckstown, Ohio and broke into the big leagues in 1888 when he joined the Washington club in the National League.

Hoy was the quintessential master of a game that would no longer be familiar to present-day players. He was a slapdash hitter who careened along the basepaths and the endless outfields of the old ballparks with reckless abandon. He had an uncanny sense of the strike zone and surprising power for a man who stood only 5 ft., 4 in. tall.

One anecdote illustrating the strength of his hands and wrists is that he wore a diamond ring with a hinge on it. The jeweler was unable to give him a regular ring that would fit over his large knuckles.

In his rookie season, Hoy led the league with 82 stolen bases and finished with 594 thefts by the time he retired after the 1902 season. That many stolen bases is enough in itself to entitle him to a posthumous spot in Cooperstown, as only Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins, Max Carey and Honus Wagner swiped more during Hoy's lifetime.

Hoy was a veritable iron man in the batter's box and in centerfield, where he played 1795 games for Washington, Buffalo, St. Louis, Louisville, Chicago and Cincinnati during the course of his career. He led the league in 1899 with 633 at bats and in walks with 1901 and 1891, when he had 119. Altogether he had 2044 hits, which gave him a lifetime batting average of .291.

He was, in addition, an outstanding centerfielder. In an interview he once said that the achievement of which he remained most proud was a fielding record he holds to this day. In the ninth inning of a game, from centerfield he threw out three runners trying to score from second.

Hoy, of course, had to overcome the handicap of being unable to communicate with his fellow fielders. Many of his teammates learned sign language. But the men who played alongside him, for example Tommy Leach during the 1899 season and Hall of Famer Wahoo Sam Crawford during 1902, listened for a sort of throaty squeak he made when calling for a ball.

His deafness had more lasting reper-cussions on the conduct of baseball. The hand signals used by umpires to indicate whether a pitch is a strike or a ball actually originated with Hoy. Since he could neither hear nor speak, umpires began to signal as a matter of course.

Hoy claimed that his disability never affected his performance on the field. Shortly before he died, he was quoted as communicating, "I found it no handicap. I could feel the tiniest foul tip and when on the bases I had my own secret way of knowing when a batter made a foul tip. The yelling of the opposition was useless as far as I was concerned."

Hoy's last season was 1902, but his prime years were the two he spent at Louisville. Hoy's roommate then was Leach, who was just beginning his 19-year career as one of the game's outstanding place hitters. In 1898, Dummy batted .304 and the following year .306.

Before he retired, Hoy married a deaf mute named Anna Maria, who taught at a school for the deaf in Cincinnati. His teammates were intrigued by the couple's unusual doorbell. The caller pulled a knob which released a lead ball on the floor. The Hoys heard the vibrations through their feet and knew someone was at the door.

Hoy made his last public appearance in 1961 when he threw out the game ball for the third game of the World Series between Cincinnati and the Yankees. He died that December at the age of 99, the oldest ex-major leaguer then living.

Yet Dummy Hoy is never considered by the Hall of Fame selectors, and it has now been 75 years since he last swung a bat.

Wahoo Sam, perhaps the game's greatest slugger before the advent of Tyrus Raymond Cobb, put it best when he said a few years ago, "And still they don't give him a tumble for the Hail of Fame. It's not right."

Indeed it's not. Dummy Hoy was truly the glory of his time.