Andy Carey

Second inning, October 8, 1956, at Yankee Stadium. Jackie Robinson ripped a shot down the third-base line that had "base hit" written all over it. Andy Carey got enough leather on it to deflect the ball to Gil McDougald at short, who threw out Robinson by a step. Six innings later, Carey lunged and speared a Gil Hodges liner an inch off the grass. Don Larsen's perfect game -- still the only one in World Series history -- doesn't stay clean without those two plays.

That afternoon is what most fans remember about Andy Carey, if they remember him at all. It's a fair introduction. It also undersells a nine-year run in pinstripes as the best defensive third baseman on a Yankees dynasty that won four straight pennants, and a two-time World Series champion in his own right.

From Alameda to a $60,000 Bonus

He was born Andrew Arthur Hexem on October 18, 1931, in Oakland, California. His parents split when he was young, his mother remarried a divorce lawyer named Kenneth Carey, and the boy took his stepfather's name. He grew up in Alameda, graduated high school in 1949, and played ball at Saint Mary's College of California until the school dropped its varsity program for money reasons -- which put a 19-year-old infielder on the open market.

Yankees scout Joe Devine won the bidding war with a $60,000 offer, reportedly the largest bonus the organization had ever paid. Carey signed in February 1951. There was no big-league promotion waiting for him, though -- baseball's bonus rule, which forced high-priced signees to stick on the major-league roster, wasn't in effect that year (fortunate timing for a front office that wanted its $60,000 investment seasoned in the minors first). So the Yankees shipped him to the Triple-A Kansas City Blues instead, where he hit .288 and forced his way into 1952 spring training.

Stengel's Whipping Boy

Carey debuted on May 2, 1952, against Detroit and went 0-for-4. He spent his first two years in a reserve role, including a 1953 championship season where he barely played -- pinch-running, defensive innings here and there, six of his thirteen starts coming only after the pennant was already locked up. He was on the World Series roster. He never appeared in a Series game. He still collected a winner's share bigger than his year's salary, which is one way to learn that October money doesn't ask how many innings you played.

Casey Stengel made Carey a full-time player in 1954, and by most accounts made him a target, too -- riding him hard in the belief that an irritated Carey was a better third baseman than a comfortable one. Carey hit .302 with 65 RBI that year and never seemed to hold the treatment against his manager (Stengel needled half the roster at one point or another -- Carey just happened to be a favorite target). Getting needled by Stengel was apparently just part of the job description in the Bronx.

A Wedding, a Batting Title in Triples

By 1955, Carey was an everyday fixture at third, leading the American League with 11 triples and setting career highs in hits and runs scored. That October, two days after the Yankees lost the 1955 World Series to Brooklyn, Carey married Lucy Marlow, a young Hollywood actress who'd shared the screen with Joan Crawford in Queen Bee and Judy Garland in A Star Is Born (the bigger name in the marriage at that particular moment, by most measures). The union lasted nearly twenty years and produced two children -- proof that at least one good thing came out of that particular October.

The Perfect Game

The 1956 Yankees beat Brooklyn again, this time for the championship, and Carey's signature afternoon came in the middle of that series. Larsen's no-hitter through eight innings had turned Yankee Stadium into the quietest packed house in baseball -- nobody in the dugout would talk to him, the sport's oldest superstition demanding silence around a pitcher working on history. Carey's glove work on Robinson and Hodges kept it alive without a word being spoken about it.

The only perfect game in World Series history put the Yankees up three games to two, though Brooklyn would force a Game 7 before New York finally closed it out. Carey had his first championship ring as an actual participant -- the 1953 title having come and gone without him ever setting foot on the field in October.

Two Rings and a Trade to Kansas City

Carey stayed the regular third baseman through 1958, posting his best power numbers -- 12 home runs and an .870 OPS, to go with a .293 average -- as the Yankees beat Milwaukee in a seven-game World Series comeback from down three games to one. That gave him his second ring. His playing time thinned out after that. A young infielder named Clete Boyer was ready, and Boyer's glove made the decision easy for the front office.

On May 19, 1960, the Yankees traded Carey to the Kansas City Athletics for outfielder Bob Cerv. He was 28 years old and had spent his entire big-league life in pinstripes. The trade ended a run that included five American League pennants and two championships. Carey played out the rest of his career with Kansas City, a brief stint with the Chicago White Sox, and a final season with the Los Angeles Dodgers before retiring after 1962.

After the Uniform

Carey went into business after baseball and found, decades later, that his name still carried weight at autograph shows. "Yankee fans, they remember me," he said. "They still idolize you. It's just amazing." He died on December 15, 2011, at 80, of Lewy body dementia, in Costa Mesa, California.

Twenty-seven up, twenty-seven down, and Andy Carey's glove touched two of those outs. He spent nine years in the Bronx doing exactly that kind of quiet, essential work -- the plays that make someone else's afternoon perfect.