Joe Dugan

Joe Dugan played third base for the New York Yankees from 1922 to 1928, hit .286 in pinstripes, and won three World Series rings (1923, 1927, and 1928) without ever posting a single number that made anyone stop and stare. That was sort of the point. Manager Miller Huggins once said Dugan could run, catch, hit, and throw better than anyone on the roster -- and then added that outside of those four things, the man was useless to him. It's the highest compliment a manager ever delivered with a straight face, and it's the closest thing Dugan has to a signature line in Yankees history.

Path to the Bronx

Dugan was born May 12, 1897, in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, coal country in Schuylkill County. He went from Hillhouse High School in New Haven to the College of the Holy Cross and straight into the majors -- no minor league apprenticeship, no seasoning. Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics put him on a big-league field on July 5, 1917, at age 20.

He struggled early, hitting well under .200 across his first two seasons (not exactly the debut Connie Mack was hoping for), then broke out with a .322 average in 1920 and a career-high 10 home runs in 1921. He also picked up a nickname that had nothing to do with his glove or his legs. Sportswriter Tiny Maxwell of the Philadelphia Public Ledger started calling him "Jumping Joe" because Dugan kept taking unauthorized leaves from the A's -- he hated Philadelphia and its fans, and he'd vanish home to Massachusetts mid-season until Mack talked him back. Opposing crowds picked up the bit and taunted him with it: "I want to go home!"

He got his wish, sort of. Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee -- yes, the same Frazee who'd already sold Babe Ruth to New York -- traded for Dugan in early 1922, then flipped him to the Yankees on July 23 that year, sending him and Elmer Smith to the Bronx for Chick Fewster, Elmer Miller, Johnny Mitchell, Lefty O'Doul, and $50,000 cash. Eighty-four games in a Red Sox uniform, sandwiched between Philadelphia and New York. Frazee had already given the Yankees their best player. This time he handed them their third baseman for the next seven years.

Yankees Career

Dugan hit .286 in 60 games down the stretch in 1922 as the Yankees held off the St. Louis Browns by a single game for the pennant (one game -- there was no margin for a bad week). New York lost that October to the Giants, but the next year the same two clubs met again and the Yankees finally broke through -- their first championship, four games to two. Dugan hit .280 in that Series, steady as ever at third, not the reason they won so much as the guy who didn't give anything away.

1924 was his best year with a bat -- a .302 average across 148 games, the high point of a career built on being reliable rather than remarkable. Then his body started working against him. A trick knee that had been nagging him since he arrived in New York required a serious operation in 1925, and Dugan spent six weeks in bed recovering. It helped. It never fully fixed the problem.

Murderers' Row

By 1927, the knee had cost him regular playing time and a little bit of pop -- he hit .269 with 2 home runs and 43 RBI in 111 games, numbers that would have looked thin on almost any other pennant winner in baseball history. On this one, he was manning third base while Ruth hit 60 home runs and Gehrig drove in 175 runs, on a club that went on to sweep the Pirates. Dugan wasn't the headline. Nobody playing next to that lineup was going to be.

The Yankees repeated as champions in 1928, sweeping the Cardinals for Dugan's third ring in six years, though he'd slipped to 94 games as the knee kept limiting him. New York released him that winter. He played one more season for the Boston Braves in 1929, batting .304 in 60 games (his best average since 1924, and nobody in New York seemed to notice), sat out 1930 entirely, and made a brief, forgettable eight-game return with Detroit in 1931 before retiring for good that June.

Key Moments

Legacy

Dugan and Ruth stayed close long after both men left the field. On June 13, 1948, at what turned out to be Ruth's last appearance at the Stadium, the two old teammates sat together and Dugan asked how he was doing. As the story is told, Ruth -- dying of cancer by then -- answered simply: "Joe, I'm gone." They both cried. Ruth never set foot in the Stadium again.

Dugan spent his own retirement running a beer distributorship that opened right as Prohibition ended, then a tavern, then a baseball school back in New England, and later scouted for the Red Sox from 1955 to 1966. He died July 7, 1982, in Norwood, Massachusetts, at 85 -- outliving nearly every man he'd played next to on those championship teams.

He's not in the Hall of Fame, and nobody built much of a campaign for him. Dugan didn't lead the league in anything. He didn't hit for power or hit .340. What he did was show up for five pennants and three championships at a position the Yankees never had to worry about for seven straight years, next to the loudest lineup the sport has ever produced. Huggins had it right. Outside of running, catching, hitting, and throwing, there wasn't much left to say about Joe Dugan -- and for a Yankees third baseman, that's a pretty complete résumé.