Tommy Byrne

September 29, 1955. Yankee Stadium, Game 2 of the World Series against Brooklyn. Tommy Byrne worked a five-hitter into a 4-2 complete game, then, with the bases loaded in the fourth, picked up a bat and drove in two of the runs himself. He was 35 years old, four years removed from a trade that looked like the end of him, and having the best season of his career. Tommy Byrne pitched for the Yankees in two separate stints, 1943-1951 and 1954-1957, and won two World Series titles as one of the wildest left-handers -- and best-hitting pitchers -- the Bronx ever employed.

Wild From the Start

Byrne signed with the Yankees for $10,000 in 1940, a math major out of Wake Forest with a live arm and no idea where it was going. His 1943 debut set the tone: 2-1 in 11 games, 35 walks in 31.2 innings (more free passes than innings pitched, a stat line that tells you everything before you've read the rest of it). He lost the next two seasons to the Navy, serving as a gunnery officer during the invasion of southern France, and came back in 1946 to find the wildness waiting for him.

He led the American League in walks three straight years, 1949 through 1951, and hit more batters than almost anyone in the league along the way. None of it stopped him from winning -- 15-7 in Casey Stengel's first year running the club, 15-9 and an All-Star nod in 1950. But New York had seen enough by June 1951, trading him to the St. Louis Browns.

Exiled, Then Reinvented

What followed was a baseball odyssey: the Browns to the White Sox, the White Sox to Washington, released and re-signed by the White Sox within a single August afternoon in 1953 (the transaction wire earned its keep that day). By December he'd been sold to the Pacific Coast League. Nobody outside Seattle would've bet on him getting back to New York.

Then he won 20 games for the Rainiers and led the league in strikeouts. Stengel asked around about arms, heard from Charlie Dressen that Byrne had finally learned to pitch, and told GM George Weiss to get him back. On September 3, 1954, the Yankees bought his contract for a second time.

The Comeback

Byrne's 1955 wasn't just good -- it was the best year any pitcher in either league had that season by one measure the Associated Press cared about. His walk rate collapsed from a career-worst 179 in 1949 to 87, his record hit 16-5, and the AP named him Comeback Player of the Year across all of sports, beating out Sugar Ray Robinson and the entire Michigan State football team for the honor (a category that, in hindsight, feels like it deserved its own trophy case).

That October he beat Brooklyn in Game 2 of the World Series, then started Game 7 and lost 2-0 as Johnny Podres shut the Yankees out for Brooklyn's first championship. A year later Byrne got his second ring, appearing in relief during the 1956 World Series as the Yankees beat the Dodgers in seven -- with Yogi Berra behind the plate for both of Byrne's championships and Whitey Ford anchoring the '56 staff alongside him.

The Bat, the Mound, and Wake Forest

Byrne could really hit. Manager Joe McCarthy once tried talking him into playing first base full time, and he pinch hit 80 times over his career to go with a .238 average and 11 home runs in pinstripes. It's a strange resume for a pitcher famous for not knowing where the ball was going -- wild enough to lead the league in walks three years running, controlled enough at the plate to make managers wonder what else he could do.

He finished up in 1957, went home to North Carolina, and eventually became mayor of Wake Forest. "I never really believed in my own mind that I was so very wild," he said once, looking back on it. The record book disagreed with him. The 1955 World Series ring didn't care either way.