Wally Schang

September 8, 1916. Shibe Park, Philadelphia. Wally Schang stepped in against a New York Yankees rookie named Allan Russell in the first inning, batting left-handed, and drove a grand slam into the right-field seats. Two innings later he came up again, this time from the right side, and took Yankees reliever Slim Love deep to center. No switch-hitter in major-league history had ever homered from both sides of the plate in the same game. Schang did it against the Yankees -- five years before he'd start catching for them.

By then he'd already caught a World Series winner. Before he was done, he'd caught three more, for three different franchises, and been the man behind the plate for the Yankees' very first championship. Cooperstown never called. Nearly everyone who caught a pitch from him thought it should have.

Path to the Bronx

Schang was born August 22, 1889, in South Wales, New York, a hamlet outside Buffalo, and broke into pro ball with the Buffalo Bisons in 1912. The Philadelphia Athletics grabbed him in that winter's Rule 5 Draft, and Connie Mack had him catching in the majors by May of 1913. He was 23, a rookie behind two established veterans, and Mack still trusted him to start four of the five games in that fall's World Series against John McGraw's Giants. Schang hit .357, drove in seven runs, and homered off Giants ace Doc Crandall. The New York Times didn't hedge: "Wally Schang, the kid catcher of the Athletics, will go down into history as the sensation of the 1913 world's series."

He backed it up. In 1914 he led every catcher in the American League in batting average, extra-base hits, home runs, and slugging, helping Philadelphia to another pennant (a World Series the "Miracle" Boston Braves swept out from under them). Mack's dynasty didn't survive much longer. The fire sale that followed sent Schang to Boston in December 1917, along with pitcher Joe Bush, for $60,000 and a handful of players. In Boston he caught a Red Sox pitching staff that included a 23-year-old left-hander named Babe Ruth, and in October 1918 he hit .444 as the Red Sox beat the Cubs for the championship. Two rings, two franchises, twenty-nine years old. He wasn't finished.

Yankees Career

The Red Sox, gutting their own roster the way the A's once gutted theirs, traded Schang to the Yankees on December 15, 1920. New York sent Del Pratt, Muddy Ruel, Hank Thormahlen, and Sammy Vick to Boston; Schang came back along with Waite Hoyt, Harry Harper, and Mike McNally. Hoyt got the ink over the years. Schang was the proven commodity at the time of the deal -- a catcher who'd already won with two different World Series champions, walking into a lineup that had Ruth in it and a pennant on the way.

He was New York's primary catcher for the first three pennants the franchise ever won. In 1921, his best year in pinstripes, he hit .317 with an .883 OPS as the Yankees won their first American League flag, then lost the World Series to the Giants in eight games. 1922 brought a second pennant and a second October loss, a sweep this time, McGraw's Giants making it look easy. Schang caught in both Series and came away with nothing to show for it but a growing reputation as the guy who'd been on winning teams everywhere except New York.

1923 changed that. Schang was behind the plate at Yankee Stadium's very first pitch on April 18, 1923 -- Bob Shawkey's ceremonial toss, high and inside -- on the same afternoon Ruth hit the ballpark's first home run. Six months later the Yankees and Giants met for a third straight October, and this time New York had the better team and the home field. Schang hit .318 in the Series the Yankees finally won, four games to two -- the first championship in franchise history, with the man who'd caught two other championships in two other cities squarely behind the plate for it.

Key Moments

Life After the Bronx

Age caught up with him first. By June 2, 1925, Miller Huggins had seen enough -- 35 years old, his production sliding -- and handed the catching job to Benny Bengough. The Yankees traded Schang to the St. Louis Browns in 1926, and he answered the doubters the only way he knew how, hitting .330 with a .516 slugging percentage at age 36. He drifted back to Philadelphia in 1930, a backup to Mickey Cochrane on a Connie Mack team stacked with Lefty Grove and Jimmie Foxx, and picked up a fourth championship ring without appearing in that World Series at all. He finished up with Detroit in 1931, nineteen years after Buffalo, and finished his career with a scattering of down-ballot Hall of Fame votes and nothing close to induction. He died March 6, 1965, in St. Louis, at 75.