Wilcy Moore

Wilcy Moore was thirty years old and had never thrown a major league pitch when the 1927 Yankees broke camp. By October, he'd led the American League in ERA, saved a World Series game for Waite Hoyt, and won another one himself. A cotton farmer with a busted arm and an accidental sinker had become the best relief pitcher in baseball, on the best team baseball had ever seen.

Path to the Bronx

Moore grew up working his family's cotton farm near Bonita, Texas, and didn't turn pro until 1922, pitching for Paris of the Class D Texas-Oklahoma League. He won all five of his starts there and moved up to Fort Worth, grinding through the minors the way most players never had to -- one level at a time, no fast track, no bonus money.

The break came by accident. Pitching for Greenville of the Sally League in 1925, a batted ball fractured his arm. When he came back, throwing overhand hurt too much, so he dropped down sidearm -- and found that the ball now sank hard and late. In 1926, throwing that new pitch, he went 30-4 with a 2.86 ERA and 31 complete games. Yankees general manager Ed Barrow spotted the line in The Sporting News and bought Moore's contract for roughly $3,500.

Yankees Career

Moore made his major league debut on April 14, 1927, older than most rookies by a decade. Manager Miller Huggins used him as something the game barely had a name for yet -- a pitcher who came in with men on base and trouble brewing, not just to finish the ninth. Teammates called him "Cy." What he did with that role changed how the Yankees thought about a bullpen.

The 1927 season was the kind rookies dream about and almost never get. Moore appeared in 50 games, started a dozen of them, and finished 19-7 with a 2.28 ERA -- the lowest mark in the American League -- across 213 innings. He led the league in saves too, with 13. On a roster that had Babe Ruth hitting 60 home runs and Gehrig driving in 175 runs, the quietest man on the pitching staff was its most valuable one.

He couldn't hit at all, and Ruth never let him forget it. Sometime that season, Ruth bet Moore $300 to Moore's $100 that he wouldn't collect three hits all year. Moore's third hit didn't come until late in the season, at Navin Field in Detroit -- a slow roller that died down the third-base line before anyone could field it. Asked about it afterward, Moore just shrugged: "This is just an easy park to hit in." Ruth paid the $300. Moore used it to buy two mules for his Oklahoma farm and named them Babe and Ruth.

October only sharpened the story. In the 1927 World Series sweep of Pittsburgh, Moore saved Game 1 for Hoyt, then started Game 4 and threw a complete game to close out the sweep, 4-3. Two appearances, one win, one save, an 0.84 ERA. The rookie who'd spent five years grinding through Class D ball was a world champion.

The decline came just as fast. In 1928, Moore fell off the roof of a barn he'd built himself on his farm that winter and broke his shoulder -- and told nobody in the organization. He pitched through it anyway, going 4-4 with a 4.18 ERA in 35 games, a shadow of his rookie year. He was on the roster when the 1928 Yankees swept the Cardinals for a second straight title, but the Yankees' starters threw four straight complete games and never needed him.

He tried a comeback in 1929, going 6-4 with 9 saves, tied for the league lead. It wasn't enough. That November, the Yankees shipped him -- along with Ben Paschal and Johnny Grabowski -- to St. Paul of the American Association for catcher-manager Bubbles Hargrave. Boston picked him up in the Rule 5 draft the following year, and Moore spent two seasons pitching for the Red Sox, a mediocre team with little of the magic he'd known in the Bronx.

The Yankees brought him back on August 1, 1932, and he made it count. In his final stretch in pinstripes, Moore went 2-0 with a 2.52 ERA in 10 games, then won the clinching Game 4 of the 1932 World Series over the Cubs, throwing 5.1 innings and allowing just two hits. A third championship, even if he'd only pitched in two of the three Series himself. He pitched one more season, 1933, going 5-6 before his final big league game that September.

Key Moments

The Accidental Reliever

Baseball didn't have a word yet for what Moore was doing in 1927. There was no "closer," no save totals on the scoreboard, no separate wing of the Hall of Fame for men who specialized in other pitchers' messes. Huggins just needed someone who could come into a tight game and get outs, and Moore -- a rookie with a sinker he'd discovered by accident -- turned out to be better at it than almost anyone in the league.

He never repeated 1927, and he knew it. The arm that carried him to a championship never fully recovered from the barn roof, and by 1933 he was a league-average pitcher finishing out a short career. But for one season, on a team that included two of the greatest hitters who ever lived, the least famous man on the pitching staff was also its most essential.

Moore went back to farming in Hollis, Oklahoma, after his last big league game in 1933, and he stayed there until he died in 1963. He never became famous the way his 1927 teammates did. But for one season, a cotton farmer with an accidental sinker outpitched every arm in the American League -- and won a bet against Babe Ruth in the bargain.