Bill Dickey- the First Great Yankee Catcher

"Bill Dickey learned me all his experience", Yogi Berra once said, as only he could. Bill Dickey was the premier catcher in baseball for almost his entire career, and many argue he was the greatest backstop ever. One of only two catchers to hit .300 ten times, Ivan Rodriguez being the other, Bill Dickey was the soul of the Yankees, playing in eight World Series and on the winning side in seven. He then managed them for a year and wound up a coach with the Bronx Bombers, where Bill Dickey tutored Berra in the finer points of the game, turning him into a Hall of Famer as well.

Born in Bastrop, Louisiana in 1907, Bill Dickey moved with his family to Arkansas; they relocated to Little Rock when Dickey was a teenager, and he made his home there until his death. Dickey excelled in school at Little Rock College in baseball, and the Yankees eventually purchased his contract from a club in the Cotton States League for $12,000 in 1927. Bill played for a pair of minor league squads in 1928 and joined the Yankees for the last ten games of the season, batting .200 in 15 at bats. The next year he was made the starting catcher at the age of 22, and he batted a robust .324 with 65 runs batted in, the first of six .300 seasons in a row and ten in eleven years.

He proved to be a skillful handler of pitchers, and his strong throwing arm kept runners from stealing bases. Five times Bill Dickey led American League catchers in fielding percentage, leading to a career mark of .988 in his fifteen full seasons. A feared clutch hitter, Bill Dickey was at his best with the game on the line. Dickey batted over .400 in two World Series, and his RBI won Game One of the 1939 Series against the Reds as the Yanks went on to sweep Cincinnati. In the 1934 All-Star Game, after Carl Hubbell had struck out five future Hall of Famers, it was Bill Dickey who broke up that streak with a single.