Thursday, January 13, 2011

Did The Yankees Win The Pennant In The Winter......of 1955

In an era when we had front office people who weren't just office boys.
excerpts from sabr journals
Yankee skipper Stengel, never at a loss for words, praised the trade at the Winter Meetings at the Commodore Hotel in New York City.
"Richards made a wonderful deal. I think the Baltimore fans are fortunate. They can see these good players every day instead of coming out to watch Turley or Larsen pitch once every fourth day...
On November 17, 1954, Paul Richards of the Orioles and George Weiss of the Yankees engineered the largest two team swap of personnel in major league history. The deal was announced in the media in two stages - first, on November 18 it was announced that the Orioles had sent the "Second Coming of Bob Feller" Bullet Bob Turley (American League leader in K's and BB's), Don Larsen (AL leader in losses with 21) and Billy Hunter (the 0's starting shortstop) to the New York Yankees for pitchers Harry Byrd and Jim McDonald; outfielder Gene Woodling; shortstop Willie Miranda; and minor league catchers Gus Triandos and Hal Smith (the American Association's batting champ with a .350 average). Because of waiver and draft regulations the rest of the trade was not officially announced until December 2, 1954. Baltimore sent pitcher Mike Blyzka, catcher Darrell Johnson, first baseman Dick Kryhoski, and outfielders Ted del Guercio and Tim Fridley to the Yankees to complete their end of the deal. The Yankees in turn sent to the Orioles pitcher Bill Miller, second baseman Don Leppert, and third baseman Kal Segrist. Originally, it was reported, that the trade was to have also included Oriole pitcher Lou Kretlow, but the 0's withdrew his name and George Weiss agreed to a nine for eight swap instead of nine for nine.

3 comments:

casey stengel said...

imagine if we had gotten lou kretlow!

the ghost of George Weiss said...

Ten cuidado con el fuego (It'll burn you!) Hey Brian, good move

Joe De Pastry said...

Great trade, even though Smith killed us with his three-run homer in Game 7 of the 1960 Series.