Whitey Ford, Beloved Yankees Pitcher Who Confounded Batters, Dies at 91

[Valin]

New York Times

An irrepressible son of New York City, Ford joined the pantheon of baseball legends who dominated the 1950s and ’60s.

Richard Goldstein

Oct. 9, 2020

Whitey Ford, the Yankees’ Hall of Fame left-hander who was celebrated as the Chairman of the Board for his stylish pitching and big-game brilliance on the ball clubs that dominated baseball in the 1950s and early ’60s, died on Thursday night at his home in Lake Success, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 91.

The Yankees announced his death.

Pitching for 11 pennant-winners and six World Series champions, Ford won 236 games, the most of any Yankee, and had a career winning percentage of .690, the best among pitchers with 200 or more victories in the 20th century.

At his death, Ford was the second-oldest surviving Hall of Famer, behind the former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda, who is 93. His death came six days after that of his fellow Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals.

He was a scrappy, rambunctious, fair-haired son of New York City — hence the nickname — and through the decades a beloved one, as loyal to Yankee pinstripes as his most die-hard fans. “I’ve been a Yankee fan since I was 5 years old,” Ford said at his Hall of Fame induction at Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1974.

Ford and the Yankees’ manager, Casey Stengel, in 1950, after the Yankees won a fourth straight game against the Phillies to take the World Series.Credit...Associated Press

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