Elston Howard Stats

In 1955, on July 23rd, Elston Howard pinch hit for Irv Noren in the ninth inning and hit a game-tying home run. The previous batter, Bob Cerv, pinch hit for Tommy Byrne and had a home run - the duo are the first New York Yankees to hit back-to-back pinch hit home runs in the same game!

15. Elston Howard

Howard reached the Yankees in 1955 and, although he played fairly well, was never a star until 1961. Everbody knows that Bill Dickey worked with the young Yogi Berra, teaching Berra to catch. But fewer people know that Dickey stayed with the Yankees for years as a coach, and also worked with Elston Howard when Stengel finally decided that Howard was going to be his next catcher.

In 1961, the first year post-Casey, Howard burst into the limelight wit a .348 season, 21 homers, and then had four genuinely outstanding seasons, 1961-64, winning an MVP Award with a 1963 seasons that, in all honesty, was not 1% better than the other three seasons. We have his Win Shares from 1961 through 1964 at 29, 20, 28, and 32. He faded quickly after that, due to injuries.

This is very much the same career pattern that Bill Dickey had. Dickey reached the Yankees in late 1928, but he, too, was never really outstanding until 1936, when he hit .362 with 23 homers. He, also, was then superb for four years, posting Win Share totals of 25, 32, 27, and 27. Then, like Howard, he had injuries and faded away.

Obviously Dickey was better than Howard, although not all that much better, in my opinion, and just a tiny bit better in his four big seasons. And, to the extent that Dickey was better, he was better mostly because the park - Yankee Stadium - favored Dickey, whereas it almost ruined Howard. In his career, Dickey hit more than two-thirds of his home runs in Yankee Stadium - one of the highest home-park home run percentages in history.

Howard, on the other hand, has one of the lowest percentages of home runs at home, because Yankee Stadium at that time was a $20 taxi ride to left field. Dickey outhomered Howard 202 to 167, in careers of fairly comparable length, but that's all because of Yankee Stadium. In road games, Howard outhomered Dickey 113 to 67.