“Guided by the deft hand of Tim Manners, Waite Hoyt shares rollicking stories and sharp insights from a Hall of Fame career fashioned at the dawning of a dynasty unrivaled in sports: the New York Yankees. Manners takes us back to the days of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig—and well beyond—through the eyes of an early mound master whose story can finally be told.”—Tyler Kepner, baseball columnist for the New York Times and best-selling author of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches
“From the trove of writings left behind by Hall of Fame pitcher Waite Hoyt, Tim Manners has woven together a warm, intensely candid, and very human story of the highest realms of success as well as the coldest moments of the ultimate realities. Very few baseball biographies have the range of triumph and anguish, of poignance and redemption, as this self-told tale of the ace of the legendary 1927 Yankees.”—Donald Honig, author of Baseball When the Grass Was Real
“What a great find to tell the story in Hoyt’s own words.”—David Maraniss, author of Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe
“Nearly forty years after his passing, baseball’s greatest storyteller finally tells his own story in his own words. From baseball to vaudeville to broadcasting, and just about anything and everything in between, Waite Hoyt led baseball’s most unique and eclectic life. Tim Manners painstakingly pieces together moments and memories to reveal fascinating insight into not just Hoyt but also the times he lived in. Hoyt’s story needed to be told, and like his legendary rain delay stories, Schoolboy makes it worth the wait. . . . What a wonderful read!”—Lance McAlister, host of 700WLW Sports, Cincinnati
“For baseball fans, the University of Nebraska Press is a perennial MVP—most valuable publisher. This biography shows why. Waite Hoyt, an underappreciated cog in a great Yankee machine, had a two-decade Major League career that illuminates the game a century ago.”—George F. Will, author of
Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball“The Yankees famed ‘Murderer’s Row’ era wasn’t just about the power of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. There were Hall of Fame–bound pitchers on that great team as well, none more prominent than the colorful local star Waite Hoyt, whose life story continues to fascinate students of the game’s history.”—Marty Appel, Yankees historian and author of Pinstripe Empire
“Manners’s skillfully edited and seamless narrative, compiled from Hall of Famer Waite Hoyt’s lifetime of memories, is a real baseball treasure. Success, failure, doubts, and achievements, in baseball and Hoyt’s personal life, are all here in his own words. This book will enhance Hoyt’s status as a baseball star, as well as a man.”—Alan D. Gaff, author of
Lou Gehrig: The Lost Memoir“A great read! Manners makes the Waite Hoyt story—especially ‘you-are-there’ material about Babe Ruth and other Yankee legends—spring to life.”—Rick Burton, David B. Falk Professor of Sport Management at Syracuse University
“An insider’s view of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, with intimate stories about Waite Hoyt’s life as a fifteen-year-old pro, his grand times with the 1927 Yankees, his twenty-four seasons in the Cincinnati Reds radio booth, and most revealingly his showdown with alcohol. Full of honesty, intimacy, and hard-knocks inspiration. I couldn’t put it down.”—John Erardi, author of Tony Pérez: From Cuba to Cooperstown
Table of Contents
Foreword by Bob Costas
Preface by Tim Manners
Prologue: Brick by Brick
Part 1
1. The Family Web
2. There Goes Our Boy
3. Odyssey of Oddities
4. In the Bag
5. Great Big Fellas
6. When Schoolboys Cry
7. The Joy Clubs
8. Miss Scoville’s Advice
9. A Bath in Badness
Part 2
10. Industrial Strength
11. Red Sox Hop
12. Me and the Babe
13. Turn of the Twenties
14. Art of Baseball
15. Young and a Yankee
16. The Merry Mortician
17. The Roaring Yankees
18. Little Big Hug
Part 3
19. Skating with Lou
20. Dear Ellen
21. The Unartful Dodger
22. Radio Days
23. The Last Drink
24. Then and Now
Epilogue: Christopher’s Question
Acknowledgments
