Still Alive and Well (reports of Bill Henry's death were only slightly exaggerated)

Catbird in the Nosebleed Seats ^ | September 7th, 2007 | Jeff Kallman

[rhema]

Several days ago came the word that Bill Henry—once a valuable left-handed relief pitcher for several clubs, including the Cincinnati Reds’ 1961 pennant winner—had died.

Several hours ago came the word that the report of Bill Henry’s death was only slightly exaggerated. The death was actually that of a Lakeland, Florida man, also named Bill Henry, who had a habit of telling people he once pitched for the Boston Red Sox.

The mistake was uncovered by genealogist and baseball historian David Lambert, who first spotted the deceased Mr. Henry’s birth year as 1924—three years before Bill Henry the reliever with the 3.26 lifetime ERA was born.

Bill Henry the actual reliever, who actually did pitch for the Red Sox, seems to have been gracious if slightly bewildered by the whole thing. “I really can’t understand why a man would do something like that,” Henry told the Tampa Tribune, alive and well, living in Deer Park, Texas, and still working for a Houston mooring company. “To impress his family or his neighbors?”

Lambert told the paper Henry the pitcher was “quite the gentleman” and added he took the pains he did to expose the error to set the record straight about the real pitcher, since Henry’s generation of former Red Sox is losing each other “rather quickly” nowadays.

Henry came up with the Olde Towne Team in 1952 and began as a starting pitcher, going 15-20 with a 3.74 ERA in four seasons with the Red Sox. His teammates included Ted Williams (at least when the Splinter came home from the Korean War), Dominic DiMaggio (who’d retire after 1953), Johnny Pesky (who’d split 1952 between the Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers), Mel Parnell, Ellis Kinder, Billy Goodman, and George Kell.

“It’s for people like Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky, so they know they haven’t lost another teammate,” Lambert told the Tribune. “The whole story is that the Bill Henry who played for the Red Sox is alive and well and won’t be forgotten.”

After the 1955 season he went to the minors and was swapped to the Chicago Cubs, who made him a full-time reliever, a role in which he flourished; his ERA dropped below three for the first time over the next four seasons with the Cubs and—after his swap (with Lee Walls and Lou Jackson, for Frank [The Big Donkey] Thomas) following the 1959 season—the Reds, going above three only once in the span. (1960, at 3.19.)

The 1961 Reds won’t forget Henry, either. He was a key member of their bullpen, splitting the team’s saves lead with Jim Brosnan (sixteen each) while going 2-1 with a 2.19 ERA, the lowest on the entire pitching staff. (No starter posted an ERA lower than Jim O’Toole’s 3.10; no other reliever posted one lower than Brosnan’s 3.04.)

He pitched twice in the 1961 World Series. He finished Game Four in old Crosley Field (the New York Yankees won the game, 7-0) with a spotless ninth inning (including his striking out Tony Kubek and Roger Maris consecutively). His assignment in Game Five began well enough, relieving Jim Maloney (who’d relieved Joey Jay, after Jay started and got relieved in the first when he surrendered a two-run bomb to Johnny Blanchard and an RBI single to Moose Skowron) for the top of the third and giving up a one-out walk (to Clete Boyer, who would be stranded after he was sacrificed to second).

But after the Reds cut the Yankee lead in half, to 6-3, in their half of the third (Frank Robinson launched a three-run bomb off Ralph Terry), Henry ran into big trouble in the top of the fourth.

Kubek opened with a base hit and Maris flied out to short left, but Blanchard doubled down the right field line and Henry passed Elston Howard intentionally to set up a double play that never came. What came, alas, was an RBI single (Skowron) and a three-run bomb (Hector [What a Pair of Hands] Lopez), leaving the Yankees with an 11-3 lead (they’d win the game, 13-5, and take the Series in five).

Henry pitched three more full seasons with the Reds before splitting 1965 between the Reds and the San Francisco Giants; according to at least one of his baseball cards of the time, he became something of the prototype for the quick specialist, a la Mike Myers and others, the left-handed specialist brought in to face one or two hitters and—when he was on—dispatching them post haste. He went on to pitch for the Pittburgh Pirates and three appearances for the 1969 Houston Astros before calling it a career.

Jim Brosnan, in his remarkable journal of the 1961 Reds, Pennant Race, noted Henry’s nickname among the bullpen bulls was Gabby, “because he usually treats the spoken word with the considered dignity of a Delphic oracle.” Jim Bouton, in Ball Four, was just a little more blunt: “[W]hen you say hello to Henry he’s stuck for an answer.”

Brosnan’s note came during a passage in mid-April 1961, when Henry was being pondered as trade bait. “I can’t afford the trade, anyway,” Brosnan quoted Henry as saying. “I’d have to have my car shipped out here and the air freight would kill me. Forty cents a pound, four thousand pound car. You know? And besides, if this club trades me they’d take my suitcase back they gave me. I’d have to check out of the hotel carryin’ my clothes in paper bags. They’d never let me outta the elevator in the lobby.”

If Henry had three gigs with the 1969 Astros, it may have meant a momentary change of heart. According to Bouton, Henry made the expansion Seattle Pilots in spring training but decided to retire just as the team broke spring training camp to start the regular season.

John Morris, who was brought up from the Vancouver squad to replace Henry, was pretty frisky, like he’d just been given a reprieve from the governor. He said he had some long talks with Henry . . . and thinks he quit because he was holding back a young player. “What am I doing keeping younger guys from a chance to earn a living?” he said to Morris. “I’m forty-two years old. I’ve had thirteen years in the big leagues. I don’t really belong here.”

Maybe Henry, like an awful lot of veteran players who think their time is really up, couldn’t resist it when the Astros reached out and touched him and told him he might still belong. Three appearances later, apparently, he had his final answer and stuck to it.

It was probably a lot simpler to stick to that than to get stuck with the stupefying news that you’d turned up dead of a heart attack six states east and three years older.

[dancusa]