Clete Boyer, RIP: The Alba Acrobat

Clete Boyer, who died Monday (complications of a brain hemorrhage, age 70), grew up in the southwest corner of Missouri, in a hamlet known as Alba. It was only a short hop to Mickey Mantle's Commerce, Oklahoma and comparably rent by the price of the mining life. The good news was that his father, Vern, was a carpenter. The bad news was that carpenters rarely if ever had to fear an excess of work in Alba, compelling the father to double as a marble cutter.

The Boyer siblings numbered 16. Their mother, according to David Halberstam (in October 1964), decided to have one of her final children in a hospital because "I just wanted to see what it was like." She wasn't too impressed, and had her final children at home, too. The Boyers seem to have been a hearty bunch in spite of the crushing poverty. If you were five minutes late for dinner, you earned a date with the strap, Halberstam noted, but father and sons were baseball mad enough to plant, roll, and manicure their own full-size baseball field. Complete with a sort of lighting system.

Three Boyer sons became Major League Baseball players, two (Clete and Ken) became third basemen, one (Cloyd, a decade older) was turned into a pitcher (the family objected), and one (Wayne) reversed Casey Stengel's pattern — he decided dentistry was a little more his speed than baseball. Vern Boyer, Halberstam recorded, refused to speak to this wayward son for several years.

Between the two third basemen, Ken (a Cardinal for the most part) was the better all around player, a good fielder in his own right, and could have outhit Clete (a Yankee for the most part) with a blindfold, but in the field, Clete made Ken resemble Felix Mantilla. He made a lot of men resemble Felix Mantilla. And a few other things. Once upon a time, Joe Pepitone, the Yankees' talented but troubled first baseman, tossed out a runner while down on the ground, eyes facing the sky. Pepitone quipped to reporters: "Clete Boyer's famous for throwing people out on his knees. I showed I could throw them out on my back."

That's one way you compared fielders in the early 1960s: if you could do it even once from positions less sane than Boyer's ability to throw from his knees. Thanks to five World Series from 1960-64, Boyer was known for acrobatic work at third a few years before the rest of the country figured out the equivalent thrill to which Baltimore had been treated for about as long. (Boyer and Robinson became regulars at their positions at about the same time.)

Like Brooks Robinson, he was far more than a third base contortionist. Unlike Brooks Robinson, and in due course Bill Mazeroski, Boyer wasn't going to get much if any look from Cooperstown. Robinson and Mazeroski at least could hit a bit. Boyer, by comparison, couldn't hit with a telephone pole. Most of the time. And he was comfortable with it.

"Brooks beat me out of about seven Gold Gloves," he told Baseball Digest, "but God gave me a lot of ability. I felt like Houdini out there. I loved defense and I had a great arm and I was quick with it. I had a lot of ability and I won't deny that. I used to tell people I was Ted Williams at third base. Defense is reflexes and instinct and I had it."

He had it, all right. Boyer's lifetime range factor at third base is — count carefully — 51 points better than his league. Brooks Robinson's lifetime range factor at third base is 36 points better than his league. And while Robinson led his league's third basemen in assists eight times to Boyer's three, in double plays three times to Boyer's one, and in fielding average 11 times to Boyer's twice, Boyer led his league's third basemen in putouts once and Robinson, never. It is absolutely right and fair to say that Brooks Robinson had a defensive equivalent at third base and his name was Clete Boyer.

Was he really that lame at the plate? He's remembered offensively for two things: teaming opposite brother Ken (who died of cancer in 1982, notwithstanding brother Clete's gallant fundraising for his special treatment options) to become the first siblings to clear the fence in a World Series game (Game 7, 1964: Ken adjusted to Al Downing's change-up and grand salamied in the second inning; Clete — of all people — ripped one off Bob Gibson in the ninth; the Cardinals won the game, 7-5), and his 1967 season in Atlanta: 26 bombs and 96 runs batted in.

The bad news: he also hit .245 with an on-base percentage of .292 against a respectable .423 slugging percentage in 1967. Lifetime, he finished with a .242 batting average, a .299 on-base percentage, and a .372 slugging percentage. He never hit above .251 in his career; he had six seasons out of 16 in which his on-base percentage went above .300 and in none of those did it go higher than .331; he produced 122 runs per 162 games lifetime but created only 3.75 runs per 27 outs.

So how did he become a regular third baseman for so long? Perhaps Total Baseball has your answer: Boyer is credited with having saved 201 runs. The only man ahead of him on that list is Mike Schmidt, with 265. He also had the record for World Series assists (65) until Graig Nettles broke it. (Nettles's lifetime range factor at third, by the way, equals Robinson's: 36 points above his league.) Boyer was simply too valuable in the field to hold his lack of hitting against him.

He died precisely 50 years to the day after he became a Yankee the hard way: one of two players (the other: second baseman Curt Roberts) sent from the Kansas City Athletics (their most frequent trading partner) June 4, 1957, to finish the following deal: pitchers Art Ditmar, Bobby Shantz, and Jack McMahan, first baseman Wayne Belardi, and two players to be named later, to the Yankees, for outfielder/first baseman Irv Noren, second baseman Milt Graff, pitchers Mickey McDermott, Tom Morgan, and Rip Coleman, shortstop Billy Hunter, and a player to be named later. (Jack Urban, pitcher, turned out to be that player.)

Boyer is also remembered as a fun lover who sometimes got into the wrong side of fun, though nothing compared to what athletes nowadays get. "The only time I hated to be around Roger Maris," Joe Pepitone remembered (in his self-lacerating memoir, Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud), "was when he was with Clete Boyer and [relief pitcher] Hal Reniff and they were out drinking. Individually, and out of a bar, they were three of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet."

Sometimes the funnier side of fun got to Boyer first. She's been in retirement for a long enough time, but Morganna the infamous Kissing Bandit once nailed Boyer in the field. Maybe she should have made him her full-time target: Boyer went 8-for-15 (including a prompt RBI single) after she planted one on his kisser.

Later, a respected third base and fielding coach (Derek Jeter credits him with teaching the right ways to turn and throw across the infield from most angles), Boyer also roomed with one of baseball's two incumbent home run kings and competed with dignity against another. As a Brave, he roomed at one time with Henry Aaron; when he played in Japan to finish his career, the competition included Sadaharu Oh. Future Yokohama Bay Stars manager Daisuke Yamashita credited Boyer with making his own career viable, from their days as teammates on the Stars, known in those earlier days as the Taiyo Whales.

Boyer also made the effort in Japan to learn the native language and culture, and comported himself accordingly. The Japanese may remember that just a little bit better than they remember his rooming arrangements.