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View Full Version : Clete Boyer Rest in Peace!!!



suave1477
06-05-2007, 11:24 AM
Well Fellas we lost another one. I have met Clete a couple of months back and he seemed to be a happy guy.
I was glad I had the chance to meet him.

Clete Boyer, 70, a Yankee Known for His Slick Fielding, Dies function getSharePasskey() { return 'ex=1338782400&en=6ac5b42099c86773&ei=5124';}function getShareURL() { return encodeURIComponent('http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/sports/05boyer.html');}function getShareHeadline() { return encodeURIComponent('Clete Boyer, 70, a Yankee Known for His Slick Fielding, Dies');}function getShareDescription() { return encodeURIComponent('Mr. Boyer played on Yankees teams that won five consecutive pennants in the 1960s. ');}function getShareKeywords() { return encodeURIComponent('');}function getShareSection() { return encodeURIComponent('sports');}function getShareSectionDisplay() { return encodeURIComponent('Sports');}function getShareSubSection() { return encodeURIComponent('');}function getShareByline() { return encodeURIComponent('By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN');}function getSharePubdate() { return encodeURIComponent('June 5, 2007');}

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/richard_goldstein/index.html?inline=nyt-per)


Published: June 5, 2007
Clete Boyer, the sharp-fielding third baseman who played on Yankees (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/baseball/majorleague/newyorkyankees/index.html?inline=nyt-org) teams that won five consecutive pennants in the 1960s, died yesterday in Atlanta. He was 70.
The cause was a stroke, said his brother Cloyd, a former major league pitcher.
When the Yankees played the St. Louis Cardinals (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/baseball/majorleague/stlouiscardinals/index.html?inline=nyt-org) in the 1964 World Series, third base was a Boyer family affair.
While Clete, who played 16 seasons in the major leagues, was at third for the Yankees in the ’64 World Series, his brother Ken, often an All-Star, played third base for the Cardinals.
“When they asked my mother who she was rooting for in the Series, she told the media, the fellow on third base,” Clete Boyer once told The Tulsa World.
Cloyd Boyer had pitched for the Cardinals and the Kansas City Athletics (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/baseball/majorleague/oaklandathletics/index.html?inline=nyt-org), appearing in the majors in the late 1940s and ’50s. Clete and Ken became the only brothers to hit home runs in the same World Series game when each homered in the Cardinals’ 7-5 victory in Game 7 of the ’64 Series.
Ken was the better hitter, but Clete excelled in his own right.
“He came up during the Brooks Robinson era and didn’t get as much attention because of Brooksie, but he could play third base,” Yankees Manager Joe Torre (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/joe_torre/index.html?inline=nyt-per), a teammate of Boyer’s with the Atlanta Braves (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/baseball/majorleague/atlantabraves/index.html?inline=nyt-org) in the late 1960s, recalled yesterday in Chicago. “Great arm.”
Robinson was a perennial Gold Glove winner with the Baltimore Orioles (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/baseball/majorleague/baltimoreorioles/index.html?inline=nyt-org). It took a move to the National League for Boyer to finally win a Gold Glove, in 1969 with Atlanta.
When Bobby Murcer was breaking in with the Yankees in 1965, he was considered their future shortstop, Boyer befriended him and made it clear that any baseball hit remotely near him was fodder for his glove.
“One day during infield practice, he came over to me and stepped off five paces near second base and drew a line in the dirt,” Murcer wrote in The New York Times in 1983.
As Murcer remembered it, Boyer told him, “You take care of this area and I’ll take care of everything on the other side of the line.”
Boyer, a native of Cassville, Mo., was reared in Alba, Mo.
“Where we grew up, down in the southwest corner of Missouri, the Cardinals were like a religion,” Clete Boyer once recalled. The Cardinals signed Cloyd and Ken, but they passed on Clete.
Clete made his major league debut with Kansas City in 1955. He was later traded to the Yankees’ organization and joined the lineup in 1959.
Boyer played on Yankees teams that won the pennant from 1960 through ’64 and captured World Series championships in 1961 and ’62.
He was a mainstay for Yankees infields that included Bill Skowron and Joe Pepitone at first base, Bobby Richardson at second base and Tony Kubek at shortstop.
“He made only one bad throw to me,” Richardson told The Associated Press yesterday. “When I made the double play, I could just about close my eyes, put my glove up and the ball would be there.”
Boyer was traded to Atlanta after the 1966 season and played five seasons for the Braves. He had a career batting average of .242, with 162 home runs. He was later a coach for the Oakland Athletics and the Yankees and a minor league infield instructor for the Yankees.
In addition to his brother Cloyd, he is survived by his sons Brett and Mickey; his daughters Valerie, Stephanie, Colette and Jerran; his brothers Ronald, Leonard, Wayne and Lynn; his sisters Bobby, Marcella, Juanita, Delores, Shirley and Pansy; 10 grandchildren; and 9 great-grandchildren.
Clete Boyer had one regret: He never became a teammate of his brother Ken, who died in 1982.
“As a kid, I always fantasized about us being on the Cardinals together, him at third base and me at shortstop,” Clete told Dave Anderson of The New York Times in 1982. ”The two of us on the same team. But it never worked out.”

cjclong
06-05-2007, 11:47 AM
Clete Boyer was an outstanding gloveman. Because of Brook Robinson he never got the recogniton he deserved from the public, but he certainly did from his teammates. I got the chance to meet him a couple of years ago in Cooperstown. He took the time to talk to me about the 61 Yankees and was really nice and generous with his time. I am glad I got the opportunity to meet him.

hblakewolf
06-05-2007, 02:27 PM
Any word on how the Yankees will remember him on their uniforms this season? They already have a black armband, so one can assume they will put his uniform number in black on the other sleeve, similar to the Mantle 7 or Dimaggio 5?

HowArd Wolf
hblakewolf@patmedia.net

suave1477
06-05-2007, 04:07 PM
Howard thats a good question.

I don't know what exactly qualifies a team / Yankees to do an armband or a number for a rememberance of a player who passed.

I think the Yankees only do it really if it is a really big player or well recognized name, because if you remember last year Steve Howe died in an accident and he was with the team in the mid 90's and besides a quick memorail the day after he died they didn't do any armbands or numbers or anything on the uniform for him.

bubbrubb25
06-05-2007, 07:47 PM
I met him in cooperstown and shook his hand I also got a personalized autographed picture of him with Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

thrush29
06-09-2007, 09:24 PM
Thanks for the post and attaching the article. It brought back a good memory of mine several years ago during when he was a bench coach with the Yanks. Me and some other "older" guys had to start chanting his name in order to get him to sign. I dont think he took us seriously at first, but then he gladly signed. He was an old school class act!