Eddie Yost obit

Eddie Yost, dubbed “The Walking Man,” passes away at age 86

 He was not on the list.

Former major league third baseman Eddie Yost, who led the AL in walks six times in an 18-year big-league career, died at age 86 on Tuesday.

Long before walks were cool, Yost was the champion of the category, racking up huge totals despite the fact that he wasn’t an overpowering hitter. Yost never batted .300 and topped 15 homers just once in his career, which spanned from 1944-62, but he twice led the AL in on-base percentage and finished in the top six five more times.

Along with leading the AL in walks six times, he finished second to Ted Williams twice. He topped 100 runs five times, leading the AL once. He also led the AL in doubles one year.

Still, for all of his success, Yost made just one All-Star team, and it actually happened in one of his weaker seasons in 1952. He was at his best in 1959, when he hit .278/.435/.436 with 21 homers in his first year with the Tigers. He spent his first 14 seasons with the Senators before finishing up with two years in Detroit and two more in Los Angeles with the Angels.

At the time of his retirement, Yost was fourth on the all-time walk list behind Babe Ruth, Williams and Mel Ott. He currently ranks 11th with 1,614 walks.

After wrapping up his playing career, Yost spent 22 years coaching with the Senators, Mets and Red Sox before retiring in 1984.

In an 18-year career, Yost played in 2,109 games, accumulating 1,863 hits in 7,346 at bats for a .254 career batting average along with 139 home runs, 683 runs batted in and an on-base percentage of .394. He ended his career with a .957 fielding percentage.[2] Yost led the American League in bases on balls on six occasions and logged 1,614 over his 18-year career, ranking him 11th on the all-time walks list. In 1956, he had a .412 on-base percentage while posting a .231 batting average, the lowest batting average with a .400 on-base percentage in major league history. Yost hit 28 home runs to lead off a game, a record which stood until Bobby Bonds broke it in the 1970s.

Yost led American League third basemen eight times in putouts, seven times in double plays, three times in assists and twice in fielding percentage. He set American League career records with 2,356 putouts, 3,659 assists, and 6,285 total chances. His 2,356 putouts ranks him third all-time among third basemen behind Brooks Robinson and Jimmy Collins. In 1960, he surpassed Pie Traynor's major league record for most games played as a third baseman with 1,865 games. Yost was the first third baseman in history to appear in more than 2,000 games. Baseball historian Bill James ranked Yost 24th all-time among third baseman in his Historical Baseball Abstract.

Yost attended New York University during the off-season, from which he earned a Master's degree in physical education in 1953.

Yost followed his long playing career with a 23-season career as a coach. After a brief stint as a playing coach with the 1962 Angels, Yost returned to Washington in 1963 as the third-base coach of the second Senators franchise, under his old teammate, manager Mickey Vernon. After Washington began the season by losing 26 of its first 40 games, Vernon was replaced by Gil Hodges. Yost served as interim manager during the brief transition, losing his only game as manager, 9–3 to the Chicago White Sox, on May 22, 1963. Yost then continued on Hodges' Washington staff through 1967.

When Hodges became manager of the New York Mets in 1968, he took Yost with him; Shea Stadium, the Mets' home field, was located only eight miles (13 km) from Yost's off-season home in South Ozone Park, Queens. Yost was the Mets' third-base coach from 1968 to 1976, and was a member of both the 1969 "Miracle Mets" World Series champion and the 1973 Mets, who won the National League pennant but fell in that season's Fall Classic in seven games.

In 1977, he continued his coaching career with the Boston Red Sox, coaching at third base for eight more seasons, through 1984, under skippers Don Zimmer and Ralph Houk. By his retirement at the close of the 1984 campaign, Yost had spent 40 years in uniform in professional baseball, all of them at the major-league level.

Yost's daughter Felita competed in ice dancing during the 1997 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Following her active career in ice skating, she is now a coach of figure skating.

 

MLB statistics

Batting average            .254

Home runs            139

Runs batted in            683

Teams

As player

Washington Senators (1944, 1946–1958)

Detroit Tigers (1959–1960)

Los Angeles Angels (1961–1962)

As manager

 

Washington Senators (1963)

Career highlights and awards

All-Star (1952)

World Series champion (1969)