Joe Pepitone obit

Flamboyant Yankees great dies at 82: ‘Playful and charismatic personality’ made him a fan favorite

 

 He was not on the list.

Yankees first baseman Joe Pepitone, known for his terrific defense and bringing the first hair dryer into a major league clubhouse, has died, the Yankees announced on Monday.

The left-handed swinging Pepitone played the bulk of his career for the Yankees. He also played several seasons with the Chicago Cubs and had short stints with the Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves. During his time with the Yankees, Pepitone played in three All-Star Games and won three Gold Glove awards.

“The Yankees are deeply saddened by the passing of former Yankee Joe Pepitone, whose playful and charismatic personality and on-field contributions made him a fan favorite of generations of Yankees fans even beyond his years with the team in the 1960s,” the Yankees said in a statement.

“As a native New Yorker, he embraced everything about being a Yankee during both his playing career_which included three All-Star appearances and three Gold Gloves-and in the decades thereafter.”

Pepitone hit 166 of his 219 career home runs with the Yankees.

According to Wikipedia:

In 1958, Pepitone was signed by the New York Yankees as an amateur free agent. After playing four seasons in the minor leagues, he broke in with the Yankees in 1962, playing behind Moose Skowron at first base. A much-discussed legend was that while on his way to 1962 spring training in Florida, Pepitone spent his entire $25,000 ($234,804 today) signing bonus. He won a World Series ring in his rookie year with the Yankees.

Yankee management believed he could handle the first base job and traded Skowron to the Dodgers before the 1963 season. Pepitone responded, hitting .271 with 27 HR and 89 RBI. He went on to win three Gold Gloves, but in the 1963 World Series he made an infamous error. With the score tied 1-1 in the seventh inning of Game Four, he lost a routine Clete Boyer throw in the white shirtsleeves of the Los Angeles crowd, and the batter, Jim Gilliam, went all the way to third base and scored the Series-winning run on a sacrifice fly by Willie Davis. He redeemed himself somewhat in the 1964 Series against the Cardinals with a Game 6 grand slam.

The ever-popular Pepitone remained a fixture throughout the 1960s, even playing center field after bad knees reduced Mickey Mantle’s mobility. Yet by the end of the decade, as the Yankees struggled to return to a .500 winning percentage, fans booed Pepitone regularly and were disappointed with his lackadaisical play and inability to get on base, especially as a left-handed power hitter in old Yankee Stadium.

Pepitone had sued the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2021 over the bat that Mantle used to hit his 500th career home run. Pepitone claimed he had loaned the bat to the Hall, and sued for $1 million. The Hall of Fame said the bat was donated and that it has owned it for more than 50 years.

Mantle hit his 500th home run off Baltimore’s Stu Miller at the original Yankee Stadium in the seventh inning on May 14, 1967. The lawsuit claimed Mantle wanted to use a lighter bat than his signature model and Pepitone loaned his bat to Mantle.

Jim Bouton talked extensively about Pepitone in his 1970 book Ball Four. Pepitone is described as being extremely vain. Bouton said that Pepitone went nowhere without a bag containing hair products for his rapidly balding head. Pepitone even had two toupees, one for general wear and one for under his baseball cap, which he called his "game piece." Bouton told a humorous story about how the game piece came loose one day when Pepitone took off his cap for the U.S. national anthem.

In January 1975, Pepitone published his own tell-all baseball memoir, titled Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud. The book received substantial attention for its many revelations, particularly about his abusive father and his self-lacerating candor about his self-destructive ways. Later that year, he posed nude for Foxy Lady magazine, featuring full frontal nudity.

In June 1973, Pepitone accepted an offer of $70,000 ($427,000 today) a year to play for the Yakult Atoms in Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League. In July, he returned to the United States.[13] While in Japan, he hit .163 with one home run and two RBIs in 14 games played. Pepitone spent his days in Japan skipping games for claimed injuries only to be out at night in discos, behavior which led the Japanese to adopt his name into their vernacular—as a word meaning "goof off."

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, several men's professional slow-pitch softball leagues were formed in the United States to build on the growth and talent in the booming men's amateur game during this period. The American Professional Slo-Pitch League (APSPL) was the first such league, launching in an era of experimentation in professional sports leagues. The APSPL was formed in 1977 by former World Football League executive Bill Byrne who would go on to form the Women's Professional Basketball League. Former New York Yankees star Whitey Ford was the first league commissioner.

A number of prominent athletes from other sports came to the men's professional softball leagues when that sport became established. MLB baseball veterans Jim Rivera, Curt Blefary, and Milt Pappas managed teams. Players included former National Football League stars Billy "White Shoes" Johnson and Bob Lurtsema, and retired Major League Baseball players Ralph Garr, Norm Cash, Jim Price, Darrel Chaney, Jim Northrup, Mickey Stanley, Dick McAuliffe, and Zoilo Versalles. Few had much success in professional softball, playing part-time and promotional roles.

The notable exception was the former major-leaguer Pepitone, who first played for the Trenton Statesmen. Pepitone put up respectable numbers in 1978 (110-225, .489, 14 HRs, 61 RBIs) and 1979 (50-122, .410, 9 HRs, 30 RBIs). The Detroit Caesars would even offer $30,000 to the Statesmen to buy Pepitone's contract in 1978. That offer was rejected. After the New Jersey franchise disbanded in 1979, Pepitone went on to serve as the team President and played first-base for Chicago Nationwide Advertising of the North American Softball League (NASL) during their 1980 season. Pepitone would get a suspension during the year for "conduct detrimental to professional softball" when NASL Commissioner Robert Brown suspended him for 6 games and then was lost for the season in August with a thigh injury. The Yankees then hired him as a minor league hitting instructor at the end of the NASL season, bringing his professional softball career to a close.

In October 1980, Pepitone was hired as a minor league hitting coach with the Yankees and brought to the major league club in June 1982. He was replaced by Lou Pinella in August of that summer. Yankee owner George Steinbrenner again hired Pepitone in 1988 after release from prison to serve in the development of minor league players. Pepitone received a 1999 World Series ring for his relationship with the Yankees. He subsequently sold that ring at auction.

Pepitone and two other men were arrested in Brooklyn on March 18, 1985, after being stopped by the police for running a red light. The car contained nine ounces of cocaine, 344 quaaludes, a free-basing kit, a pistol, and about $6,300 in cash. Pepitone denied knowing there were drugs and guns in the vehicle. He spent four months at Rikers Island jail in 1988 for two misdemeanor drug convictions.

In January 1992, Pepitone was charged with misdemeanor assault in Kiamesha Lake, New York, after a scuffle police said was triggered when Pepitone was called a "has-been." He was arraigned in town court and released after he posted $75 bail. In October 1995, the 55-year-old Pepitone was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated after losing control of his car in New York City's Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Police found Pepitone bloodied, disoriented, and mumbling as he walked through the tunnel. Authorities charged Pepitone with drunken driving after he refused to take a sobriety test. Pepitone pleaded guilty. When asked if he was staying away from alcohol, Pepitone responded: "I don't drink that much."

Pepitone was married three times, all ending in divorce. He had five children.

Pepitone died in Kansas City, Missouri on March 13, 2023, at the age of 82.

MLB statistics

Batting average .258

Home runs          219

Runs batted in   721

NPB statistics

Batting average .163

Home runs          1

Runs batted in   2

Teams

 

    New York Yankees (1962–1969)

    Houston Astros (1970)

    Chicago Cubs (1970–1973)

    Atlanta Braves (1973)

    Yakult Atoms (1973)

 

Career highlights and awards

 

    World Series champion (1962)

    3× All-Star (1963–1965)

    3× Gold Glove Award (1965, 1966, 1969)