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Baseball Personalities - Bob Shawkey

Bob Shawkey

Photo Credit: Personal Collection of the Author (with Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert)

Bob Shawkey

Photo Credit: Charles Conlon photo

Bob Shawkey was the ace of the New York Yankee pitching staff from the mid-`teens (when they were a weak team) to the early 1920s (when they were a rising power). He pitched and won the first game in Yankee Stadium, in April 1923, and threw out the first ball in the re-modeled Yankee Stadium in 1976, 53 years later.

Bob was on the Yankee roster from 1915 to 1927, coached the team's pitchers in 1929 and managed the Yankees in 1930, after the death of Miller Huggins. An even-tempered and good-natured man, he had a long and rich baseball life. A few years before his death, he reminisces about some of baseball's characters and events of the 1920s.

Bob Shawkey was interviewed by Eugene Murdock.