Joey Jay, who in 1953 became the first former Little Leaguer to reach the major leagues and went on to win 99 games in 13 seasons pitching for the Milwaukee (later Atlanta) Braves and the Cincinnati Reds, died on Sept. 27 in Lutz, Fla. He was 89 and had lived in the Tampa Bay area of Florida in his later years.
The Serenity Funeral Home in Largo, Fla., posted his obituary.
Jay was an imposing presence on the mound at 6 feet 4 inches and 230 pounds and he had an overpowering fastball, slider and sinker.
He was signed by the Braves’ organization in June 1953, two months before his 18th birthday, and received a $20,000 contract and a $50,000 bonus, becoming a “bonus baby” in the baseball parlance of the time. Under rules designed to discourage teams from high spending on unproven prospects, the Braves were required to keep him on their roster for at least two seasons.
Jay made his first major league start on Sept. 20, 1953, and pitched seven shutout innings in a game shortened by rain. He pitched sporadically during the 1954 and 1955 seasons, when the Braves’ pitching staff featured the future Hall of Fame left-hander Warren Spahn and the talented right-handers Bob Buhl and Lew Burdette.
“It was pretty dreadful,” Jay told the Society for American Baseball Research many years later. “I fitted in nowhere. No one was deliberately unkind to me. I was just ignored and felt like the batboy.”
He was sent to the Braves’ Wichita farm team to gain experience; he later returned to Milwaukee and posted a 7-5 record with a 2.14 earned run average for the Braves’ 1958 pennant-winning team. But the Braves lost to the Yankees of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris in a six-game World Series.
Jay was traded to Cincinnati before the 1961 season in exchange for the sharp-fielding shortstop Roy McMillan. At the time, the Reds were building what became known as the Big Red Machine for their power hitters, most notably Frank Robinson and Johnny Bench.
In his first year with the Reds, Jay won 21 games and lost seven, tied for the National League lead in wins and shutouts, pitched a one-hitter facing the Phillies and was named an All-Star.
The Reds won the 1961 National League pennant but lost to the Yankees in a five-game World Series, the only bright spot coming in Jay’s Game 2 victory.
“I’m pitching the same way I did when I was with the Braves,” he told Sports Illustrated when it put him on the cover of its Oct. 9, 1961, edition. “No one taught me any new pitches. The difference is that I’m getting a chance to pitch with the Reds. It’s hard to work much when you have guys like Spahn, Burdette and Buhl around. Last year I started 11 games and won six of them. This year I started 34 games and won 21.“
“Jay quickly won himself a reputation as an eater and sleeper of championship caliber,” Walter Bingham wrote in a Sports Illustrated profile after the World Series. “He seldom was seen awake without a candy bar or a soft drink, often with both. He would eat in the bullpen during ball games.’’
Jay was a 21-game winner again in 1962 when the Reds finished in third place behind the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. But he struggled on the mound in 1963 when he went 7-18 and in 1964 when he posted an 11-11 mark as the Reds finished one game behind the St. Louis Cardinals, who went on to win the World Series.
He had a record of 99-91 with a 3.77 earned run average when he retired after pitching for the Braves in 1966, the team’s first season in Atlanta, and was inducted into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame in 2008.
Joseph Richard Jay was born on Aug. 15, 1935, in Middletown, Conn., and was 12 years old when he joined Little League Baseball, playing first base. (Middletown had the very first Little League in New England.)
Jay switched to pitching while playing American Legion baseball and at Woodrow Wilson High School. His father, Joseph John Jay, had pitched for the Rochester team in the International League and was in training camp with the Boston Braves in the late 1930s, but a back injury ended his baseball career. He became a laborer to support his family.
Jay’s survivors include his wife, the former Lois Elizabeth Bruggen; five children and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
In retirement, he lived in Florida and turned to the business world. He was an owner or part owner of an oil drilling company in West Virginia, taxicab companies, a fleet of limousines, a carpet-cleaning business and building-maintenance firms.
“I don’t live in the past, like most ballplayers,” The Middletown Press quoted him as saying. “I don’t wear my World Series rings; my mother has my scrapbooks, and if someone offered me a baseball job, I’d turn it down in a minute.”
“When I made the break, it was clean and forever. It’s infantile to keep thinking about the game. It gets you nowhere. Most ex-ballplayers keep on living in some destructive fantasy world. Not me. I’m happier than ever since I left. And do me a favor. Don’t mention where I live.”
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