The Catcher Project: Bill Dickey

Born: 6-6-07

Career: 1928-1946

Hall of Fame: Yes

Career highlights: Eleven All-Star teams. Runner-up once in MVP voting, top ten five times. Regular catcher for eight World Series teams, winning seven titles. Had four consecutive seasons of at least .300 average, 20 homers, 100 RBI for the greatest Yankee dynasty, 1936-39. Set a record by catching at least 100 games a year for 13 straight seasons.

Career slash line: .313/.382/.486

See his stats here.

Games caught after age 30 season: 648. Age in last season as regular catcher: 34. Win shares after age 30 season: 120. Win shares after age 33 season: 53

An interesting career pattern — a Mauer-esque left-handed singles hitter the first half of his career, then a power spike from age 29-33, then a decline. The conventional explanation is that he learned to pull the ball into Yankee Stadium's short right-field porch.

Like contemporaries Mickey Cochrane and Gabby Hartnett, Dickey didn't carry the workloads that their modern counterparts frequently do. Dickey had just one season of 130 games caught and was frequently under 110. The difference is probably a combination of better protective gear today and a schedule in the 1930s heavy with double-headers.

Dickey had finshed his age 34 season when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He played two more seasons as a half-time starter, missed two seasons to serve in the Navy, then played a little in 1946, when the war was over. My guess is that the war extended his career slightly.

More on Mauer

A tangent on Joe Mauer's season that I chose not to pursue in the Monday print column:

Mauer hit .365 for the season. This is — or isn't — a record for a catcher. It depends on how persnickety you want to be in defining catcher.

Here's the competition:

1) Bill Dickey, 1936. Hit .362. Actually, he hit .3617 — 153 hits in 423 at-bats. This distinction is significant because of

2) Mike Piazza, 1997. Hit 362. Actually, he hit .3615 — 201 hits in 556 at-bats.

And some sources list the record for batting average by a catcher as

3) Babe Phelps, 1936. He hit .367 — 117 hits in 319 at-bats.

Dickey and Piazza you probably know about already. Phelps was a platoon catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers and figures in a number of amusing tales about the Daffyness Boys. He could hit, at least against right-handers — .310 lifetime average — but apparently wasn't much behind the dish.

If we apply the current standard for qualifying for the batting title to these three, only Piazza remains. Dickey and Phelps would have needed 493 plate appearances to qualify; Dickey had 472, Phelps just 349.

Dickey caught 106 games; Phelps caught in 98. Piazza caught in 136 — and had 595 plate appearances in those games, easily enough to qualify. And he hit "just" .358 in those games. (Interleague play allowed Piazza to DH in seven games, in which he hit .484.)

And Mauer? He caught in 109 games and had 473 plate appearances in those games. He hit .372 in those games, .330 in the 28 games as the DH, and .600 in his five pinch-hit appearances.

So if what you want is somebody who qualified for the batting title while playing catcher, it's Piazza.

If what you want is a batting title qualifier whose primary position was catcher, it's Mauer.

If what you want is somebody who caught in more than half his team's games, it's Phelps.

I can't come up with a definition that puts Dickey in the lead.