Waite Hoyt was a vaudeville song-and-dance man, who performed with Mae West.
He drank champagne with Al Capone, went to a drag show with J. Edgar Hoover, and worked as an undertaker.
Among the first members of Alcoholics Anonymous — and one of the first to speak publicly about his battle with the disease — he was sober for the next 45 years.
Waite Hoyt was also a star pitcher on the 1927 New York Yankees. Many call that “Murderers Row” team with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig the best baseball team ever.
New York Yankee teammates Waite Hoyt and Babe Ruth.
Hoyt was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1969 — the same year as Stan Musial and Roy Campanella.
Although everyone remembers Ruth, Gehrig, Musial and Campanella, Waite Hoyt has been largely forgotten.
But he’s the subject of a great new book by Westport author Tim Manners. “Schoolboy: The Untold Journey of a Yankees Hero” is out just in time for the start of a new baseball season.
Like most others, Manners — who describes his baseball fandom as “between casual and avid” — had never heard of Hoyt.
Then one day, more than a year after he’d started working with Chris Hoyt at Westport’s Glendinning Company, his colleague casually said, “My father was a Hall of Fame pitcher with the Yankees.”
Manners Googled “Waite Hoyt.” He was astonished to learn about his life, on and off the diamond.
And equally amazed that a man who spent 21 years in the major leagues, played in 6 World Series, won 3, and in that famous ’27 year led all of baseball with a . 759 winning percentage, is now basically unknown.
(Except in Cincinnati. More on that later.)
Manners grew up in the Cranbury section of Norwalk, but considered Westport “my town.” He spent hours in the Library, then worked in PR in a Post Road office with Staples High School graduate Rick Leonard, doing business-to-business marketing.
That evolved into a magazine aimed at marketers. He then joined Glendinning, the Weston Road marketing firm, as a writer.
That’s where he met Chris Hoyt — and learned about Waite.
Tim Manners (Photo/Michael Chait)
Hoyt’s baseball career fascinated Manners. But so did every other aspect of his life.
His father was a vaudevillian (and baseball fan). His mother, by contrast, was “very prim and proper.”
Before joining the Yankees, Hoyt was the youngest player ever signed to a professional contract. (He got a $5 bonus.)
Just 15 (hence his “Schoolboy” nickname), he spent 3 years in the minors. Those were “rough and tumble” years, Manners says. Players cleared rocks from fields. Locker rooms lacked showers. Alcohol and women were everywhere.
To make extra money, Hoyt got a job as a funeral director. One day, when he was scheduled to both play for the Yankees and bury someone, he packed a body in the back of his car and drove to the park. He pitched, then finished his work.
After retirement, Hoyt was one of the first former players to become a sportscaster.
Prior to that, athletes were considered “too dumb and inarticulate” for the job, Manners says.
Hoyt demolished that stereotype. His Cincinnati Reds broadcasts were so entertaining — particularly his story-telling between innings and during rain delays — that listeners who heard them and are still alive, continue to revere him.
Waite Hoyt, at the radio mic.
At his Hall of Fame induction speech, Hoyt expressed one regret: that he had not become a journalist.
“Unfulfilled dreams resonate with a lot of people,” Manners says. “But just think of the number of journalists who wish they had been athletes!”
Yet “Schoolboy” would not have been written, without a bit of luck.
Four years ago — 2 weeks after COVID struck — Manners visited Chris Hoyt in Arizona. Hoyt showed Manners some of his dad’s memorabilia. Manners asked if there was any more.
A couple of weeks later, 8 large boxes arrived at Manners’ home, off Compo Road South.
He worried there might not be much worthwhile.
But as he dug through the letters, photos, news clippings, diaries and notes, he found plastic binders filled with transcripts of interviews Hoyt had done years earlier with his niece.
Suddenly, Manners realized, he could write not a biography, but a memoir. Waite Hoyt’s story would be told in his own voice.
Waite Hoyt, in action.
An agent helped sell the proposal to the University of Nebraska Press — one of the top baseball book publishers in the country.
“Schoolboy” will be published officially on April 1. It’s already shipping on Amazon.
The audience, Manners says, is baseball fans. But it’s also a very human story.
“There’s a bit of the ‘road not taken’ in it, which resonates with people,” the author says.
“And of course, his battle with alcohol is also very important.”
(When Hoyt was broadcasting, one of the Reds’ sponsors was the Burger Brewing Company. When he went public about his alcoholism, Hoyt was sure he would be fired. But the company stood by him.
(“He was an alcoholic who promoted beer on the radio,” Manners notes. “He made it work.”)
Early feedback has been great (particularly from Cincinnati readers).
Bob Costas loved it too. He enjoyed an advance copy so much, he sent several paragraphs. What was intended to be a blurb turned into the foreword.
Manners is ready now for the interview circuit. He hopes for some local events, perhaps at the Library and Barnes & Noble.
It could make a great movie too, in the right hands.
Perhaps it could be called “Waite Hoyt: Field (And Vaudeville Stage) (And Funeral Home) of Dreams.”
