Al Lopez

Alfonso Ramon Lopez caught 1,918 major league games, more than any catcher in history at the time he retired, and then managed the only two non-Yankees clubs to win the American League pennant during a 16-year stretch when the Yankees won everything else. His 1954 Cleveland Indians won 111 games, the most in American League history to that point, and his 1959 Chicago White Sox ended a 40-year pennant drought on the South Side. Casey Stengel won everything in between. "I learned a lot from Stengel," Lopez said, "but apparently not enough." A reporter once accused him of being "anti-Yankee." Lopez corrected him. "I'm anti any club that wins all the time." The Veterans Committee elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1977.

Ybor City

Lopez was born on August 20, 1908, in Tampa, Florida, the seventh of nine children. His parents Modesto and Faustina were Spanish immigrants who settled first in Havana and then in Ybor City, the cigar-manufacturing district of Tampa. His father sorted raw tobacco leaves for different cigar grades, and the family lived in a four-bedroom house without running water. Lopez recalled the neighborhood as rough. "I went to work one day and had to step around a couple of guys who had been murdered in the streets," he said. As a boy he delivered Cuban bread door-to-door for La Joven Francesca Bakery before school.

Lopez attended Sacred Heart College, now Jesuit High School, and dropped out after his freshman year at 16 to play for the Tampa Smokers of the Florida State League at $150 a month. During spring training in 1925, the Washington Senators hired him to catch batting practice at $45 a week. He caught Walter Johnson in a barnstorming exhibition, and Johnson told him, "Nice game, kid. You're going to be a great catcher someday." Lopez was the first Tampa native to play in the major leagues, the first to manage a major league team, and the first inducted into the Hall of Fame.

The Catcher

The Brooklyn Robins purchased Lopez's contract for $10,000 in December 1927, and he made his major league debut on September 27, 1928, at Ebbets Field. The first pitcher he faced was Burleigh Grimes. Lopez became the primary catcher at 21 in 1930, hitting .309 with 57 RBI, and spent the next 19 seasons catching for Brooklyn, the Boston Bees, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Cleveland Indians.

Lopez was small for a catcher at five-eleven and 180 pounds, and Arthur Daley of the New York Times wrote that "what he lacked in bulk, he compensated for in agility, speed, intelligence, and class." In 1941 he caught 114 games for the Pirates without a passed ball. He passed Gabby Hartnett's career record for games caught in 1945 and held the mark until Bob Boone broke it in 1987. His career batting average was .261, modest enough that his reputation rested entirely on his defense, his game management, and the way pitchers trusted him. Lopez played his final game on September 16, 1947.

Cleveland

Lopez managed Indianapolis, Pittsburgh's Triple-A affiliate, for three seasons and won the American Association pennant in 1948 with a 100-54 record. The Cleveland Indians hired him in November 1950. Over six seasons he went 570-354, the best winning percentage in franchise history, but the Yankees blocked his path to the pennant for three consecutive years.

In 1954, Lopez's Indians won 111 games and finally broke through. Bob Lemon won 23 games, Early Wynn won 23, Mike Garcia won 19, and Bob Feller won 13. Lopez called that pitching staff "the greatest ever assembled." Bobby Avila won the batting crown at .341, and Larry Doby drove in 126 runs. The Indians won the pennant by eight games over the Yankees, who won 103 games themselves and still finished second. The World Series was a shock. Willie Mays caught Vic Wertz's 460-foot drive in Game 1, and the Giants swept Cleveland in four games. Lopez resigned after the 1956 season, exhausted and frustrated by the stress that gave him chronic stomach ailments and insomnia.

The Go-Go Sox

Lopez took over the White Sox in 1957 and inherited a roster built on pitching, speed, and defense. "Nobody can beat the Yankees on power," he said. "They can have the power; we'll take the glory." The 1959 White Sox stole 113 bases, led the American League in ERA at 3.29, and hit only 97 home runs as a team, the fewest in the league. Nellie Fox won the MVP at .306, Luis Aparicio stole 56 bases, and Early Wynn won the Cy Young Award with 22 victories. The White Sox won 35 of 50 one-run decisions and clinched the pennant on September 22.

Mayor Richard J. Daley activated Chicago's air-raid sirens to celebrate, causing widespread public panic about a Russian attack. The White Sox won Game 1 of the World Series 11-0 but lost the series in six games to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Lopez managed the White Sox through 1965, with two more 94-win and 95-win seasons that finished second, and retired because of his health. He returned briefly in 1968 and 1969 but the insomnia came back. "That's when I knew it was time to get out," he told a reporter.

Over 15 full seasons in the majors, Lopez finished 1,410-1,004. His teams never posted a losing record. Bill Veeck said his only fault as a manager was being "too decent," and that his "completely relaxed" leadership "squeezed every drop of talent out of his teams." Tommy John, who played for him, said Lopez "had a better handle on all the facets of the game than any manager I ever played for."

Tampa

Lopez returned to Tampa in 1970 and spent 35 years in the city where he grew up. The minor league ballpark in Tampa was named Al Lopez Field in 1954, and in 1992 the city renamed Horizon Park as Al Lopez Park and installed a bronze statue of him in catching gear. On March 31, 1998, Lopez was one of four Hall of Famers who threw out the ceremonial first pitch welcoming the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to the American League, alongside Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and Monte Irvin.

On October 26, 2005, Lopez watched the Chicago White Sox win the World Series on television, their first championship in 88 years and their first pennant since he won one for them in 1959. "They have a darn good ballclub," he told a reporter. "I was so happy to see it." Four days later, on October 30, Lopez died of a heart attack at his son's home in Tampa. He was 97 years old, the last living person who played major league baseball during the 1920s.