Baseball Despite being a
Dodgers fan, Hoyt was signed to a professional contract by
New York Giants manager
John McGraw when he was but 15. Because of his extreme youth, he was immediately
nicknamed "the Schoolboy Wonder".
Ernie Stanton also was the one that got him his job with the Giants. After a brief stint with the Giants, McGraw sent Hoyt to the minors for refinement and experience. Hoyt soon returned to the majors, this time with the
Boston Red Sox. His performance there attracted the attention of the Yankees, who acquired him in 1920. In his first season as a Yankee, he won 19 games and pitched three complete games in the
World Series without allowing an
earned run – over his career, he would win six
American League pennants with the Yankees and one with the
Philadelphia Athletics. In his finest years with the Yankees, 1927 and 1928, Hoyt posted records of 22
wins and 7
losses with a 2.64
earned run average (ERA) and 23 wins and 7 losses with a 3.36 ERA. During his 21-year career, he won 10 or more games 12 times, 11 of them consecutively. In May 1930, the Yankees traded Hoyt and
Mark Koenig to the
Detroit Tigers for
Ownie Carroll,
Harry Rice, and
Yats Wuestling. He pitched for eight years after leaving the Yankees in 1930, but did not consistently display similar levels of pitching dominance. Hoyt finished his career with a win–loss record of 237–182 and an ERA of 3.59. By the time he retired in 1938, he had pitched the most victories in World Series history (his World Series record with the Yankees and A's was 6–4). As a hitter, Hoyt posted a .198
batting average (255-for-1287) with 96
runs, 100
RBI and 40
bases on balls. Defensively, he recorded a .966
fielding percentage which was 9 points higher than the league average at his position. Hoyt had a total of 36 Major League teammates who would later be elected to the Hall of Fame. , no other Hall of Famer has had more Hall of Fame teammates.
Additional/concurrent careers In addition to the "Schoolboy" moniker appearing on his Hall of Fame plaque, Hoyt was also known as "the Merry Mortician", for when he was not playing baseball, he spent days working as a
funeral director and nights appearing in
vaudeville. As a vaudevillian, he appeared with many of the most well-known performers of the day, including
Jack Benny,
Jimmy Durante,
George Burns, and others. He kept in shape during the off-season by playing semi-professional
basketball. He added to his repertoire by becoming an accomplished painter and writer, including two published books: “Babe Ruth as I Knew Him” (Dell Publishing Company, 1948) and “Schoolboy: The Untold Journey of a Yankees Hero,” (University of Nebraska Press, 2024), a posthumous memoir, with co-author Tim Manners and foreword by Bob Costas.
Broadcasting After retiring as a player, Hoyt went into radio
broadcasting. He was heard on
WMCA in New York City but left that station to begin "a nightly quarter-hour program" of sports news and commentary on
WNEW in New York, beginning October 17, 1938. During a stint as the host of
Grandstand and Bandstand on WMCA, he tried to audition for the Yankees, but sponsor
Wheaties vetoed him out of hand. The common view at the time was that former players did not possess enough education or vocabulary to be successful broadcasters. However, Hoyt was well known for dressing down
umpire George Moriarty when he missed a call by saying, "You're out of your element. You should be a traffic cop so you could stand in the middle of the street with a badge on your chest and insult people with impunity!" Dodgers voice
Red Barber, however, thought more of Hoyt's abilities and hired him to host the team's post-game shows on
WOR in 1940. Two years later, Hoyt became the play-by-play voice of the
Cincinnati Reds, a post he held for 24 seasons. He became as much a celebrity with the Reds as he was while a player. He was well known for calling games exclusively in past tense, which was and still is unusual for sportscasting. Whereas most baseball announcers would say, "Here's the pitch!" Hoyt would say, "There was the pitch!" He told author
Curt Smith that he felt using past tense was more accurate, because "as I speak to you, what happened a moment ago is gone." On the evening of August 16, 1948, the Reds played the
Pittsburgh Pirates. During the game, Hoyt learned that his friend
Babe Ruth had died. After the game, speaking without notes, Hoyt paid tribute to Ruth on the air for two hours. He was well known as the pre-eminent authority on Ruth; they were teammates from 1921 to 1930, and Ruth long counted Hoyt among his small inner circle of friends.
Robert Creamer, author of the definitive Ruth biography
Babe, indicated in that book's introduction that the novella-length memoir written by Hoyt shortly after Ruth's death was "by far the most revealing and rewarding work on Ruth." Nationally, Hoyt shared radio play-by-play duties for the
1953 All-Star Game on the
Mutual network and the
second 1960 All-Star Game on
NBC Radio. He also called the
1961 World Series on NBC Radio, in an era when it was common for the principal broadcasters for the participating teams to be utilized in the network broadcasts of the Fall Classic. As it happened, 1961 was the Reds' only World Series appearance during Hoyt's tenure in their booth. In fact, the team only finished in the
first division seven other times during his tenure, leading Hoyt to call himself "a bad news broadcaster." Hoyt became known for entertaining radio audiences during rain delays, sharing anecdotes and telling vivid stories from his days as a player; a selection of these stories is collected on two record albums:
The Best of Waite Hoyt in the Rain, and
Waite Hoyt Talks Babe Ruth. Hoyt was one of the first professional athletes to develop a successful career in broadcasting and his name frequently appears on "all-time best" broadcaster lists. He retired from full-time broadcasting work in 1965, though he later made appearances on both radio and television, including the color commentary for the Reds telecasts in 1972. On June 10, 2007, the Reds honored Hoyt,
Marty Brennaman, and
Joe Nuxhall with replica microphones that are hung below the radio broadcast booth at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. ==Honors and legacy==