Talk:Billy Hoy

According to Bill Deane -----

"William 'Dummy' Hoy who played professional baseball from 1886 to 1902 and who is credited with inventing the hand signals used by umpires. Hoy, who was deafened at the age of 2 and attended the Ohio School for the Deaf, played for the Cincinnati Reds and the Washington Senators. He asked the umpires to raise their right arm to signify and strike and left arm to signify a ball."

In reality, umpires' hand signals came about several years after Hoy retired, and were designed for the benefit of fans. This is one of dozens of canards I take on in my work-in-progress on baseball mythology.

Hoy did indeed rely on hand signals -- but they came from his third base coach, not the umpire. According to the April 7, 1888 edition of the Washington, DC EVENING STAR, "When he bats a man stands in the Captain's box near third base and signals to him decisions of the umpire on balls and strikes by raising his fingers."

Hoy died at age 99 in 1961. It was some time after that his supposed onnection with umpire's hand signals began circulating. But, a thorough check of Hoy's voluminous clipping file at the National Baseball Library & Archive turns up only one article written during Hoy's long lifetime which mentions anything about hand signals. In THE SILENT WORKER, April 1952, Hoy states that "the coacher at third kept me posted by lifting his right hand for strikes and his left for balls. This gave later day umpires an idea and they now raise their right ... to emphasize an indisputable strike." This indicates that this practice was adopted AFTER Hoy's career; and, as far as we know, Hoy merely ASSUMED that his coaches' signals were the inspiration for this idea.

The 1909 SPALDING's OFFICIAL BASE BALL GUIDE provides more evidence against the Hoy myth. In a full-page essay entitled "Semaphore Signals by the Umpires," it is stated that "Two or three years ago Base Ball critics in the East and West began to agitate the question of signalling by the umpires to announce their decisions. At first the judges of play did not want to signal (but) now there is not an umpire (that doesn't use his) arms to signal. If he did not, two-thirds of the spectators at the immense crowds would be wholly at sea as to what was transpiring on the field." There is no mention of Hoy, who had retired from pro baseball only five years earlier, in the essay.

National League umpires Bill Klem (who began his big league career in 1905) and Cy Rigler (who started a year later) have both been credited with the innovation. Another source credits a fan, General Andrew Burt, who suggested the idea to American League President Ban Johnson in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Klem's Hall of Fame plaque states that he was "credited with introducing arm signals indicating strikes and fair or foul balls." According to the May 1, 1905 edition of Evansville COURIER, Rigler introduced the practice in a Central League game there the previous day: "One feature of Rigler's work yesterday that was appreciated was his indicating balls by the fingers of his left hand and strikes with the fingers of the right hand so everyone in the park could tell what he had called." In a 1985 article in SABR's THE NATIONAL PASTIME, Dan Krueckeberg asserts that "When Rigler entered the National League a year later (September 27, 1906), he found that his raised-arm call had preceded him and was in wide use."

There was at least one instance of umpires' hand signals being used in the minor leagues long before this. It involved a deaf player - but not Hoy. Ed Dundon, who had pitched in the major leagues in 1883-1884, was the innovator. The 6 November 1886 edition of THE SPORTING NEWS reports that "Dundon, the deaf and dumb pitcher of the Acid Iron Earths, umpired a game at Mobile between the Acids and Mobiles, on October 20 ... He used the fingers of his right hand to indicate strikes, the fingers of the left to call balls, a shake of the head decided a man 'not out,' and a wave of the hand meant out.'" The 30 October 1886 issue of the New York CLIPPER concurred with the description, saying "Dundon, the deaf-mute pitcher, umpired a game in Mobile, Ala., and gave entire satisfaction."

And, the idea of umpires' signals was suggested even long before THIS. In a letter to the editor published in the 27 March 1870 New York SUNDAY MERCURY, Cincinnati Red Stockings' manager Harry Wright wrote "There is one thing I would like to see the umpire do at (a) big game, and that is, raise his hand when a man is out. You know what noise there is always when a fine play is made on the bases, and it being impossible to hear the umpire, it is always some little time before the player knows whether he is given out or not. It would very often save a great deal of bother and confusion." There is no indication that Wright got the idea from seven-year-old Ohioan Billy Hoy.

The consensus is that umpires' hand signals first appeared in the big leagues about 1906, give or take a year. And Dummy Hoy, who last played in the majors in 1902, had nothing to do with them. --Ron 01:13, 10 Apr 2006 (EDT)