Ernie Koy: A Legacy in Baseball and Beyond (1909–2007)

Ernest Anyz “Ernie” Koy, Major League Baseball player, was born in Sealy, Texas, on September 17, 1909, to Frank and Lucille (Lambert) Koy. The nickname “Chief” was bestowed on him, as was often the case with players who had American Indian ancestry. In 1928 Koy graduated from Sealy High School. He began his collegiate athletic career at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas, and later transferred to the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). Moving on to the University of Texas at Austin, Koy played fullback on the football team from 1930 to 1932 and outfield on the baseball team from 1931 to 1933. He was a member of the All-Southwest Conference teams in both baseball and football during those years. In football, he was the leading scorer in the conference in 1931 and served as co-captain of the team in 1932. In baseball, he was an All-American outfielder and captain of the 1933 team.

Signed by the New York Yankees after graduating from the University of Texas in 1933, Koy spent five seasons in the Yankees minor league organization. He began his professional career with the Durham Bulls of the Class B Piedmont League. In 1937 he was promoted to the Binghamton Triplets of the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League. Later in the season Koy was promoted to the Newark Bears of the Double-A International League, with whom he played through 1936. He spent 1937 with the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, another Double-A affiliate (one of three that season) of the Yankees. During the baseball off-season, he was also an assistant football coach at Sam Houston State Teachers College (now Sam Houston State University). Throughout his minor league career, Koy put up good numbers, but gaining the ultimate promotion to the Yankees was difficult in those days. In 1936 and 1937, when Koy was playing for their top minor league teams, the Yankees were World Series champions. They were awash with talent and able to maintain more than one Double-A affiliate.

Just before the 1938 season Koy, at age twenty-eight, was sold to the Brooklyn Dodgers. On opening day in 1938 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia, Koy started at left field for the Dodgers. Notably, he was third in the batting order, a space usually occupied by the team’s best pure hitter, one who can hit for average as well as power. Koy hit a solo home run in his first major league at bat off Wayne LaMaster of the Philadelphia Phillies. He finished the day with three hits in five at bats in a 12–5 Brooklyn victory. Koy went on to have a solid rookie year. He batted .299 in full-time duty with eleven home runs and seventy-six runs batted in. Befitting a former fullback (he stood 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds), he blended power and speed, as indicated by his thirteen triples. His record of fifteen stolen bases was only one behind league leader Stan Hack of the Chicago Cubs. A highlight of Koy’s rookie year was that Babe Ruth, three years after retiring as a player, appeared as a Dodgers coach on June 19 and remained with the team through the end of the season. Dodgers president Larry MacPhail said he signed Ruth for his “inspirational value,” which apparently was lacking, as the Dodgers finished the season in seventh (out of eight) place with a 69–80 record.

After a slight sophomore slump in 1939, Koy underperformed at the start of the 1940 season and was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in a multi-player deal. He finished strongly for the Cardinals, batting .310 in 383 plate appearances. Nevertheless, the Cardinals sold him to the Cincinnati Reds early in the 1941 season. A year later the Philadelphia Phillies (then the Phils) purchased him from the Reds. At age thirty-one he had been demoted to part-time status. He played his last professional game in 1942. In 1942 Koy joined the U.S. Navy and served through the duration of World War II. After his discharge in 1946 at age thirty-six, he was officially released by the Phillies. He retired from the major leagues with 515 hits and a .279 batting average.

On March 10, 1936, Koy married Jane Moore Cameron in Bellville, Texas. Their son, Ernie Koy, Jr., born in 1942, went on to play football for the University of Texas at Austin’s 1963 national championship team under head coach Darrell Royal. He followed up with a six-year career as a running back for the New York Giants of the National Football League (NFL). Koy’s younger son, Ted Koy, born in 1947, followed a similar career path. After playing with the undefeated 1969 University of Texas team, he played in the NFL, mostly as a tight end, for five seasons with the Oakland Raiders and Buffalo Bills. Koy’s daughter, Margaret Koy Kistler, became one of the first female sportswriters in Texas. Her byline appeared in the Bellville Times, the Daily Texan, the Abilene Reporter-News, the Dallas Morning News, and the Temple Daily Telegram.

A longtime resident of Bellville, Texas, Ernie Koy, Sr., died there at the age of ninety-seven on January 1, 2007. He was buried in Oak Knoll Cemetery in Bellville. He was survived by his wife of more than seventy years and their three grown children (his daughter Margaret passed a little more than a year after him, and his wife Jane lived to be 102). In 1960 Koy was named to the Longhorn Hall of Honor—he was joined by his sons Ted in 1995 and Ernie Jr. in 1998. In 1986 Koy was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.