Ted Lyons: A Legendary MLB Pitcher and Hall of Famer (1900–1986)

Theodore Amar “Ted” Lyons, Major League Baseball pitcher, manager, and coach, was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on December 28, 1900, to Asa Foreman Lyons and Sudie E. (Fancher) Lyons. Ted Lyons grew up on a farm. In 1919 he enrolled at Baylor University, where he was a standout athlete. As the baseball team’s star pitcher, he earned four varsity letters. Lyons also earned four in basketball (he was the starting center) and two in track. His reputation spread to Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack, who was known for scouting and signing college players. Mack offered to pay Lyons’s way through college if he would sign with the A’s, but Lyons turned him down, perhaps because the A’s had finished last in the American League from 1915 through 1921. In his senior year Lyons led the baseball team to a Southwest Conference championship and defeated the University of Texas Longhorns 6–2 in his final game. He caught the attention of the Chicago White Sox, who spent spring training in Texas in 1923. Their veteran catcher, Ray Schalk, had occasion to audition Lyons and recommended him to manager Kid Gleason. Consequently, Lyons signed with the White Sox for a $1,000 bonus after he graduated from Baylor. If Lyons thought the Sox had better prospects than the A’s, he was wrong, as the White Sox were a middling team throughout his long tenure (1923–42, 1946) with the franchise. Meanwhile, the A’s became competitive in 1925 and went on to win three consecutive pennants (1929–31) and two World Series.

Lyons, who bypassed the minor leagues, made his debut in a one-inning relief appearance against the St. Louis Browns on July 2, 1923. He had not witnessed a major league game until he was on the roster of a major league team. Lyons was used sparingly (22.2 innings in just nine appearances) in his rookie year. The two victories he earned were on the same day late in the season (October 6), when he relieved in both games of a doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians. In 1924 Lyons pitched 216.1 innings, starting and relieving, on his way to a 12–11 record. In 1925, at age twenty-four, he led the American League in victories (twenty-one) and shutouts (five). He remained a stalwart in the White Sox rotation for the rest of the decade. In 1927 and 1930 he won twenty-two games. On August 21, 1926, Lyons hurled a no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox. On May 24, 1929, he pitched a twenty-one-inning game against the Detroit Tigers. Opposing pitcher George Uhle, who pitched twenty innings, got the victory with help from reliever Ulysses Simpson Grant Stoner.

After 1930 Lyons’s career declined, largely due to arm and back injuries. The low point was 1933, when he led the league in losses with twenty-one. No longer able to reliably throw his fastball, Lyons adopted a knuckleball to compensate and soon improved, though not to his prior level. His career was prolonged by the White Sox limiting his appearances to reduce strain on his arm. A fan favorite in Chicago, he was known as a Sunday pitcher because the White Sox usually sent him to the mound on Sundays (typically in the first game of a doubleheader). The once-a-week schedule seemed to agree with Lyons, who was thirty-eight years old in 1939. That year he was named to the American League All-Star team and during the season pitched a string of forty-two consecutive innings without issuing a base on balls. Late in the 1940 season the White Sox held a day in his honor and presented him with a Buick convertible, among other gifts. In 1942, his last full season, he led the league in earned run average (ERA) with 2.10.

Though Lyons was over the draft age when America entered World War II, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He was stationed in the South Pacific. In 2013 he was posthumously awarded the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award, created to honor Hall of Famers who served during the war. Lyons, at age forty-five, returned to the White Sox for one month in 1946 and earned his 260th and final major league victory. Lyons remains the all-time White Sox leader in victories as well as innings pitched (4,161) and complete games (356).

The right-handed, heavy-set (5’11”, 200 lbs.) Lyons was a craftsman on the mound with a wide assortment of pitches in his repertoire. According to Ted Williams, “Lyons was tough and he got tougher the more you faced him, because he’d learn about you by playing those little pitcher-batter thinking games, and he’d usually out-think you.” Given Lyons’s cerebral approach to the game, it is fitting that one of his favorite teammates was catcher Moe Berg, who was with the White Sox from 1926 through 1930. A graduate of Princeton University and a linguist, Berg was known for his baseball savvy and his knowledge of hitters. “He makes up for all the bores in the world,” Lyons once said of him. Supposedly, Berg and Lyons conversed in Greek to disguise their strategy from opposing players. Lyons, however, was fond of telling tall tales and this might have been one of them.

Lyons was named manager of the White Sox six days after he threw his last pitch (May 19, 1946). The results were unimpressive, however, as the White Sox accumulated a record of 185–245 during his three seasons (1946–48) at the helm. In 1949 Lyons finally donned another major league uniform when he served as pitching coach for the Detroit Tigers. In 1954, after four seasons with the Tigers, he performed the same duties for the Brooklyn Dodgers, which was his only experience with National League baseball. After his coaching career ended, Lyons returned to the White Sox and served as a scout and minor league pitching instructor. He remained a scout with the team until 1967. In the off-season he lived on a rice farm with his sister in Vinton, Louisiana.

In 1955 Lyons was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame (he is the only ballplayer from a Southwest Conference team to be enshrined) along with teammate Ray Schalk, who first brought him to the attention of the White Sox. While Lyons’s 260–230 record produced a mere .531 winning percentage, Hall of Fame voters were well aware that he had spent his entire career with a lackluster team. Joe McCarthy, who managed the New York Yankees from 1931 to 1946, opined that Lyons would have won more than 400 games had he pitched for the Yankees. Even so, Lyons’s 3.67 career ERA was on the high side for a Hall of Fame pitcher, particularly considering that his home field, Comiskey Park, was widely considered a pitcher’s park. He is the only pitcher enshrined in the Hall of Fame with more walks (1,121) than strikeouts (1,073). This does not indicate wildness, however, but that he was not a strikeout pitcher. His career record of 2.3 strikeouts per nine innings is the lowest of any Hall of Fame pitcher who began his career after 1920 (the end of the dead-ball era). Lyons’s control improved with age, as he led the American League in fewest walks per nine innings from 1939 to 1941. Lyons was a good-hitting pitcher, which probably kept him in games for which a pinch-hitter would otherwise be called. As a result, he completed almost three-fourths of his starts, and led the league in complete games in 1927 (thirty) and 1930 (twenty-nine). In 1942 when he was forty-one years old, he completed all twenty of his starts.

When Baylor University started its Athletic Hall of Fame in 1960, Lyons was a member of the inaugural class. The only other inductee that year was longtime (1920–65) assistant football coach Floyd Crow. That same year Lyons became the first baseball player named to the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. In 1985 he was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. A lifelong bachelor, Lyons passed away in a nursing home in Sulphur, Louisiana, on July 25, 1986. In 1987 the White Sox retired his uniform number (16). The Theodore “Ted” Amar Lyons papers reside in the Texas Collection at Baylor.