Dummy Taylor’s Journey to the Majors

The New York Giants were in Brooklyn to make up a game that was canceled due to rain on August 27^th, 1900. Despite a 9-2 loss to the host Superbas, the eventual National League champions, the Giants had an unusual starting pitcher on the mound. His name was Luther Taylor and while the human eye could not see his disability from the bleacher seats at Washington Park, Taylor was a deaf-mute.

Taylor was not the first deaf-mute player, or pitcher for that matter. Thomas Lynch holds that honor, pitching in one major league game for the Chicago White Stockings in 1884. Taylor, however, was the first successful major league player to suffer from this disability. Born in 1875 in Oskaloosa, Kansas, Taylor hadn’t always wanted to be a baseball player. Taylor’s dream was to become “another Bob Fitzsimmons or Jack Dempsey” and he spent his days working out in gymnasiums and boxing anyone who challenged him. Taylor later credited his lengthy life to his hard workout regime. But baseball soon became the focus of Taylor’s life when his parents objected to him becoming a boxer.

After graduating from the Kansas School for the Deaf, Taylor began chasing his dream of being a big league pitcher. He spent five years playing semi-pro baseball in Missouri, Illinois, and his home state of Kansas. In 1900, he accepted a contract to play for a minor league team in Albany, New York. While there, Giants manager and future Hall-of-Famer George Davis decided Taylor had the potential of a future starting pitcher for his team and purchased his contract in late August.

Despite losing his big league debut, Taylor would compile a 4-3 record over 11 games for the Giants and earned a rotation spot in New York for the 1901 season. Taylor and another second year pitcher, Christy Mathewson, became the rotation front men for the Giants. Taylor led the NL in games pitched with 45, starting all but two. He also logged 353 1/3 innings, and earned a record of 18-27 for the 7^th place Giants.

With his performance in 1901, Taylor was lured to the upstart American League by Jim McAleer, where he promised Taylor would make more money pitching for the Cleveland franchise. But Taylor was unhappy in Cleveland, the players did not attempt to communicate with him as they did in New York and he was miserable. During his fourth and final start for Cleveland, Giants player, catcher, and friend Frank Bowerman came to watch Taylor pitch. Each inning as Taylor strolled to the mound, Bowerman made him a cash offer from owner Andrew Freedman to rejoin the Giants. Finally, the two came to terms during the game and Taylor was back in a Giants uniform the next day.

The Giants though were a team in disorder when Taylor rejoined. John McGraw jumped from managing Baltimore in the AL to the Giants and he and Taylor began a good player-coach relationship. McGraw even learned some sign language so he and Taylor could communicate, an act no doubt appreciated by Taylor who left Cleveland for reasons opposite of that. McGraw once said he learned sign language because Taylor had “a genial, humorous spirit that covets companionship.” During one game, Taylor and McGraw were talking in sign language about umpire Tim Hurst, obviously thinking the man in blue had no idea what was being discussed between the two. Hurst, though, knew sign language, having a relative who was deaf, and ejected both McGraw and Taylor.

On May 16^th, history was made as Taylor pitched to Cincinnati leadoff hitter, William Hoy, also a deaf-mute. Hoy told Taylor in sign language, “I’m glad to see you”, and then went 2-for-4. The Giants scored five runs in the ninth to defeat Cincinnati 5-3, with Taylor picking up the win. Taylor finished 1902 with a 8-18 record and a 2.19 ERA complied both in Cleveland and New York.

The Giants enjoyed a make over in 1903, with McGraw bringing many new players aboard; only three Giants stuck around: Mathewson, Bowerman and Taylor. Taylor went 13-13 on a staff that included Mathewson and newcomer Joe McGinnity. The Giants themselves also improved, finishing in second place, 5.5 games back of the NL pennant winning Pirates.

In 1904, New York won 106 games and the National League pennant, although they did not participate in the World Series because McGraw didn’t want to play a series against “a minor league club.” Taylor himself had a fine year, winning a career high 21 games with a 2.34 ERA. He won 16 more in 1905 and won a World Series ring with New York, although he did not pitch. Taylor was scheduled to pitch the third game of the series, but the game was rained out.  When it was finally played, McGraw sent Mathewson out to the mound instead.

Taylor lasted three more seasons, from 1906-1908, pitching for McGraw’s Giants. During that span, he won 36 games opposed to 21 losses. But his arm no longer could pitch at a major league level and in February 1909, the Giants released Taylor and his long-time rotation mate, Joe McGinnity.  Taylor spent five more years pitching for semi-pro teams in Buffalo, New Orleans, and Montreal but did not catch on anywhere else. Taylor finally hung up the spikes in 1913.

Taylor came back to his old stomping grounds, the Kansas School for the Deaf, where he coached a variety of sports for many years. He later coached and taught in similar schools in Iowa and Illinois where he was very popular. He quit teaching in 1949. One of Taylor’s prouder moments came in 1945, when a deaf player he had mentored, Dick Sipek, debuted for the Cincinnati Reds. Sipek was also the first deaf player not to have the nick name “Dummy,” a name that Taylor and league mate Hoy were known as. Said Taylor to Baseball Magazine: “In the old days Hoy and I were called Dummy. It didn’t hurt us. Made us fight harder. ”

In 1936, Major League Baseball awarded Taylor a lifetime pass. He was also inducted into the USA Deaf Sports Federation’s Hall of Fame and after his death in 1958, the Kansas School for the Deaf renamed its gym in his honor. In 2006, he was inducted into the Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame.

Taylor died at the age of 82 on August 22^nd, 1958. His life was a success on the field, where he complied 116 career wins, and in the classroom, where he gave deaf students and athletes hope that they themselves could succeed as he did.