Let’s face it, the name Herb Pennock doesn’t ring a bell with many baseball fans today. Yet he was the winning pitcher when the Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig won the franchise’s first World Series championship in 1923. During his Hall of Fame career, the Squire of Kennett Square (his Pennsylvania hometown) had a 5-0 record in the World Series play and became known as one of the best big-game pitchers of his era. Biographer Keith Craig has brought Pennock out of the shadows, not only by examining a playing career marked by a pitching style so relaxed looking that Yankee catcher Bill Dickey said you could catch his deliveries sitting in a rocking chair, but also recounting his success later as a baseball executive, credited with assembling the 1950 Philadelphia “Whiz Kids.”
Here’s an excerpt from Herb Pennock:
“At the pinnacle of his career, Pennock and the story of his success commanded attention. For a pitcher whose slender appearance belied his robust results, Herb consented to set the record straight on just how he developed the skills to achieve success as a major league pitcher.
“Pennock held forth in a profile published by Baseball Magazine, which begins with a rather ironic assessment of his arm: ‘Look at his arm and you would say offhand that if there is any job on earth for which he is totally unfitted, that job would be pitching. There isn’t a suggestion of muscular development in that arm. It is undeveloped, attenuated, frail.’ ”
