By PAUL POST
Capital District Baseball Hall of Fame Honoree: Tom McAvoy
STILLWATER – Jean McAvoy knew the ground rules right off the bat.
Her late husband, Tom, was a professional baseball player and everything else would take a back seat for the next 51 years, until his passing last March.
Tom pitched one game in the big leagues for the Washington Senators, in 1959, before suffering a series of heartbreaking, career-ending arm injuries. Unable to play, he focused his athletic energies elsewhere, and two years ago was inducted to the International Softball Congress Hall of Fame, in Kimberly, Wis., as one of the top managers in the country.
“It was year-round with
him,” Jean McAvoy said. “If he wasn’t trying to recruit for this weekend, he was trying to recruit for next year or trying to find a sponsor. It would slow down a little after Labor Day. Then come January or February, he’d start up getting ready. Here we go again!”
Tom and Jean shared the same birthday — Aug. 12 — but seldom blew out candles together.
“He’d be in Timbuktu, away for the weekend at some tournament,” Debbie McAvoy, the couple’s daughter, recalled with a smile.
At home, Tom would sometimes have half the team sleep over at his house, with Jean handling kitchen duties. However, all the sacrifice and inconvenience paid off when she saw the look in her husband’s eye after receiving his Hall of Fame ring.
“He loved that ring,” she said. “His whole life he wanted that ring.”
On Sunday, Nov. 6, Tom will be honored once again as one of 40 inaugural members of the newly created Capital District Baseball Hall of Fame. The first-ever class features dozens of former major league players. Ceremonies are scheduled for the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Albany.
“He’d be thrilled!” said Jean McAvoy, who will be there with Debbie, on Tom’s behalf. “This isn’t Cooperstown, but it’s a big deal. He’s being recognized by baseball now. It’s the national pastime.”
A 6-foot-3, 200-pound lefthander hurler, McAvoy signed with the Senators in 1956 before graduating from Mechanicville High School, where he’d made a name for himself as one of the area’s best pitchers.
“He was so anxious to go play that when they made him an offer, he took it,” Jean said. “They paid him $1,000 per month. Back in those days that was big bucks.”
His journey through the minor leagues took him to Erie, Pa., Midland, Tx. and Charlotte, N.C. before finally reaching the big leagues, with Washington, for a brief relief appearance on Sept. 27, 1959. In 2-2/3 innings he gave up one hit, no runs and even took a turn at bat in this era long before the designated hitter.
After the season, the Senators wanted him to gain more experience so they sent him to Winter Ball in Managua, Nicaragua, playing for dictator Anastasio Somoza’s own team. For Jean, Tom’s bride of just over one year, traveling to a Third World country was an unforgettable experience.
“It was scary,” she said. “The wives would only go out together in groups of three or four at a time. We would never get in a cab alone. They told us the beds had bed bugs, although we never saw any. We slept with the lights on.”
One time, she slipped coming out of the shower (no hot water) and called for help. Tom, who had been down the hall, came running with several players following close behind. “He brings half the ball team in and there I am wrapped in a towel,” Jean said, laughing.
However, it’s one of the few light things that happened that winter, because both of their worlds were turned upside down when Tom suffered a broken arm while delivering a pitch. “He was pitching to Joe Hicks,” Jean said.
Hicks, too, had just been called up to the majors that season by the White Sox. He spent parts of five years in the big leagues from 1959-63 with the Chisox, Senators and Mets.
After leaving the field, holding his arm, Tom was taken to a military hospital in an open jeep, accompanied by Somoza’s soldiers, within bayonets on their rifles.
Then he came home to recuperate with hopes of making the Senators again in 1960. Perhaps trying to return too soon, he sustained an even worse injury as the bone in his arm sheared off while he was warming up to go in a game.
“He was in a full-body cast from the waist up,” Jean said. “They put a stick from his arm to his belly to hold his arm up.”
By 1961, the Senators had moved Minnesota and become the Twins. McAvoy attempted another valiant comeback, but it wasn’t to be.
For earlier stories on Tom McAvoy at Fastpitchwest, click here.