#225 Gil McDougald - New York Yankees

Gilbert James McDougald
New York Yankees
Second Base-Third Base

Bats:  Right  Throws:  Right  Height:  6'0"  Weight:  175
Born:  May 19, 1928, San Francisco, CA
Signed:  Signed by the New York Yankees as an amateur free agent before 1948 season
Major League Teams:  New York Yankees 1951-1960

Died:  November 28, 2010, Monmouth County, NJ (age 82)

Gil McDougald's decade in baseball, all with the Yankees, included winning the American League Rookie of the Year award in 1951, attending six All-Star Games, playing in eight World Series and winning five World Championships.  In his rookie season, McDougald made 107 starts between third and second base while batting .306 with 14 stolen bases, a career-high 14 home runs and 63 RBIs.  He became the first rookie to hit a grand slam in the World Series, hitting his blast off the Giants' Larry Jansen in 1951's Game 5.  McDougald made his first of six All-Star teams in 1952, returning in 1956, 1957, 1958 and both games in 1959.  His best season came in 1957 when he batted .289 while leading the league with nine triples and 19 sacrifice bunts.  

August 16, 1987 - Cooperstown, NY

McDougald will forever be linked with Indians' pitcher Herb Score (#140), as a line drive off his bat struck Score in the right eye on September 10, 1958.  Score suffered several facial bone fractures, and the injury may have shortened his pitching career.  A steady fielder throughout his career, McDougald appeared in 596 games at second base, 512 games at third base and 284 games at shortstop, with his .984 fielding percentage as a second baseman 54th on the all-time list.

He retired following the 1960 World Series, having appeared in 1,336 games and collecting 1,291 hits, 112 home runs and 576 RBIs.  McDougald batted .237 (45 for 190) in 53 World Series games, with seven home runs and 24 RBIs.  Following his major league career, McDougald was the head baseball coach at Fordham University between 1970 and 1976, a position he'd resign due to his worsening hearing loss.  He successfully received a cochlear implant in 1994, restoring his hearing and making him a strong proponent of the procedure for others suffering hearing loss.

Building the Set
August 16, 1987 from Cooperstown, NY - Card #45
This was the first card we purchased in the summer of 1987, officially marking the beginning of us collecting the 1956 Topps set.  As told now frequently in our set's origin story, and most recently with the post for the Early Wynn (#187) card, I was essentially gifted with a shoebox of vintage Topps baseball cards in the summer of 1983 or 1984.  Within the spoils were 44 cards from the 1956 Topps set – by far the most cards from any one set.  I studied them, I sorted them, and I pretty much memorized every detail of those 44 cards.  

A few years later, in the summer of 1987 while on a family vacation, I was giddy with excitement when we came across a few 1956 Topps cards in the Walker Gallery on the main drag in Cooperstown, New York.  It was our first trip to Cooperstown, and details from that family vacation still make up several of my most important core memories from my childhood.  My Dad and I studied the cards for sale and he casually asked me the question, “Why don’t we try to put together the whole set?” We bought four cards that day for $9.25, including this McDougald card which was all of $3.  Those cards, along with the 44 from the magic shoebox, became the basis for our 1956 Topps set.

That small but incredibly meaningful purchase meant so much to me that I tacked a Walker Gallery business card to my bulletin board in my bedroom on 12th Street, where it hung for years.

The Card / Yankees Team Set
McDougald was featured exclusively in the Bowman sets in 1954 and 1955, and this is his first Topps appearance since 1953.  The action photo shows McDougald just after he made a relay throw to first base to presumably complete a double play.  

His grand slam from the 1951 World Series is highlighted in the first cartoon panel on the back.  The middle panel showcases his league leading fielding percentage and double play totals.  McDougald led all second baseman in fielding percentage only once with a .985 mark in 1955.  He led the league in double plays turned three times, at three different positions - in 1952 as a third baseman, in 1955 as a second baseman and in 1957 as a shortstop.  Manager Casey Stengel makes an uncredited cameo appearance in the final cartoon panel.

Topps reprinted this card in the 2002 Topps Archives set.

1956 Season

McDougald appeared in 120 games overall, making 88 starts at shortstop, 24 starts at second base and four starts at third base.  He batted a career-high .311 for the pennant-winning Yankees, with 13 home runs and 56 RBIs.  In his second All-Star Game berth, McDougald didn't make it into that year's game at Washington's Griffith Stadium.  In the World Series, he played every inning of all seven games at shortstop, batting just .143 (3 for 21).  But he made one of the top defensive plays in Game 5, fielding a hard line drive in the hole, deflected off the glove of Andy Carey (#12) and smoked off the bat of Jackie Robinson (#30), throwing out Robinson at first base and preserving Don Larsen's (#332) eventual perfect game.  The Yankees would win the series in seven games.

1952 Topps #372

1954 Bowman #97

1957 Topps #200

1959 Topps #345

1960 Topps #247

Other Notable Baseball Cards
First Mainstream Card:  1952 Bowman #33
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (7):  1952-1953, 1956-1960
Most Recent Mainstream Card:  2016 Panini Diamond Kings #31

252 - McDougald non-parallel baseball cards in the Beckett online database as of 11/5/22.

Sources:  
Baseball Reference
Beckett Database

SABR
The Trading Card Database

Wikipedia

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Set Order: #224 "Bud" Podbielan - Cincinnati Redlegs / #226 New York Giants Team Card

Order Collected: #340 Mickey McDermott - New York Yankees / #229 Harry Brecheen CO - Baltimore Orioles