#340 Mickey McDermott - New York Yankees

Maurice Joseph McDermott
New York Yankees
Pitcher

Bats:  Left  Throws:  Left  Height:  6'2"  Weight:  170
Born:  April 29, 1929, Poughkeepsie, NY
Signed:  Signed by the Boston Red Sox as an amateur free agent before 1945 season
Major League Teams:  Boston Red Sox 1948-53; Washington Nationals 1954-55; New York Yankees 1956; Kansas City Athletics 1957; Detroit Tigers 1958; St. Louis Cardinals 1961; Kansas City Athletics 1961

Died:  August 7, 2003, Phoenix, AZ (age 74)

Mickey McDermott pitched in parts of a dozen big league seasons between 1948 and 1961, mostly with the Red Sox.  A swingman early in his career, McDermott joined Boston's starting pitching rotation for good in 1953 when he won a career-high 18 games.  Perhaps due to his off-the-field struggles, he was dealt to the Nationals following the season with Tom Umphlett for All-Star outfielder Jackie Jensen (#115).  McDermott found some success in Washington for two seasons, and then was on the move again in early 1956 to the Yankees.  He'd appear in only 23 games and pitch 87 innings in his one season with the Yankees, and he'd see his only postseason action, pitching three innings of mop-up relief in World Series Game 2, won by the Dodgers by a 13-8 score.  McDermott pitched almost all of the next three seasons in the minor leagues, before making one last return to the majors in 1961 with the Cardinals and Athletics.

He'd keep trying to make a comeback to the majors, while battling his alcoholic tendencies, making minor league appearances through the 1964 season.  McDermott coached with the Angels (1968-69) and was hired as a scout by the Athletics during the time Billy Martin (#181) was managing the club in the early 1980s.  McDermott was the first scout to recommend Mark McGwire to Oakland.  In 291 big league games, McDermott was 69-69 with a 3.91 ERA in 1,316 2/3 innings pitched.

Building the Set
Summer of 1983 or 1984 in Millville, NJ - Card #37
This McDermott card was the last of the Original 44.  Given it's also the last player card in the set, and the last card in the set overall, depending on your feeling towards checklists, I'll repeat the story of how my Dad and I started collecting this set, one last time.

June 1983 - Ocean City Baseball Card Show

Technically speaking, my Dad and I actually began collecting the set in the summer of 1987, but this card (along with the other Original 44) first entered my collection three or four years before that.

I think it was either the summer of 1983 or 1984 when a shoebox of vintage baseball cards, football cards and a few non-sports cards arrived into my world.  The box contained about a hundred cards dating between 1950 and 1956, and for the most part, they were all in excellent shape.  A friend of the family was in the process of cleaning up and moving into her new house when she found the old shoebox and she wondered if the only kid she knew who collected baseball cards (me) would be interested in looking through it – maybe even taking the box off her hands.

She dropped the box off to my parents and asked them to have me look through the box and take what I was interested in. Turns out, I was interested in everything.  Up to that point, the oldest cards in my collection were cards from the early '70s I had obtained through trades or cards that my Dad had picked up for me at yard sales or small baseball card shows.  (My Dad had given me a few dog-earred and rough Topps cards – Juan Pizzaro and Jim Busby – a few years prior, and I completely forget how or why he had purchased these cards for me.)

My parents asked me to pick out a few cards from the box, and then we’d return the rest to the family friend.  Problem was, I wanted them all.  I really wanted them all.  I diligently and meticulously went through one of my price guides and determined the “value” of the treasure chest. I probably used my Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide No. 4, edited by Dr. James Beckett, and I had no way to value the football or non-sports cards.  My memory is fuzzy, and I can't find the original tally, but I think I came up with the box being worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 to $400, which I knew my parents definitely did not have in their discretionary spending budget.  But they could tell how much I wanted those cards, as I lovingly studied each and every one and handled each as if it were some long-lost artifact.

I don’t know the exact details, but I believe my Dad went back to the friend and told her we’d take the whole box, but only if she let him give her some money for it.  I believe she was genuinely shocked that the box of old cardboard pictures had some value, and that someone was willing to give her cash for it.  My Dad shared the list I had created showing the “book value” of the cards and he mentioned how it was going to be close to impossible to get me to pick and choose which ones I wanted.  When all was said and done, the family friend, who had absolutely no intention of making money on this endeavor, walked away with (I think) something in the neighborhood of $100 for the whole lot.

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.  

And so 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 ’56 Topps cards in the Walker Gallery on the main drag in Cooperstown, New York.  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.  Those cards, along with the 44 from the magic shoebox, became the basis for our 1956 Topps set.

The list below contains the baseball cards from the Magic Shoebox, as well as other "old" cards in my collection as of the summer of 1987.

The Card / Yankees Team Set
McDermott is likely wearing a Nationals' uniform and hat here, and a Topps artist was tasked with swapping out the W on his hat with an interlocking NY.  This card marks his return to Topps after exclusively appearing in the Bowman sets the prior two seasons.  The first cartoon panel on the back highlights the three lefties at the top of the Yankees' pitching rotation to start the season - McDermott, Whitey Ford (#240) and Tommy Byrne (#215).  Only Ford stuck around in the starting rotation, going 19-6 with a league leading 2.47 ERA, while Byrne made one less start (eight) than McDermott.  The middle cartoon panel highlights McDermott's hitting skills.  He was a lifetime .252 batter with nine home runs and 74 RBIs.

1956 Season

As mentioned above, McDermott joined the Yankees before the 1956 season.  On February 8th, the Nationals traded him and Bobby Kline to the Yankees for Lou Berberet (#329), Herb Plews, Dick Tettelbach, Bob Wiessler and player to be named later, Whitey Herzog.  Of his 23 appearances, nine were starts, and he was 2-6 with a 4.24 ERA.

Phillies Connection
McDermott spent part of the 1958 season pitching with the Miami Marlins, then the Phillies' top farm team in the International League.  With the Marlins, he was 3-7 with a 5.66 ERA in 23 games, including seven starts, and he'd depart the Phillies' organization without ever earning a promotion to the big club.

1950 Bowman #97

1952 Topps #119

1953 Topps #55

1954 Bowman #56

1957 Topps #318

Other Notable Baseball Cards
First Mainstream Card:  1950 Bowman #97
Topps Flagship Set Appearances (4):  1952-53, 1956-57
Most Recent Mainstream Card:  1991 Topps Archives 1953 #55

25 - McDermott non-parallel baseball cards in the Beckett online database as of 9/24/25.

Sources:  
Baseball Reference
Beckett Database

SABR
The Trading Card Database

Wikipedia

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Set Order: #339 Rance Pless - Kansas City Athletics / 1st Series / 3rd Series Checklist

Order Collected: #323 Willard Schmidt - St. Louis Cardinals / #225 Gil McDougald - New York Yankees