It takes more than just household names to build and maintain a dynasty. Every World Series winning squad needs the role players and glue guys to get through the grind of the regular season and step up in unexpected ways when the games matter the most. For the Joe DiMaggio’s and Whitey Ford’s of the early-50s halcyon days, you had guys like Joe Ostrowski who went unremembered but contributed nonetheless.
Joseph Paul Ostrowski Born: November 15, 1916 (West Wyoming, PA) Died: January 3, 2003 (Wilkes-Barre,
PA) Yankees Tenure: 1950-52
Joseph Paul Ostrowski was born on November 15, 1916, in West Wyoming, PA, the sixth of eleven children (six girls and five boys), to Polish immigrants Marcel (or Martin) and Helena (née Cegielka) Ostrowski. Despite growing up in the heart of Pennsylvania coal country, Ostrowski did not work the mines like his father after his oldest brother perished in a mining accident when he was 17, causing his father to promise that Joe nor any of his remaining brothers would work in the coal industry. His local high school did not have a baseball team, so his introduction to the sport came through playing in the local sandlot “anthracite leagues” as they were informally known.
Ostrowski attended college at St. Thomas College (now the University of Scranton) and graduated with a degree in education. He taught social studies and Latin in his hometown, which is the origin of the nicknames of “Professor” and “Specs” that he would pick up from teammates during his major league career. Playing baseball during the summers, Ostrowski pitched a no-hitter and a pair of one-hitters in amateur ball in 1940 and 1941, which caught the eye of the business manager of the Scranton Red Sox, Joe Reardon. His first taste of organized ball came with Boston’s Class D affiliate, the Centreville Red Sox of the East Shore League in 1941, with whom he compiled a 10-4 record and league-best 1.71 ERA in 17 starts to earn a promotion to the Class C Canton Terriers of the Middle Atlantic League. It was during these initial years in the low minors that Ostrowski learned how to throw a curveball from Hall of Fame pitcher Herb Pennock, at that time Boston’s minor league director.
A promotion to the Class B Greensboro Red Sox of the Piedmont League in 1942 further accelerated his career, as he posted a league-best 21-8 record and 1.65 ERA in 35 starts as his team won the league championship. The following year, Ostrowski enlisted in the US Army Air Forces. He served as a medic and rose to the rank of sergeant after being assigned to a fighter group in Italy for 19 months. Upon his return from the war, Ostrowski married Helen Regina Augustynovich, with whom he would have three sons. Around the same time in 1946, he was promoted to the Triple-A Louisville Cardinals of the American Association and went 10-4 with a 2.87 ERA in 24 appearances (11 starts). The next season saw him go 13-11 with a 2.98 ERA in 29 appearances (22 starts), but that is as close as he would get to playing for the Red Sox, the team trading him alongside eight other members of the organization and $310,000 to the St. Louis Browns for Vern Stephens, Jack Kramer, Ellis Kinder, and Billy Hitchcock following the 1947 season.
After starting the season with the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens of the International League, Ostrowski finally received his first big league call-up at the age of 31. He debuted on July 8, 1948, allowing four runs on five hits and two walks in the seventh inning of a 6-2 loss to the Tigers. He pitched his first career complete game in August against Cleveland and even added two hits and two RBI on the offensive side. His rookie season ended with Ostrowski sporting a 4-6 record and 5.97 ERA in 26 appearances (nine starts) and 78.1 innings.
The following season saw Ostrowski go 8-8 with a 4.79 ERA in 40 appearances (13 starts) and 141 innings including a pair of complete game victories. It was around this time that the Browns started deploying Ostrowski as the game’s final pitcher, long before the term “closer” came into existence. He tallied another pair of complete game victories to open the 1950 season, but the cash-strapped Browns owners were desperate to keep the team solvent, and so traded Ostrowski alongside Tom Ferrick and Leo Thomas to the Yankees on June 15, 1950, for Snuffy Stirnweiss and minor league prospects Jim Delsing, Don Johnson, and Duane Pillette along with $50,000 in cash.
Ostrowski added a multi-inning relief arm to the Yankee bullpen to help ease the burden on their starting rotation, pitching to a 5.15 ERA in 21 appearances (just four starts) totaling 43.2 innings following the trade. He was left unused in the 1950 World Series as the Yankees swept the Phillies thanks to brilliant pitching displays from Ford, Allie Reynolds, Eddie Lopat, and Vic Raschi.
Ostrowski saw a sharp uptick in his game time in 1951, and he made the third-most appearances on the pitching staff behind Reynolds and Raschi. In 34 appearances (three starts), Ostrowski went 6-4 with a 3.49 ERA and six saves in 95.1 innings while earning the highest salary of his career at $8,500. He made the lone postseason appearance of his career as the Yankees advanced to their third straight World Series, tossing two scoreless innings allowing just one hit in 6-2 loss in Game 3 against the Giants. Lopat and Reynolds combined for three complete games in the series as the Yankees vanquished the Giants in six games.
The following season would be Ostrowski’s last in the big leagues, the 35 year old seeing his opportunities taper off sharply after the Yankees acquired Johnny Sain and Bob Kuzava the previous offseason. He made just 20 appearances, going 2-2 with a 5.63 ERA in 40 innings, his final major league appearance a five-inning relief outing allowing five runs on hive hits and three walks in a 12-3 loss to the White Sox on August 20, 1952. The Yankees hosted Joe Ostrowski Day on the final day of the regular season, gifting him a car. He would again watch from the sidelines in that year’s World Series. The Yankees outlasted the Dodgers in seven games to tie a franchise record four straight titles, Ostrowski explaining, “The Dodgers had seven right-handed batters and I was a left-handed pitcher.”
Prior to the start of the 1953 season, the Yankees sold Ostrowski to the Los Angeles Angels — then the Pacific Coast League affiliate of the Cubs — and he finished his baseball career with a 3-6 record and 2.96 ERA in 28 appearances totaling 73 innings. He settled with his wife and children in his hometown of West Wyoming, PA, where he would resume his teaching career for a further 25 years while also coaching baseball and refereeing basketball. He returned for Old Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium in 1978, where he light-heartedly recalled that former teammate Phil Rizzuto didn’t recognize him despite reminding him his name, though DiMaggio and Ford did remember him. Ostrowski was inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 1988 and passed away at the Wilkes-Barre General Hospital on January 3, 2003, at the age of 86.
Though he largely went unused in the three-straight World Series wins during his Yankees tenure, he nonetheless helped preserve the arms of the team’s workhorse starters during the regular season as a valuable member of those teams’ bullpens.
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