Yankees Birthday of the Day: Lefty O’Doul

An outstanding hitter who started his career as a pitcher is involved in a trade between the Yankees and Red Sox. While this statement could be used to outline the career of the legendary Babe Ruth, it also rings true for the not-nearly-as-renowned Lefty O’Doul — a talented player in his own right and the next individual in our Birthday Series.

Francis Joseph “Lefty”O’Doul
Born: March 4, 1897 (San Francisco, CA)
Died: December 7, 1969 (San Francisco, CA)
Yankees Tenure: 1919-20, 1922

The San Francisco Giants are such a storied franchise in baseball that for those born around the turn of the century and even a bit older, it’s difficult to imagine a version of MLB without a team in the Bay Area. That being said, before the Dodgers and Giants moved to California in the late-1950s, there was still quality baseball played out in San Francisco. Few people could attest to that quite in such rich fashion as Lefty O’Doul, a late-blooming, MLB star and a legend of the San Francisco Seals, the Pacific Coast League team for which he played and managed.

Hardcore MLB trivia enthusiasts might know O’Doul as the record holder for most runs allowed in a single relief appearance, but his career went far beyond that curious bit of minutiae. If you’re curious about that specific game, back when he pitched for the Red Sox in 1923, O’Doul gave up an absurd 16 runs against Cleveland—only three of them earned due to a plethora of errors, which, of course, didn’t take the sting off that much.

Following his career in chronological order, O’Doul started out as a pitcher for the aforementioned Seals of the PCL and moved to the Des Moines Boosters, where he caught the eye of Yankee as a 20-year-old pitcher. O’Doul made the Yankees team in 1919 and spent a couple of seasons with the team, receiving minimal opportunities as a relief pitcher, failing to reach even 10 innings pitched in the two seasons. New York won 95 games in 1920 but still fell three short of Cleveland in the race for the American League pennant. In 24.2 innings for the Yanks from 1919-22, he had a 3.65 ERA and looked the part of a pitcher at the plate at .243/.282/.297 with a 55 OPS+.

New York made its first World Series in 1921 while O’Doul was farmed back to the Seals, and he appeared in eight games for the team that repeated as American League champs in ’22 (falling to the Giants in an all-Polo Grounds Wolrd Series in both years). O’Doul wasn’t around for the end of the latter year either, as he was shipped off to Boston in September of ’22 as the player-to-be-named-later of a July package deal that had seen the Yankees acquire Joe Dugan and Elmer Smith. In Boston, O’Doul struggled heavily the following year, allowing a 1.887 WHIP in a little over 50 innings pitched, playing for a team that finished 61-92-2.

Struggling to cope with the demands of pitching, O’Doul went back to the Pacific Coast League to try his hand at hitting. He hadn’t hit much in the majors for Boston, but in 1921 with the Seals, he’d caught eyes with a .338 average and a .529 slugging percentage in 75 games. Over a four-year stretch beginning in 1924 with the Salt Lake City Bees, he made a complete mockery of PCL pitching, never finishing the year with a batting average lower than .338, accruing over 2,500 PA across those four seasons in the California sun with Salt Lake City, Hollywood, and San Francisco. O’Doul hit .392 in ’24 and .378 in ’27, finishing runner-up for the batting crown in both seasons (the former by mere percentage points). Those superb averages and a 33-homer campaign in ’27 were a sign of things to come for O’Doul.

Picked up by the Giants after those outstanding numbers with the Seals in 1927, O’Doul hit the ground running in the bigs, managing a .319 average in a little under 400 plate appearances. Perhaps still a bit unsure of what exactly they had in this 31-year-old who had reinvented his career as a hitter, the Giants flipped O’Doul to the Phillies for Freddy Leach in a straight-up swap after 1928, one they’d come to regret.

O’Doul broke out as one of the game’s top players in 1929, finishing as the NL MVP runner-up and coming within an inch of hitting .400. O’Doul’s .398 average wasn’t all made of singles either; in fact, far from it. The San Francisco native hit 33 home runs and only missed out on the MVP award due to the magnificent efforts of the great Rogers Hornsby. Hornsby, who played for a far superior Cubs team that managed to make it all the way to the Fall Classic, a particularly meaningful distinction during that period. But O’Doul won the NL batting title and also led the Senior Circuit with a .465 OBP and the majors with a staggering 254 hits. That was just three knocks shy of George Sisler’s MLB record 257 in 1920 and remains third in MLB history behind only Sisler and 2004 Ichiro (262).

O’Doul took a couple of steps back, but remained a great player in 1930. As his team got worse, Philadelphia flipped him to the Brooklyn Robins, where he’d spend the next two-plus seasons, further cementing his legacy as a great hitter, including a top-three MVP finish in 1932, when he won his second and final batting title at .368.

As if in a twist of fate, O’Doul would get moved once again, this time back to Giants in June 1933. Hall of Fame Giants skipper John McGraw had retired the previous year, but he was enlisted to manage the first-ever NL All-Star team on July 6, 1933 at Comiskey Park, and he named O’Doul to the inaugural roster. (He grounded out as a pinch-hitter.) At age-36, O’Doul also got to play in his first Fall Classic that fall, and he singled to drive in two runs during his only at-bat as the Giants beat the Washington Senators in five to win the World Series.

O’Doul retired as a productive hitter in 1934, finishing that year with a .908 OPS in 197 PA. The left-hander walked away with an outstanding .349 career big-league batting average and .945 OPS in over 3,000 at-bats, having debuted as a full-time hitter in the majors after turning 30. It still stands as one of the more remarkable career comebacks in MLB history (with his career providing part of the inspiration for Roy Hobbs in “The Natural,” alongside Eddie Waitkus). Outside of the controversial Shoeless Joe Jackson, O’Doul has the highest average of any big-league regular not already enshrined in Cooperstown. He appeared on 10 different ballots from 1948-62 and again on Veterans Committee ballots in 2007 and 2022, most recently coming seven votes shy of induction in ’22.

Upon his retirement, O’Doul moved back to the Bay Area, where he managed the San Francisco Seals in the Pacific League for nearly two decades. There, he led his hometown team to six Pacific Coast League championships, including four in a row between 1943-46.

During his successful period at the helm of the Seals, O’Doul developed perhaps his most notable Yankee connection, working with a young center fielder by the name of Joe DiMaggio. The future “Yankee Clipper” had already agreed to join New York for 1936, but his final season with the Seals corresponded with O’Doul’s first as their skipper, and he hit an O’Doul-esque .398.

While the lack of a larger sample ultimately prevented O’Doul from joining Cooperstown, he was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame (the Lefty O’Doul Bridge near Oracle Park is named in his memory), the Pacific Coast League Hall of Fame, and in 2002, the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. On top of his fascinating career on the field, O’Doul, who served in the United States Army, played a key role in helping baseball grow in Japan with several tours throughout the country to help promote the sport. O’Doul helped name their oldest and most successful pro team, the Yomiuri Giants, upon their founding in 1934. The club that would one day star the likes of Sadaharu Oh and Hideki Matsui retain the MLB Giants’ orange, black, and white colors to this day.

O’Doul’s first trip to Japan was back in 1931 as part of a group that included Lou Gehrig and Lefty Grove, and he returned at least 10 times for extended visits throughout the rest of his life — including a meaningful trip in 1949 to help thaw relations between Japan and the U.S. following the all-around devastation of World War II.

O’Doul lived long enough to see his Giants come to him, as the New York club moved west in 1958 to become the San Francisco Giants. They played their first two seasons in his old stomping grounds of Seals Stadium, and O’Doul led his last exhibition tour in 1960 when he brought the Giants to Japan. At the end of the decade, he passed away due to a stroke at age 72. He’s a somewhat-forgotten name today in New York baseball circles, but the ripple effects he had on baseball in San Francisco and Japan will last forever.

See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.