Hoy never heard roar of the crowd

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 23, 1998 | by Leslie Koren

William "Dummy" Hoy threw out three base runners at home plate in one game while playing outfield for the Washington Nationals in 1889. No Major League Baseball player has accomplished the feat since.

But it wasn't only that exploit that made Dummy Hoy a special baseball player. He also was deaf and mute. It was for Hoy that umpire Bill Klem first employed the hand gestures used to this day to signal balls and strikes.

Klem is enshrined in the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y But Hoy, an accomplished player for 14 big-league seasons, is not. His absence angers deaf activists, who gathered recently in Washington to lobby for Hoy. They call their mission "Dummy pride."

It is part of deaf heritage," says Randy Fisher, founder and chairman of the Committee for William "Dummy" Hoy, an affiliate of the American Athletic Association of the Deaf Inc. "What Jackie Robinson did for the color barrier, Dummy Hoy did for the sound barrier." Fisher, who is deaf and signs through an interpreter when addressing the press, adds that Hoy deserves a plaque in Cooperstown based on his skills not just his achievement of overcoming a handicap. "The statistics prove it."

Fisher, a 49-year-old postal employee from suburban Philadelphia, felt his first surge of Dummy pride in 1961. He was 12, sitting at home watching the third game of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Cincinnati Reds. The boy was amazed to see Hoy, then age 99, throw out the ceremonial first pitch. "I put it up my sleeve that Dummy Hoy could overcome his disability and could do anything," Fisher recalls.

Wielding reams of Hoy's achievements, recorded in average totals, percentages and lifetime tallies, Fisher and his colleagues hope to convince the Hall of Fame's veterans committee to include Hoy on its list of old-timers who could be picked to be in the mall. The Hall of Fame has committed to inducting a 19th-century player each year for the five years beginning in 1995. Under this program, Hoy would have to win induction this year or next.

Students from Gallaudet University and the Model Secondary School for the Deaf, both in Washington, and members of the National Association of the Deaf also are pushing for Hoy's induction into the Hall of Fame. "When he first started, the pitcher would do anything to make Dummy Hoy look bad," says Philip Mattiacci, 23, a Gallaudet student. "And Dummy Hoy played in a dead-ball era. There weren't many rules. But he still did it.