A Forgotten Hero With A Disability

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One subject that I enjoy reading about is baseball history. I find the stories of the early days of the sport to be interesting. There were some very interesting and eccentric characters back then. The player I read about is quite amazing. This player impressed me so much because he played despite the hardship of deafness. He played in the years of the late Nineteenth Century and into the early years of the Twentieth Century. His name was William Hoy? His nickname was "Dummy" Hoy", but at that time and in his case the term "Dummy" was not meant as an insult. He played in center field which would normally be pretty dangerous since outfielders need to communicate and hear one another. They call out when they are going to catch the ball to keep from colliding with another player that might be trying to make the catch. Those who played ball with this man knew his system. Whenever he felt that he could catch the ball he made clicking or chirping type sounds and whenever he did the other outfielders automatically backed off and let him make the catch...which it appears that he rarely missed and according to the book, "Glory of Their Times" by Lawrence S. Ritter he had a great throwing arm. He was a good hitter too and many thought he should have been put in the Baseball Hall of Fame. One interesting note about him is that there have been claims that it was his participation in Major League Baseball that brought about umpires using hand signals, so that William Hoy would know what was being called. His wife was also deaf and both of them taught sign language...I believe they had their own deaf and hard of hearing school which taught sign language. There is quite a bit more about this amazing man and I will share a couple of links with you below. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/763405ef Verified by Wikipedia and "Glory Of Their Times" by Lawrence S Ritter