pretty nice debut<\/a>. He ended up appearing in 10 MLB games in 1917, putting up right at league average numbers. In 1918, Vick appeared in two games before joining the military to serve in World War I.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
Vick returned for the 1919 season and ended up as the team\u2019s regular right fielder. He ended up appearing in 106 games in \u201819, although a 83 OPS+ wasn\u2019t much to write home about. However after the season, the Yankees purchased Ruth from the Red Sox in probably the most well known baseball trade of all time. It also left Vick in a fourth outfielder role. Adding to that was that another young outfielder named Bob Meusel also debuted during the 1920 season. He still ended up playing over 50 games for the 1920 Yankees, but was quickly falling down the pecking order.<\/p>\n
One thing of note that happened for Vick in 1920 was getting into a fight with manager Miller Huggins after a game in Cleveland. While you might expect that played a role in Vick\u2019s diminished playing time and eventual departure, Huggins thought the incident was a good thing, as the manager had thought Vick was too shy and timid and not capable of that type of emotion.<\/p>\n
Despite that, Vick was headed for a departure after the season, as the team thought had he never lived up to his potential and now had a couple better players. The following December, the team made another deal with the Red Sox, sending Vick to Boston as part of a nine-player deal. This one would also go in the Yankees\u2019 favor as the most notable mover in the trade was pitcher Waite Hoyt, who became an ace for the team as they finally got over the World Series championship hump.<\/p>\n
An injury delayed Vick\u2019s Boston debut until June, and he never really got going in 1921, posting a .594 OPS in 44 games. He was eventually sold to the minor league Toronto Maple Leafs (a baseball team, they didn\u2019t make him learn hockey), and he never returned to the majors. Vick continued playing in the minor leagues through 1930, mostly playing for teams in the south near his Mississippi birthplace.<\/p>\n
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In the years following his baseball career, Vick did some work as a teacher and also bought a farm. He eventually passed away in Memphis in 1986 at age 91.<\/p>\n
In a way, Sammy Vick helped set the stage for the first dynasty in Yankees\u2019 history. It just wasn\u2019t in a way he himself might have hoped.<\/p>\n
See more of the \u201cYankees Birthday of the Day\u201d series here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Yankees famously purchased Babe Ruth from the Red Sox in 1919, there was always going to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[1647,5,141,135,14211,85503,4,89,85502,22139,12124,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-674150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-babe-ruth","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-memphis","13":"tag-millsaps-college","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-red-sox","16":"tag-sammy-vick","17":"tag-the-yankees","18":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","19":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116392231134316507","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}