Lost Memoir Sparks Hoyt Family Reunion

COOPERSTOWN—As many as 20 survivors of Yankees ace pitcher Waite “Schoolboy” Hoyt will gather on Thursday, August 8 at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in an improbable family reunion sparked by the long-dead Hall-of-Famer’s newly released memoir.

“That Waite Hoyt’s memoir would be published 40 years after his passing was unlikely enough,” said Tim Manners, co-author with Hoyt of “Schoolboy: The Untold Journey of a Yankees Hero,” published by University of Nebraska Press this past April. “To have the book bring together a divided family is nothing short of remarkable.”

Indeed, many of the Hoyts have never met before and some were wary of a book that is now attracting them to Cooperstown, where Manners will speak about “Schoolboy” as part of the Hall of Fame’s “Summer Author Series.”

The book happened because Manners is a longtime friend of Waite’s son, Chris, who arranged to have eight boxes of his dad’s papers, letters, interview transcripts and memoir attempts sent to him four years ago. Manners reanimated those materials into a complete, first-person narrative of Waite Hoyt’s life, entirely in the Yankees legend’s own words.

Waite Hoyt enjoyed an astonishing run: signed at 15 to the New York Giants; three years as a teen in the rough-and-tumble minors; friend and teammate of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig; vaudeville star; undertaker; oil painter; recovering alcoholic; and beloved radio voice of the Cincinnati Reds.

He was the kind of guy who was good at everything he tried, except, perhaps, being a dad. Yet, 40 years after his death, Hoyt somehow managed to reunite his fragmented family at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, where he was enshrined in 1969.

“It’s a complicated family and a very human story,” Manners says. “Bringing Waite’s memoir to fruition has felt like magic from the start, and this Hoyt family rendezvous in Cooperstown goes way beyond anything anyone ever imagined.”

For further information, or to join the Hoyts at the Cooperstown event, contact Manners at (203) 227-6004 or tim@timmanners.com.