Greatest Cardinals No. 7: 3B Ken Boyer
NOTE: The BND has endeavored to identify an objective list of the top 100 St. Louis Cardinals players of all time, based on statistical formulas developed through sabermetrics. We’ll count down the list daily, player by player, until April 4, the day of the Cardinals’ 2019 home opener. The running list and player bios can be found at bnd.com.
NO. 7: 3B Ken Boyer
Clete Boyer grew up with six brothers and five sisters in a baseball-crazy family that would produce seven professional players, himself included.
But his idol was always his big-brother Ken, who was six years his senior.
As a 10-year-old bat boy for the Alba Aces, he’d watch from the home team dugout as his big brother built a reputation as the best player in the Ban Johnson League. Ken was a better player even than that big blond-haired, blue-eyed slugger from across the state line in Baxter Springs, Oklahoma — a kid named Mickey Mantle.
Ken Boyer was a hard-throwing pitcher for the Aces, but also a league all-star at shortstop. He moved around the field so effortlessly and had such an easy swing, some questioned whether he always gave his best effort.
The oldest of the Boyer boys, Cloyd, already was under contract with the Cardinals, their favorite team growing up in the tiny southwest Missouri town. Clete, also an infielder, envisioned someday joining the Redbirds, too, manning the left-side of the St. Louis infield with Ken, his hero.
‘’As a kid I had always fantasized about us being on the Cardinals together, him at third base and me at shortstop,” Clete would say. “Later on, when I was playing third base, I was still hoping to be on the same team with him.”
Nearly 20 years later, Ken and Clete would, in fact, end up playing together in the same World Series, but in opposite dugouts.
After he graduated from high school, the Cardinals called on strong-armed Ken to invite him to a tryout at Sportsman’s Park. They took him on as a pitcher and assigned him to the Class D North Atlantic League. He went 5-1 with a 3.42 ERA, but also hit safely in 15 of 33 at bats with three home runs. By the middle of the following season, he was a third baseman again.
Two years of military service overseas during the Korean War interrupted his climb through the Cardinals’ minor league system, but Ken was back at Double A Houston in 1954 to lead the Buffalos to the Texas League title with a .319 average, 21 home runs and 116 RBIs.
By that point he was as highly anticipated as any prospect the Cardinals had in years. They traded away starting third baseman Ray Jablonski to Cincinnati, intent to turn the job over to Boyer.
“He’s the kind of player you dream about: terrific speed, brute strength, a great arm. There’s nothing he can’t do,” Cardinals manager Fred Hutchinson told Sports Illustrated. “I think he has the greatest future of any young player in the league.”
Boyer kicked off his major league career with a rookie-season slash line of .364/.311/.425 with 18 home runs and 62 RBIs.
Meanwhile, back home in Jasper County, young Clete had drawn his own crowd of pro scouts, but none from the Cardinals. He signed on instead with the Kansas City Athletics — recent of Philadelphia — who gave him a hefty $35,000 bonus. The A’s sent him straight to KC as a utility infielder. He would spend three seasons there before being traded to become the New York Yankees’ everyday shortstop.
Big-brother Ken and the rebuilding Cardinals continued to get better by the year. Boyer was back at third to stay in 1958 after a short-lived experiment as a center fielder. He launched a string of seven seasons in which he would hit no less than .285 (he was over .300 in four of those years), hit no fewer than 24 home runs (including a career-high 32 in 1960, then four seasons straight of exactly 24), and drove in at least 90 runs. He was a National League All-Star each of those seasons.
Over a little more than a month in 1959, Boyer maintained a 29-game hitting streak. In June, as his contribution to a 7-1 win over the Houston Colt .45s, he became just the seventh player in big-league history to hit for the natural cycle — a single, double, triple and home run in sequence during one game. It was the second cycle of his career.
He also established himself as the best defensive third baseman in the National League, winning five of the first seven Gold Glove Awards ever given at his position.
Despite the odd falling out he’d had with Cardinals broadcaster Harry Caray, whose criticism of Boyer was often sharp and sarcastic, he was revered by teammates, who voted him the Cardinals’ field captain.
“Kenny Boyer was a pillar of strength in the Cardinal organization,” said his teammate, Stan Musial. “It was kind of an understood thing that Kenny took care of the players coming into the organization. He took people under his wing.”
Should there have been any doubts about his worth given the consistency of his previous nine seasons, Boyer put them to rest in 1964.
As Philadelphia crumbled to its infamous “Phillie Phold,” the resurgent Cardinals won 20 games in September and closed a 6 1/2-game Philadelphia lead over just 12 games to clinch their first National League pennant in 18 years. The month started with five walk-off wins in seven days that included Boyer’s game-winning, three-run homer against the Braves on Sept. 4.
Boyer was the National League’s MVP with a .295/.365/.489 batting line to go with 24 home runs, 100 runs scored and a league-best 119 RBIs. Better still, he and the Redbirds earned their shot against the Yankees, who had won five-straight American League Championships with little brother, Clete, at third base.
For the first, and only, time in their careers, the Brothers Boyer would be together on the same major league field. Watching from reserved box seats were the mayor and city treasurer of Alba, Missouri — none other than Vern and Mabel Boyer, their parents.
Clete didn’t have a great series at the plate, batting just .208, but did contribute an RBI each to Yankee wins in Games 2 and 4. Kenny, though, became a certifiable Fall Classic hero.
The Cardinals were down two games to one in the series and trailed New York 3-0 in the sixth inning of Game 4. Yankees starter Al Downing had allowed just one St. Louis hit through five, before surrendering hits to Carl Warwick and Curt Flood. Then New York second baseman Bobby Richardson kicked a double-play ball off the bat of Dick Groat.
A clean play would have ended the inning, but the error instead loaded the bases for Boyer with one out. The 33-year-old captain clubbed a grand slam to put the Cardinals ahead, 4-3, and even the series. As he trotted around third base, he slapped his brother on the belly, who secretly beamed with pride inside.
“When he hit that homer, I loved it,” he would say later. “In my heart, I think I was pulling for him that year because it was his first Series.”
In the decisive seventh game, Ken blasted a seventh-inning home run and scored three more times in a 7-5 Cardinals victory.
Boyer played a final season in St. Louis, but fell off badly due to recurrent back issues that prevented him from being a starter for the remaining four years of his playing career. He retired in 1969 among all-time leaders in games played, assists and double plays among third baseman. Only four of the 13 third basemen inducted into the Hall of Fame, hit more home runs.
Clete retired in 1971, after five seasons with the Atlanta Braves.
A three-year stint as manager of the Cardinals ended for Ken with a mid-season firing in 1980. Still, the Cardinals asked him to stay with the organization as manager of their triple-A team in Louisville. He wanted the assignment, but was forced to decline with the diagnosis of lung cancer in both lungs. When he died on Sept. 7, 1982, the championship-bound Cardinals honored him by wearing a black band around the left sleeve of their jerseys and retiring his No. 14.
In 2014, they also made him an inaugural member of the Cardinals Hall of Fame.
SEASONS IN ST. LOUIS: 1955-1965
KEY STATS
.293/.356/.475 in St. Louis | 7x All-Star | 5 Gold Gloves | WS ring | MVP’64 | 58.1 WAR | Cardinals HoF’14
TOP 100 SCORE: 6.28
This story was originally published March 26, 2019 at 5:13 PM.