Johnny Broaca/pagetext

From SABR Encyclopedia

THE FOLLOWING ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE NORTH ANDOVER - EAGLE TRIBUNE LISTED BELOW.

Johnny was the son of Lithuanian immigrants, he grew up in a tenement apartment and went on to becomeone of greatest athletes ever to come out of Lawrence High. From there he spent two years Phillips Andover and the on to Yale University. He aced his studies at two of the nation's premier educational institutions, but is was baseball the put on the national map.

The New York Yankees signed Broaca a star pitcher in 1933, before he had even graduated from Yale. In April 1933 he began to experience arm and back trouble, so he quit the baseball team at Yale and called Yankee scout Paul Kritchell and signed contract a few days later. Johnny was immediately farmed out to their top minor league affiliate in the International League, the Newark Bears. He finished the season with the Bears with a 7-2 record. He redturned to Yale in the fall of 1933 to finish his coursework. He graduated on time in 1934 and joined the Yankees in May.

Broaca's first major league start on June 2,1934 was one of his worst, lasting only 2 innings, giving up 5 runs before being removed from the game. He then settled down and finished his rookie season with a 12-9 record. In 1935 the Yankees finished in second place with Broaca posting a 12-7 record. In 1936 the Yankees won the World Series and Johnny finished the season with 12-7 record.

A few weeks after the season ended,Johnny married Cordelia Ireland. In 1937 armed with a World Series ring and a new wife and their first child on the way,everything seemed to be going great. But 1937 proved to be his undoing. After a great start in which he allowed only 6 hits and one run with win over the Philadelphia A's he did not win another game and after pitching only 44 innings he was 1-4. He got into arguments with manager Joe McCarthy over his workout regimen and his arm was in constant pain. His career came to a head on July 16 in Detroit, McCarthy brought in a disgruntled Boraca in the 8th inning with the Yankees trailing 9 to 5, Broaca finished the game giving up two home runs, a triple,two doubles and a single and five more Tiger runs.

He joined the team on the trip to Cleveland after the game. But he never showed up at the park the next day. Days wennt by, and the Yankees had no answers as to Broaca's whereabouts. Worse, his wife of less than a year and was pregnant,claimed she had not heard from him either. Two months later a newspaper account said the she had filed for divorce, their son was just 5 weeks old at the time.

The Yankees won the World Series again in 1937, showed their agitation with Broaca by voting a $1000 to his wife.

Sources

• "The tragic story of Johnny Broaca". North Andover (MA) Eagle Tribune, 2010-05-16.