No Yankee ever pitched longer than 'Slick'

Mickey Mantle called him "Slick," even at the end. Casey Stengel often glared at him, Mantle and Billy Martin, mockingly chewing them out by calling them "Whiskey Slick." Casey would quickly deliver an approving wink, suggesting that he was just making an example of them for the older players. Ted Williams once called him one of the five toughest pitchers he'd ever faced. No doubt Williams is at the head of a long line. In 16 seasons he won fewer than the exalted 300 games and struck out fewer than 2,000 batters. Sandy Koufax probably had better stuff. But there's no denying the fact that Edward Charles "Whitey" Ford was a winner, a fierce competitor, one of the dominant pitchers of the 1950s and early '60s and one of the greatest lefthanders of all time. "I was one never to worry about records," he said. "If I were making $2 million, I might have gone on the disabled list a lot." Pitchers didn't pace themselves then. Whitey Ford and others played in an era of one-year contracts, when market value applied more to peaches than to players. "When you get four- and five-year contracts, you're not going to do anything to jeopardize anything in your career. We had to play because our next year's salaries depended on what we did that year. We had no say-so on salaries. And if you had a good year, the owners had to pay you more because, ultimately, the press would get wind of it and make it public." Ford's lifetime record was 236-106; for pitchers with more than 200 wins, his .690 winning percentage is the best in the 20th Century. He won the Cy Young Award in 1961 with a 25-4 record; and missed winning it in 1963 with a 24-7 mark.

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