Boomer: A Profile of Steve Yeager

Stephen Wayne Yeager was born in Huntington West Virginia on November 24th, 1948. His father was a businessman and his mother, a homemaker. He was 18 years old when he was drafted by the Dodgers out of Meadowdale High School in Dayton Ohio. Yeager has kept most of his early years private so not much is known. He was taken in the 4th round of the 1967 draft. What is known is that he is the cousin of Chuck Yeager, the pilot who broke the sound barrier and was a WWII Ace.

He moved through the Dodger system with members of the famed 68 draft class, Cey, Garvey, Buckner, Ferguson and Lopes. A sign of what kind of tough player he would become came in 1969 when he was at Class-A Bakersfield. During a game, he suffered a fractured leg in a first inning collision at home plate with a runner. Unaware of the nature of the injury, he finished the game. It was the first of many injuries that would add to his reputation as a tough and solid defender at the catching position.

During his career, Yeager was shown to have as much perseverance as he did toughness. He played just 23 games in 69 and batted .151. In 1970, he slowly emerged out of a reserve role. After going hitless in his first five at bats as a pinch hitter at AA Albuquerque, he crushed a grand slam to lead the team to an 8-5 win over Dallas-Fort Worth. He hit .278 that year. He returned to the team in 1971 and made the Texas League All-Star team.

By 1972, the team was carefully managing a crop of developing players. They had a particularly complex situation at catcher. They had Duke Sims and Chris Cannizzaro, plus minor leaguers, Bill Sudakis, Terry McDermott, Joe Ferguson and Yeager. They got yet another veteran off of waivers in April, Dick Dietz.

Yeager who had impressed defensively in spring training and was selected by the writers for the Dearie Mulvey most outstanding rookie of the spring, was on the plane to Los Angeles having been told he had made the team.

When the Dietz signing was announced, they optioned Yeager to Albuquerque where he was connected with Tommy Lasorda, who had been moving up the managerial ladder with the 68 class. It turned out to be a crucial moment in his career. Lasorda recognized several traits in Yeager that he felt a major league player needed to succeed. Toughness, a desire to succeed and a hunger to play.

“We would like all of our players to have the fire, determination and the hustle that Steve shows on the field.” said Bill Schweppe, the Dodgers farm director and the chief architect of the 1968 draft. Lasorda said that Yeager was in the same league as Johnny Bench defensively. You won’t beat that arm of his. There was nothing you could ask a catcher to do that Yeager would not do.

He would mentor many minor league pitchers. Yeager said that his improving skills behind the plate had to do with learning the mental side of the game. “The mental part is very important. you have to work with a pitcher so that the best pitch he has going on a particular day is the one he uses effectively to get a batter out. Setting up a hitter is as important as throwing a runner out.”

The Dukes won the PCL Championship in 72. Yeager hit a solid .280/13/45 with a .502 slugging pct, the highest of his career. A sportswriter, anticipating Yeager’s arrival in the majors, pointed out that he wore glasses, at the time thought to be a deterrent for a catcher. Yeager, a bit defensive about the whole thing, said he planned to switch to contact lenses. He did that twice, in 75 and 78. Both times it was short lived. He could never get comfortable playing in them. He was called up in August when Dietz broke his hand and got into 35 games, He hit,.274 with 4 homers and 15 RBIs.

In 1973, he spent the entire year with the Dodgers. He played in 54 games, mostly backing up Joe Ferguson, who Alston preferred to play because of his power. In his first full season, Fergie crushed 25 homers and drove in 88 runs. Yeager hit .254 with 2 homers and had 10 driven in. The bulk of the class of 68 started playing regularly in 73. But they finished 2nd again.

That winter Yeager was dangled in some trade talks. Ferguson had been anointed by Alston as the starter. Steve was disappointed when nothing came of the talks. He felt he should be starting and knew he would be if he were with another team.

That changed in 1974. Ferguson started the season in a deep slump. By mid-May, Yeager was hitting .375 with 10 RBIs. Adding to that was the fact that the Dodgers had not lost a game that Yeager started, a streak that stretched to 22 games. Steve hit .266/12/41 in 94 games and the Dodgers won the division winning 102 games, tying them with the 1962 team for the most in Alston’s tenure. “If anyone deserved a chance, it is Yeager” Alston said. He is out there every day even if he isn’t starting. “

The Dodgers were buoyed by his stellar defense. He threw Lou Brock out three times and Brock said he had the best arm in the league. He was 0-9 in the NLCS against the Pirates but hit .364 in the World Series. LA lost, but one of the highlights of the series was when Joe Ferguson threw out Sal Bando trying to score on a fly ball. Fergie’s throw was a laser, but Yeager’s ability to hang on to the ball after Bando crashed into him that clinched the play.

Boomer as he was called by his teammates, became the Dodgers defacto starting catcher. In 1975 the team finished 20 games back of Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine.” Yeager’s playing as hard as he did cause him to be injured often over the next several years. In 1976, LA would finish 10 games back of the Reds.

In 75 because his backup, Joe Ferguson had been injured in a brawl with the Padres, Yeager caught 737 of the team’s final 760 innings. In 76 he suffered a concussion in a collision at home with Cesar Cedeno but sat out just 2 games.

Then on September 6th of that year, he almost lost his life. He was waiting in the on-deck circle when Bill Russell shattered his bat on a grounder to third. Shards of the heavy end of the bat slammed into his throat. There were nine large splinters. One of the splinters according to the doctor who removed them, missed hitting a major artery by just millimeters. Yeager returned to action in just 3 weeks. He also had the team’s equipment manager make an addition to the tools of ignorance, a throat protector for his catcher’s mask.

Prior to his being injured, he had gotten a huge vote of confidence from Walter Alston, “Yeager has become a much better hitter, he used to hit a lot of fly balls, but they were usually caught. Now he hits them a lot harder and they occasionally go out.

Towards the end of the 76 season, Alston decided to retire, and Lasorda took over for the last 4 games of the season. That winter the interim tag was taken off of Tommy’s managerial title and he became the team’s second manager in Los Angeles.

Yeager’s emergence as the teams #1 catcher, had made Ferguson expendable. On June 15th of 76, he was traded to the Cardinals with two minor leaguers for OF Reggie Smith. Also, by 1976, Yeager had emerged as one of the major social figures on the team. He was well known for his late-night carousing at the local bars and music clubs of his adopted city. So notorious in fact that he and his wife of 8 years, Brenda divorced.

That was followed by a marquee wedding to a local rock musician, Gloria Giaone on the steps of city hall in Los Angeles with Mayor Tom Bradley as the best man. There was no question that Yeager would be the starting catcher for new manager Lasorda’s Dodgers in 1977.

Lasorda had a penchant though for tinkering with Yeager’s swing. But he, like the team, started off hot in 1977. They were 22-7 at the end of the first month of play. Despite Yeager’s usual fade due to the usual bruises and other injuries, he recorded career highs in HRs (16), and slugging pct. (.444). His handling of pitchers, including Charlie Hough, the teams knuckleballing closer, was excellent. He came in second to Bench in the Gold Glove vote.

Despite having strained ligaments in his left leg, he played all six games of the World Series homering twice and driving in five runs. If 77 was a great year, 78 was exactly the opposite. After a 1-26 slump dropped his BA to .196, he found himself behind Johnny Oates. He struggled to get over the Mendoza line and would finish the season at .193. LA was forced to trade for Ferguson from the Astros in July. After Yeager and Oates went down with injuries, the Dodgers in August traded with the Mets for Jery Grote.

When Oates and Yeager returned, the Dodgers had four experienced catchers on the roster. Of course, Ferguson could also play the outfield. Remarkably all four were on the World Series roster against the Yankees and all four saw action in at least one game. Lasorda still favored Yeager’s defensive skills, and he started in five of the six game series loss to the Yankees.

He would continue to struggle at the plate for the next few years. He hit just .216 in 1979. This forced Lasorda to give more time to his other catchers, first Ferguson, then Oates. Mike Scioscia came up in 1980 for a short time. He would take over as the #1 backstop in 1981. Yeager played just 42 games Yeager asked the Dodgers to trade him to another organization, but no trade materialized.

In the 1981 World Series against the Yankees, Yeager and Scioscia got about the same playing time, mostly because of the Yankees left-handed heavy rotation. Yeager reminded Dodger fans how important he was to the team. In game 4 he knocked in the winning run with a sac-fly. In game 5, which he started, moments after Guererro hit a game tying homer off of Ron Guidry, Yeager hit the go-ahead homer to almost the same spot. It would be the game winner. He went 4-14 in the series with 2 homers and 4 driven in and was named the Tri-MVP along with Guererro and Ron Cey in the Dodgers first championship since 1965.

After 81, Yeager, now 33, was content to be Scioscia’s backup. In 1983 though Scioscia got injured and Yeager played in 113 games. He hit just .203 but had 15 homers and 41 driven in. He played in 74 games in 84 and just 53 in 1985. He had season ending injuries in 83, a broken wrist and 84, a broken leg. 1985 would be his last season with the Dodgers.

Prior to the season, he and a reporter from The Sporting News were musing over some of his X-Rays. “Do you believe that?” he said pointing to the two screws that held his knee to his tibia. ” Boomer is a throwback to the old days.” said Lasorda. “When someone is squawking about his arm hurting, he will yell at the guy, just spit some tobacco juice on it and play the game.”

The reporter went on to compare the long suffering and surviving Yeager to his famous uncle, the very macho Chuck Yeager, an Air Force general who was the man who broke the sound barrier and did it while nursing broken ribs.

Yeager’s last season was spent in Seattle. The Dodgers finally traded him in December of 85 to the Mariners for LHP Ed VandeBerg. He got into 50 games for the Mariners batting .208 with 2 homers and 12 RBIs. He was granted free agency after the season.

After his retirement, he started coaching in the 90s. He became the hitting coach for the San Bernadino Stampede, a Dodger Class A affiliate at the time. He would manage a couple of independent league teams in the early 2000’s.

He had roles in all 3 of the Major League movies, playing coach Duke Temple. He also coached at various levels of the Dodgers farm system and was credited with helping Russell Martin convert to catching from third base.

He filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1991. He is one of several players who still have close ties to the team and can be seen at several events. He and Orel were at game 1 of the World Series in 24 placing a ball on the mound honoring recently deceased Dodger great, Fernando Valenzuela. He also is the co-owner of a Jersey Mike’s Subs franchise.