Big Pete Sheehy was a thread through Yankee history….to which when Lou Gehrig realized his career was over….he flipped his glove to Sheehy and said “I’m done, Pete.”….while Sheehy was the man who issued Mickey Mantle # 7….after Mantle was recalled from Kansas City so he could get a new start rather than being pressed with # 6…..for Pete Sheehy was the equipment manager for the New York Yankees from age 17 until his death at age 75. He witnessed home runs by Babe Ruth and the MVP season of Don Mattingly…..and in between, he was part of the organization for 21 World Series titles and eight additional American League pennants. Sheehy died suddenly in August 1985, still employed by the club. The home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium is named for him. There is also a plaque in the dugout that reads “Pete Sheehy, 1927-85, Keeper of the Pinstripes.”
Whenever somebody would poke his head into the Yankee clubhouse and make sounds about redecorating….Pete Sheehy would not let him touch the rugged oak table in the center of the room…. saying ”You can’t take that one…it came with the Stadium.”….for some people thought Pete Sheehy came with the Stadium, too, but in fact the Stadium had been open for nearly four seasons before he was invited into the Yankee clubhouse. ‘‘I was waiting for the gates to open one day when I was 15, and the clubhouse man then, Fred Logan, brought me in to help him do some things,” Sheehy once recalled. ”I was sitting on the trunk later when he asked me to come around the next day. I’ve been here ever since. I never said much. He called me ‘Silent Pete.’ The ‘Silent’ wore off but the ‘Pete’ stuck. My real name is Michael.” Most of the Yankee players did not know his real name was Michael….just as most of them did not know he had been a soldier in the Pacific in his 30’s….and just as many of them probably did not know he had a wife and two daughters and seven grandchildren. One of the many things that I liked about George Grande as host of Baseball’s Greatest Hits….was his ability to go into the bowels of the game of baseball….to find stories of pieces of baseball history like the one of “Pete Sheehy, 1927 – 1985, Keeper of the Pinstripes.”
