Take Action

There will be an effort to ask the National Baseball Hall of Fame: Historical Overview Committee

to include Dummy Hoy when it considers candidates for induction in 2025.  The Committee will create the Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot to be voted on at the 2024 Winter Meetings in late summer/early fall of 2024, so you’ll want to send any letters of support to them by June 1.

Key points to include in your letter:

• Hoy was only one of twenty-nine major league baseball players to have played in four different leagues – the American, National, Players, Brotherhood, Pacific Coast and American Association, playing for several major league teams including the Cincinnati Reds, the Chicago White Sox, the Washington Nationals, and the Washington Senators.
• While others may be credited with introducing hand signals so that umpires could convey balls and strikes to deaf players in the major leagues, Hoy was likely the player who introduced them and utilized them to become the most successful deaf player in the history of baseball.   Hand signals became a mainstay with managers, umpires, and players.
• As a rookie he led the National League in stolen bases.  
• Hoy was the first Deaf to hit a grand slam in the American League in 1901 while playing for the Chicago White Sox and the second player to do so. 
• He had over 2,000 hits, score more than 1400 runs, had 594 stolen bases, and finished with a .287 batting average. 
• His on base percentage was .386. He set records for put outs at 3,958.  He held the major league record for games in center field from 1889 to 1902 (1726). Hoy held the achievement of being second on the list of career walks at 1006 when he retired.  His 40 home runs were a remarkable achievement at the time when homers were not as common as they are today.
• Hoy’s achievements were highlighted in a a 2019 movie called The Silent Natural gave a heart rendering story of Hoy’s incredible life  and three documentaries including the 2006 Emmy-award winning Signs of The Time, along with “Dummy Hoy: A Deaf Hero; and “I  See The Crowd Roar”.
• Hoy became the first to be elected to the American Association for the Deaf’s Hall of Fame in 1951. The Cincinnati Reds inducted Hoy into their Hall of Fame in 2003. Gallaudet University named their baseball field after him in 2001. Hoy died in 1961 at age 99. At the time, he was the oldest living major league baseball player.
• Notably, Jackie Robinson was the first African American to be inducted into the Hall. It’s time for the National Baseball Hall of Fame to add Hoy as the first deaf player.  Not just because he was Deaf and overcame his limitations, but because he was also a great baseball player.