A few Cincinnati Reds players expressed their disappointment in the crowd sizes at Great American Ball Park during the playoff push late last season.
The reason: Players feed off crowd noise, whether the cheers are for or against them. It motivates them. But what if they didn’t hear the crowd at all, sold out or not? Ever? In their entire playing career? And yet still managed to produce over a long career?
Marty Brennaman wants everyone to know there was a guy who did that – William “Dummy” Hoy, who played 14 seasons in the big leagues more than a century ago, including five with the Reds. Hoy was one of the great leadoff hitters of his era. But not enough people know about Hoy, recognized as the first deaf player in the big leagues. Brennaman is trying to change that.
The legendary broadcaster is calling for Hoy to be inducted into the national Baseball Hall of Fame. And those efforts are starting now. Brennaman, in the broadcast wing of the Hall of Fame, is part of organizing Dummy Hoy Day from 5-7 p.m. on Saturday, May 23, at The Banks near Great American Ball Park.
Umpires began signaling strike, out and safe calls with their arms and hands because of Hoy, baseball historians say. That’s a major impact on the game alone. Brennaman, the Reds’ radio voice for 46 seasons, believes that contribution coupled with Hoy’s ability to consistently perform in the face of a disability over such a long career warrants a call from the Hall.
The event, which would be on Hoy’s birthday, is free and open to the public. It’s designed in part to also raise awareness for hearing impairment, which impacts about 50 million Americans, according to the Hearing Loss Association of America.
“The first step is to make more people aware of who William Ellsworth Hoy was,” Brennaman told me. “This might be the single biggest untold story about the impact a player had on the game.”
Brennaman is pushing for the Hall of Fame’s Classic Baseball Era committee to vote Hoy in as part of the 2028 induction class. Fans can go to the website, signforhoy.com, to sign a petition in support of getting Hoy on the committee’s ballot in December 2027.
A native of tiny Houcktown, Ohio, near Findlay, Hoy played from 1888 to 1902. He was with the Reds from 1894 to 1897, a stretch in which he hit .293. He stole 50 bases in each of the 1895 and 1896 seasons and only struck out a total of 21 times during those years. He also played the 1902 season, his last, in Cincinnati. Hoy’s time with the Reds was the most he spent with any team, and he’d go into the national Baseball Hall of Fame as a Red. Hoy died in 1961 at 99 years old and was inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame in 2003.
Hoy ranks 19th all-time in stolen bases (596), behind 10 players who are in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Hoy also is among the 126 players all-time who’ve drawn more than 1,000 career walks. Those were particularly important numbers during the dead-ball era, which focused on small-ball game strategies such as stolen bases and hit-and-run rather than home runs and extra-base hits.
As the leadoff batter, Hoy was the tone-setter for his teams, something that particularly amazes Brennaman.
“I was talking to somebody the other day and said, ‘Could you imagine playing in a ballpark with no seat available, big game and the noise is deafening – and you hear nothing?” Brennaman said. “Your energy has to come from somewhere inside you. To me, it’s incomprehensible. I can’t imagine how you rise to the level he did as a player day in and day out – and he did it well.”
And Hoy embraced his now politically incorrect nickname, which was a common moniker given to people who were deaf in the 1800s. Why are we still calling Hoy by that nickname?
“Back then, no one meant anything derogatory by that,” Brennaman said. “He embraced the nickname without any animosity at all. He embraced it with a sense of pride for what he had to overcome to be the standout player he was.”
Contact columnist Jason Williams at jwilliams@enquirer.com
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Marty Brennaman wants Reds legend ‘Dummy’ Hoy in Baseball Hall of Fame
