Jerry Lynch

“Jerry Lynch scares you with everything he does in baseball. He scares you when he tries to catch a fly ball. He scares you when he runs the bases. He scares you when he throws the ball. But most of all he scares you when he comes off the bench as a pinch-hitter with a game waiting to be won.” – Branch Rickey1

Jerry Lynch sometimes bemoaned his lack of regular playing time, or the fact that his sure-fielding teammates were better defenders. But his 1961 home run that one sportswriter called “the shot heard ’round all of baseball” was one of many clutch hits that defined his career and kindled a feeling in Cincinnati that the Reds could depend on “Lynch in a Pinch.”2 Earlier in the season Reds manager Fred Hutchinson had declared, “I’ve said before and I’ll say it again—he’s the greatest pinch-hitter I’ve seen in baseball.”3

Lynch considered the best to be Smoky Burgess, a pudgy catcher and his onetime teammate on the Cincinnati Redlegs and Pittsburgh Pirates.4 Burgess’s 133 career pinch-hits surpassed Lynch’s total by 20, but Lynch hit three more pinch-hit home runs than Burgess and held the major-league record for the most, at 18, until 1984.5 For Lynch, pinch-hitting was an unintended career path—one forged by a series of setbacks, from his struggles to break into the lineup, to the injury that at age 26 brought to mind thoughts of retirement.6

Gerald Thomas Lynch was born in Bay City, Michigan, on July 17, 1929. From the backs of his trading cards to the pages of The Baseball Encyclopedia, his birthdate was almost always erroneously listed as 1930. “He could be a little bit impish, and when he got the…maybe it was the Topps paperwork to fill out for the baseball card, he just thought, I’ve got to put something down [and] 1930 sounds like a round number,” said youngest son Patrick, who remembered his father having many laughs over the misprints.7 Part of his motivation, said son Keith, was to boost his value. “He had teammates recommend, ‘Jerry, when you fill out forms give yourself a year or two,’” Keith said.8

Jerry was the ninth of 13 children born to William, a farmer whose side can be traced back to the Galway port region of western Ireland, and Ina Violet (née Beaushaw) Lynch. They maintained their bustling, gambrel-roofed farmhouse on Tuscola Road in the rural village of Munger, Michigan. On a below-zero January day when Jerry was 10, fire tore through the home. Flames broke out in the roof or attic, were fanned by high winds, and quickly spread, destroying the farmhouse.9 The family relocated to nearby Kinney Road.

Raised on potato pancakes and baseball, a teenage Lynch and at least five of his nine brothers played for the hometown Munger Merchants. Jerry lettered in baseball and football at St. Joseph High School, where he played third base in the 1945 season opener, but his preoccupation with baseball interfered with his schoolwork and he dropped out of school after the first semester of his sophomore year. It was a decision Lynch would come to regret, and it wasn’t until years later that he would earn his diploma, in the second-to-last year of his major-league career.10

As a young man Lynch developed his back and forearm strength by unloading boxcars for Morley Brothers, a Saginaw-based hardware supplier. He left Munger at age 19 for a minor-league opportunity in Mississippi and eventually signed with the Greenville Bucks of the Class-C Cotton States League. A lefty batter who threw right-handed, Lynch in 1950 hit .329 across 125 games.

He was selected by the New York Yankees’ Norfolk affiliate in September, but his dreams of reaching the majors were put on hold before the season began when he was drafted into service for the Korean War. As an Army infantryman stationed at Camp Rucker, Alabama, Lynch played the outfield for the regiment’s baseball team and, in the first half of 1952, led the league with a .416 average.11 He helped lead Camp Rucker to the state title by hitting .545 with two home runs in the championship tournament.12

Lynch joined the Yankees’ Class-B Norfolk Tars in 1953 after being discharged from the Army. He led the circuit in average (.333), hits, total bases, doubles, and triples,13 attracting the attention of Pirates general manager Branch Rickey. The Yankees, never expecting a big-league team to select a Class-B player, promoted Lynch to their Triple-A roster at Kansas City, allowing the Pirates to scoop him up in the Rule 5 Draft in November. “I told the Yankees he was so good, they should put him on their roster and avoid losing him in the draft,” said Mickey Owen, Lynch’s manager at Norfolk.14 It wasn’t the first time the Yankees underestimated Lynch. One of the club’s early scouting reports on the 6-foot-1, 185-pounder read, “Good hitter but lacks power.”15 After Lynch smashed seven extra-base blows, including three home runs, in his first nine spring-training hits for the Pirates in 1954, The Sporting News selected him as its standout National League prospect.16

He made his major-league debut at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field on April 15, 1954, playing right field in the Pirates’ third game of the season, and hit a bases-loaded single off Russ Meyer that scored two in the eighth inning. Lynch went 1-for-4 on the day, striking out once in the 7–4 loss. After a first half in which the rookie batted just .227 with four home runs, The Sporting News reconsidered and backed off its assessment, instead writing that Lynch “found the jump from Class B to the National League too much at the moment.”17

Lynch became known as a dependable, potent hitter yet flawed fielder, a reputation that he thought unduly followed him around the league. He considered himself a victim of circumstance when he lost two fly balls in the sun in the second inning of a game in Brooklyn as a rookie; one dropped behind him in left field to begin the five-run Dodgers frame and the other fell in front of him. Afterward, a benched and downcast Lynch stared at the ground in the visitors’ dugout. “The next day,” he recalled, “every story was about what a butcher Lynch was and how I almost got hit on the head.”18 Never at a loss for repartee, Lynch often showed that he could poke fun at his shortcomings, once joking that he should play center field so there would be a glove on either side of him.19

In March 1955, Rickey watched as Lynch got behind the plate to warm up the pitcher between innings of a spring training game in Fort Myers. With Lynch’s hard throw to second, Rickey saw a catching prospect—but Lynch wasn’t eager to switch to a position he thought might take five years to master.20 “I slept on the catching for a couple of nights,” he said, “but decided it was too late in life to change over for me.”21 He was sent to Brunswick, Georgia, to await reassignment to the minors. The farm clubs were full, though, so he rejoined the Pirates. By the end of May he was hitting .356 platooned against righties.

That August, Rickey again approached Lynch about catching; on September 24, Lynch manned the plate for a doubleheader against the Dodgers.22 He then played catcher and first base in the Dominican League that winter, and in a collision at home plate was spiked in the back of his neck by a sliding baserunner. Lynch lost a half-pint of blood in the accident.23

New Pirates manager Bobby Bragan announced in February 1956 that he would abandon the Lynch catching experiment. “I’m not a Thomas Edison man. I don’t believe in inventing new positions,” he said.24 But by then, the damage to Lynch’s right shoulder had been done—caused by his repeated throwing from a crouched position, he suspected—and when he went to lift a trunk from the back of his car, he felt something pop.25 A blood clot formed in the shoulder, and “he was given something to dissolve the clot,” Pirates team physician Dr. Joseph Finegold reported.26 On March 4, Lynch was diagnosed with phlebitis.

Despite all this, Rickey—now less visible as board chairman after retiring as general manager in November—remained intent on Lynch becoming a catcher and playing the outfield only as an emergency substitute. “He has told me and very recently that he wants to catch, that he feels that he can come to be a good catcher, and that he knows that he will like to do the job,” Rickey wrote in his scouting notes.27 “It is the only position in which Lynch can become a World Series major-leaguer.” However, Lynch’s injury kept him on the disabled list for much of 1956. He played in only 19 games that season and hit .158 before being shut down in late July. Four doctors examined Lynch’s shoulder and warned that it would be dangerous for him to continue playing.28

Regardless, Birdie Tebbetts had seen enough of Lynch from the Cincinnati dugout to covet his services. “That son of a gun kept me awake many nights,” the Redlegs manager had said in 1955.29 Tebbetts witnessed Lynch’s two-homer game against Cincinnati in 1954, in a two-game series in which the rookie went 5-for-8. He remembered Lynch’s two-out, game-winning home run in the ninth later that season at Forbes Field. At Tebbetts’s suggestion, Lynch was drafted from Pittsburgh’s farm system on December 3, 1956. “We are gambling $15,000 on his physical condition,” said Redlegs general manager Gabe Paul.30 The way Tebbetts saw it, if Lynch recovered, the Redlegs would be getting a six-figure player for a bargain.31 He would later say, “The two best drafts of my time were Lynch by the Reds and Roberto Clemente by the Pirates, and I’m glad I had a hand in one of them.”32

Doctors prescribed a light throwing regimen for Lynch on January 8, and the Redlegs signed him that day. The team began preparing for the 1957 season on February 28 in Tampa, and Lynch reported to Plant Field as a newlywed—having just married the Pittsburgh-born Alice Barbara Johnston, who accompanied him to camp.

At a time when the nation’s civil rights movement was picking up steam, Lynch was one of its vocal advocates, said son Keith. Jackie Robinson had recently announced his retirement, and although he had broken baseball’s color barrier a decade earlier, the game was still not fully integrated. The Redlegs, integrated since 1954, now had a scattering of Black and Cuban players. Segregation had once forced Reds outfielder and pinch-hitter Bob Thurman to lodge at a Sarasota funeral director’s home, where he slept among caskets he was certain contained bodies.33 Left fielder Frank Robinson would tell of his own spring-training experiences of being banished from Tampa cinemas and bowling alleys because of his skin color.34 Lynch, Keith said, once asked the driver of the Pirates’ team bus to stop when he spied a restaurant’s sign plainly refusing service to non-Whites, and told the manager, “See this bus full of players? You get none of our business.”35

In early preseason drills with his new team, Lynch knew something was wrong when he couldn’t throw the ball across the infield. He thought his career might be over, but osteopath Wayne “Doc” Anderson, the Reds trainer, worked with Lynch and convinced him to try weights.36 Lynch’s condition improved, but arm soreness from the injury would linger for years afterward.37

Coming off the bench in nearly twice as many games as he started, Lynch’s prowess as a pinch-hitter began to take hold toward the end of the 1957 season with a trio of notable home runs. His pinch-hit homer on September 6 in St. Louis tied the Redlegs with the 1954 New York Giants’ single-season mark of 10. Then Lynch blasted two more on September 21 and 25 at Crosley Field that extended the Redlegs’ record to 12.

Tebbetts made Lynch a frequent starter in late May 1958, platooned against right-handed pitchers—a pattern that continued until the manager resigned from the second-to-last-place Redlegs on August 14. Interim manager Jimmy Dykes then broke the mold when he “stuck Lynch into right field and forgot about him,” wrote the Cincinnati Post’s Earl Lawson.38 Over the remainder of the season, Lynch hit .351. Batting mostly second in the order, he was Cincinnati’s best hitter in 1958, posting a .312 average.

Lynch’s long spells on the bench resumed, however, under Mayo Smith and Hutchinson, managers who penciled him into the Reds starting lineup less than 40 percent of the time over the next two seasons. At the conclusion of the 1959 season, Lynch went to the general manager and said, “Gabe, one of us right fielders has got to go—me or Gus Bell.”39 Lynch had a growing family; his fraternal twin boys Keith and Mark were 19 months old and daughter Kimberly was born in April. In offseasons past, Lynch had taken a second job selling General Tires in Pittsburgh.

Cincinnati boasted a crowded outfield of capable hitters—a “benchwarmer’s outfield,” as Lynch called it.40 “We had Robinson and Pinson and Gus Bell and Wally Post also … so, he was really the designated pinch-hitter and came on in late innings,” said former Reds catcher Johnny Edwards, a rookie in 1961 as Lynch sometimes platooned in left field.41 It took a special kind of player to come off the bench cold and deliver consistently, and Hutchinson believed that Lynch’s success as a hitter hinged on keeping him in that role.42 And as Lynch himself once explained, to start him every day would be to move him out of the catbird seat. “When you’re playing and come to bat in the second inning, the pitcher will play around with you. He can afford to throw curves and try for the corner,” he said.43 “When I come off the bench in the late innings and the bases are loaded, the pitcher can’t gamble.”

“If I recall correctly, he was famous for pacing up and down in the dugout [as an expectant pinch-hitter],” Patrick Lynch said of his father.44 Patrick was born in Cincinnati on the same day that Edwards scored his first major-league run, on a Jerry Lynch pinch-hit triple. Part of Lynch’s preparation from the bench, Edwards said, was to memorize starters’ go-to pitches during the game. “He would chart when the guy was behind, when he was ahead, and when he was in a real bind … and by the time he got to the plate to pinch-hit in the seventh or eighth inning or later on in the game, he would have a real good idea of what this guy was throwing,” Edwards recalled.45

Lynch pinch-hit in 59 games in 1961, slashing .404/.525/.851 in 47 at-bats. In all, he hit 13 home runs that season, none more crucial than the one on September 26 in Chicago—a two-run shot in the eighth that soared out of Wrigley Field and onto North Sheffield Avenue to break a 3–3 tie with the Cubs. The moment Lynch made contact, he knew it was gone.46 “One look at him and our pitchers went to pieces,” former Cubs coach Elvin Tappe recalled of Lynch, a .353 hitter that season in Chicago.47 Hutchinson was known to have Lynch emerge from the dugout with a bat for no other reason than to toy with them.

The Reds held on, their win at Wrigley assuring the 92-59 team of at least a tie for the pennant with Los Angeles. With six games remaining, the 86-62 Dodgers teetered on the brink of elimination in a doubleheader that afternoon in Pittsburgh. Back in Cincinnati, Lynch’s wife Alice held a transistor radio to her ear to follow the score, and Reds fans packed downtown’s Fountain Square, where announcers kept them abreast of developments over loudspeakers. At 9:56 PM, the Reds clinched the pennant with the Pirates’ one-hit shutout of the Dodgers in game two. Some 30,000 revelers stretched the length of a few Cincinnati city blocks, a throng estimated to be twice the turnout for John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign rally.48 Across the Ohio River, a lighted sign at a used car lot read: “Jerry Lynch for President.”

The free-swinging Lynch was taught in his high school days at St. Joseph never to be cheated in at-bats, and reportedly once went two years in the majors without taking a third strike.49 “I swing at most everything my bat will reach,” he once said.50 One of Lynch’s three career ejections came in Pittsburgh toward the end of the 1961 season when he argued a called third strike with plate umpire Stan Landes. “As he’s told me before, he didn’t understand how these guys could stand up at the plate there and just watch a fastball go right down the middle and take the pitch,” Lynch’s son Mark recalled.51 “He always believed that you may only get one good pitch per at-bat, so why would you waste it?”

Lynch pinch-hit in his first World Series plate appearance on October 4, popping out to third on a pitch from the Yankees’ Whitey Ford in the ninth inning of Game One in New York. Hutchinson had originally penciled Lynch into the starting lineup for the home games, but Post was awarded the outfield starts after going 3-for-7 in Games One and Two. “I’ve heard him say that he felt like he should have been given a start in left field … that kind of irritated him,” Mark recalled.52 Lynch went 0-for-3 with an intentional walk in the Series, which the underdog Reds lost four games to one.

The next year began much like the previous one: Lynch, feeling that he had proven himself, felt lowballed by the Reds’ contract offers that arrived in the mail. In the end, he steered his station wagon brimming with children to the Reds’ spring training hotel in Tampa, having signed his contract after being a late holdout. The estimated $23,500 he signed for—then a historic amount for a pinch-hitter—seemed to satisfy him in his role as an occasional player, at least for the moment.53 “Sure, you always want to play regular, but I don’t care anymore,” Lynch told Sports Illustrated.54 “I probably never could have made as much playing regular.” With Post slumping, Lynch got the start in left field on Opening Day but went hitless. Ten of his 12 home runs came as a starter in 1962, his last full season in Cincinnati.

On May 23, 1963, he was traded back to Pittsburgh for left-handed hitter Bob Skinner, someone the Reds touted as younger, speedier, and a better outfielder.55 Skinner saw Lynch as the likely run-producer for the Pirates that he hadn’t been lately, and in Skinner, the Reds saw a regular player.56 Primarily a cleanup hitter for Pittsburgh, Lynch batted .266 with 10 home runs the rest of the season, while Skinner hit .253 with three home runs for Cincinnati and struck out more often. By August, Reds president Bill DeWitt was already showing signs of regret for the trade. “If we had to do it over, we’d probably have kept Lynch because he’s a better pinch-hitter than Skinner,” he said.57 Lynch set a major-league record on August 21 when he hit his 15th career pinch-hit home run, his third off Chicago’s Lindy McDaniel. The previous record holder was George Crowe, whose mark of 14 was set with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1960.

On Christmas Eve 1964, ground was broken on a 140-acre project to be constructed on the site of an old apple orchard in Bolivar, Pennsylvania—a public golf course to be Lynch and his former Pirates teammate Dick Groat’s nest egg after their time in the majors. They already co-owned a string of apartments in Pittsburgh, and this new venture would feature a driving range and sand traps shaped like baseball bats.

As a Pirates elder statesman, the veteran Lynch coached young Willie Stargell—with whom he was platooned in left field—on hitting left-handed pitchers. Lynch had begun the 1965 season with only one hit in 12 tries when on May 2 he started in right field for Clemente, who had been benched for his post-malaria lethargy and tension with new manager Harry Walker.58 In a seven-game stretch as a starter, Lynch hit .542 with three home runs, raising his batting average from .083 to .389. Off the bench, however, he had an unproductive year, batting just .128 in 44 plate appearances.

Lynch hit the final pinch-hit home run of his career, his 18th, on August 12, 1966, tying the game in the ninth. It would be Lynch’s final at-bat at Crosley Field, where even his swings and misses stirred some applause when he played for the Reds. And although he had switched his allegiances three seasons ago, he was “still a favorite with Crosley Field fans,” Lawson wrote.59

The Pirates waived Lynch on October 11, and although he thought he had a few more years left in him, he wouldn’t swing a bat in the majors again.60 Champion Lakes, his golf course that opened on October 3, kept him busy, and Lynch was a hands-on owner—from hauling away logs in the early stages of construction to pouring drinks as a substitute bartender. He and his family lived on the course in a turn-of-the-century, two-story brick home that neighbored the newly built clubhouse.

Still, he reflected on what might have been, according to Lynch’s daughter Kimberly. “As the days went on he would say things like he had wished that he didn’t get the blood clot, because he knows he would have gone a long way [in baseball],” she recalled.61 Lynch retired from the game with a .277 career average, 798 hits, and 115 home runs, and had five games in which he clubbed two home runs. In 435 pinch-hit opportunities he batted .264, and his 18 round-trippers would stand as a major-league record for 17 years.62

In 1984, with retirement in view, Toronto Blue Jays designated hitter Cliff Johnson was determined to have a .300 season before calling it a career and retreating to his Texas ranch.63 He changed his approach at the plate, spreading out his large, 6-foot-4 frame and using less of a stride with two strikes. “When I came off the bench, I never swung at the first pitch,” Johnson recalled.64 “You’ve been sitting on that cold pine and you’re not physically ready … generally, [pitchers] try to pitch them in because they’re not loose.”

It was a humid August afternoon in Baltimore in 1984 when the .300-hitting Johnson blasted Tippy Martinez’s 2-1 pitch over the bleachers beyond the center-field wall, notching his 19th career pinch-hit home run to break Lynch’s record. Johnson hit his 20th and last pinch-hit homer in his final major-league season on June 13, 1986, a shot to deep left field in Toronto to pad the record, which would be broken in 2010 by journeyman Matt Stairs.

Lynch retired from managing the golf course in 1987 and moved to Lawrenceville, Georgia. That year, as the number of home runs surged across the majors and incidents of emery balls and corked bats were in the news, former Reds pitcher Joe Nuxhall said that he occasionally used a “loaded bat” that belonged to Lynch. “You could look right at it and not tell it was doctored,” said Nuxhall.65 When contacted by the Pittsburgh Press, Lynch explained, “I always got good wood from the people at Louisville Slugger. Maybe that’s what Nuxhall meant [by ‘loaded’].”66 The story, which was confined to the Press, quickly faded, and in 1988 Lynch was elected to the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. “It’s nice to be thought of after the twilight of a mediocre career,” he said.67

On March 31, 2012, Lynch died of complications that arose from an earlier bout with prostate cancer.68 He was 82, and survived by his wife of 55 years, their four children, and 11 grandchildren. His ashes were scattered at Champion Lakes. “We had a caravan of golf carts and went from hole to hole, and all the family members made a few comments at a given place,” son Patrick said.69

As of 2025, Lynch’s 13 pinch-hit home runs and 63 pinch-hit RBIs as a Cincinnati Red remained atop the club’s leaderboard, as did his single-season mark of five pinch homers.70 His 25 single-season pinch-hit RBIs in 1961 remained a major-league record shared with Joe Cronin, who first set the mark in 1943, and Rusty Staub, who tied it in 1983. Lynch’s 18 career pinch-hit home runs were still the most in National League history.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to express special thanks to Jerry Lynch’s children—Keith, Mark, and Patrick Lynch and Kimberly Najjar—as well as Johnny Edwards and Cliff Johnson for agreeing to take part in interviews for this story. Thanks also to Lynch’s nephews Al, Charles, and Don Lynch; niece Maureen Lynch-Groya; family friend Dinah DuRussel; Cassidy Lent and Nicholas Gentry at the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Giamatti Research Center; and Zach Komorowski of the Bay County Library System for their assistance.

This biography was reviewed by Gregory H. Wolf and Rory Costello and checked for accuracy by Dan Schoenholz of SABR’s fact-checking team.

Photo credit: Jerry Lynch, Trading Card Database.

Sources

The author relied on Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for statistics, Major League Baseball’s pinch-hit records data at MLB.com, the Sporting News Baseball Player Contract Cards Collection for draft dates; the Hall of Fame’s player file, and the virtual Jerry Lynch exhibit compiled by the Bay County Historical Society at bchsmuseum.org. All other sources are shown in the Notes.

Notes

1 “Baseball Loses Its Minute Men,” UPI, Pittsburgh Press, October 12, 1966: 88.

2 Bill Ford, “Jerry’s Blast Puts Reds On Top to Stay,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 27, 1961: 13. The term “Lynch in a Pinch” gained traction around Cincinnati during the Reds’ pennant-winning 1961 season.

3 Earl Lawson, “Hutch Tips Fedora to His Bench,” The Sporting News, July 5, 1961: 4.

4 Phil Axelrod, “In the Pinch: Coming Off the Bench to Hit Is an Art That Few Master,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 8, 1994: C5.

5 All-Time MLB Player Hitting Stat Leaders, Elias Sports Bureau, MLB.com, https://www.mlb.com/stats/all-time-totals. MLB, Baseball Reference, and Retrosheet list Lynch’s career pinch-hit total as 113, 115, and 117, respectively.

6 Lynch once described pinch-hitting as his fallback role. “You don’t get comfortable with that role but I was injured, had a bad arm, and couldn’t throw. I had a wife and four children to support; I had to do something,” he said in Mike Spencer’s “Munger’s Lynch Excelled in Pinch,” Bay City Times, August 13, 1989: 2D. Also, Lou Smith, “Sport Sparks: Hutch’s Stock Up,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 20, 1961: 4J.

7 Patrick Lynch, interview with author, July 1, 2025.

8 Keith Lynch, interview with author, July 3, 2025.

9 “Farm Residence Is Destroyed by Blaze,” Bay City Times, January 19, 1940: 4; also, Lynch family scrapbook from the records of Al Lynch.

10 Lynch’s football and baseball honors were listed in the 1945 Torch yearbook, St. Joseph High School, 67. Records at All Saints Catholic, the modern-day amalgamation of St. Joseph and other schools, show only half credits for Lynch’s sophomore year and no marks for his junior or senior years. Lynch spoke of his regrets in leaving school for baseball in Scott Bernarde’s “Gwinnett Man Big in Cincinnati,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, January 5, 1989: 15J.

11 “164th Infantry Leads First-Half Standings in Camp Rucker Loop,” Dothan Eagle, July 20, 1952: 15.

12 “Alabama’s Camp Rucker, Bi-State Champ, One of Dixieland’s Entrants in National,” Wichita Eagle, August 7, 1952: 20. The team went on to a national baseball tournament in Wichita, where it tied for 25th place.

13 “Outfielder Gerald Thomas Lynch,” typewritten profile, Pittsburgh Pirates Player Sketches, 1956. Included in the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s clippings file on Lynch.

14 Les Biederman, “Lynch Backing Buildup Given Yanks by Owen,” The Sporting News, April 14, 1954: 2.

15 Al Abrams, “Sidelights on Sports: His Report Card All Wrong,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 18, 1954: 16.

16 C. C. Johnson Spink, “Power, Lynch Tabbed Prize Rookies: Athletics’ Vic, Bucs’ Jerry Long Hitters,” The Sporting News, April 14, 1954, 1.

17 J. G. Taylor Spink, “Moon and Finigan Pace Rookie Derby,” The Sporting News, July 14, 1954: 1.

18 Lou Smith, “Lynch Hopes To Lift ‘Butcher’ Tag,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 6, 1963: 43.

19 Si Burick, “Si-ings: Lynch Would Have Put Self in Middle, but Not on Spot,” Dayton Daily News, May 13, 1963: 10.

20 Les Biederman, “The Scoreboard,” Pittsburgh Press, April 5, 1955: 31.

21 Jack Hernon, “Gene Freese Battles Grounders As Well As Bucco Job Rival,” The Sporting News, April 13, 1955: 20.

22 Lynch would catch parts of two more games with the Redlegs in 1957, including a June 26 loss in which Willie Mays was roundly criticized for stealing second base on Lynch in the ninth with a ten-run Giants lead. Mays, who drove in four runs and was a home run short of the cycle in the rout, said he swiped second to test Lynch’s arm for future reference (Bob Pille, “‘Testing Lynch’s Arm’—Willie,” Cincinnati Post, June 27, 1957: 28). It was the last game in which Lynch would appear as a backstop.

23 Myron Cope, “Mr. Wonderful,” Sport, March 1962: 37.

24 Les Biederman, “The Scoreboard: Bragan Refreshingly Candid,” Pittsburgh Press, February 17, 1956: 32.

25 Si Burick, “Si-ings: Lynch, His Phlebitis Cured, Happiest Player in Majors,” Dayton Daily News, March 5, 1959: 20; also, Cope, “Mr. Wonderful,” 78.

26 Jeff Samuels, “Moose On Shelf Indefinitely After Surgery,” Pittsburgh Press, May 31, 1974: 32.

27 “Lynch, Jerry,” typewritten scouting report, Branch Rickey Papers, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss37820015, March 20, 1956.

28 Jack Hernon, “Roamin’ Around: Part of the Visiting Tourists,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 15, 1961: 37; also, Hernon, “Roamin’ Around: About a Couple of Guys Who Left…” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 5, 1958: 17.

29 Les Biederman, “The Scoreboard,” Pittsburgh Press, April 29, 1955: 29.

30 Dick Young, “TV Contests in Columbus Inspires Fla. Brawl,” (New York) Daily News, December 4, 1956: 25C.

31 Si Burick, “Si-ings: Draftee Lynch Calculated Gamble,” Dayton Daily News, December 11, 1956: 18.

32 Si Burick, “Si-ings: Hutchinson Continues to Call Bullpen Late—and Effectively,” Dayton Daily News, July 4, 1961: 14.

33 Earl Lawson, Cincinnati Seasons: My 34 Years with the Reds (South Bend, Indiana: Diamond Communications, Inc., 1987), 8–9; also, Lawson, “The Boys of Spring: Fun Was Part of the Game,” Cincinnati Post, February 28, 1976: 29.

34 Frank Robinson and Berry Stainback, Extra Innings (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), 50.

35 Keith Lynch interview.

36 In 1950, while with Sacramento of the Pacific Coast League, Anderson had revived the dead arm of former Yankees pitcher Bill Bevens, who is best remembered for his near no-hitter in the 1947 World Series.

37 Earl Lawson, “Ed Bailey Is Hitting .343,” Cincinnati Post & Times-Star, March 24, 1959: 15.

38 Earl Lawson, “Lynch, Like Bell, Beats Platooning Rap,” Cincinnati Post & Times-Star, July 17, 1959: 18.

39 Myron Cope, “Roamin’ Around: Jerry Lynch’s Cold War,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 4, 1959: 23. Lynch’s desire to be traded was financially driven—“The glory wears off early … I just want to make that big dollar,” he told the press (Cope, “Roamin’ Around”). On March 29, 1960, Cincinnati television personality Ruth Lyons announced in error on her 50-50 Club, a TV-radio simulcast that reached 7 million across four states, that Lynch and catcher Ed Bailey had been traded to Milwaukee for pitcher Bob Buhl and cash. The Reds were flooded with phone calls, prompting the team to deny the report and Lyons to retract it and apologize before the program went off the air.

40 Earl Lawson, “Robinson, Pinson and Bell Form Brilliant Combine; Lynch Asks to Be Traded,” The Sporting News, September 30, 1959: 38.

41 Edwards, interview with author, May 30, 2025.

42 Ben Olan, Big-Time Baseball (New York: Hart Publishing Co., 1965), 25.

43 Al Heim, “Sports Time with Al Heim: Lynch Tells About Pinch-Hitting,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 6, 1961: 3H.

44 Patrick Lynch interview.

45 Edwards interview. Lynch faced Bob Gibson the fourth most times of any pitcher in his career, hitting .310 off the Cardinals ace in 62 plate appearances. “When [Gibson] got in trouble he’d go to the fastball, and I’m sure Jerry knew that,” laughed Edwards (Edwards interview), who, in his one season with St. Louis in 1968, caught Gibson in 10 games.

46 Si Burick, “Si-ings: Lynch Got Distance, but Time, Place, Game Meant Much More,” Dayton Daily News, September 27, 1961: 20.

47 Jerome Holtzman, “Baseball’s Hitters in Waiting,” The Jerome Holtzman Baseball Reader (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2003), 212.

48 Jack McDonald, “Frenzied Red Fans Jam Fountain Square,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 27, 1961: 1.

49 William Barry Furlong, “The Fine Art of Pinch Hitting: How Specialized Can You Get?” New York Times Magazine, August 14, 1966: 77.

50 Lou Smith, “Smith’s Notes: NL Schedule Favors Reds Rest of Way,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 13, 1962: 33.

51 Mark Lynch, interview with author, July 2, 2025.

52 Mark Lynch interview.

53 “Lynch Gets $23,500,” Cincinnati Post & Times-Star, February 15, 1962: 46.

54 “A Good Living on the Bench,” in Cincinnati Reds Scouting Report, Sports Illustrated, April 9, 1962: 72.

55 “Reds Deal Lynch to Pittsburgh for Bob Skinner,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 24, 1963: 1.

56 Les Biederman, “Pirates Will Use Lynch in Left Field Against Righties,” Pittsburgh Press, May 24, 1963: 30; also, “Reds Deal Lynch,” Enquirer.

57 Jim Schottelkotte, “Changes On Way—DeWitt,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 16, 1963: 39.

58 Al Abrams, “Clemente Irked, Says, ‘Trade Me,’” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 6, 1965: 1.

59 Earl Lawson, “Arm Doesn’t Worry McCool,” Cincinnati Post & Times-Star, June 22, 1966: 32. The Pirates won by a score of 14–11 in 13 innings. They and the Reds connected for a combined 11 home runs, which broke a National League record. The mark stood—three later NL games also yielded 11—until the Arizona Diamondbacks and Phillies hit a combined 13 homers in Philadelphia on June 10, 2019.

60 Charley Feeney, “Pirates Asking Waivers on Jerry Lynch,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 12, 1966: 25. “I felt I had a few years left,” Lynch said at a banquet in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, a few months after the Pirates released him (Ken Miller, “Lynch, Francona, Hart Substitute for Duffy,” Beaver County Times, January 27, 1967: A15).

61 Kimberly Najjar, interview with author, July 5, 2025.

62 Jerry Lynch, career batting splits, Baseball-Reference.com, https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=lynchje01&year=Career&t=b. Baseball Reference and Retrosheet differ on these statistics; Retrosheet lists 449 at-bats and a .261 average.

63 Johnson, interview with author, June 2, 2025. Johnson got his wish, finishing the season with a .304 average.

64 Johnson interview.

65 Bob Hertzel, “Majors Having Corking Time with Batty Brouhaha,” Pittsburgh Press, August 23, 1987: D6.

66 Hertzel, “Majors Having Corking Time with Batty Brouhaha.”

67 Bernarde, “Gwinnett Man Big in Cincinnati.”

68 John Erardi, “Lynch Was a Hit When at the Plate and with His Kids,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 18, 2012: B2; confirmed by Patrick Lynch.

69 Patrick Lynch interview. Alice Lynch died in 2020, at age 87.

70 Phil Gagliano topped Lynch’s NL single-season mark of 12 pinch-hit walks in 1974. Jacob Cruz, in 2005, bested the Reds’ single-season pinch-hit mark of 19, set by Lynch in 1960 and 1961.