Joe Ostrowski

With champion teams, history often remembers the stars and forgets the supporting cast. Joe Ostrowski was one of those overlooked contributors. As the New York Yankees won three straight World Series in 1950, 1951, and 1952, the bespectacled lefty control pitcher provided bullpen depth; he was the club’s primary reliever in 1951. Yet within a few decades, he slipped from the memory of even some former teammates.

Ostrowski attended the Yankees’ Old Timers’ Day game in 1978. He later recalled, “Not all of them remembered me. I saw Phil Rizzuto standing near me and I said, ‘Hello, Phil, how are you?’ He said, ‘I don’t remember you.’ ‘I’m Joe Ostrowski,’ I said. He replied, ‘I still don’t remember you.’”1

“But the Big Fellow remembered me,” exclaimed Ostrowski. “[Joe DiMaggio] knew who I was. That was a big deal.”2 Another Yankee great, Whitey Ford, also recalled Ostrowski. In his interview for We Would Have Played for Nothing, as Ford listed from memory his teammates in 1950, “Specs” was the first relief pitcher he mentioned.3

Ostrowski was a five-year American League veteran, first with the St. Louis Browns and then with the Yankees, Though his output was similar with each club, the difference to Ostrowski was that as a Yankee, he brought home World Series bonuses.

***

Joseph Paul Ostrowski was born on November 15, 1916, in West Wyoming, Pennsylvania, a small mining town located about 16 miles southwest of Scranton. Joe was the sixth of 11 children – six girls and five boys – born to Marcel (or Martin) and Helena (née Cegielka) Ostrowski, Polish immigrants who married in 1906. (Infielder-outfielder Johnny Ostrowski, a Chicago native born the following year, was no relation.)

The region, which once contained 75 percent of the earth’s anthracite coal deposits, spawned such baseball luminaries as Christy Mathewson, Stan Coveleski, and Pete Gray. Coveleski, Gray, and many other sons of immigrants worked in the mines in their youth. Mathewson, however, the son of a wealthy gentleman farmer, did not.4  

Ostrowski did not work in the mines either, but for a tragic reason. His oldest brother, Marcel, died in a mine accident at the age of 17 and his father swore to never allow his other sons to work there.5  Their father, himself a coal miner, died of silicosis in August 1951. He was 73. Mother Helena, a homemaker, died of heart disease at the age of 59 in 1949. Neither saw their son’s World Series appearance in 1951.

Ostrowski attended elementary school and high school in West Wyoming and worked part-time on a farm. West Wyoming High School did not have a baseball team in 1930-1934, so the 6-foot, 180-pounder played football and basketball there. He got his start in baseball on the sandlots, playing mostly first base in the “anthracite leagues” with St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, the Luzerne Croatians, and the West Wyoming Nomads.6

Ostrowski enrolled in St. Thomas College, which was renamed the University of Scranton in 1938, the year he graduated with a degree in education. “My father managed to put me through by taking out a mortgage on the house,” he said.7

Ostrowski took a job teaching social studies and Latin in the West Wyoming School District; he continued to play baseball in the summer. He was a good ballplayer and a fairly good hitter, but not good enough to be pursued by the professional clubs that combed the area. Instead, Ostrowski pursued them.

Cleveland Indians’ scouts Scott Pytlak and “Dutch” Zwilling, whom Ostrowski met along the way, had suggested that, because he wore glasses, which was not usual among position players, Ostrowski should give pitching a try.8 “I took [their] advice and shopped myself around the local minor leagues as a pitcher,” he said.9 He proceeded to hurl a no-hitter and two one-hitters in amateur ball in 1940 and 1941, which earned him a closer look from the Wilkes-Barre Barons, his boyhood favorite team and a Cleveland Indians affiliate at the time. However, after two tryouts, the club passed on him.10

Instead, Ostrowski was signed in 1941 by Joe Reardon, the business manager of the Scranton Red Sox. He was assigned to Centreville, Maryland, a Class D farm team for the Boston Red Sox in the Eastern Shore League.11 Ostrowski was already 24, although his baseball records listed him as 21.12 “Well,” he looked back laughing, “that was a little cheating. In those days it was common to make yourself a little younger.”13

“I wanted to try my luck in baseball and see how far I could go,” Ostrowski said.14 He learned to throw a curveball from Herb Pennock, a Hall of Famer who mastered the pitch during the 22 years he pitched in the American League. Pennock was the director of Boston’s minor league operations when Ostrowski signed.15

Ostrowski posted a 10-4 record and a league-best 1.71 ERA with Centreville.16 He was promoted quickly to the Canton (Ohio) Terriers of the Class C  Middle Atlantic League.

In 1942, Ostrowski advanced to the next level, the Greensboro (North Carolina) Red Sox, a Class B team in the Piedmont League, where he wowed his manager, future Hall of Famer Heinie Manush. Ostrowski helped lead his club to the league championship, posting a league-best 21-8 record and a 1.65 ERA, which ranked second only to future major-leaguer Walter “Monk” Dubiel’s 1.62 mark.17

Before the next season began, Ostrowski joined the armed forces. From March 15, 1943, until October 31, 1945, Corporal Ostrowski served as a medic in the US Army Air Forces. He advanced to sergeant and was assigned to a fighting group in Italy for 19 months but did not see combat.18

Although he missed three seasons of pro ball, Ostrowski pitched while he was in the service, according to The Sporting News. “In his first game, a seven-inning affair, he hurled his squadron to a 6 to 2 victory. … He struck out 11, allowed two hits and two unearned runs. He turned in a 5 to 1 five-hitter in his next appearance, striking out 15. Two days later, in a relief role, Ostrowski fanned the only three men to face him.”19

After his discharge, Powell married Helen Regina Augustynovich on February 2, 1946. She was a native of Wilmington, Delaware; a graduate of Wilmington High School; and a stenographer at the New Castle (Delaware)Army Air Base.

Ostrowski’s pre-war and military base success earned him an assignment to the Red Sox’ Triple-A club, the Louisville (Kentucky) Colonels in the American Association, for the 1946 season. The pitching staff allowed the fewest runs per game in the league and included 11 future major-leaguers. Ostrowski’s 10 wins tied him for third on the team and his 2.87 ERA was second-best among the starters. However, he ranked seventh among the team’s pitchers with 116 innings and eighth with 11 starts, suggesting that the franchise placed greater focus on its other hurlers.

The arrangement held true in the postseason. In the 1946 Junior World Series, the foursome of Fritz Dorish (whom Joe Reardon had also signed), Jim Wilson, Al Widmar, and Otey Clark started for the AA champs against the International League champions, the Montreal Royals. It was Louisville’s third consecutive Junior World Series appearance.

The Colonels won two of the three games played in Louisville before heading north to Montreal. In those first three games, the Royals fielded an anguished rookie African American infielder named Jackie Robinson. Louisville fans booed Robinson mercilessly; the IL batting champ had only one hit in 10 at-bats in Kentucky. Back in Delorimier Stadium in Montreal, however, Robinson batted 7-for-14 and helped lead the Royals to three consecutive wins.

Ostrowski did play a part in the historic series. In Game Four, he was called from the bullpen to relieve Clark with two outs and the bases loaded in the ninth inning. Robinson was on second. Ostrowski walked Lester Burge, allowing the Royals to get within a run of the Colonels, 5-4. When catcher Fred Walters attempted to pick Tommy Tatum off second base, the throw got away and Robinson scampered home with the tying run. In the 10th inning, Louisville intentionally walked Marv Rackley to set up a force at every base, but Robinson singled to left to win the game and even the series at 2-2. Ostrowski took the loss. (He did not give up the hit to Robinson, but he allowed the runner who scored to get on.) Robinson’s Royals won the next two games and the series.20

In 1947, Dorish moved up to the Red Sox. Ostrowski – nicknamed “The Professor” by his teammates for his intellectual appearance and because he taught high school to supplement his income during the offseasons – jumped ahead of Wilson, Widmar, and Clark in the rotation. His 184 innings, 22 starts in 29 games, 13 wins, and 13 complete games were second to Clem Dreisewerd, who came to the Colonels after playing in the majors for three years during the war.

When both the Colonels and the Red Sox failed to repeat as champions in their respective leagues, the franchise underwent a major overhaul, loading and unloading more than four dozen players before, during, and after the 1948 season. Capping off the remake, the Red Sox exchanged nine players for four from the St. Louis Browns in a two-day period in November.

• Sam Dente, Pete Layden, Roy Partee, Eddie Pellagrini, and Bill Sommers, along with Dreisewerd, Widmar, Wilson, and Ostrowski, plus $310,000, were traded to the last-place Browns.
• In return, Boston got once and future All-Stars Vern Stephens and Jack Kramer, plus Ellis Kinder and Billy Hitchcock.

Ostrowski started the season with the Toledo Mud Hens in the Class AAA International League. But on July 8, at age 31, he finally got his chance to pitch in the big leagues.

The Browns trailed the Tigers in the seventh inning, 6-2, at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. Ostrowski replaced Frank Biscan but could not stop the bleeding. He allowed four earned runs on five hits with two walks in one inning of work. The Browns lost, 12-2.

Ostrowski overcame his first-game jitters and allowed only three earned runs over his next 13 2/3 innings while recording two saves and a victory. By the end of his rookie season, Ostrowski had appeared in 26 games, starting nine, with three complete games and a 4-6 record.

On August 12, in the first game of a doubleheader at home in Sportsman’s Park, Ostrowski started and tossed a complete game victory over the World Series-bound Cleveland Indians, 8-4. It was the first of his 12 career complete games. He held Larry Doby, Ken Keltner, and Joe Gordon – the heart of the Cleveland order – to a collective 1-for-13. He also helped his own cause with two hits and two RBIs.

Ostrowski’s 1949 season with the Browns was better than his first. He recorded eight wins and eight losses, including two consecutive complete game wins on June 14 (when he struck out a career-high five batters) and June 19 (when he drove in the go-ahead run). The eight wins tied him for second-best on a team that won only 53 for the season, their fewest victories since 1939. His ERA was 4.79 (the American League average that year was 4.20); the Browns’ staff posted a league-worst 5.21 ERA.

On June 24, in Ostrowski’s very next start following the two complete games, St. Louis faced the Red Sox. Ted Williams and company inflicted the Browns’ worst drubbing of the season, 21-2. It was the worst start of Ostrowski’s career; he allowed seven earned runs in three innings, including a three-run homer by Williams. The Splendid Splinter drove in seven runs that day, just one short of his career-high eight on July 14, 1946.

On the final day of the season, skipper Zack Taylor engaged in a bit of frivolous entertainment for the Brownies’ diehard fans. He paraded nine pitchers to the mound, one per inning, including Ostrowski in the second. The Chicago White Sox defeated St. Louis, 4-3.

Ostrowski opened the 1950 season with two complete game victories and a 2.51 ERA for the Browns. Seeking to reverse the Browns’ misfortunes, new owners Bill DeWitt and Charley DeWitt made several deals to improve their roster – and to generate needed cash. The activity included this transaction on June 15, 1950:

• Ostrowski went to the Yankees along with right-handed veteran reliever Tom Ferrick, plus infielder Leo Thomas.
• Louis received 1946 American League All-Star second baseman Snuffy Stirnweiss and minor league prospects Jim Delsing, Don Johnson, and Duane Pillette – plus $50,000.

The players the DeWitts acquired did not help the Browns very much. The cash, on the other hand, kept the team afloat.21

On the flip side, this trade was critical for the Yankees to continue their success. With three-time All-Star reliever Joe Page injured, manager Casey Stengel needed support for starters Eddie Lopat, Vic Raschi, and Allie Reynolds – Ostrowski called them the “Big Three”22 – and rookie phenom Whitey Ford.

Stengel – the other Yankee nicknamed “The Professor” – used Ostrowski in relief stints ranging from two batters to six innings. Ostrowski started only eight times in two and a half years compared to 29 under Taylor during his similar time in a Browns uniform. In New York, Ostrowski was sometimes the finishing pitcher – a “closer,” had that term been in vogue at the time – and he chalked up 12 of his 17 career saves there.23

In the 1950 World Series, the Yankees needed only five hurlers as they swept the Philadelphia Phillies. Ostrowski was not among them.

In 1951, Joe Page had reached the end of the line with the Yankees, and Ostrowski responded with his best season. He appeared in 34 regular season games – more than any other Yankee except Reynolds and Raschi – and registered a 6-4 record, seven saves, and a 3.49 ERA. He was paid the biggest salary of his career – $8,500.24 The 34-year-old helped the Yankees reach the World Series for the fourth time in five years, and again Stengel did not need much help from his bullpen, as Lopat pitched two complete games and Reynolds one. Ostrowski pitched two scoreless innings in Game Three for his only postseason appearance. The Bronx Bombers won the Series over the New York Giants in six games.

The following year was Ostrowski’s last in the majors. It was also the first year since 1935 that the Yankees were without the great Joe DiMaggio, who had retired. The hurler later observed that DiMaggio “first struck me as being aloof. Later I learned that he really was just shy. [However,] he was still the leader of the bunch.”25

Ostrowski’s usage dropped in 1952 after the Yankees acquired pitchers Johnny Sain and Bob Kuzava in 1951. He appeared in only 20 games, producing a 2-2 record with two saves before making the final appearance of his career on August 20.

Ostrowski watched from the bullpen as the Yankees outdueled the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1952 World Series, four games to three. “The Dodgers had seven right-handed batters and I was a left-handed pitcher,” Ostrowski explained.26 New York’s four consecutive World Series championships tied the record they set in 1936-1939. With their fifth consecutive championship in 1953 (after Ostrowski was gone), they established a new mark.

Although Ol’ Specs was not at the center of the diamond during the final weeks of the 1952 season, he was at the center of the celebration on the night the Yankees defeated the Athletics to clinch the AL pennant. In the ballroom of Philadelphia’s Warwick Hotel, he played the piano while his teammates rollicked around him singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.”27

On September 21, 1952, the last home game of the year, the Yankees honored The Professor by hosting Joe Ostrowski Day. He received a car and other gifts for his contributions to their success. Attending the celebration were his neighbors and friends from Belleville, New Jersey, where he lived during the season, and from West Wyoming, Pennsylvania, his family’s offseason home.28 Still, Scooter Rizzuto did not remember Ostrowski when they reconnected at that Old-Timer’s Day in 1978.

In the majors, Ostrowski appeared in 150 games including 37 starts, and tallied 23 wins, 25 losses, and a 4.54 ERA. Pitching to contact, the Pennsylvania portsider had an excellent rate of 1.9 walks per nine innings and a K/9 ratio of 2.6.

On February 12, 1953, the Yankees sold the 36-year-old Ostrowski to the Chicago Cubs. He pitched in 28 games with the Los Angeles Angels, the Chicago Cubs’ affiliate in the Pacific Coast League. Later that year, Ostrowski retired from baseball. He and his wife settled for good in West Wyoming and raised three sons – Paul, Billy, and Joe – who grew up to be a chemist, a mechanical engineer, and a civil engineer, respectively.29

Ostrowski returned to teaching high school in the West Wyoming and Wyoming Area school districts for 25 years. He retired in 1978.30 He coached baseball for five years and guided his team to one league championship.31 He also refereed basketball for 18 years – in the early years, it helped him stay in shape in the offseasons. He was honored by his chapter of the PIAA Basketball Officials upon his retirement in 1963.32 In his retirement years in Wyoming Valley, Ostrowski enjoyed gardening, crossword puzzles, and long walks. From 1969 onward, he suffered from diabetes.33

In 1985, the Luzerne County Sports Hall of Fame made Ostrowski one of its 26 initial inductees, along with major-leaguers Fritz Dorish, Buck Freeman, Pete Gray, and Norm Larker.34 Ostrowski threw out the first ball for “University of Scranton Night” at the new I.ackawanna County Stadium on August 12, 1989, and the University presented him an Alumni Achievement Award during pre-game ceremonies.35

Joe Ostrowski died on January 3, 2003, in Wilkes-Barre. His wife Helen, a seamstress and quilter in her golden years, died on December 12, 2019, at the age of 100. The couple are buried in the St. Joseph’s Church Cemetery in West Wyoming.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Cassidy Lent, manager of reference services at the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, for supplying copies of news clippings from the Joe Ostrowski file.

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Bill Lamb and fact-checked by Paul Proia.

Photo credit: Joe Ostrowski, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted www.sabr.org, www.baseball-reference.com, www.retrosheet.org, www.baseballcube.com, www.statscrew.com, www.newspapers.com, www.newspaperarchive.com, www.deanscards.com, and ancestry.com.

Notes

1 Dom Forker, The Men of Autumn: An Oral History of the 1949-53 World Champion New York Yankees (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1989), 97.

2 Forker, 97.

3 Fay Vincent, We Would Have Played for Nothing: Baseball Stars of the 1950s and 1960s Talk About the Game They Loved (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 154.

4 William C. Kashatus, Diamonds in the Coalfields (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2002), 1-5, 9, 15-16.

5 Kashatus, 21.

6 Kashatus, 39; “Tribute Paid Joe Ostrowski,” Pittston (Pennsylvania) Sunday Dispatch, April 28, 1963: 17.

7 Kashatus, 22.

9 Kashatus, 39.

10 Patton, “Patton’s Patter.”

11 Kashatus, 51.

12 E.g., Ostrowski’s American Baseball Bureau questionnaire (December 24, 1945) and his 1952 Topps baseball card list August 15, 1919, as his date of birth.

13  William R. Genello, “From Sandlots to the Stadium,” The Scranton Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Fall 1989): 9.

14 Forker, 92.

15 Forker, 93.

16  “1941 Eastern Shore League Leaders,” Stats Crew. https://www.statscrew.com/minorbaseball/leaders/l-ESHL/y-1941.

17 “1942 Piedmont League Leaders,” Stats Crew. https://www.statscrew.com/minorbaseball/leaders/l-PIED/y-1942.

18 Kashatus, 63.

19 “Ostrowski Back in Stride,” The Sporting News, October 5, 1944: 18.

20 Marc J. Steiner, “Jackie Robinson: History Made at the 1946 Junior World Series,” Jackie Robinson: Perspectives on 42 (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, Inc., 2021), 86.

21 The DeWitt brothers bought the club in February 1949 for a million dollars. In the two years that they were at the helm through June 1951 when Bill Veeck purchased the team, the DeWitts made 17 trades that completely turned over the roster and, more importantly, earned them approximately $1,287,500, unofficially. See Franklin Lewis, “DeWitts Proved Shrewd Dealers,” Baseball Digest, Vol. 10, No. 9 (September 1951), 99. Further, they sold their interest in the team to Veeck for $1.5 million.

22 Forker, 94.

23 Saves were not an official major-league statistic until 1969. For games played before 1969, saves were awarded retroactively using the 1969 definition. Baseball-Reference.com updates its website as historical information becomes available through new research.  Ostrowski’s 1951 Game Log page on B-R identifies seven saves (as does Ostrowski’s Retrosheet.com season-level page for 1951), although Ostrowski’s B-R season-level/overview page reports six. B-R’s Customer Success Manager replied in an e-mail to this author that B-R will update Ostrowski’s overview page. Aidan Jackson-Evans, personal communications [via e-mail], October 29, 2025, and June 18, 2026.

24 Forker, 96. His salary in 1952 was the same.

25 Genello, 10.

26 Joe Miegoc, “Classic Memories of the World Series,” Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader, October 16, 1985: 6C.

27 Dan Daniel, “Over the Fence,” The Sporting News, October 8, 1952: 10.

28 “Woodling, Ostrowski Honored,” The Sporting News, October 1, 1952: 28.

29 Forker, 96. Paul Ostrowski (1947-2015) and his wife Patti lived in Webster, Texas (see https://www.crowderfuneralhome.com/obituaries/paul-charles-ostrowski); Billy (1948-2020) and his wife Pat lived in Exeter, Pennsylvania (see https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/citizensvoice/name/william-ostrowski-obituary?id=2185896); and Joe Jr. (b. 1951) and his wife Mona lived in State College, Pennsylvania. They all played baseball in high school and Billy attended the University of Pennsylvania on a football scholarship.

30 Bush, “Joe Ostrowski, Ex-Yankee Reliever, Retires From 2nd Career as Teacher.” (West Wyoming and three other school districts merged to become the Wyoming Area School District in 1966.)

31 Forker, 95.

32 “Tribute Paid Joe Ostrowski,” Pittston Sunday Dispatch, April 28, 1963: 17.

33 Forker, 96.

34 Ostrowski’s brother Casmir Ostrowski (1924-2000), the ninth Ostrowski child, was one of the greatest basketball players ever to play in the Wyoming Valley, according to Frank Zawacki, his West Wyoming High School coach. Cas played eight years for the Wilkes-Barre Barons in the American Basketball League and the Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League. He was inducted in the Luzerne County Sports Hall of Fame in 1986.

35 Genello, 10.