THE OTHER TY

He was an outfielder playing for the New London Planters in baseball’s Eastern League when the call came inviting him to The Show.  He was 20 years old when he made his debut with his hometown team, the Philadelphia Phillies and in his lone game in the majors, on April 30, 1918, he got a base hit and later returned to the minor leagues with a batting average of 1.000.  For some baseball players a good pickup game is all they’ll ever play in.  At the major league level, one good baseball game is all Clarence William “Ty” Pickup did play in but it was memorable because it was for The Phillies. His 81-year-old son Harry, a retired steam fitter, said teammates called his father Sy, short for Clarence and since it was the Ty Cobb-era, Sy morphed into Ty. 

Ty Pickup passed away in 1974 at the age of 77. When he wasn’t playing baseball he spent the winter months working for the Pennsylvania Railroad.  After his baseball career ended he was a wholesale delicatessen salesman and distributor in Northeast Philadelphia.  Harry Pickup, a cadet pilot during the Korean War, never took up baseball nor did any of his 10 kids including daughter Patricia, a Software Developer who runs Pickup Consulting Inc. “I remember seeing a family photo of my Grandfather in a baseball uniform but I really didn’t know much about him until I was a teenager,” Patricia recalled.  Ty’s son Harry doesn’t recall playing much baseball with his Dad.  “He worked seven days a week and at home all he pretty much talked about was his job,” Harry said.  Ty did however share with his son some thoughts on the way the game had changed mainly in the equipment ballplayers used. Harry does recall his Dad saying that the gloves had changed an awful lot, getting much bigger, and bat handles were a lot more tapered than ones he used.

            After he went one-for-one with the Phillies Ty Pickup hurt his leg and so the leftfielder who batted Right and threw Right, was sent back down to the minors where he played from 1919 until 1921 for the Pittsfield Hillies, Hartford Senators, Durham Bulls and Waterbury Brasscos.  He came back in 1928 for the Rocky Mount Buccaneers and the Wilmington Pirates. Pickup finished his baseball career with 1,030 hits, although not one of them was bigger than the base hit he had with the Phillies back in 1918.