Kemp Wicker wasn’t on the field at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, to hear Lou Gehrig’s famous farewell speech.
“Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth,” Gehrig echoed off the grandstands in between games of a doubleheader.
Wicker, Gehrig’s former teammate with the Yankees, was in nearby Rochester, sitting through a pair of losses as a pitcher for the Montreal Royals, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ entry in the Double-A International League.
The lanky lefthander from Kernersville, N.C. — and former standout pitcher for NC State’s 1927 freshman baseball team — may have even heard about Gehrig’s speech the next day. The slugging first baseman gave a public farewell after revealing his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and abruptly retiring from the job he held for 2,130 consecutive games.
Without a doubt, a mental connection was made with baseball’s “Iron Horse” when Wicker himself, retired to his tobacco farm in Forsyth County, was diagnosed with the same fatal disease that now frequently bears Gehrig’s name.
NC State baseball fans know more about the rare neurological disease these days because of another former Wolfpack star, Chris Combs, who has been fighting to raise awareness and research money for an underfunded cause since his diagnosis last year. Saturday, the Wolfpack will face Boston College in famed Fenway Park in the Eagles’ sixth-annual ALS Awareness Game, founded in honor of former Eagle baseball captain Pete Frates, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2012.
Combs was also a family friend, through his father Francis, with another famous Yankee pitcher who fought ALS, Jim “Catfish” Hunter, who was Francis Combs’ high school teammate in Hertford, N.C., in the early 1960s.
The Yankees organization has long supported ALS research, contributing to a local New York chapter in Gehrig’s honor and making a $100,000 donation to a national ALS organization in conjunction with the “Ice Bucket Challenge,” which was started on behalf of Frates and went viral.
And while Gehrig and Hunter are the most famous Yankees with ALS, Wicker should be remembered as well, not only for the condition that claimed him 46 years ago, but for a remarkable life devoted to baseball.
How many other players in the history of the game went to the World Series every year of their major league career? How many won World Series rings in each of their first two seasons? How many won two World Series titles in the same season, a feat accomplished by Wicker in 1937 as a member of both the Yankees and the Newark Bears, winners of the Junior World Series between the champions of the International League and American Association?
Wicker did all that, and more, in a half century as a pitcher, player/coach, manager and scout.
Born on Aug. 13, 1906, in Kernersville, Kemp Caswell Wicker grew up on a tobacco farm and a baseball field, twin passions he pursued his entire life. He played baseball and basketball at Tyro High School in Davidson County, spent a year at now-defunct Weaver College in Weaverville, N.C., and then came to Raleigh to play for freshman baseball coach/head football/head basketball coach Gus Tebell.
He never returned for his sophomore year after being signed by a scout from the Detroit Tigers while playing on a summer league team at the Outer Banks later that year. He was assigned to the Class B Columbus (Georgia) Foxes of the Southeastern League in 1928 and was associated with professional baseball for the rest of his life.
He lived the vagabond life of a low-level minor league player, leaving Wilhemina, his wife of 46 years, in Kernersville to raise four children while he played for teams like the Charleroi (Pennsylvania) Governors, the Goldsboro Goldbugs and the Wheeling (West Virginia) Stogies.
In all, he played for 10 minor league teams from Class D to AA, in the eight years before getting an invitation to join the Yankees in spring training before the 1936 season. He was assigned to the AA Newark Bears before the season started, but was called up by the Yankees in August to join a staff that included Hall of Fame pitchers Lefty Gomez and Red Ruffing.
Wicker was one of two rookies on the ’36 Yankees that beat the New York Giants in six games in the World Series. The other guy was an outfielder named Joe DiMaggio, who also had a somewhat successful major league career.
“He is a quiet, serious young fellow, ambitious to make the big league grade,” read the preseason assessment of the experienced pitcher.
Wicker mopped up in seven games that season and was on the World Series roster, though he did not see any postseason action.
Wicker returned to Newark in 1937, and was part of one of the greatest teams in minor league history. The Bears posted a 109-43 record, with Wicker posting seven wins and pitching 24 consecutive scoreless innings during one stretch.
Wicker, who returned to the Yankees when Yale-educated pitcher Johnny Broaca walked away from the team because of a sore arm, wasn’t part of the Bears’ come-from-behind win in the Junior World Series.
He did, however, pitch successfully for the Yanks, posting a 7-3 record in his 16 appearances. He made a little dubious history that season at Fenway Park, allowing only the second home run ball to ever be knocked out of the historic stadium — a 450-foot shot by Red Sox slugger Jimmie Foxx on Aug. 12, 1937. It traveled just right of the centerfield flagpole, over a factory across Lansdowne Street and onto the Boston & Albany railroad tracks.
Wicker also saw his only World Series action that season, retiring all three batters he faced in the eighth inning of a 7-3 loss to the New York Giants in Game Five.
He spent most of the 1938 season with Double-A Kansas City, but won the only game he appeared in for the Yankees, which recalled him as insurance late that season when Gomez was battling a sore arm. He did not, however, make the postseason roster for the Yankees who won their third consecutive title.
His contract was sold in 1939 to Brooklyn, and Wicker spent two years in Montreal before returning to the majors in 1941. He helped the Dodgers win the pennant that season, but they lost in six games to the Yankees in the World Series.
Wicker spent the war years, plus three more, playing for the St. Louis Cardinals organization, though he never returned to the major leagues.
In 1945, Wicker played on one of the worst professional baseball teams of all time, the Rochester Red Wings. It was a hard-luck team, and Wicker had one of the worst outcomes that any pitcher has ever suffered, throwing all 19 innings of a 2-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
In all, Wicker won exactly 200 minor league games and lost 180. He was 10-7 in the majors.
From 1946-49, he was a player-manager for the Columbus (Georgia) Cardinals, and later managed the Greensboro Pilots, the Houston Buffaloes, the Des Moines Bruins and the Lancaster Red Roses. In nine seasons, he posted a 270-313 managerial record.
As a scout for the Cardinals, he signed lefthander pitcher and future three-term North Carolina Congressman Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell.
In retirement, Wicker assisted in the organization of the Kernersville Little League and helped one of his grandsons become a successful left-handed pitcher, just as he had been. He also farmed, leasing land for tobacco and raising beef cattle. Some off-seasons he worked at a friend’s grocery story and eventually opened a restaurant in Kernersville.
An active church member, Wicker was also elected to the county school board.
“We spent many summer vacations with family at the North Carolina coast and mountain trips,” said Judy Osborne, Wicker’s youngest daughter. “He and my mother were hard-working parents who provided an education and Christian home for us all.
“Sunday dinners and holidays were always great. Summers were shared raising a vegetable garden, freezing and canning our harvest.”
Wicker succumbed to the effects of ALS on June 11, 1973.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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