page_title: Whitey Ford
section_title: Retirement
hierarchical_section_title: Whitey Ford / Biography / Pitching career / Retirement
caption_attribution_description: English: Whitey Ford at Yankee Stadium in 2010. This file has been extracted from another file: Yogi Berra, Mariano Rivera, Whitey Ford.jpg
context_page_description: Edward Charles "Whitey" Ford, nicknamed "The Chairman of the Board", is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played his entire 16-year Major League Baseball career with the New York Yankees. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.
  Ford is a ten-time MLB All-Star and six-time World Series champion. In 1961 Ford won both the Cy Young Award and World Series Most Valuable Player Award. He led the American League in wins three times and in earned run average twice. The Yankees retired Ford's uniform number 16 in his honor on Saturday August 3, 1974.
  In the wake of Yogi Berra's death in 2015, George Vecsey, writing in the New York Times, suggested that Ford is now "The Greatest Living Yankee."
context_section_description: Ford ended his career in declining health. In August 1966, he underwent surgery to correct a circulatory problem in his throwing shoulder. In May 1967, Ford lasted just one inning in what would be his final start, and he announced his retirement at the end of the month at age 38.
  Ford wore number 19 in his rookie season. Following his return from the army in 1953, he wore number 16 for the remainder of his career and it would later be retired by the Yankees on Saturday August 3, 1974.
  Ford was a Yankees coach in two different stints: 1968 as first base coach and from 1974-1975, as pitching coach.
  After retiring, Ford admitted in interviews to having occasionally doctored baseballs.  Examples were the "mudball", used at home in Yankee Stadium. Yankee groundskeepers would wet down an area near the catcher's box where the Yankee catcher Elston Howard was positioned; pretending to lose balance, Howard would put down his hand with the ball and coat one side of the ball with mud and throw it to Ford. Ford sometimes used the diamond in his wedding ring to gouge the ball, but he was eventually caught by an umpire and warned to stop. Howard sharpened a buckle on his shinguard and used it to scuff the ball.
  Ford described his illicit behavior as concession to age:  
  "I didn't begin cheating until late in my career, when I needed something to help me survive. I didn't cheat when I won the twenty-five games in 1961. I don't want anybody to get any ideas and take my Cy Young Award away. And I didn't cheat in 1963 when I won twenty-four games. Well, maybe a little."
  Ford admitted to doctoring the ball in the 1961 All Star Game at Candlestick Park to strike out Willie Mays. Ford and Mantle had accumulated $1200 ($10,143 today) in golf pro shop purchases as guests of Horace Stoneham at the Giants owner's country club.  Stoneham promised to pay their tab if Ford could strike out Mays. "What was that all about?" Mays asked. "I'm sorry, Willie, but I had to throw you a spitter," Ford replied.
  In 1977, Ford was part of the broadcast team for the first game in Toronto Blue Jays history. In 2008, Ford threw the first pitch at the 2008 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. On September 21, 2008 Ford and Yogi Berra were guests of the broadcast team for the final game played at Yankee Stadium.
  In 2002, Ford opened "Whitey Ford's Cafe", a sports-themed restaurant and bar next to Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City, New York. A replica of the Yankee Stadium facade trimmed both the exterior and the bar, whose stools displayed uniform numbers of Yankee luminaries; widescreen TVs were installed throughout. The main dining area housed a panoramic display of Yankee Stadium from the 1950s, specifically a Chicago White Sox–Yankee game with Ford pitching and Mickey Mantle in center field; the Yanks are up 2-0. Waiters and waitresses dressed in Yankees road uniforms, with Ford's retired No. 16 on the back. It lasted less than a year before it closed down.
  During the 1950s, Ford lived for a period in Glen Cove, on the North Shore of Long Island. As of 2015, the 86-year-old Ford was splitting his time between his homes in Long Island and Florida.
caption: Ford in 2010
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