R.I.P. Luis Arroyo

"Joe Page, Johnny Sain, Ryne Duren, Sparky Lyle, Goose Gossage.
Along with providing instant R-E-L-E-I-F, all of these pitchers added up to a long line of P-E-N-N-A-N-T-S. They were the Yankees' own SWAT team, the troubleshooters who left the bullpen to face dangerous situations, douse last minute fires- and to make the Bronx the home of champions.
On equal footing with any of these aces, Luis 'Yo-Yo' Arroyo was another Mission Impossible specialist. While his own stay in New York was a short one (1960-63), the pudgy little left-hander from Puerto Rico carried the Yankees to two pennants, in 1960 and '61. Throwing nothing but screwballs or curves, he went 20-6 over those two seasons, with thirty-six saves and a razor-sharp 2.53 ERA. Arroyo was such a soothing sight jumping over the bullpen fence, Whitey Ford called him 'my personal bodyguard, the guy who kept me in the big leagues.' (Over half of Arroyo's twenty-nine saves in 1961 came after Ford pitched.) The fans, equally enthusiastic, signaled their respect by making LUIS-LUIS security blankets the hottest item at Yankee Stadium concession stands.
Arroyo first joined the Yankees halfway through the 1960 season, after four rather disappointing seasons in the majors (with the Cards, Pirates and Reds in quick succession). The Yankees were then six games out (on July 22) and, to complicate matters, one-time star reliever Ryne Duren was becoming progressively less effective. In desperation, the Yankees brought Arroyo up from the minors. Now manager Stengel had no choice. He had to rely on this relatively untested junk-throwing pitcher.
'Man, I couldn't believe it, none of it,' exclaims the fifty-six-year-old Arroyo, shaking his head until his Yankee cap falls off. Now a scout for New York in Puerto Rico, he dusts off his pride and joy and continues, 'Only a few months earlier I'd been pitching for a Reds' farm team in Jersey City; now I was with the champs. Man, I'll never forget. I was told to go to Yankee Stadium. I looked in the paper to see who was in town, and saw the White Sox were there. I never thought of the Yankees. I couldn't believe it. Nope. I could only think, 'Here we go again. Damn, why couldn't it be the Yankees?'
'Imagine my surprise. Especially when I was told I had to get to the Yankee locker room than night. I didn't know how to get there, so I took a taxi. It cost me sixty dollars, but it was worth it. I took out a cigar, walked up to the players' entrance, and the guard said, 'Who the hell are you?' The next thing I knew, I was walking into the clubhouse, puffing away, and there was Mantle and Maris, looking at me kind of funny.'
Poor Baltimore.
Pity the White Sox.
And goodbye to the rest of the league.
Casey's experiment immediately worked. Arroyo was hot. He won five games and saved seven, as the Yankees went on a tear. They won sixteen of their last eighteen games, and Arroyo had the honor of nailing down the pennant-clincher, by getting the Red Sox' Pete Runnels to pop up to Clete Boyer. No one laughed now at Arroyo's name (Stengel couldn't pronounce it, hence the Yo-Yo). For little Luis, it was big cigar time.
Arroyo had fantasized about becoming a Yankee since childhood, when he worked on his father's farm outside Ponce. He once saw Johnny Mize, Joe DiMaggio and Cliff Mapes at a local stadium, and the image of the flannel pinstripe never left him. It didn't matter where, or what he was doing- milking the cows, cutting sugar cane, or feeding the chickens- Arroyo carried his glove around with him, dreaming of playing on the same field with his heroes.
Only attending school until the eighth grade, the squat, five-foot-seven lefty signed his first pro contract with a Ponce team, and then it was, 'a lot of banging around, hamburgers, and bad buses.' As he pointedly says, 'I really got a chance to learn English. I saw every small town in America ... the smallest places you could imagine, that didn't even have sidewalks.' Making about $250 a month (in the early 1950s), he spent six years in the minors, moving from one team to another as rapidly as kids trade baseball cards. The struggle to make it often seemed futile. But despite feeling depressed at times, he was more worried about adjusting to America. 'The first few years in the minors were the toughest. I didn't want to make a fool of myself in restaurants. I had to learn how to eat hamburgers, french fries, shakes, to really be one of the guys.'
Forced to overcome various arm or shoulder injuries, Yo-Yo didn't make it to the biggies until 1955. He then broke in with St. Louis as a starter, and dazzled the league by winning his first nine games. Leo Durocher selected him for the All-Star Game, and Arroyo seemed headed for a brilliant career. But, inexplicably, he soon flip-flopped, going 2-8 the rest of the year.
'I still don't know what happened,' says Arroyo, who only won three games the following year, and then had a disastrous 3-11 mark in 1957. 'Nothing was bothering me; I felt fine. I was a fastball pitcher then, and I guess the batters caught up with me. Nothing worked. I couldn't even fool a rookie. I soon knew I had to come up with another pitch, or it would be back to the sugar cane fields.'
Consequently, it was screwball-screwball-screwball. Except for an occasional curve or slider, batters saw nothing else. And today, Arroyo's two middle fingers are permanently bent, seemingly wedged together in a question mark-like shape. They're also painfully arthritic. But the tricky pitch did keep Arroyo in the majors. In fact, the difference between the two phases of his career can only be described by one of Phil Rizzuto's Holy Cows. From that 3-11 record, Arroyo screwballed his way to 5-1 in 1960, and then a sensational 15-5 mark with a 2.19 ERA in '61. Those latter totals made him the Sporting News Fireman of the Year- and for a little icing on the proverbial cake, he won the third game of the World Series that year by retiring six straight Cincinnati batters. Oh, what sweet revenge.
Twisting his left arm, as if throwing a screwball could magically recreate 1961, Arroyo says, 'The Yankees did a super job of taking care of me that year. Houk never pitched me more than three innings. I was once in nine straight games, but other than that everything was super. What an organization. We had speed, defense, power. Going to the ballpark was better than being at home. At least six or seven times, Mantle or Maris hit a homer in the ninth to win the game for me. I couldn't do anything wrong. Even my batting average was good (.280).'
In two years time, however, Arroyo was out of baseball. A candidate for the Cy Young Award in 1961, he would have had trouble getting his grandmother out the following season. His screwball no longer danced or fluttered; and as for his curve, some of those are still in orbit. Statistically, he was 1-3 in 1962, with a 4.81 ERA, while the next season his 13.5 ERA (in six games) put him on a train to the minors with a one-way ticket.
Why the nosedive? Why did he become totally ineffective?
He had always played winter ball, but the Yankees convinced him not to that year, and that led to a lot of eating and drinking on the banquet circuit. Even though the Yankees strongly influenced his decision by giving a him check for what he would have would have earned in Puerto Rico ($6000), Arroyo shows now signs of being bitter. Instead, he talks glowingly about manager Ralph Houk, pre-Steinbrenner Yankee management, and the team's giving him a full 1963 World Series share.
'The Yankees are class. They did everything they could to get me through a tough time,' says Arroyo, sitting in a cafe near a stadium in Ponce.
'It bothers me a little that I didn't get more years in (he played eight) for my pension. I should have continued to play winter ball. It never hurt me to do that. But that's all in the past. When I quit, the Yankees made me a scout. I used to have the whole Caribbean. Just recently I signed a kid. It's getting tough, though. While kids used to sign for four to five thousand, now they're looking for twenty to twenty-five thousand. It's unbelievable.'
Taking out a long black cigar, Arroyo flashes an equally big smile and concludes, 'Not only am I proud of what I did in baseball, but it's also the best sport around. It treats people good. When I hear guys complaining about baseball I really get ticked off. It did so much for me. Right now my son's going to dental school at the University of Michigan. He's getting a great education, thanks to the Yankees and me screwball.'"

-Edward Kiersch, Yankees Magazine (May 12, 1983)