Mike Naymick

Michael John Naymick
(Slim)

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 8", Weight 225 lb.
• High School Weirton High School
• Debut September 24, 1939
• Final Game July 6, 1944
• Born September 6, 1917 in Berlin, PA USA
• Died October 12, 2005 in Stockton, CA USA

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Biographical Information

Mike Naymick was working in a West Virginia steel mill and toiling for the company's baseball team when he signed with the Cleveland Indians and assigned to the Springfield Indians of the Middle Atlantic League in 1937; he went 8-7 with a 5.79 ERA and was assigned to another class C club in 1938, going to the Oswego Netherlands.

He set a Canadian-American League record with 230 strikeouts (the record was later broken), 181 walks and a record 37 wild pitches in 213 innings and went 10-12 with a 4.18 ERA. In one game he walked 11 batters in under 3 innings of work. He went 13-10 with a 4.63 in the Three-I League the next year and was a late-season call-up to the Indians.

He spent the next 5 years bouncing between Cleveland and the minors (he went 12-18 in the minors from 1940-1944). While the team was impressed with his speed (Jimmie Foxx said he threw harder than Bob Feller), he could not develop good control.

The 6' 8" man with the size 15 shoe was turned down by the military due to his size. He was the tallest player in American League history when he made his debut.

Naymick's career finished up in the St. Louis Cardinals system in 1944.

His parents emigrated from what is now Slovakia and his father was a coal miner in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where Mike went to high school. He played basketball and football and was on the track team there, but did not play baseball, as his school did not field a baseball team. He went to work for Weirton Steel after graduation, having been recruited for his basketball skills.

After the 1944 season, he decided to leave baseball and contribute to the war effort working for a manufacturer of airplane parts in Traverse City, MI, the Parsons Company. He continued to play various sports on the side, got married to a local girl in 1946 and started a family (he would eventually have five children). He later became the director of the local American Legion Baseball program and refereed basketball games. He rose in his company's ranks to become a supervisor and eventually moved to Stockton, CA when the company merged with a firm from California, but his family did not follow him and the move ended up in a divorce. He remarried in 1979 and had two more children. He retired in 1986 and died in Stockton in 2005.

Sources: "Baseball's Canadian-American League" by David Pietrusza and Pat Doyle's Old-Time Professional Baseball Player Database

Related Sites

• Mike Naymick at the SABR Bio Project