Joseph Anthony Pepitone was born on October 9, 1940, in Brooklyn. John Lennon of The Beatles was born the exact same day. Both would become stars in 1962, and genuine superstars by 1964. But, in each case, stardom would cost them a great deal.
Joe grew up in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, and graduated from Manual Training High School (now John Jay Educational Campus). Among its other graduates have been actress Thelma Ritter, Nobel Prize-winning physicist I.I. Rabi, comedian Henny Youngman and painter Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The Yankees signed him after he graduated in 1958, and he worked his way up through their minor league system. He made his major league debut on April 10, the Opening Day of the 1962 season, at the old Yankee Stadium. Wearing the Number 25 that he would wear for the entirety of his tenure with the New York Yankees, he pinch-hit for pitcher Whitey Ford in the bottom of the 6th, against Hal Brown, and grounded into a double play. He was not put into the field. Thanks to home runs by Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Bill "Moose" Skowron, the Yankees won the game, 7-6.
"Pepi" became the backup to Skowron at 1st base, and received a World Series ring after the season. The Yankees thought so highly of Pepitone that they traded Moose before the 1963 season. Pepitone helped the Yankees win the 1963 and '64 AL Pennants, and hit a grand slam in Game 6 of the '64 World Series. He made 3 All-Star Teams and won 3 Gold Gloves. He had 182 career home runs before he turned 30. Joe was a New York kid playing for the local team, and he was very good. This made him enormously popular in New York at the time.
He had a bit of a nose, and was actually balding, but you couldn't tell that while he was wearing a cap or a batting helmet. (He had 2 toupees: A small one for during games, and a bigger "Guido" hairpiece for being out on the town.) Women wanted him, men wanted to be him. He was a matinee idol, and a hero to many, not just to his fellow Italian-Americans.
But, he would later admit, his father's death left him depressed, and he looked for comfort in New York's nightlife, in drinking and women -- "wine, women and song," as the old saying goes. He still hit a few home runs, and he still, as Yankee broadcaster Frank Messer put it, "played first base like he owned it," although he switched to center field in 1967 and '68 so that Mantle, with no designated hitter in those days, could ease the strain on his legs by playing 1st base.
But if you're going to carouse like Mantle, you'd better be able to play like Mantle. Like all but maybe 20 men who have ever played the game, Pepitone was not at that level. He once said that Mantle had told him, "I wish I could buy you for what you're really worth, then sell you for what you think you're worth."
It didn't help that he came into his own just as the old Yankee Dynasty was collapsing. As it turned out, he and Mel Stottlemyre were the last 2 remaining Yankees who had played on a Pennant winner. He was traded to the Houston Astros before the 1970 season, and they traded him to the Chicago Cubs during that season. He hit Chicago's Rush Street every bit as hard as he hit New York's nightspots, but didn't hit National League pitchers quite so well, though the wind blowing out at Wrigley Field did help him. The ballpark's famed "Bleacher Bums" would throw marijuana joints and bags of cocaine onto the field as he warmed up into the outfield. He would hide them in the ivy on the outfield wall, and pick them up after the game.
But, he would later admit, his father's death left him depressed, and he looked for comfort in New York's nightlife, in drinking and women -- "wine, women and song," as the old saying goes. He still hit a few home runs, and he still, as Yankee broadcaster Frank Messer put it, "played first base like he owned it," although he switched to center field in 1967 and '68 so that Mantle, with no designated hitter in those days, could ease the strain on his legs by playing 1st base.
But if you're going to carouse like Mantle, you'd better be able to play like Mantle. Like all but maybe 20 men who have ever played the game, Pepitone was not at that level. He once said that Mantle had told him, "I wish I could buy you for what you're really worth, then sell you for what you think you're worth."
It didn't help that he came into his own just as the old Yankee Dynasty was collapsing. As it turned out, he and Mel Stottlemyre were the last 2 remaining Yankees who had played on a Pennant winner. He was traded to the Houston Astros before the 1970 season, and they traded him to the Chicago Cubs during that season. He hit Chicago's Rush Street every bit as hard as he hit New York's nightspots, but didn't hit National League pitchers quite so well, though the wind blowing out at Wrigley Field did help him. The ballpark's famed "Bleacher Bums" would throw marijuana joints and bags of cocaine onto the field as he warmed up into the outfield. He would hide them in the ivy on the outfield wall, and pick them up after the game.
As late as 1971, nearly 31, he was batting .307 with 16 home runs and 61 RBIs. But that was in only 115 games. Injuries, which his carousing didn't help, had caught up with him. In 1973, he was traded to the Atlanta Braves, and they released him after the season. His major league career was over, with a lifetime batting average of .258, an OPS+ of just 105, and 1,315 hits including 219 home runs.
He played in Japan, signing for the Yakult Swallows. But he didn't hit well, begged off games with injuries, and then got caught dancing in Tokyo's discos. In Japan, "Pepitone" became a slang term for a person who goofed off. He tried a comeback with the San Diego Padres in 1976, but after just 13 games for their Class AAA team, the Hawaii Islanders, batting .225, he was released.
In 1980, he was hired as a hitting instructor for the Yankees' minor-league system, and was promoted to the major league team in 1982. He would do time on Rikers Island on gun charges in 1988, although drug charges against him were dropped. And he would have continued alcohol and marriage problems, getting arrested again in 1995, when he drunkenly crashed his car inside the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
He stayed out of trouble after that, living on Long Island, getting by and then some at memorabilia shows. He was welcomed back for Old-Timers Day, and I once saw him hit a triple when he was nearly 60. Eventually, he bowed to reality -- not enough to appear in public bald, but enough that he wore a gray hairpiece instead of a black one.
He knew he could have been so much more, and he knew he blew it: He titled his 1975 autobiography Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud. Jim Bouton had portrayed him poorly in his own 1970 book, Ball Four, but Joe followed Jim by writing his own tell-all, and it is considerably more lurid, and less funny.
But the bad things Joe did were no excuse for what Cosmo Kramer did in "The Visa," a 1993 episode of Seinfeld. He had no right to hit Joe with a pitch at that fantasy camp. For crying out loud, Joe was 52 years old! You don't plunk a 52-year-old man! (Seinfeld co-creator Larry David would write Pepitone's name into 2 more episodes, and into 2 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. He was also mentioned on The Golden Girls, The Sopranos, The West Wing and Rescue Me.)
Tony Conigliaro was a very similar player in Boston, but his career was curtailed by injury as much as by wasting his talent. New England fans have often suggested that, had he stayed healthy, Tony C would have been their Mantle. But now that Tony C is dead, and the Boston press no longer has to protect the popular, handsome, ethnic local boy, some less-than-savory details about his life have come out.
Joe Pepitone married and divorced 3 times. He died on March 13, 2023, in Kansas City, Missouri, at the home of his daughter Cara. He also had daughters Eileen and Lisa, and sons Joe Jr. and Bill.