CNHI News Service Boyer boys were in league of their own

Photos

Brothers Ken and Clete Boyer played for the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees, respectively, during the 1950s. Here they are shown with legendary baseball announcer Harry Carey. Clete passed away this week and Ken passed away in the '80s. The Boyer family grew up Alba and all seven brothers went on to play professional ball -- three of them in the major leagues. Courtesy Lynn and Lyla Boyer

Brothers, from left, Ken, Clete, and Cloyd Boyer held places in baseball coaching and management during the 1980s. Ken was the manager for the St. Louis Cardinals, Clete was the New York Yankees third base coach and Cloyd was the Atlanta Braves pitching coach. Clete passed away this week and Ken passed away in the '80s. The Boyer family grew up Alba and all seven brothers went on to play professional ball -- these three in the major leagues. Courtesy Lynn and Lyla Boyer

Brothers Clete and Ken Boyer played for the New York Yankess and the St. Louis Cardinals, respectively, during the 1950s. Clete passed away this week and Ken passed away in the '80s. The Boyer family grew up Alba and all seven brothers went on to play professional ball -- three of them in the major leagues. Courtesy Lynn and Lyla Boyer

Lyla, left, and Lynn Boyer of Carl Junction hold photos of Lynn's brothers Clete (who played for the New York Yankees) who passed away this week and Ken, (who played for the St. Louis Cardinals and later managed) who passed away in the '80s. The Boyer family grew up in Alba and all seven brothers went on to play professional ball -- three of them in the major leagues. Lynn played for the Yankees in the minor leagues. T. Rob Brown / The Joplin Globe

Lyla, left, and Lynn Boyer of Carl Junction hold a photo of Lynn's brother Clete (who played for the New York Yankees) who passed away this week. Another of his brothers, Ken, (who played for the St. Louis Cardinals and later managed) passed away in the '80s. The Boyer family grew up in Alba and all seven brothers went on to play professional ball -- three of them in the major leagues. Lynn played for the Yankees in the minor leagues. T. Rob Brown / The Joplin Globe

A memorial service for baseball great Clete Boyer will be Saturday in Suwanee, Ga.

ALBA, Mo. — If Webb City is the “City of Flags,” Neosho the “Flower Box City” and Joplin the “City that Jack (zinc) Built,” then Alba would have to be the “City of Diamonds.”
Baseball diamonds.
And the Boyer family — with seven brothers who played professional ball, three in the big leagues — would be in a league of its own at a time when the little cluster of towns of Alba, Purcell and Cossville produced at least three dozen professional ballplayers.
“There were 36 kids that signed pro contracts,” remembers one of the Boyer brothers, Lynn, of Carl Junction, who says that at the time, the population at Alba was around 300.
Southwest Missouri, Southeast Kansas and Northeast Oklahoma — the home of Mickey Mantle — were fertile recruiting grounds for the former Junior Cardinals League from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s.
The death a week ago of former New York Yankees third baseman Cletis “Clete” Boyer gave the Boyer siblings and their childhood playmates a chance to remember Jasper County’s days in the limelight of the national sport.

Brother vs. brother
Those were the days when the Yankees, with Clete Boyer and teammates Mantle, Yogi Berra and Roger Maris, won the American League pennant from 1960 through 1964 and captured World Series championships in 1961 and 1962.
Clete Boyer and his older brother, seven-time All-Star Ken Boyer, made baseball history in 1964 when they played against each other — Ken on the family’s revered St. Louis Cardinals team — in the World Series. Both hit home runs. Ken Boyer’s Cardinals won that Series.
Ken died of cancer in 1983 at the age of 51. He and Clete followed their eldest brother, Cloyd, into the major leagues. All three were third basemen.
When asked for whom she was rooting in the Series when the Yankees and Cardinals faced off, their mother, Mabel Boyer, replied, “The third baseman.”
Cloyd Boyer, who lives in Purcell, near the Boyers’ old stomping grounds in Alba, played with the Cardinals from 1949 to 1955. He went on to coach in the minor leagues and with the Yankees, Braves and Royals until the mid-1980s.

Practice and more practice
Lynn Boyer said there is nothing to which the brothers’ athletic success can be attributed, other than practice and providence.
“There was nothing special about the family,” he said. “We played baseball, basketball and swam.”
But mostly, they played baseball.
Joe Cook, a Carl Junction resident who grew up with the Boyers, said they were known for their exceptional throwing skills.
“Back in those days, there were only two things to do in Alba. You either played baseball or went and watched somebody else play baseball. There was no pool hall, no television - nothing else to do,” Cook said. “They just had a real natural ability to throw the ball hard and long.”
To talk about the Boyer brothers, though, is to tell only half the story. The other reason the Boyers were locally famous is because of the size of their family.
There also were seven sisters — a total of 14 children born to Vern and Mabel Boyer. Their second daughter, Leila, died at the age of 16 months.
Vern Boyer was a marble cutter in Carthage. He helped carve the marble that was used in the construction of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan., the Boyer siblings said.
It was their mother, though, who was one of the biggest baseball fans among family members.
“Mom listened to every Cardinal ballgame. She would always tune the radio to the ballgame,” said the oldest Boyer sister, Juanita Woodmansee, who still lives in Alba.
With 13 kids in the house, Woodmansee remembers being a mother figure to some of her siblings, especially Clete.
“He’d cling to me a lot,” she recalled. “When I went to school, he’d cry and cry, and then he’d be at the door waiting on me when I came home.”
After she married and moved from the home she had shared with her parents and siblings, Woodmansee only occasionally had the opportunity to attend a baseball game in which her famous brothers played.
But, the baby of the Boyers, Marcy Layton of Oronogo, remembers wanting to hop right onto the field with her brothers.
“I went to a lot of ballgames. We spent most of our time at ballgames” by the time she came into the family, Layton said. “I used to wish I’d been a boy so I could play ball.”
Another sister, Pansy Schell of Alba, did play ball with the boys. She remembers being the only girl playing on the elementary school team with her brothers, though other girls joined later.
That’s before fame hit Alba and the Boyers.

Oblivious to the awe
But, the fame didn’t cause as much of a ruckus as it might today.
“Nobody made a big deal out of it,” Lynn Boyer said. “And we never treated them any different when they came home. They were just family.”
Cook said the Boyers used to come back to Southwest Missouri with some of their famous teammates and invite some of the local boys to play games that would raise money for local charities.
“It was a chance for us guys who weren’t good enough to play with some of the big leaguers to play and get a chance to meet them,” Cook said. “We were just in awe of them.”
Mantle would put together a team from the Commerce, Okla., area, and the Boyers would get the Alba-area gang together.
“Clete and Ken and Cloyd - they took care of all of us,” Cook said. “If we went to a ballgame, they had tickets waiting on us. They never forgot where they came from.”
He said the Boyers also were generous to area children.
“They kept our local teams supplied in baseballs, bats and other equipment,” Cook said.
“I was very honored to have the Boyers as real good friends.”

Debby Woodin writes for The Joplin (Mo.) Globe.