Earle Bryan Combs (May 14, 1899 – July 21, 1976) was an American professional baseball player, who played his entire career for the New York Yankees (1924‑1935). Combs batted leadoff and played center field on the Yankees' fabled 1927 team (often referred to as Murderers' Row). He is one of six players on that team who have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame; the other five are Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, Tony Lazzeri, Lou Gehrig, and Babe Ruth.
Nicknamed "the Kentucky Colonel", Combs was known as a great gentleman on and off the field. Miller Huggins once said: "If you had men like Combs on your ballclub, you could go to bed every night and sleep like a baby." Joe McCarthy (another longtime Yankee manager) said: "They wouldn't pay baseball managers much a salary if they all presented as few problems as did Earle Combs." Said Babe Ruth: "Combs was more than a good ballplayer. He was always a first-class gentleman." American sportswriter and baseball historian Fred Lieb wrote of Combs, "If a vote were taken of the sportswriters as to who their favorite ballplayer on the Yankees would be, Combs would have been their choice." Combs' induction into the Hall of Fame in 1970 was by the Veterans Committee. Upon his induction he said, "I thought the Hall of Fame was for superstars, not just average players like me."
Famous quotes containing the word combs:
“Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flights,
Waves in its plumes the various light.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)