![]() Dean married Patricia Nash on June 15, 1931, and she proved to be a shrewd business manager for her husband’s interests throughout his life. Dean joined the Houston club for the 19 seasons and was in the big leagues for the 1932 season when the St. In 1930, he signed a baseball contract with the Houston minor-league team, which sent Dean to St. There is also some debate as to how Dean acquired the nickname “Dizzy,” though the generally accepted explanation is that it resulted from a 1927 incident during Dean’s military career when an Army sergeant found young Dean throwing peeled potatoes against garbage can lids and erupted with an exclamatory, “You dizzy son-of-a-bitch!” Dean left the Army in 1929, signing with a semi-pro team in San Antonio. Dean later explained, “I was helping the writers out…. He added further confusion shortly after arriving in the major leagues by telling three reporters (in a matter of hours) three different locations and dates of his birth. Named for Jay Gould, the nineteenth-century railroad magnate, and Mark Hanna, an Ohio political figure of the same era, Dean confused sportswriters by going, at times, by “Jerome Herman,” the name of a former Lucas playmate who had died when Dean was seven. ![]() Growing up, he demonstrated more skill at picking cotton than at being a scholar, though throwing a baseball would prove to be his real talent. In later years, Dean would claim a fourth-grade education. Dean’s school attendance became sporadic following his mother’s death, ceasing totally in 1926 when he joined the Army at age sixteen. The family moved to Yell County in 1920 and later to Oklahoma, first to Purcell in 1924 and then to the Okemah and Spaulding area in 1926. His mother died in 1918 from tuberculosis, and parental guidance from his father was scarce because he worked long hours. ![]() His Arkansas childhood was not an easy one. Along with the aging Babe Ruth, “Dizzy” Dean was considered baseball’s major drawing card during the Depression years of the 1930s.īorn in Lucas (Logan County) on January 16, 1910, Jay Dean was the son of Albert Monroe “Ab” Dean, a tenant farmer and sawmill worker, and Alma Nelson Dean. Louis Cardinals during the team’s “Gashouse Gang” era of the 1930s. Dean and his younger brother, Paul, pitched for the St. ![]() Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean was a professional baseball player and radio and television baseball broadcaster who was later inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. ![]()
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