Johnny Blanchard, a power-hitting catcher and outfielder known as Super Sub who played in five consecutive World Series for the Yankees in the 1960s, died Wednesday in Robbinsdale, Minn. He was 76. The cause was a heart attack, Major League Baseball said on its Web site.
As a left-handed hitter who could deliver the long ball, Blanchard seemed a perfect fit for Yankee Stadium and its short right-field fence. But he was essentially a catcher and had little chance of breaking into the starting lineup since the Yankees had Yogi Berra and Elston Howard.
Blanchard’s best season was 1961, when he hit a career-high 21 home runs and batted .305 in 93 games. He was decidedly in the shadow of Roger Maris, who broke Babe Ruth’s record with 61 homers, and Mickey Mantle, who hit 54 home runs, but he had his moments that summer.
Blanchard set a major league record in July with home runs in four consecutive at-bats over three games. He had a game-winning pinch-hit grand slam against the Red Sox in Boston with two out in the ninth inning, hit a game-tying homer as a pinch-hitter in the ninth at Fenway Park the next day, then hit two home runs a few days later in his first two at-bats as the starting catcher against the White Sox at Yankee Stadium. He almost had a fifth straight home run, but Chicago right fielder Floyd Robinson caught his sixth-inning drive a few feet from the wall.
Blanchard’s mark of four consecutive homers over three games was equaled by Jeff Manto of the Baltimore Orioles in 1995.
Playing in the World Series every year from 1960 to 1964, Blanchard had 10 hits in 29 at-bats for a .345 average. In 1961, he hit two home runs and batted .400 when the Yankees defeated the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series.
Blanchard, a native of Minneapolis, made his Yankees debut in 1955, playing in one game, then played with the Yankees from 1959 to 1965, when he was traded to the Kansas City Athletics. He retired after finishing the season with the Milwaukee Braves and had a .239 career batting average with 67 home runs.
Blanchard, who lived in Wayzata, Minn., is survived by his wife, Nancy; his sons, Tim, Paul and John; and six grandchildren.
During his years in the Yankees’ farm system, Blanchard grew discouraged since Berra and Howard were unlikely to be dislodged. “No matter what I did in the minors, it really didn’t seem to matter because there was no room for me,” he once told The Record of Bergen County, N.J. “It got kind of depressing.”
But when he was traded to Kansas City after all those World Series paychecks as Super Sub, he seemed apprehensive. As he told reporters, “Now I’ll have to play every day.”