NY Times · Jul 31, 2015
Billy Pierce, White Sox Power Pitcher, Is Dead at 88
Photo Billy Pierce strikes a pitching pose in Yankee Stadium before a game in 1953. Credit Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, via Getty Images Billy Pierce, the Chicago White Sox left-hander with a blazing fastball who became one of baseball’s leading pitchers of the 1950s, died on Friday in Palos Heights, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. He was 88.
The cause was gall bladder cancer, his son Robert said.
Pierce was only 5 feet 10 inches and 160 pounds or so, but his smooth mechanics enabled him to become a power pitcher with the ball club then known as the Go-Go Sox, which relied on pitching, speed and defense in an era dominated by the power-hitting Yankees.