Jay Johnstone, Major League Outfielder and Prankster, Dies at 74

“Jay went up and hit a homer,” Reuss recalled. “Who in the history of baseball has dragged the infield in the fifth inning and hit a pinch-hit homer in the sixth?”

During the Dodgers’ 1982 spring training camp in Vero Beach, Fla., Johnstone locked Lasorda in his motel room one evening, after Lasorda had gone to bed, by tying a rope from his doorknob to a palm tree. Lasorda was freed by a laundryman who heard his hollering, and he made the team bus just in time for a trip to Orlando for an exhibition game.

John William Johnstone Jr. was born on Nov. 20, 1945, in Manchester, Conn. His father, an accountant, and his mother, Audrey (Whebell) Johnstone, moved the family to Southern California when Jay was a child, and he starred in baseball, basketball and football at Edgewood High School in West Covina.

Johnstone was signed by the California Angels in June 1963 and made his major league debut with them in July 1966. In addition to the Yankees and the Dodgers (with whom he did two stints), he played for the Chicago White Sox, the Oakland A’s, the Philadelphia Phillies, the San Diego Padres and the Chicago Cubs. A left-handed hitter, he had a career batting average of .267, hit 102 home runs and drove in 531 runs.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/sports/baseball/jay-johnstone-dead-coronavirus.html