Cloyd Boyer

Who is Cloyd Boyer?

Cloyd Victor Boyer Jr. is a former right-handed pitcher and pitching coach in Major League Baseball who played between 1949 and 1955 for the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Athletics.

Boyer was the oldest of fourteen children of marble cutter Chester Vern Boyer and his wife, the former Mabel Agnes Means, including sons Cloyd, Wayne, Ken, Lynn, Clete, Ronnie and Lenny and daughters Juanita Woodmansee, Leila, Dolores Webb, Pansy Schell, Shirley Lockhart, Bobbi McNary and Marcy Layton. All seven boys played professional baseball, with two of his brothers also reaching the major leagues as third basemen: Ken for the Cardinals, and Clete for the New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves.

In a five-season career, Boyer posted a 20-23 record with 198 strikeouts and a 4.73 earned run average in 395⅔ innings pitched, including 13 complete games, three shutouts, and two saves.

Cloyd Boyer also played for the Duluth Dukes, a Cardinals minor league team, in 1947. During the 1947 season in Duluth, Boyer compiled a record of 16 wins against 9 losses. He struck out 239 and easily took the strikeout lead in the Northern League. After that season, he was sold to the Houston Buffs, for whom he played in 1948.