By the time the Yankees reached the 1976 World Series, Jim Mason was a forgotten man. After beginning the ‘75 season as the team’s starting shortstop, he gradually descended in the team’s pecking order as his offense slipped, first serving as a part-time player and then purely as a late-inning defensive replacement. Mason would appear in three World Series games in this capacity, drawing a single plate appearance in Game 3. Pat Zachry, that year’s NL Rookie of the Year, hung a 1-0 slider that Mason pulled into the right field seats. It would be his last at-bat in pinstripes.
James Percy Mason
Born: August 14, 1950 (Mobile, AL)
Yankees Tenure: 1974-76
Jim Mason grew up in Mobile, Alabama, where he played three sports and was enough of a prospect to be drafted by the Washington Senators 28th overall in the second round of the 1968 MLB Draft. After a brief stint at Low A, he jumped all the way up to Triple-A at just 19 after impressing the team’s manager, Ted Williams, during spring training. Mason, who the Hall of Famer dubbed a “can’t miss” prospect, spent the next three years at Triple-A, steadily improving on both sides of the ball (his defense hit a nadir in 1970, when he made 48 errors in 109 games at Triple-A Denver).
On September 26, 1971, a 21-year-old Mason debuted for Washington. He’d play in three games, including two against the Yankees, before season’s end. When the team moved to Texas the following year, Mason started off back at Denver but joined the Rangers in July. This time, he was there to stay. Mason split time at shortstop with fellow prospect Toby Harrah during the Rangers’ first two seasons, hitting just .203 with three home runs in 139 games while failing to wow on defense. As such, he continued to cede playing time to Harrah, precipitating his ouster in Texas. “I wasn’t playing and lost interest,” he said in a damning quote of this period.
After the ‘73 season, the Rangers sold Mason’s rights to the Yankees for $100,000 to spell aging shortstop Gene Michael. His first season in the Bronx would be the best of his career. The 23-year-old slashed .250/.302/.352 — all career highs by a healthy margin — while holding down a starting job for a full season for the only time in his career. But the next season he regressed mightily, hitting .152 and losing his starting job to Fred Stanley. Dick Young, the legendary Daily News writer who’d end up in the Hall of Fame, had a cutting diagnosis for Mason’s woes, calling him “a big guy with a small tolerance for pressure.”
Mason himself seemed to tacitly agree. “I completely lost my confidence last year,” he said in 1976. “I got to the point where I didn’t want the ball to come at me. If it did, I knew I was going to mess it up.” Whatever the cause of his downturn, he saw little improvement in 1976, hitting .180 while once again taking a back seat to Stanley. This made all the more remarkable his Game 3 homer that October, the Yankees’ only long ball of the series. Mason was the first player to hit a home run in his sole Fall Classic at-bat, a feat matched since only by Geoff Blum, who hit his in ‘05 while with the White Sox.
After the ‘76 season, the Yankees left Mason vulnerable in an expansion draft, where he was selected by the nascent Blue Jays. He’d spend the next three years bouncing between the Blue Jays, Rangers, and Expos before finding himself out of the game at the age of 29. Mason returned home to Mobile after his playing career was through.
While Jim Mason was never a star, he put together a nine year career that included one of the most improbable home runs in World Series history. Please join us in wishing him a very happy 76th birthday.
See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.