Sal Yvars

Salvador Anthony Yvars (February 20, 1924 – December 10, 2008) was an American professional baseball catcher. He played all or part of eight seasons in Major League Baseball, with the New York Giants from 1947 to 1953 and the St. Louis Cardinals from 1953 to 1954. Born in Manhattan's Little Italy to a Valencian gravedigger and a Sicilian laundress, he was a three-sport star at White Plains High School, playing football, basketball, and baseball. He originally signed with the Giants in 1942, and enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces shortly afterward. His lone hit of the season came off of Schoolboy Rowe, a single to left field. In the 1980s, he said he wrote a memoir titled How We Stole the Pennant, but lost his publishing deal, he claimed, when he refused to detail the personal peccadilloes of teammates.

The Giants traded Ivars to St. Louis in 1953. He retired the next year, and worked as an investment advisor for 50 years.

In 210 games over eight seasons, Yvars posted a .244 batting average (102-for-418) with 41 runs, 10 home runs and 42 RBI. Defensively, he recorded a .987 fielding percentage.

Yvars is interred in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.