Whitey Ford

NEW YORK — Whitey Ford, the street-smart New Yorker who had the best winning percentage of any pitcher in the 20th century and helped the Yankees become baseball's perennial champions in the 1950s and '60s, has died. He was 91.

A family member told The Associated Press on Friday that Ford died at his Long Island home Thursday night.

Ford had suffered from the effects of Alzheimer's disease in recent years.

Nicknamed “The Chairman of the Board,” Ford was a wily left-hander who pitched from 1950-67 in the major leagues, all with the Yankees. He was among the most dependable pitchers in baseball history.

He won 236 games and lost just 106, a winning percentage of .690. He helped symbolize the machinelike efficiency of the Yankees in the mid-20th century, when only twice between Ford's rookie year and 1964 did they fail to make the postseason.

Ford spent his first year of professional baseball in Butler. Signed by the Yankees as an amateur free agent in 1947, he pitched for the Butler Yankees in the Class C Middle Atlantic League that same year.

Ford was 18 at the time and compiled a record of 13-4 with a 3.84 earned run average.

Butler resident Ben McLure, a longtime professional baseball scout, said he saw most of Ford's games with the Butler Yankees. He met Ford at the Yankees' spring training facility in Florida years later — when Ford was in his 70's — and said the pitcher still remembered Butler, particularly his manager, Frank Verdi.

Ford's death is the latest this year of a number of baseball greats: Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock and Bob Gibson.