Thaddeus Stanley Lepcio was born in Utica, New York on July 28, 1929 and passed away on December 5, 2019 at his home in Dedham, Massachusetts. The right-handed hitting Ted Lepcio was not a baseball superstar but he loved baseball and always wanted to be a big league player. He achieved that goal and played in the major leagues for 10 years playing second base, third base and shortstop for five different big league teams.
Ted Lepcio had made a rapid rise to the majors from the schoolyards and sandlots of Utica, New York, where he was born the seventh and last child of Michael and Frances Lepcio, who each emigrated from Eastern Europe in the second decade of the 20th century. Ted played both football and baseball at Proctor High School but baseball was his future. He played amateur and semipro ball throughout the area, often under assumed names. After graduating from high school he played for a number of teams including a semipro team in St. Albans, Vermont, teaming with some college players from Villanova University. The Villanova coach helped Lepcio get a baseball scholarship at Seton Hall in 1947.
Lepcio said that legendary coach and former major league player Owen T. Carroll Carroll helped make him a big-leaguer. In an interview shortly before he retired, Carroll said Lepcio was the best player he ever had at Seton Hall: “Lepcio was an all-around player,” Carroll told the New York Times. “He could field and he could hit the ball nine miles.” After his graduation from Seton Hall in 1951, Lepcio signed with the Red Sox for a reported $60,000, then joined the Triple-A Louisville Colonels.
After spring training in 1952, Lepcio made the Boston Red Sox major-league roster, and started the season’s first game, on the road against the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium where he went 1 for 4 with a stolen base and his team won the game 3-0. Lepcio said his first game was the most memorable of his 10-year major-league career. If the excitement of his first major-league game wasn’t enough, President Harry Truman threw out the first ball. As Truman tossed the ball there was a scramble, the ball fell to the ground, and Lepcio picked it up. He returned it to the president and chatted with him while pictures were taken. Lepcio is mentioned in Jimmy Piersall’s book, Fear Strikes Out, as his roommate during the 1952 season, when Piersall had to be hospitalized with mental issues. Lepcio often saved Piersall from being beaten up by his own teammates. Here you can listen to a 9 minute audio interview done by Nick Diunte with Ted Lepcio about Jimmy Piersall.
Boston 1952: Four Young Starters. Lou Boudreau, Red Sox Manager is flanked by four of his outstanding rookies who have all but replaced regulars in the starting lineup. Left to right are: Jim Piersall, shortstop; Ted Lepcio, second base; Boudreau; Faye Throneberry, outfield; and Sammy White, catcher. BETTMANN ARCHIVVE
Lepcio played with the Red Sox for all or parts of eight seasons appearing in 532 games but never played in more than 116 games in any season. In May of 1959 he and Dave Sisler were traded to the Detroit Tigers for Billy Hoeft. After just one season in Detroit he was again traded, this time to the Philadelphia Phillies. His start in Philly in 1960 didn’t go well as Lepcio expected a raise but when none was forthcoming, he decided not to report to Spring Training and sat out until late march when he finally got the raise he wanted. That didn’t sit well with manager Eddie Sawyer who called Lepcio “one of the worst ballplayers I ever saw.” As luck would have it, Sawyer quit the Phillies after an Opening Day loss to the Reds and Gene Mauch took over as the Philly skipper in what would be the first of his 26 years as a manager. Just before the 1961 season started, the Phillies sold Lepcio to the White Sox, who subsequently released him after just three plate appearances.
Lepcio was soon picked up by the Minnesota Twins who assigned him to their Triple-A affiliate, the Syracuse Chiefs. Lepcio played in 36 games for the Chiefs, mostly at second base, and though he was hitting a mere .183 he was called up to the Twins on July 7 thanks to former Red Sox teammate and current Twins manager Sam Mele. Lepcio’s batting average, .170, was anything but robust, but he could provide some pop. And “bomb the ball” Lepcio did; in his first four games in a Twins uniform he had three hits, each one was a home run and in the first month he hit seven home runs. On September 11, Lepcio played in his last big league game, as a ninth-inning replacement at third base. For the rest of the season, back problems, which required traction and surgery, kept him on the bench. Lepcio was released by the Twins on October 25. In a July 13 game Lepcio hit a grand slam home run in the first inning against the Cleveland Indians and Mudcat Grant at Cleveland Stadium giving the Twins a 5-0 lead that they never relinquished in the 9-6 victory. In an oddity, all four runs on the grand slam were unearned. In a July 23 game when the Twins beat the Indians 10-0 at Met Stadium Lepcio had his only multi-hit game as a Twin, getting 3 hits in 4 at bats with a home run and 2 RBI. In 47 games for Minnesota he hit just .170 but 7 of the 19 hits he did have were home runs and he plated 19 base runners.
He was immediately signed by the expansion New York Mets but was released the following April before the season started. Ted Lepcio had played his last professional baseball game.
Out of baseball at the age of 32, with his Seton Hall degree in hand, Lepcio was ready for life after baseball. He made his home in suburban Dedham, where he and his wife, Martha, raised their son, Thaddeus Stanley Lepcio, Jr. Lepcio immediately found a position with the Honeywell Corporation and later became an executive with St. Johnsbury Trucking, where he spent 22 years, the last as a vice president. Even at 80, Ted was still working as a transportation consultant for Stonepath. In the 1960’s he was a founder and early president of the BoSox Club, a Red Sox fan organization. He appeared regularly at Fenway Park for old-timers games into his 60s. Lepcio was inducted into the Seton Hall University Athletics Hall of Fame in 1973 and the Greater Utica Sports Hall of Fame in 1990.
Here you can listen to a 9 minute audio interview done by Nick Diunte with Ted Lepcio about Jimmy Piersall.
No official Obituary has been posted and no services have been announced. Ted Lepcio’s passing was originally reported as December 11, 2019 but according to RIPBaseball.com that was not the case. Obituary: Ted Lepcio (1929-2019)