1943-1944
1946-1947
ROY PARTEE   C

Roy Partee was born on September 7, 1917, in Los Angeles. He attended public school, including three years at Bret Harte Junior High and three years at George Washington High School, where he also played football all three years. He played baseball throughout, and Sunday semipro ball, too.

He kept going by the Los Angeles Angels park and working out, helping catch batting practice at  Wrigley Field. As soon as he graduated in 1937, he went to  Catalina Island for about two months and then he came home and they offered him a contract.

Roy had an excellent year at Bisbee., playing in 125 games, and hit for a .365 average. When he reported to St. Joseph the next spring, he weighed over 200 pounds. He only hit .245 at the Class-C club, and was released a month before spring training began in 1940.

He was back on track, hitting .284 with seven homers at Class C, and was acquired by the San Francisco Seals, jumping up to the Triple-A Pacific Coast League for 1941. He actually trained with the Seals in the spring of 1942, but in March, he got his break when Portsmouth bought his contract. He played in 114 games in 1942, and got off to a tremendous start, hitting .390 by June. By year’s end, Partee had hit for a .299 batting average and also improved his best season defensively behind the plate. The Red Sox bought his contract in September.

He was one of the first to report to the Red Sox for spring training in 1943, held in the north at nearby Tufts University because of wartime travel restriction, and he made the team. He became the team’s first-string catcher in both 1943 and 1944. He started the 1944 season strongly, batting .333 after the first month of the season, but then tailed off significantly, dipping to .243 at season’s end. 

There had been uncertainty throughout the season about his status with the military draft and therefore the Sox picked up Hal Wagner for insurance. At one point Roy was called for a physical at the Boston induction center, but was rejected with an injured elbow. He later was reclassified 1-A and subject to immediate call. 

In October, he was inducted into the United States Army at San Pedro, California. He ended up getting on a boat to go to the South Pacific on Leyte Island and was there for a year. After the Japanese surrender in September 1945, he got a chance to play some baseball, playing for the Leyte team against teams in Manila.

Roy was discharged from the Army in early April 1946 and joined the Red Sox. Hal Wagner did most of the catching, but Roy backed him up, appearing in 40 games and batting .315 in 128 plate appearances. He played in five games of the 1946 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, including complete games in Game Five and Game Six. He injured his thumb in the sixth inning of Game Two, and though it was not broken, his thumb was numb, causing him to miss Games Three and Four. 

He had a solid year in 1947, appearing in 60 games as primary backup to Birdie Tebbetts. It was a competent, but not spectacular year. He hit .231 and drove in 16 runs. In November, Roy was part of an eight-player deal with the St. Louis Browns. 

He got the chance to play, for the Browns. Though Les Moss was their main catcher, Roy appeared in 82 games, with 258 plate appearances. He barely cracked .200, hitting hit .203, with 17 RBIs. In December 1948, he was traded to the New York Yankees.

He was put on the roster of the Newark Bears, but was sold to the San Francisco Seals in mid-January 1949 and wound up playing in the Pacific Coast League again in 1949 and 1950. He caught for the Kansas City Blues (American Association) in 1951 and 1952. His final year in the Yankees organization was with Syracuse in 1953, but he sprained his back, threw a disc out and had only hit .178. He refused to report to Syracuse in 1954 and was released outright.

In just 26 games in 1954, he hit .200 for Sacramento and .303 for the Class-A Edmonton Eskimos. Beginning in 1955, Partee managed the Stockton Ports (Class-C California League) for three years. 

We worked as a coaching instructor on the Giants’ minor-league staff in 1958. In 1959 he managed in Oregon for the Eugene Emeralds (Class-B Northwest League), a Giants farm club, and played in one game, his last one in organized baseball. 

Roy then went into scouting. In April 1961, he signed as one of the first group of scouts working for the New York Mets, scouting for them until 1988.

In 1989 he retired as Northern California scout supervisor and passed away at age 83, on December 27, 2000, at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka, California.