Hank Borowy, who died Monday in Brick, N.J., pitched in two World Series for the Yankees and lost the final game the last time the Cubs made it that far, in 1945.

He compiled a record of 108-82 for several teams over 10 major league seasons. In his prime, he pitched for New York and Chicago, and there was a ruckus in the Bronx when Larry McPhail sold him to the Cubs.

A native of Bloomfield, N.J., Borowy was a standout on the Fordham baseball team, where he went 33-1 over three seasons, eventually being elected to the university’s hall of fame.

After three years with the minor-league Newark Bears, he came north from spring training with the Yankees in 1942. His rookie year was stellar, as Borowy went 15-4 with a 2.52 earned run average. In 1943 he was nearly as good: 14-9, 2.82. In both years, Borowy pitched in the World Series against the Cardinals. In 1943, he pitched eight strong innings en route to a win in Game 3. The Yanks took the series in five games.

In 1945, maverick Yankees owner McPhail sent Borowy to the Cubs midseason in a sale that appalled fans and writers and raised hackles around the American League.

Borowy had continued his winning ways, going 17-12 in 1944,and at the time he was sold in 1945, he was already 10-5, the workhorse and ace of the Yankees’ somewhat beleaguered pitching corps. He would go 21-7 overall that year.

Nobody expressed any surprise when Borowy was put on waivers. The waiver technically allowed any team to offer to buy a player outright for $7,500, but if a team made an offer, the owner could decide not to make the deal. Owners routinely put half their teams on waivers to see if other teams would bite, thus disclosing their weaknesses. Waivers on premier players were thus usually ignored, and if no waiver was claimed, a player could be sold.

But after Borowy cleared waivers, McPhail audaciously sold him to the Cubs for $97,500, a huge sum for a player in 1945. The Washington Senators owner, Clark Griffith, protested the deal and decried the waiver system. (Indeed, the rules would be tightened in 1947, partly due to the Borowy case.) McPhail responded that the notoriously tightfisted Griffith wouldn’t have bought Borowy “with the Queen Mary thrown in.”

In New York, the deal looked inexplicable. The Yankees were only four games behind the first-place Tigers at the time; they would finish five games out. Reading the tea leaves, Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich speculated that Yankee manager Joe McCarthy “was not fond of Borowy despite his winning record.”

On the other hand, the sale apparently played a role in McCarthy’s departure after 15 years at the helm in the Bronx. According to “Yankee Century” by Glenn Stout, “The manager couldn’t take it…. Throwing away a potential pennant and selling the staff ace in the midst of the race was something he couldn’t understand…. Mc-Carthy turned inward. Baseball was everything to him…. His drinking problem grew worse.”

Meanwhile, the first-place Cubs were looking for some pitching for their stretch run, and got it.

“If they can’t win with the pitching strength Borowy represents, they’ll never win,” McPhail said, somewhat prophetically. But Borowy would win 11 more games that summer, and the Cubs made it to the World Series for the first time since 1938.

Borowy started and won Game 1, shutting out the Tigers while scattering six hits over nine innings. He was not as sharp starting Game 5, which he lost, but he was fresh enough to post a win in Game 6 for four strong innings in relief.

Cubs manager Charley Grimm rolled the dice one too many times when he started Borowy again in Game 7 on just three days’ rest; Borowy faced just three men in the first and failed to record a single out. The Tigers went on to win the game and the series. The Chicago Daily Tribune headlined, “Tigers Earn $6,123 Each; Rout Cubs, 9 to 3.” The prize money was the highest ever, but the headline certainly reflects baseball’s changing economics as well as the fact that a Cub failure to take the series was hardly unexpected, even in 1945. “Our Cubs Will Be Better Yet For 1946 Race,” the paper headlined a week later. They weren’t.

Borowy stayed with the Cubs for three more seasons, reaching double-digit in wins only in 1946, with 12. In 1949, he was traded to Philadelphia, where he had one mediocre season before settling into a reliever’s role. By 1952, he was out of baseball.

He had happy memories of a distinguished career that included two appearances in the All-Star Game, barnstorming tours to Alaskan Army and Navy bases during World War II to entertain the troops, and a reputation as one of the best pitchers of his time.

Borowy had always lived in Bloomfield, and he opened a real estate agency there that he ran for many years before retiring to the Jersey shore.

Henry Ludwig Borowy

Born May 12, 1916, in Bloomfield, N.J.; died August 23 at his son’s home in Brick, N.J.; survived by his children, Claire Gelli, Mary Ellen Borowy, and Henry Borowy; two brothers; a sister, and four grandsons.