RetroSimba

(Updated Oct. 6, 2019)

Cal McLish grew up as a Cardinals fan and nearly began his professional pitching career with them.

Instead, he made his big-league debut as a teenager against the Cardinals in St. Louis. The first batter he faced: Stan Musial.

Cal McLish’s full name was Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish. His father named him after leaders: Calvin Coolidge was president when McLish was born on Dec. 1, 1925, in Anadarko, Okla. Julius Caesar had been emperor of Rome, and “tuskahoma” was a Choctaw Indian word for warrior.

In the October 2005 edition of Indian Ink Magazine, McLish was interviewed by writer Chuck Murr, who told the story of how the pitcher almost started his career with the Cardinals:

“Part Choctaw and Cherokee Indian, McLish played at 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds,” Murr wrote. “He grew up in Oklahoma listening to the St. Louis Cardinals on the radio. In the fall of 1943, the Cardinals invited him to St. Louis for the World Series so that he could be introduced to commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in order to settle a dispute as to who owned the rights to the young right-hander.

“This was decades before baseball had an annual player draft. Back then, teams had hordes of scouts trying to sign prospects and both the Cardinals and Washington Senators thought they had McLish’s name on the dotted line. In the Senators’ case, there was a signature but no dotted line.

“McLish explained to Landis how he and another young Oklahoma player had signed an agreement to go to Washington for two weeks and work out with the Senators, whose scout tried unsuccessfully to make a binding contract out of a napkin that had been signed by the boys.”

Landis ruled neither club had signed McLish properly. McLish then attended a Dodgers tryout camp and was signed by Brooklyn while still a senior in high school.

With big-league rosters depleted because of World War II, the Dodgers brought McLish, 18, to the majors in 1944. He was introduced by general manager Branch Rickey to reporters at Brooklyn’s Ebbetts Field. Baseball Digest magazine, describing the scene years later, reported that McLish “wore country clothes and looked dazed by his sudden transportation from Oklahoma to the Big City.”

McLish made his big-league debut on May 13, 1944, against the Cardinals at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis before a Saturday afternoon gathering of 2,264. Brought on in relief of starter Rube Melton with one out and the bases loaded in the fifth inning, here is a description of the scene by writer Charles Dexter in a July 1959 profile of McLish in Baseball Digest:

“The first game Cal tossed in the majors was something to remember. Stan Musial was up. Walker Cooper waited in the batter’s circle. And next was Whitey Kurowski … The knees of 34-year-old Cal McLish, bold and brave, still knock when he thinks about it.”

McLish pitched 1.2 innings that day, allowing two runs on three hits and a walk. The Cardinals won, 8-4. Boxscore

He went on to compile a 92-92 record and 4.01 ERA for the Dodgers, Pirates, Cubs, Indians, Reds, White Sox and Phillies in a big-league career that lasted until 1964.

McLish also spent 16 seasons as a major-league pitching coach for the Phillies, Expos and Brewers. He was the pitching coach for Milwaukee in 1982 when the Brewers won the pennant and faced the Cardinals in the World Series.

In a 2019 edition of the Baseball Hall of Fame magazine, “Memories and Dreams,” pitcher Ferguson Jenkins credits McLish with being a mentor.

“I played winter ball for two years in Puerto Rico, 1963 and 1964, and I developed a pretty good slider under the tutelage of Cal McLish,” Jenkins said. “I think that pitch probably got me to the big leagues quicker than any other aspect of learning how to play the game the right way.”