Ted Wilks was a right-handed pitcher who suffered from ulcers and had trouble controling his weight.
He also had an amazing knack for winning games for the Cardinals.
As a 28-year-old rookie, Wilks won 14 of his first 15 decisions with the 1944 Cardinals and finished the season at 17-4 with a 2.64 ERA.
Manager Billy Southworth used Wilks, 5 feet 9 and 180 pounds, as a spot starter and reliever for the first part of the 1944 season. When George Munger went into the Army after posting an 11-3 record and 1.34 ERA, Wilks replaced him in the Cardinals’ rotation as the season entered July.
From July 2 through Aug. 29, Wilks won 11 consecutive decisions. During that stretch, he survived getting struck in the head by a line drive hit so hard that Southworth feared for Wilks’ life. The smash by Reds third baseman Steve Mesner during an Aug. 6 game at Cincinnati bounced high off Wilks’ skull and knocked out the pitcher. Boxscore
“Ted got out of that quite luckily,” Southworth told The Sporting News. “In my long experience in baseball, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
After striking Wilks, Southworth said, “the ball went about 40 feet into the air before (Whitey) Kurowski caught it at his regular third-base position. Wilks was knocked out and I’ll admit we were all pretty scared … Hit an inch lower, that drive could have been fatal.”
Said Wilks: “That ball came at me so fast I didn’t have time to duck.”
He recovered to pitch complete-game three-hitters in consecutive starts _ a 2-1 victory over the Cubs on Aug. 24 Boxscore and a 3-0 victory over the Reds on Aug. 29 that boosted Wilks’ record to 14-1. Boxscore
The son of a Polish immigrant who changed the family named from Wilzcek to Wilks when naturalized, Ted Wilks was born in Fulton, N.Y., about 20 miles from Syracuse. He joined the Cardinals’ organization as an amateur free agent in 1938 and spent six seasons in their minor-league system.
Because of ulcers, Wilks was classified 4-F and didn’t serve in the military during World War II. He was prone to gain weight, and headline writers poked fun at his waistline even while praising his pitching. Some examples from The Sporting News:
_ “Wilks Fills Out as Cardinals’ Fill-In”
_ “Chunky Ted Proves Winner”
_ “Chubby Righthander Rates Best of Majors’ Rookie Crop”
Frederick G. Lieb, a veteran baseball reporter, noted, “Ted is a husky young gent and needs to exercise to keep down to his best pitching weight of 175 pounds.”
Regardless, Wilks was an effective pitcher. In 36 games (21 starts) for the 1944 Cardinals, Wilks had 16 complete games and four shutouts, helping them win the National League pennant.
In the 1944 World Series, Wilks started Game 3 but yielded four runs in 2.2 innings and got the loss in the Browns’ 6-2 victory. It was suspected that ulcers hampered Wilks in that start. Boxscore
Three games later, Wilks got another chance _ and delivered one of the greatest relief stints in Cardinals history.
In Game 6, Wilks relieved starter Max Lanier with one out and two on in the sixth. He retired all 11 batters he faced and preserved the Series-clinching 3-1 victory. Boxscore
Converted to a reliever, Wilks thrived. He was 8-0 for the Cardinals in 1946, 4-0 in 1947 and 2-0 in 1950.
In a 10-year major-league career with the Cardinals, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, Wilks was 59-30.
RetroSimba 
I noticed that he logged quite a few innings pitching for Houston in the minors. You have to wonder if that didn’t contribute to his arm troubles. One things for sure, his positive attitude in being converted to a closer certainly helped him to make that transition.
You could be correct, Phillip, about the high innings pitched totals in the minors later causing arms woes for Ted Wilks. According to the Houston Chronicle, Wilks wanted to pitch all the time. The Chronicle described him as “a glutton for punishment, and he likes his work.” According to the Houston Post, it wasn’t unusual for Wilks to “start and finish both games of a doubleheader in the minors.”
Wilks told the Houston Chronicle, “It’s the starting pitchers who get the money.”
By the way, Eddie Dyer was Wilks’ manager for four consecutive seasons (1939-42) in the minors. During those years, Wilks pitched 235 innings for Houston in 1939, 197 innings for Houston in 1940, 248 innings for Houston in 1941 and 164 innings for Columbus in 1942. Dyer then was Wilks’ manager with the Cardinals from 1946-50.
In 1945, Wilks had two spurs and several bone chips removed from his pitching elbow.
One more note on Wilks: Left-hander Herb Score credited Wilks with turning around his career and making him an effective pitcher. In the Cleveland farm system in 1953, Score threw hard but was wild, walking 126 in 98 innings. Wilks became pitching coach of Cleveland’s farm club at Indianapolis in 1954 and worked diligently with Score. The results: Score was 22-5 with 330 strikeouts in 251 innings for 1954 Indianapolis. With Cleveland, Score appeared headed to a Hall of Fame career until a line drive struck him in the eye.