Something screwy usually happened to Cardinals batters when they faced Jack Baldschun, but the one time they beat him, it opened a crack in the solid hold the Phillies had on first place in the National League.
Soon after, when the crack turned into a chasm, the Phillies fell and the Cardinals climbed past them to win the 1964 pennant.
A right-hander who relied on a screwball and thrived on a heavy workload, Baldschun was one of baseball’s best relievers in the early 1960s.
The right stuff
As a youth in his hometown of Greenville, Ohio, 40 miles northwest of Dayton, Baldschun was interested in several sports, including harness racing. “My dad owned some horses and drove them in races in Ohio, Michigan and Illinois,” Baldschun told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I traveled with him (as a stable boy) in the summer.”
Baldschun was good at playing golf and the piano, but even better at baseball. He attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, for two years, then entered baseball’s minor leagues in 1956 when he was 19.
Pitching in the Reds’ system, “I only threw 80, maybe 83, mph,” Baldschun said to the Philadelphia Daily News. “I’d never get by with just a fastball.”
Baldschun experimented with a variety of other pitches but nothing clicked. Then in 1960, when he was with Class A Columbia (S.C.) of the South Atlantic League, Baldschun discovered a way to make a screwball move sharply onto the corners of the plate. “I threw it three-quarters, off the backside of my fingers,” he told the Philadelphia Daily News.
Columbia manager and former big-league pitcher Max Macon encouraged Baldschun to use the pitch in games and successfully converted him from starter to reliever.
“I’ve got three different screwballs,” Baldschun said to the Dayton Daily News. “I can make it break straight down, down and in, and down and out.”
Macon said he recommended Baldschun “two or three times” to the Reds during the 1960 season but they weren’t interested, the Greenville Daily Advocate reported. After the season, the Reds didn’t put Baldschun on their 40-man winter roster and the Phillies picked him in the draft of unprotected players.
“He comes highly recommended,” Phillies manager Gene Mauch told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Max Macon said he’d stake his reputation that Baldschun has what it takes to help a big-league club in relief.”
Power pitcher
Making the leap from Class A to the majors, Baldschun, 25, earned a spot with the 1961 Phillies. The rookie was a bright light in a dark season. The Phillies lost 23 in a row and finished 47-107, but Baldschun (5-3) had a winning record and led National League pitchers in appearances (65, all in relief). In July, he pitched in eight consecutive games and allowed only one run in that stretch.
“He has done it by using a bewildering screwball, the confidence of a burglar, and a right arm that looks like it belongs to Popeye,” Ron Smith of the Philadelphia Inquirer concluded.
Estimating he unleashed the screwball for 85 to 90 percent of his pitches, Baldschun told the newspaper, “I believe I could throw 10 straight screwballs, tell them it’s coming and still get them out, somehow, eight of the 10 times.”
The rookie also began a workout regimen to help his right arm withstand the strain of delivering screwballs. “He performed a set of isometric exercises before each game and increased the strength of his forearm until it was as big as his bicep,” the Greenville Daily Advocate reported.
Mauch told the Dayton Daily News, “Baldschun is blessed with some kind of arm that defies all the rules. I never saw a man with a freak pitch who could work as often. That’s where his personal exercising program comes in. His entire right side is actually brutish.”
His rookie season was no fluke. The next year, Baldschun was 12-7 and led the 1962 Phillies in ERA (2.96), saves (13) and appearances (67). He followed that with an 11-7 record and 2.30 ERA in 1963, achieving team highs in saves (16) and appearances (65). On Easter Sunday, Baldschun won both games of a doubleheader against the Cardinals at St. Louis. Boxscore and Boxscore
Down and out
Tempers flared when the Phillies and Cardinals played in St. Louis on May 4, 1964. After the Phillies’ Dennis Bennett knocked down Julian Javier with a pitch, Bob Gibson retaliated when Bennett came to bat.
The next time Gibson batted, Baldschun was pitching. His first pitch made Gibson skip away from the plate. The next one plunked him in the thigh. Gibson flipped his bat toward Baldschun, who caught it with his glove hand. Gibson was ejected, but the Cardinals got revenge. On the first pitch from Baldschun after he hit Gibson, Carl Warwick slammed a two-run home run.
The Phillies, who won 10 of their first 12, remained contenders in 1964. In July, Mauch pitched Baldschun in 19 games, including five in a row.
When the Cardinals came to Philadelphia on Sept. 9, 1964, the Phillies (83-55) were in first place, six games ahead of three teams in second: Cardinals (77-61), Reds (77-61) and Giants (78-62).
Phillies ace Jim Bunning pitched six innings in the series opener against the Cardinals before being lifted for Baldschun, who was tasked with protecting a 4-3 lead. Baldschun pitched a scoreless seventh and a scoreless eighth, then drove in a run with a double (the only extra-base hit of his big-league career) versus Barney Schultz and extended the lead to 5-3. “I felt sure we’d win after that,” Baldschun told the Philadelphia Daily News.
The Connie Mack Stadium scoreboard showed two significant results: the Giants lost to the Dodgers and the Reds lost to the Pirates. If Baldschun could secure a win over the Cardinals with a shutdown ninth, the Phillies’ lead in the standings would increase to seven games.
“If they win it, they break it open,” Cardinals third baseman Ken Boyer told the Philadelphia Daily News. “A seven-game pad would have been tough.”
In the ninth, the Cardinals scored a run, making it 5-4, and had Lou Brock on third, two outs, with Boyer at the plate. With the count 1-and-2, Boyer stroked a single to center, driving in Brock with the tying run.
Mauch stuck with Baldschun. He pitched a scoreless 10th, but in the 11th, his fifth inning of relief, the Cardinals knocked him out, and won, 10-5. Boxscore
Instead, of being seven games back, the Cardinals were five behind.
A week later, Baldschun lost back-to-back games against the Dodgers. Mauch tried others in the closer role, the Phillies lost 10 in a row, and the Cardinals clinched the pennant on the last day of the season.
Changing the script
Though Baldschun led the 1964 Phillies in saves (21) and appearances (71), Mauch proposed changes to him in 1965. “He wanted me not to throw the screwball,” Baldschun recalled to the Philadelphia Daily News. “I just hated to give up my best pitch.”
Mauch said he thought Baldschun was nibbling the corners too much with the screwball and getting behind on counts, and that the pitch would be more effective thrown with two strikes on the batter, or in special situations, instead of most of the time, the Dayton Daily News reported.
In the book “We Played the Game,” Phillies reliever Ed Roebuck said, “Baldschun was an excellent relief pitcher but he always went deep in the count, and this really upset Mauch.”
Another Phillies pitcher, Chris Short, told the Philadelphia Daily News, “I know that three-fourths of the gray hair Gene Mauch got _ and he got a lot _ came from Jack Baldschun. He had a great year for us, but he was always falling behind in the count. We used to call him ‘Three-and-Oh.’ “
Baldschun pitched in 65 games for the 1965 Phillies but shared the closer role with rookie Gary Wagner.
On Dec. 6, 1965, Baldschun was traded to the Orioles for Jackie Brandt and Darold Knowles. Three days later, the Orioles sent him with Milt Pappas and Dick Simpson to the Reds for Frank Robinson.
(According to The Cincinnati Post, Reds owner Bill DeWitt Sr. said the club initially wanted Pappas and Curt Blefary, but the Orioles wouldn’t part with Blefary. The trade was revived when the Orioles acquired Baldschun and offered him.)
Baldschun (1-5, 5.49 ERA) flopped with the Reds in 1966, and spent most of 1967 and 1968 in the minors. “The Reds wanted me to die in the minor leagues,” Baldschun told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “In my heart, I knew I could pitch.”
An expansion team, the Padres, picked him up in 1969. Roger Craig was their pitching coach. Though Baldschun pitched in 61 games for the 1969 Padres and had a 7-2 record, he confessed to the Philadelphia Daily News, “The screwball wasn’t breaking. It was rolling.”
Baldschun, 33, pitched his final big-league games with the Padres in 1970. The Cardinals, the first team he faced in the majors, also were the last he pitched against. Boxscore
In 49 games versus the Cardinals, Baldschun was 5-1 with three saves. Overall for his big-league career, he was 48-41 with 60 saves.
RetroSimba 
1964 Phillies September starting pitching: Bunning, Short and three Career Sore Arms: Ray Culp, Art Mahaffey and Dennis Bennett (Culp would have a couple of good seasons with Boston). Gibson’s ejection in that 1964 game might have cost him a twenty-win season.
The 1964 Phillies played 31 September games and 17 of those were started by Jim Bunning (9) and Chris Short (8). Bunning entered September with a 2.17 ERA for the season, but his ERA for that month was 4.68. It was an especially tough month for Art Mahaffey. He entered September with a season record of 12-6 and was 0-3 for that month.
Indeed, Bob Gibson almost surely would have had his first 20-win season in 1964 if not for the ejection. When he got tossed after pitching 4 innings and the Cardinals in front, Roger Craig relieved, pitched 5 innings and was the winning pitcher in the 9-2 Cardinals victory. Gibson finished with 19 wins for the season.
I don’t know the average expiration date of an arm that predominately throws a screwball, but I would think Baldschun outlasted it. That he discovered an exercise routine that kept his arm sharp and healthy speaks to his intelligence, specifically his understanding of his body, of his arm and reminds me of the smarts of Mike Marshall for the same reasons.
I love that quote you found “….the confidence of a burglar, and a right arm that looks like it belongs to Popeye.”
Maybe Mauch did have a point. All that pitching into late counts can not only make a manager crazy, but I would think makes the minds of fielders stray and make more errors and/or get late jumps on batted balls. But at the same time, I like it when a pitcher ignores advice and sticks to what got him there, to the major leagues.
So glad you mentioned Mike Marshall. He seemed a lot like Jack Baldschun _ right-handed screwball specialist who made a ton of appearances. Also, both pitched for Gene Mauch. Mike Marshall said it was Mauch, managing the Expos, who encouraged him to throw the screwball. Marshall described his relationship with Mauch as being “like poetry:” https://retrosimba.com/2021/06/13/cardinals-created-dramatic-endings-vs-mike-marshall/
Thanks for making a post on a player I didn’t know about. I sure did enjoy reading up on him. I also didn’t know that he was a part of the Frank Robinson trade. Jack Baldschun talks about the pressure he felt in Cincinnati because of that. Also, due in part because his arm was starting to wear down. He also mentions how maybe it would have been different had he been able to stay with the Orioles because in the American League at that time, most of the hitters had never had to face a pitcher who threw a screwball. I suppose to receive praise and accolades from Stan Musial is the ultimate. I did notice though that in the few at bats Stan Musial had against Jack Baldschun he did pretty well .
I know what you mean about Jack Baldschun and the Frank Robinson trade. Just like most people refer to the trade of Ernie Broglio for Lou Brock (and forget that Bobby Shantz, and others, were involved), most refer to the trade of Milt Pappas for Frank Robinson and forget about Jack Baldschun or Dick Simpson.
To your point, when he was sent from the Phillies to the Orioles, Baldschun told the Baltimore Sun, “I’m really pleased to be going to Baltimore. If I was to be traded, I wanted it to be to the American League.”
In 1965, the Orioles had such aging relievers as Stu Miller, Harvey Haddix and Don Larsen. At the time they acquired Baldschun, the Orioles said it was to get a younger reliever in the mix.
After sending Baldschun to the Reds, the man who made the deal for Baltimore, Harry Dalton, told the Sun that the number of good pitching prospects in the Orioles’ farm system enabled them to give up Baldschun. Indeed, in 1966, when Frank Robinson’s hitting led the Orioles to a World Series championship, they got relief help from rookies Eddie Watt and Gene Brabender (as well as veterans such as Stu Miller, Moe Drabowsky and Dick Hall).
Regarding Baldschun being part of the Robinson trade, the Sun reported, “Baldschun is an important man in the deal as far as the Reds are concerned. They needed help in the bullpen and Baldschun should supply it.”
The Phils made a great deal getting Darold Knowles for Baldschun. If they’d been smart enough to keep him, there might have been no A’s dynasty.
Yep, the Phillies kept Darold Knowles for only one season.
Knowles did well for the 1966 Phillies, making 69 relief appearances, earning 13 saves and posting a 6-5 record with a 3.05 ERA. Yet, on Nov. 30, 1966, the Phillies sent him to the Senators for outfielder Don Lock.
“The swap of Knowles came as a surprise in view of the fact the Phillies are vigorously seeking help in the bullpen,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Knowles helped the A’s become World Series champions in 1973, appearing in all seven games of the Fall Classic against the Mets.
The Phillies tried to replace Knowles with another former Oriole, Dick Hall, in 1967.
I don’t think many people throw the screwball anymore, but the first person that comes to my mind would be Fernando Valenzuela. He and the screwball are so interrelated that he had a biography called, “The Screwball Artist.”
Good point, Gary. In 2014, the New York Times did a story that was headlined: “The Mystery of the Vanishing Screwball” and noted that few threw the pitch anymore at the big-league level.
Fernando Valenzuela was at a Dodgers instructional league in the fall of 1979 when he learned the screwball from Dodgers reliever Bobby Castillo. Described by the Associated Press as his “million-dollar pitch,” it accelerated Valenzuela’s rise to the majors. He debuted with the Dodgers in September 1980.