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Archive for the ‘Pitchers’ Category

Cardinals nemesis Mickey Lolich got assist from ex-Redbird

Posted in Games, Opponents, Pitchers, Prospects on December 29, 2025| 19 Comments »

Mickey Lolich was at a crossroads in his pitching career when a former Cardinals ace came to his rescue.

A left-hander with a stellar fastball he couldn’t control, Lolich, 21, was an unhappy prospect in the Tigers system when he was dispatched to Portland (Ore.) in 1962. The pitching coach there, Gerry Staley, 41, served a dual role as reliever.

Staley had been a big winner for the Cardinals before becoming a closer for the White Sox. Perhaps his biggest save came later with the work he did on Lolich. Staley taught him how to make a fastball sink. Lolich became a pitcher instead of a thrower, a winner instead of a loser. The sinkerball made all the difference.

Six years later, Lolich earned the 1968 World Series Most Valuable Player Award for beating the Cardinals three times, including in the decisive Game 7.

In his 2018 book “Joy in Tigertown,” Lolich suggested Staley deserved a 1968 World Series share for helping him become a success. “Meeting him was one of the great breaks of my career,” Lolich said. “Maybe the most important one.”

Wild thing

Two-year-old Mickey Lolich was pedaling a tricycle as fast as he could in his Portland (Ore.) neighborhood when he lost control and slammed into the kickstand of a parked motorcycle. The big bike crashed down on the tyke, pinning him to the ground. His left collarbone was fractured.

“Well, back in 1942, they just sort of strapped your arm across your chest and waited for it to heal,” Lolich recalled to Pat Batcheller of Detroit Public Radio (WDET, 101.9 FM) in 2018. “When they took the bindings off, I had total atrophy in my left arm. It wasn’t working at all.”

Though Mickey was right-handed, a doctor advised the Lolich family to encourage him to use his left hand and arm as much as possible to build strength. His parents “tied my right arm behind my back and made me use my left hand,” Lolich told Detroit Public Radio. “I wanted to throw those little cars and trucks, so I threw them left-handed … and that’s how I became a left-handed pitcher.”

The kid learned to throw with velocity, too. In his senior high school season, Lolich struck out 71 in 42 innings. He was 17 when the Tigers signed him in 1958 and told him to report to training camp the following spring.

Lolich’s first manager in the minors was fellow Portland native Johnny Pesky, the former Red Sox shortstop whose late throw to the plate enabled Enos Slaughter to score the winning run for the Cardinals in Game 7 of the 1946 World Series.

When Braves executive Birdie Tebbetts saw Lolich’s fastball in April 1959, he told Marvin West of the Knoxville News-Sentinel, “I’d give cold cash for this Lolich boy.”

The problem was control. In a four-hit shutout of Asheville in May 1959, Lolich walked nine but was bailed out by five double plays. A month later, in a two-hitter to beat Macon, he walked 11 and threw four wild pitches.

Lolich began each of his first three pro seasons (1959-61) with Class A Knoxville and was demoted to Class B Durham each year. In June 1961, after Lolich gave up no hits but nine walks and four runs in a five-inning start, Knoxville manager Frank Carswell told the News-Sentinel, “I’ve seen some strange games, but I can’t remember seeing one pitcher give away a decision without a hit.”

Headed home

After a strong spring training in 1962, Lolich was assigned to Class AAA Denver, but he was a bust (0-4, 16.50 ERA). In late May, the Tigers demoted him to Knoxville, but Lolich refused to return there. Instead, he went home to Portland. The Tigers suspended him.

Portland had a city league for amateur and semipro players in conjunction with the American Amateur Baseball Congress. Lolich showed up one night in the uniform of Archer Blower, a maker of industrial fans, faced 12 batters and struck out all of them, the Oregon Daily Journal reported.

Blown away by the performance, the Tigers quickly reinstated Lolich and arranged for him to pitch the rest of the summer for the Portland Beavers, the Class AAA club of the Kansas City Athletics. That’s when Gerry Staley got a look at him. In the book “Summer of ’68,” Lolich told author Tim Wendel, “He (Staley) asked if I’d give him 10 days to let him try and turn me into a pitcher. All I was then was a thrower, really. I’d stand out there and throw it as hard as I could.”

Lolich agreed to the proposal.

Starting and closing

Gerry Staley went from Brush Prairie, his rural hometown in Washington state, into pro baseball as a rawboned right-handed pitcher who “looks as if he could whip a wounded bear,” Dwight Chapin of the Vancouver Columbian noted.

When he was with a Cardinals farm club in 1947, Staley was throwing warmup tosses to infielder Julius Schoendienst, brother of St. Louis second baseman Red Schoendienst. “He noticed I had a natural sinker when I threw three-quarters overhand,” Staley recalled to United Press International. “He said my sinker did more than my fastball. So I stuck with it.”

Using the sinker seven out of every 10 pitches, Staley became a prominent starter with the Cardinals. He had five consecutive double-digit win seasons (1949-53) for St. Louis. His win totals included 19 in 1951, 17 in 1952 and 18 in 1953.

In explaining to Al Crombie of the Vancouver Columbian how he threw the sinker, Staley said, “You have to release the ball off one finger more than the other, and then I roll my wrist to get a little more of the downspin on the ball.”

Staley threw a heavy sinker. According to the Vancouver newspaper, “It breaks down at the last second, and as the surprised hitter gets his bat around on it, most of the ball isn’t there. Most of the time it dribbles off harmlessly to an infielder and is made to order for starting double plays.”

Traded to the Reds in December 1954, Staley went on to the Yankees and then the White Sox, who made him a reliever. In 1959, Staley got the save in the win that clinched for the White Sox their first American League pennant in 40 years. He appeared in 67 games that season and had eight wins, 15 saves and a 2.24 ERA. The next year also was stellar for him (13 wins, nine saves. 2.42 ERA).

Released by the Tigers in October 1961, Staley snared an offer to coach and pitch for Portland.

Soaring with a sinker

Mickey Lolich became Staley’s star pupil. As author Tim Wendel noted, “After a week or so, Lolich caught on to what Staley was trying to teach him _  how it was better to be a sinkerball pitcher, with control, than a kid trying to throw 100 mph on every pitch. The new goal was to keep the ball low, often away from the hitter, consistently hitting the outside corner.”

Staley also taught Lolich to extend his pregame warmup time. The extra pitches tired his arm a bit and gave more sink to his sinker.

The results were impressive. In 130 innings for Portland, Lolich struck out 138 and yielded 116 hits. The next year, he reached the majors with Detroit. “Gerry Staley changed my whole life,” Lolich told Tim Wendel. “It’s as simple as that.”

In the 1968 World Series, Lolich won Games 2, 5 and 7. He went the route in all three, posting a 1.67 ERA.

Lolich had double-digit wins 12 years in a row (1964-75), including 25 in 1971 and 22 in 1972. He pitched more than 300 innings in a season four consecutive times (1971-74).

In 16 seasons in the majors with the Tigers (1963-75), Mets (1976) and Padres (1978-79), Lolich earned 217 wins and had 41 shutouts. He is the Tigers’ career leader in strikeouts (2,679), starts (459) and shutouts (39).

The 1962 season with Portland was Gerry Staley’s last in professional baseball. He became superintendent of the Clark County (Washington) Parks Department. “It was time I went to work,” he told the Vancouver Columbian.

After retiring in 1982, Staley enjoyed gardening and fishing for steelhead trout. Once a week, he would take time to carefully autograph items mailed to him by baseball fans. “There are some people who won’t sign unless they get paid for it,” Staley said to the Vancouver newspaper. “What the heck. I’ve got enough to live on. It’s nice to be remembered.”

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Randy Jones reached lofty heights by staying grounded

Posted in Games, Opponents, Pitchers on December 8, 2025| 20 Comments »

To get batters out in the big leagues, Randy Jones needed to make them hit the ball on the ground.

That’s what the Padres left-hander did when he pitched his most impressive game _ a 10-inning one-hitter to beat the Cardinals in 1975. Twenty-two of the 30 outs were ground balls.

When batters lifted the ball in the air against Jones, bad stuff often happened _ like the game at St. Louis when Hector Cruz and Lou Brock hit inside-the-park home runs to beat him in 1976.

A 20-game winner the season after he lost 22, and recipient of the 1976 National League Cy Young Award, Jones was 75 when he died on Nov. 18, 2025.

Portrait of a prospect

Randy Jones grew up in Brea, Calif., near Anaheim. Another prominent big-league pitcher, Walter Johnson, spent his teen years there after his family moved from Kansas. Looking to cash in on an oil boom, the Johnsons settled in the village of Olinda, now a Brea neighborhood.

Jones liked baseball and followed the Dodgers (his favorite players were Sandy Koufax and Tommy Davis). He showed promise as a pitcher. In 1963, when Jones was 13, his school principal asked a friend, Washington Senators left-hander Claude Osteen, to give the teen a pitching lesson. Osteen emphasized to Jones the importance of throwing strikes and keeping the ball down in the zone.

“He had a good sinker, even at 13,” Osteen recalled to The Sporting News, “but he threw sidearm. I advised him to throw more overhanded, or three-quarters.”

Jones went on to pitch in high school and at Chapman College, but arm ailments caused him to lose velocity. In explaining why he’d offered Jones only a partial baseball scholarship in 1968, University of Southern California (USC) coach Rod Dedeaux told columnist Jim Murray, “He’s only got half a fastball.”

Padres scouts Marty Keough and Cliff Ditto saw enough to recommend Jones. The Padres picked him in the fifth round of the 1972 amateur draft. Keough (who later scouted for the Cardinals) told Dave Anderson of the New York Times, “He threw strikes … and he got people out.”

Welcome to The Show

Duke Snider and Jackie Brandt, the former Cardinal, were Jones’ managers in the minors, but the person who had the biggest influence on him there was pitching instructor Warren Hacker. A former Cub and the uncle of future Cardinals coach Rich Hacker, Warren Hacker “taught me to throw a better sinker,” Jones told the New York Times. “He showed me how to place my fingers differently and how to apply pressure with them.”

The sinker became the pitch that got Jones to the big leagues just a year after he was drafted. His debut with the Padres came in June 1973 versus the Mets. The first batter to get a hit against Jones was 42-year-old Willie Mays, who blasted his 656th career home run over the wall in left-center at Shea Stadium. Boxscore

A week later, Jones made his first start, at home versus the Braves, and Hank Aaron, 39, became the second player to slug a homer against him. It was the 692nd of Aaron’s career. “The home run came off a fastball outside,” Aaron told United Press International. “The kid got it up. Had it been down a little, I probably would have popped it up.” Boxscore

Facing Aaron and Mays, who were big-leaguers before Jones started kindergarten, wasn’t the end of the rookie’s storybook experiences. His first big-league win came in the ballpark, Dodger Stadium, where Jones’ father took him as a youth to cheer for the home team. Jones beat them, pitching a four-hitter and getting 18 outs on ground balls. Dazed, he told The Sporting News, “I finished the ninth inning and didn’t realize the game was over.” Boxscore

Reconstruction project

Based on Jones’ seven wins as a rookie, including a shutout of the 1973 Mets (who were on their way to becoming National League champions), the Padres had high hopes for him in 1974, but Jones instead posted an 8-22 record. Though the Padres scored two or fewer runs in 17 of those losses, lack of support wasn’t the sole reason for the poor mark. Jones’ pitching deteriorated as the season progressed (4.46 ERA in August; 6.23 in September.) “My confidence was completely shot,” he told The Sporting News.

After the season, the Padres hired pitching coach Tom Morgan. As Angels pitching coach, Morgan turned Nolan Ryan into an ace by getting him to alter his shoulder motion. “If you ask me who had more influence on me than anybody in my career, I’d have to say Tom Morgan,” Ryan told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Morgan did for Jones what he’d done for Ryan. “He said I was opening up too soon with my right shoulder, that I wasn’t pushing off the rubber with my left foot, that I was pitching stiff-legged and that I was throwing all arm and no body,” Jones said to The Sporting News.

In short, Jones told the Los Angeles Times, Morgan “basically reconstructed my delivery … He gave me the fundamentals to be consistent.”

The turnaround was immediate. Jones was 20-12 with a league-best 2.24 ERA in 1975. He won two one-hitters _ versus the Cardinals and Reds.

Luis Melendez (who batted .248 for his career, but .571 against Jones) singled sharply to open the seventh for the lone St. Louis hit. The Cardinals managed just two fly balls. “It was the best game of my career because of all the ground balls the Cardinals hit,” Jones told the Associated Press. Boxscore

Two months later, facing a lineup featuring Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez, Jones gave up only a double to Bill Plummer and beat a Big Red Machine team headed for a World Series championship. He got 20 outs on ground balls. Boxscore

After Jones induced 22 ground-ball outs in a three-hit shutout of the Braves, pitcher Phil Niekro said to The Sporting News, “You get the feeling he can make the batter ground the ball to shortstop almost any time he wants to.” Boxscore

Location and movement

Jones basically relied on a sinker and slider. Roger Craig, who became Jones’ pitching coach (1976-77) and then manager (1978-79), said Jones threw a sinker 60 to 70 percent of the time, and a slider the other 30 to 40 percent. “Craig estimates that Jones’ sinker breaks down five to 10 inches and breaks away up to six inches from a right-handed batter,” the New York Times reported.

Jones’ fastball was clocked at about 75 mph. Foes and teammates alike kidded him that it was more like 27 mph.

In rating pitchers for the Philadelphia Daily News, Pete Rose said “the two who gave me the most trouble were Jim Brewer and Randy Jones.”

Rose was a career .183 hitter versus Jones. “Randy had him crazy,” Padres catcher Fred Kendall told the New York Times. Kendall recalled when Rose stood at the plate and yelled to Jones, “Throw hard, damn it, throw hard.”

Cardinals first baseman Ron Fairly told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1975, “He has a sinker. That’s all it is, and not a very hard one at that.”

Fairly’s teammate, Keith Hernandez, saw it differently. In his book “I’m Keith Hernandez,” the 1979 National League batting champion said of Jones, “Anyone who dismissed him as a soft tosser missed the point. With a hard sinker and a wicked hard slider, much like Tommy John’s, Randy threw his fastball hard enough to keep hitters off-balance.”

As Jones told The Sporting News, “My fastball is good enough that I can come inside on right-handed hitters and keep them honest.”

Jones also put batters out of synch by working fast. A game with Jones and Jim Kaat as starting pitchers was completed in one hour, 29 minutes. Jones finished a two-hitter versus Larry Dierker and the Astros in one hour, 37 minutes. Boxscore and Boxscore

Six of Jones’ 1975 wins came in games lasting less than one hour, 45 minutes.

Ups and downs

Jones followed his 20-win season of 1975 with a league-leading 22 wins and the Cy Young Award in 1976. He also was first in the league in innings pitched (315.1) and complete games (25), and had a stretch of 68 innings without issuing a walk.

Though the Cardinals were a mess (72-90) that season, they played like the Gashouse Gang when facing Jones. He was 1-3 against them.

On June 18, 1976, the Cardinals snapped Jones’ seven-game winning streak with a 7-4 victory at Busch Memorial Stadium.

In the fourth inning, with Ted Simmons on second, Hector Cruz (hitless against Jones in his career) drove a high pitch deep to left-center. Willie Davis leapt and got his glove on the ball, but, when he hit the wall, the ball popped free and shot toward the infield. Cruz circled the bases for an inside-the-park home run.

An inning later, with Don Kessinger on first, Lou Brock (a career .190 hitter versus Jones) punched a pitch to right-center. The ball hit a seam in the AstroTurf, bounced over Davis’ head and rolled to the wall. Brock streaked home with the second inside-the-park homer of the game. “The odds are real strong on that not happening again,” Jones told the Post-Dispatch. Boxscore

In October 1976, Jones had surgery to repair a severed nerve in the bicep tendon of his left arm. He never had another winning season, finishing with a career mark of 100-123.

Terrific tutor

Back home in Poway, Calif., Jones placed an ad in a local newspaper, offering private pitching instruction. Joe Zito signed up his son, 12-year-old Barry Zito, at a cost of $50 per lesson. “We had it,” Joe Zito recalled to the New York Times. “It was the food money.”

The lessons took place in the backyard of Jones’ hilltop home. Getting pitching tips from a Cy Young Award winner was something “I would kind of marvel at,” Barry Zito told the Associated Press.

According to the New York Times, Jones tutored Zito, a left-hander, once a week for more than three years and videotaped their sessions. Jones used a tough-love approach. One time, after Zito kept throwing pitches into the middle of the strike zone, Jones yelled, “We’re not playing darts. Never throw at the bull’s-eye.”

Zito recalled to the Associated Press, “When I did something incorrectly, he’d spit tobacco juice on my shoes, Nike high-tops we could barely afford.”

Reminded of that, Jones told the wire service, “I had to get his attention, and that worked with Barry. He didn’t focus really well when we first started. By the time, he got into his teens, he locked in. He just kept getting better.”

In 2002, two years after reaching the majors with Oakland, Zito was a 23-game winner and recipient of the American League Cy Young Award.

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How Lee Smith got wake-up calls on career and health

Posted in Pitchers on November 18, 2025| 11 Comments »

In 2025, relief ace Lee Smith was interviewed by Jon Paul Morosi for the Baseball Hall of Fame podcast “The Road to Cooperstown.”

Here are excerpts:

Lee Arthur Smith was from rural Louisiana. On the recommendation of scout Buck O’Neil, the Cubs selected Smith in the second round of the 1975 amateur draft.

Smith: “I was playing sandlot baseball and we didn’t have a catcher, so I decided to catch … I had no chest protector … Buck comes looking for me. He said, ‘I’m looking for a boy named Lee Arthur.’ Nobody knew me as Lee Arthur … He said, ‘We’re thinking about drafting you.’ I said, ‘For the military?’ ”

When Smith was with minor-league Midland (Texas), his manager, former Cubs catcher Randy Hundley, converted him from starter to reliever. Objecting to the switch, Smith decided to quit and play college basketball for Northwestern State.

Smith: “That relief pitching thing I didn’t like. Back then, it was, you’re not good enough to start, so they threw you in the bullpen … My first love was basketball … Billy Williams (then a Cubs minor-league instructor) came to my house and talked to me (about returning to baseball) … I can’t say what he said, but it worked. That’s all that matters.”

(Smith reached the majors with the Cubs in September 1980 and became their closer in July 1982. Playing primarily for the Cubs, Cardinals and Red Sox, he earned 478 saves in 18 seasons.)

On taking naps during afternoon Cubs games at Wrigley Field:

Smith: “The best thing to do was to put a heating pad on your back and lay on the training room table. I’d be out … The job of the assistant trainer was to make sure I had on the right uniform and that I got there (to the bullpen) by the sixth inning … There’s nothing better than waking up with a three-run lead.”

On becoming buddies with the Wrigley Field grounds crew:

Smith: “I found they got time-and-a-half after 4:30. That started me doing that long, slow walk from the bullpen (to the mound). I said to them, ‘I’m taking my time so that you can send all your kids to college.’ … They made a mint off of me after the seventh inning. I took care of my grounds crew boys.”

On taking advantage of the shadows that covered home plate at Wrigley Field in late afternoons:

Smith: “I struck out Eric Davis looking to end a game. Eric complained to umpire Frank Pulli that the ball was a couple of inches outside. Frank said, ‘Yeah, but it sounded like a strike.’ ”

On playing for Cardinals manager Joe Torre before Torre went to the Yankees:

Smith: “He didn’t talk a whole lot. He’d bring me into the game, hand the ball to me and walk off. (Later), he compared me to (the Yankees’) Mariano Rivera and said, ‘Those were the only guys I’d just give the ball to and walk off the mound.’ ”

On having shortstop Ozzie Smith (no relation) as a Cardinals teammate:

Smith: “Ozzie used to give me a hard time about taking too much time between pitches … I love harassing him … He saved my butt a few times. When that ball was hit up the middle, I would think, base hit, and I’d look back and there was Ozzie. He always took good care of me.”

His interest in baseball history:

Smith: “I have a room in my house where I collect the memorabilia from the Negro League. I’m trying to do some (research) on Hilton Smith.”

On being diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis, a buildup of abnormal proteins that thicken the heart muscle, preventing it from working as it should. Smith received a heart transplant in July 2024:

Smith: “My doctor told me I got a mulligan. My wife, Dyana, has taken care of me … I feel really good.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, amyloidosis occurs more commonly in men. People of African descent appear to be at higher risk. Smith was asked what advice he’d have for them.

Smith: “Get checkups. Get blood work. Listen to your wives.”

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Classic combo: Jim Kaat, Lee Smith, Bruce Sutter

Posted in Games, Opponents, Pitchers on November 12, 2025| 14 Comments »

A run-of-the-mill second game of a Saturday afternoon doubleheader at Wrigley Field turned into a showcase featuring a trio of future Hall of Fame pitchers.

Jim Kaat and Lee Smith were the starters in the Cardinals versus Cubs game on June 26, 1982, at Chicago. Kaat got the win and Smith took the loss in a 2-1 St. Louis triumph. The save went to Bruce Sutter. All three pitchers would be elected to baseball’s shrine in Cooperstown, N.Y.

For Sutter, earning a save was standard _ a five-time National League saves leader with the Cubs (1979-80) and Cardinals (1981-82 and 1984) _ but starts were uncommon then for Kaat and always were rare for Smith.

A prominent starter during his prime with the Twins and White Sox, Kaat was converted to a relief role in 1979. The start against the Cubs was just his second in two years.

Smith pitched in 1,022 games in the majors but made only six starts.

The longshot odds of Kaat and Smith opposing one another as starters made their matchup extra-special.

Making adjustments

Kaat, 43, was the primary left-handed reliever in a 1982 Cardinals bullpen that had Sutter as the closer and Doug Bair as the right-handed setup man. After Kaat struggled early _ his ERA for the season was 6.75 on May 1 _ pitching coach Hub Kittle worked with him to use a sidearm motion. “When he drops down, his ball moves more,” Kittle told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I think he throws harder down low, too.”

The altered delivery helped Kaat. He didn’t allow a run in 12 of 15 relief appearances from May 2 to June 20.

Meanwhile, Smith, 24, was part of a 1982 Cubs bullpen with veterans Willie Hernandez, Bill Campbell and Dick Tidrow. Hernandez and Campbell got most of the save opportunities early in the season, but Cubs pitching coach Bill Connors told the Chicago Tribune, “Smitty can be a bullpen star. If you need a strikeout, he’s the guy who’s going to get it for you. Some people say he’s not consistent with his fastball, that he tires easily and loses his stuff. They’re wrong.”

When Cubs starters Dickie Noles (knee) and Randy Martz (shoulder) went on the disabled list in June, manager Lee Elia moved Smith into the rotation. Before then, his only big-league start came in the 1981 season finale against the Phillies.

Smith started twice for the 1982 Cubs before facing the Cardinals.

Fine-tuned engine

With the Cubs’ top run producer (Bill Buckner) and best home run hitter (Leon Durham) batting left-handed, Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog chose a pair of left-handers, Dave LaPoint and Kaat, to start the June 26 doubleheader.

In Game 1, LaPoint (eight innings) and Sutter (one) confounded the Cubs, and St. Louis won, 4-1. Boxscore

As Kaat recalled to podcaster Jon Paul Morosi, “I’m sitting in the clubhouse and (broadcaster) Harry Caray’s on the air and he’s saying, ‘Well, the Cardinals got the best of us, but we’ve got a chance in Game 2, because we’ve got hard-throwing Lee Smith and the Cardinals got 43-year-old, soft-tossing Jim Kaat.’ ”

(Kaat had been around so long that his manager, Whitey Herzog, batted against him 20 years earlier when Herzog was with the 1962 Orioles. Kaat struck Herzog on the right elbow with a pitch and Herzog had to leave the game.)

The Cubs scored a run in the first, but Kaat found a groove and held them scoreless over the next five innings. Described by the Tribune as “a genuine geriatric marvel,” Kaat relied on “guile, breaking stuff and an occasional sneaky fast one,” the newspaper noted.

“In relief pitching, you have a tendency to come in and gun like you’re gunning the engine of a car,” Kaat said to the Post-Dispatch. “Starting pitching is entirely different. I don’t try to throw as hard. I try to stay within myself.”

Unlike Kaat, Smith was a hotrod. Displaying a 95 mph fastball, he gave up a run in the second on consecutive doubles by Ken Oberkfell and Gene Tenace. The winning run came in the third when, with two outs, Lonnie Smith singled, stole second and scored on a Keith Hernandez single.

Herzog said he planned to let Kaat pitch five innings, but he sent him out in the sixth because Buckner and Durham were due to bat. Kaat retired the side in order, then was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the seventh.

On being taken out after throwing 82 pitches, Kaat told the Post-Dispatch, “Emotion always tells you that you could have gone longer, but common sense tells you that you’ve got to bring pitchers in when you’ve got our bullpen.”

The Cubs loaded the bases in the seventh against Bair, and again in the eighth versus Bair and Sutter, but couldn’t score either time. (The Cubs stranded 11 runners in the game.) Sutter got his second save of the day with a scoreless ninth. The win for Kaat was his 280th in the majors.

Kaat, Sutter and Smith were three of eight future Hall of Famers in uniform during that game. The others: Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith, Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg, Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog, Cardinals coach Red Schoendienst and Cubs coach Billy Williams. Boxscore

What a relief

Smith was 0-4 with a 4.94 ERA as a starter for the 1982 Cubs. In July, they moved him back to the bullpen and he excelled as the closer (seven saves, 1.32 ERA in August; seven saves, 0.57 ERA in September.) He never started another game in the majors.

Kaat returned to the Cardinals bullpen. In July, he allowed just one run in 14 appearances. The Cardinals gave him one more start, his 625th and last in the big leagues, on Sept. 18 against the Mets. Boxscore

Sutter (nine wins, 36 saves, 70 games pitched) and Kaat (five wins, two saves, 62 appearances) helped the 1982 Cardinals become division champions. Then they won the National League pennant and World Series title.

Kaat pitched his final season, his 25th in the big leagues, with the 1983 Cardinals before being released in July.

After stints with the Cubs and Red Sox, Smith was acquired by the Cardinals in May 1990. In four seasons (1990-93) with St. Louis, Smith earned 160 saves. Only Jason Isringhausen has more saves (217) as a Cardinal. In 1991, Smith had 47 saves for St. Louis. The only Cardinals with a higher single-season total are Ryan Helsley (49 in 2024) and Trevor Rosenthal (48 in 2015).

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1982 Cardinals played Jim Kaat style of baseball

Posted in Broadcasters, Games, Pitchers on November 7, 2025| 13 Comments »

In 2025, Jim Kaat was interviewed by Jon Paul Morosi for the Baseball Hall of Fame podcast “The Road to Cooperstown.”

Here are excerpts:

Being enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame:

Kaat: “I’m probably the only pitcher inducted based on longevity, dependability, accountability (rather than) dominance … There are a lot of guys who are there because they’re thoroughbreds, but there’s room for a Clydesdale as well.”

The secret to pitching 25 years (1959-83) in the big leagues:

Kaat: “I didn’t play Little League baseball. I didn’t really pitch organized baseball until I was about 15 _ American Legion ball in Michigan. Before that, we just had neighborhood kids, you’d get eight, 10 kids together, and go out and play … My sports were fast-pitch softball and bowling. Little did I know that those two exercises are great for the pitching arm … because your arm is going underhanded. I didn’t abuse my arm. Lucas Giolito (2019 all-star) threw 90 mph when he was 14 years old. He’s probably suffered through some injuries because of that. I probably threw 90 in my early 20s. There wasn’t an emphasis on velocity. It was movement and control.”

On youth baseball today:

Kaat: “It’s become so competitive. There is so much pressure on these young kids that I think a lot of times, by the time they’re 16, they’re probably burned out. A lot of it is the coaches and the parents … When I see the parents nowadays, they’re hanging on the fence, screaming at their kids, ‘Get the ball over.’ They’re paying big money to send these kids to these schools. They’ve taken the fun out of it. I never had to go through that. I think that’s a big reason I was able to pitch for a long time.”

On his father, John Kaat:

Kaat: “I have a picture on my desk of my dad standing in front of the Hall of Fame in 1947. He went to see Lefty Grove’s induction. That was his favorite player. He was an avid fan.”

On what he might have done if he didn’t become a big-league pitcher:

Kaat: “I’d have loved to have been a small-town high school basketball coach. You’d have a lot of influence on kids.”

On Twins teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew:

Kaat: “Harmon kind of set the tone for the behavior of the Twins … If you look at his penmanship, it’s the most immaculate, perfect, and he taught all the Twins players … He insisted, ‘Don’t you want to write your name so people know who you are?’ (Today) the Twins’ top-paid player, Carlos Correa, (signs) C.C. You don’t even know who it is.”

On Twins teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Rod Carew:

Kaat: “He took batting practice with us the end of 1966 and he was hitting some home runs. Then I think he found out that we didn’t care about exit velocity or launch angle … He was a magician with the bat. He changed his stance pitch to pitch. He moved all over the place. He got about some 30 bunt hits a year.”

On Twins teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Tony Oliva:

Kaat: “American League catchers in those days … would say the one guy we feared coming up in a clutch situation was Tony O. because Tony was that blend of power, average and speed.”

On Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers starter who opposed Kaat in Games 2, 5 and 7 of the 1965 World Series (Koufax won two of the three):

Kaat: “Happy to say he became a friend. He’s one of the (congratulatory) calls I got when I (was elected to) the Hall of Fame. We’ve stayed in touch. We’ve had some dinners together through (ex-Cardinal) Bill White, who was my broadcast mentor. He and Sandy live close to one another in the summer in Pennsylvania. I cross paths with Sandy a fair amount.”

On White Sox teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Dick Allen, who came up to the majors with the Phillies:

Kaat: “Had he been brought up in the Cardinals organization, where they had more black players, (Lou) Brock and (Curt) Flood, (Bob) Gibson, Bill White … it would have been easier for him … Dick suffered a lot in Philadelphia … It was tough for him as a black star in Philadelphia.”

On pitching for the Phillies (1976-79):

Kaat: “The end of my time in Philadelphia in 1979, I wasn’t pitching much. Danny Ozark was not a manager that had much confidence in guys who didn’t throw hard. I used to tell him, ‘Danny, Walter Johnson’s not around anymore.’ ”

On pitching in 62 games for the 1982 Cardinals at age 43 and being a part of a World Series championship team:

Kaat: “That was the most exciting team … The most enjoyable year I ever had … We hit 67 home runs as a team, stole 200 bases, had Bruce Sutter at the end of the games … To see that team play every day and the havoc it created for the opposition … Willie McGee would get on first. Boom! He’s on third … That was such a rush for me, waiting that long and to be a part of a team that … was totally foreign to the way the game is played today … Baseball came from the words base to base, and that’s what we did … That was the kind of baseball I was raised on.”

On what he told rookie pitcher John Stuper, who, with the Cardinals on the brink of elimination, pitched a four-hitter to beat Don Sutton and the Brewers in World Series Game 6:

Kaat: “I was kind of like a mentor to Stuper. I sat with him on the plane (after Game 5). I said, ‘Stupe, nobody expects you to win tomorrow. We’re facing Don Sutton. He’s going to the Hall of Fame. (Pretend) it’s a 10 o’clock in the morning exhibition game. Have some fun out there. Don’t worry about it.’ ”

On Cardinals teammate Keith Hernandez:

Kaat: “I don’t think there was ever a player I played with that was more intense on every play of the game … He kind of personified our team in that every play, every day, there was an intensity that’s hard to have over 162 games.”

On what he’s most proud of in his broadcasting career:

Kaat: “I learned from Tim McCarver to be honest and objective … Not being a homer.”

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Bobby Tiefenauer made his best pitch and got hitched

Posted in Games, Pitchers, Prospects on October 10, 2025| 8 Comments »

In September 1950, Bobby Tiefenauer was young, successful and in love.

A 20-year-old reliever for a Cardinals farm club in Winston-Salem, N.C., Tiefenauer threw a knuckleball that had batters swinging at air. His manager, George Kissell, credited him with making his team the best in the league.

Tiefenauer’s No. 1 fan was his sweetheart back home in the mining district of Missouri. Rosemarie Henson agreed to marry the pitcher at home plate before a game at Winston-Salem. The wedding date was set for Sept. 5, 1950.

On the morning of the big day, the ballclub’s business manager, Bill Bergesch, accompanied the couple to the county clerk’s office to obtain a marriage license. That’s when Bergesch learned the bride was 17. “We almost missed having this wedding,” Bergesch later told the Winston-Salem Sentinel.

Because Rosemarie was younger than 18, she needed the written consent of her parents in order for a license to be issued, the county clerk said. Rosemarie’s mother, who was in town for the wedding, promptly gave her consent, but dad was back in Missouri, working in a mine, the Sentinel reported.

The clerk said if the father could send a telegram of consent by 5 p.m. that day, the wedding could be held that night as scheduled at Southside Park. Frantic calls were made to Missouri. As the clock ticked, Bergesch paced the floor. “One might have thought he was the groom,” Carlton Byrd of the Sentinel observed.

A few minutes before 5, the father’s telegram arrived and the license was issued. “It was close, but we made it,” Bergesch told the Sentinel.

The couple rushed to the ballpark for the 7:30 p.m. ceremony. A total of 3,050 spectators came out. Tiefenauer had wanted the wedding held at home plate so that all his teammates could be present, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. He also made a request to George Kissell: The groom wanted to pitch in the game that night against the Burlington (N.C.) Bees.

The bride was dressed in a satin gown. Her matron of honor was Kissell’s wife. Tiefenauer wore a suit. The Rev. Mark Q. Tuttle, a Methodist pastor, officiated. After the service, “the couple moved under an archway of bats held by members of the Winston-Salem and Burlington teams,” the Journal reported.

The game began at 8:15. In the sixth inning, Kissell honored Tiefenauer’s request, sending him in to pitch. Tiefenauer’s mind may have been on other things. He faced five batters, plunking one with a pitch, walking another and giving up three hits, before being lifted.

Though his pitching that night was a dud, Tiefenauer’s marriage was a winner. It lasted for 50 years until his death in 2000.

No quit

Tiefenauer was from Desloge, 65 miles south of St. Louis and in an area of Missouri where mining of lead and zinc had been prominent. His high school didn’t have a baseball team, so Tiefenauer played sandlot ball and softball. A prep basketball talent, he got offers to play in college, but dreamed of pro baseball.

In the summer of 1947, after graduating from high school, Tiefenauer, 17, attended a Cardinals tryout camp in St. Louis and was signed to a pro contract. The club told him to report to minor-league spring training at Albany, Ga., in 1948. When he got there, however, he failed to impress and was sent home.

While playing softball, Tiefenauer found he could make his overhand throws around the infield move like a knuckler. He tried it with a baseball, too, with encouraging results. That summer of 1948, Tiefenauer, 18, went to a Cardinals tryout camp at Fredericktown, Mo., and told scout Joe Monahan he’d developed a knuckleball pitch. Monahan liked what he saw and signed him.

The Cardinals sent the teen to a Class D farm club in Tallassee, an Alabama cotton mill town on the Tallapoosa River in the Emerald Mountains. Tiefenauer returned there for a full season in 1949 and won 17. That earned him the promotion to Winston-Salem for 1950.

Dipsy-doo

The Winston-Salem club managed by George Kissell featured pitcher Vinegar Bend Mizell and second baseman Earl Weaver. Even at 19, Weaver was feuding with umpires the way he would years later as Orioles manager. In describing a Weaver plate appearance to the Winston-Salem Sentinel, Kissell said in 1950, “He really stands up there and talks to those umpires. He had a strike called on him on a bad pitch and he really squawked.”

Kissell chose Tiefenauer to be his top reliever, in part, because the knuckleballer could work multiple games in a row. It was a wise decision. Tiefenauer consistently secured wins for the team by baffling batters with the knuckler.

Fayetteville (N.C.) manager Mule Haas, the former outfielder who played in three World Series for the Philadelphia Athletics, said to the Sentinel, “I’ve seen a lot of guys who throw that dipsy-doo stuff, but this kid (Tiefenauer) has the stuff to become the best (knuckleballer) I’ve seen.”

Carolina League umpire Johnny Allen, a former big-league pitcher, told Kissell he’d never seen anyone throw a more effective knuckleball than Tiefenauer.

Kissell said to the Winston-Salem Journal, “If his first pitch is a strike, the batter had better look out, because he’s not going to see anything but those knucklers. I saw him make one pitch that dropped two feet just as it started across the plate.”

The bravest members of the Winston-Salem team were the catchers tasked with corralling Tiefenauer’s knuckleball. Bullpen catcher Preston Shepherd didn’t wear any protective face covering when he took Tiefenauer’s warmup throws because the team’s only catcher’s mask was worn by the starter.

“Preston Shepherd is now insisting we buy him a mask to wear in the bullpen,” Kissell said to the Journal. “The other night he got hit in the eye by one of Tiefenauer’s knucklers. He swears the ball hopped right over his mitt.”

Even with a mask, one of Winston-Salem’s regular catchers, Willie Osteen, told the Sentinel, “I sure hate to call for his knuckleball with runners on base. I’m afraid I can’t catch the ball.”

Winston-Salem won the league championship with a 106-47 record. Tiefenauer won 16, but Kissell said the reliever contributed to 50 of the team’s wins. “Bobby was certainly the key to the pennant,” Kissell told the Journal.

Reidsville (N.C.) manager Herb Brett said to the newspaper, “Tiefenauer is the difference between a championship team and a second-division club … A lot of those victories chalked up to other pitchers (were) saved by his relief pitching.”

More work, the better

Tiefenauer went on to have many more excellent seasons in the minors, including for 1953 Rochester (9-3, 2.31 ERA), 1958 Toronto (17-5, 1.89), 1960 Rochester (11-4, 3.14) and 1967 Portland (6-1, 1.87).

The major leagues were a different story. Tiefenauer’s record was 9-25 (including 1-4 for the Cardinals), with 23 saves. Usually, he didn’t get to pitch a lot and his control suffered.

For example, his three stints with the Cardinals:

_ 1952: Eight innings, 12 hits allowed, seven walks.

_ 1955: 32.2 innings, 31 hits, 10 walks.

_ 1961: 4.1 innings, nine hits, four walks.

“I just need a lot of work,” Tiefenauer told the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in March 1955. “When I do pitch often, I can get the knuckler over.”

Tiefenauer’s most productive time in the majors came in a stretch with the Milwaukee Braves. Brought up from the minors in mid-August, he had a 1.21 ERA in 29.2 innings for Milwaukee in 1963. Tiefenauer spent all of 1964 with the Braves, pitched 73 innings and led them in saves (13).

The next year, though, another knuckleball pitcher, rookie Phil Niekro, arrived in the Braves’ bullpen and Tiefenauer was shipped to the Yankees (whose manager, Johnny Keane, had him in the Cardinals’ system).

At the plate, Tiefenauer had trouble making solid contact regardless of what pitch was thrown. In 39 at-bats in the majors, he had one hit _ a double versus the Giants’ Jack Sanford, a 24-game winner that year. Boxscore

Overcoming adversity

Tiefenauer didn’t discourage easily. He persevered through setbacks more dire than roster demotions or transfers.

In early May 1957, Tiefenauer arranged for his wife Rosemarie and their three sons to leave their house in Desloge and join him for the summer in Toronto while he pitched for the minor-league Maple Leafs there.

A couple of weeks later, a tornado “cut a path of havoc six blocks wide” through Desloge, the Associated Press reported. The twister lifted Tiefenauer’s two-story white frame house off its foundation and moved it 200 feet into the middle of the street, the Globe-Democrat reported. One side of the house was blown out.

Tiefenauer said the tornado also took the roof off his parents’ house and his mother was knocked unconscious when struck by falling boards, the Associated Press reported. O.M. McLeod, a miner who watched the tornado hit Desloge, told the wire service it sounded like “a steam engine with burned out bearings pulling a string of freight cars.”

Two years later, Tiefenauer was at 1959 spring training with the Cleveland Indians when he injured his right arm practicing pickoff throws. He went home to Desloge and sat out the entire season.

At one point that summer, Cleveland general manager Frank Lane asked Cardinals trainer Bob Bauman to examine Tiefenauer’s arm. Bauman discovered the pitcher had circulatory trouble. “My arm started to come around after he worked on it,” Tiefenauer told The Sporting News.

Tiefenauer resumed pitching in 1960 and continued to play in the pros until 1969, the year he turned 40. After that, Tiefenauer worked for many years as a pitching coach in the Phillies’ system. He also was the bullpen coach for the 1979 Phillies on manager Danny Ozark’s staff.

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