Month: October 2016

Johnny Klippstein

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01011106-2After Cleveland’s big win last night in Game 1 of the World Series and a short post about Cleveland’s Hall of Fame player/manager Lou Boudreau, I thought I’d sit back, watch tonight’s Game 2 and post about a Chicago Cub.

Johnny Klippstein is not a name you hear very often but he pitched for the Chicago Cubs from 1950-1954.  Known as one of the “most liked guys in baseball” during his 18 year career, Klippstein pitched for 8 teams from 1950-1967 and posted a 101-118 record.  Nicknamed the “Wild Man of Borneo”, Klippstein was seen as a player with great potential who could turn in masterful performances from time to time.  It was often his lack of control that overshadowed his dominance on the mound.   Leading the league in hit-batters one year, he also claimed the single-season record for wild pitches twice.

In 1943, at the age of 15, Klippstein was visiting an uncle in Appleton, Wisconsin and decided to take advantage of a tryout camp being held locally by the St Louis Cardinals. After trying out, Klippstein was signed the following spring.  300 players tried out and out of all of them, Klippstein was the only to sign a contract.

After completing school in the spring of 1944, Klippstein reported to Allentown of the Class B Interstate League.  As one of the youngest players in the league, he won his first game but posted a 10.50 ERA.  After bouncing around the minors that season, Klippstein returned home to finish up his last year of high school.  Following the school year, he returned to baseball for the 1945 season and performed much better.  The Cardinals were finally starting to see the potential in Klippstein.

After missing the entire 1946 season due to being drafted into the Army, Klippstein returned to the Cardinal’s minor league season and struggled to regain his form.  After a disappointing season, the Cardinals lost Klippstein to the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1948 draft.  After excelling in the Dodgers minor league system through the 1949 season, the Dodgers ended up losing him to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for $10,000 in cash.

Klippstein made his major league debut with the Chicago Cubs but never blossomed with Chicago.  After the 1954 season, he was dealt to the Cincinnati Reds where he developed further as a pitcher, learning the slider and working on his control.  It was in 1958 the

St. Louis Cardinals Stan Musial

Klippstein facing Stan Musial as Cincinnati catcher Ed Bailey awaits the pitch.

Klippstein was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers where he reinvented himself as a relief specialist.  The following year, he would pitching over 50 games, the Dodgers would go on to win the National League Pennant and eventually defeat the White Sox.  1960 would be the season in which Klippstein would show his age and as the Dodgers became more concerned about his health and effectiveness, they traded him to the Cleveland Indians where he would go on to lead the league in saves with 14, post a respectable sub-3.00 ERA and was considered one of the most effective closers in all of baseball.

Despite his success, the Indians made him available for the expansion draft and shipped him to the Washington Senators in exchange for $25,000.  The Senators flopped that year and so did Klippstein, posting a 6.78 ERA and leading the league with ten wild pitches. Klippstein was shipped back to the Cincinnati at the end of the season.  The next year he pitched much better but found himself being traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in spring training of 1963.  He would go on to have the best season of his career pitching in 49 games and posting an ERA of 1.93.  The Phillies would go on to finish in fourth place that season. 1964 saw Klippstein being marginalized and found himself buried in the bullpen and eventually waived.  The Minnesota Twins would pick him up and he would go on to develop a quick-pitch curve which helped him to become one of the most effective closers in the league and help the Twins clinch the pennant.  The Twins would go on to lose to the Los Angeles Dodgers thanks in part to the magnificent pitching of Claude Osteen and Sandy Koufax.

1966 would see Klippstein on the hill just 26 times and found his 18 year career over.  He finished with a lifetime 4.24 ERA.  When asked about his “best season”, Klippstein often remarked that he never had one.

Despite wearing the uniform of 8 different teams in his career, Klippstein loved the Chicago Cubs and remained a die-hard Cubs fan for the rest of his life.   In 2003 while listening to the Cubs defeat the Marlins, he passed away after a long battle with prostate cancer.  I can only imagine how excited he is to now be looking down on his Cubs and his former Indians both sharing the spotlight in the 2o16 World Series.

Lou Boudreau

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01211202-2This will be a quick little update here as I’m currently watching Game 1 of the 2016 World Series.

What a season it has been as we finally arrive here at Game 1 with the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians facing off.  It’s certainly great to see two teams with such dedicated…and patient fans.

Who am I rooting for?  I’m excited for both teams but at the end of the day, I think I’ll have to go with the Chicago Cubs.  Their fans have waited longer and I’m a huge fan of their catcher David Ross.  What a career he has had.  He is hanging up his cleats after this year and getting to put a World Series ring on his finger would be the perfect send off.

This past weekend I was looking through a collection of Perez-Steele Hall of Fame postcards that I have accumulated through the years and came across Mr. Lou Boudreau.  Ironically, he was the player/manager of the last Cleveland Indians team to win the World Series.  Boudreau managed the Tribe from 1942 to 1950 and lead the team to a World Series title in 1948.  As their shortstop that year, he also hit .355.  Seems fitting to write about him tonight.  I love his signature on this post card.  Simple and legible – something you don’t see in today’s players signatures.

A few interesting facts about Boudreau – 1941 against the New York Yankees, he was responsible for starting the double play that ended Joe DiMaggio’s historic 56 game hitting streak.

In 1942 during his rookie year as Cleveland’s player/manager, Boudreau is said to have not only blown his nose while suffering from a cold in the dugout, but also the game.  Not feeling well enough to play the field that day, he decided to sit in the dugout and send signals to his third base coach.  At the time, Cleveland’s sign for a double-steal was a towel to the face.

Boudreau seemed to have forgotten that sign as Cleveland runner Pat Seerey pulled up into second base.  Seerey’s nickname was “Fat Pat” and it doesn’t take a genius to conclude that ol’ Fat Pat wasn’t stealing any bases anytime soon.  First base was occupied by a Cleveland runner who was just as slow.

As you can probably imagine, Boudreau’s cold that day led him to reach for the nearest towel to blow his nose.  This set off a verrrrry slooooow domino effect of two very overweight base runners taking off from their bases and attempting to advance.

While the stadium stood in shock to watch the opposing infielders easily toss out both of Boudreau’s fat  base-runners for an inning-ending double play, Boudreau lept to his feet barking at the third base coach for putting on such a stupid play.  The third base coach was just as stunned as the fans, the 2 base runners, and the opposing team.  He told Boudreau that it was in fact HIM who had given the sign for such a stupid play and it was then that Boudreau realized that he had “blown it”.  The Indians went on to lose that game.

Boudreau is also widely credited with creating the “Boudreau Shift” with the

migratedhopes of stopping the dead-pull hitter Ted Williams.  In July of 1946 as Williams was coming off of a May where he had hit .427 and the Red Sox were coming into Cleveland for a double-header with a five-game winning streak.  In the first game, Williams smashed a grand slam in the third inning and followed that up with two more dingers. By the end of the first game, Williams had racked up four hits, four runs scored, and eight RBI’s.  The Red Sox went on to win the first game 11-10.  In his first at-bat of the second game, Williams would double and score.

Boudreau had to do something defensively drastic.  Moving nearly every defensive player to flood the right side of the field, Boudreau hoped that the carnage would stop.  In his next at bat, Williams grounded out to Boudreu who was while still playing shortstop was actually standing closer to the first baseman.  The Red Sox would go on to win the second game as well with a final score of 6-4.  Later, in his biography Player-Manager, Boudreau would go on to say that the idea of the shift was spontaneous and was probably out of desperation that day.  The infield shift has been already been covered pretty extensively online.  One of the best articles can be found here.

As I wrap up this piece, the Indians are leading in the 9th, 6-0.

I haven’t seen any infield shifts yet.

Joe Cowley

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After retiring 27 batters without giving up a single hit on September 19, 1986; White Sox pitcher Joe Cowley became the 214th major league pitcher to toss a no-hitter to beat the red-hot Angels 7-1.  Not to take anything away from Cowley but it wasn’t exactly what you would think of when you think “no-hitter”.  01011102

Most of the no-hitters that I’ve seen happened to creep up on me (usually by the 5th inning) and leave me on the edge of my seat as I watch the pitcher battle deeper into the game and the defense making plays to keep that magic “0” in the “H” box on the scoreboard.

Most no-hitters are close to perfection.  Cowley’s no-hitter was closer to perfectly unconventional.

Sure, Cowley lasted 9 innings and the Angels failed to get a hit, so technically, by definition it was a “no-hitter” and his name is in the record book.

Ask Angels first-baseman Wally Joyner about the game and he’s flatly not impressed –

“He was either two feet outside or right on the black (the corner). He did his job. He got 27 outs. But he wasn’t tough at all, he wasn’t. We didn’t get a hit, that’s all that happened.  If you guys don’t look up at the scoreboard, you’d think he gave up eight or nine hits. When he was around the plate, he was barely around it. I’m not even frustrated. It wasn’t impressive, it wasn’t. Not to put Joe Cowley down, but it wasn’t impressive.”

Joyner’s take on the game probably had something to do with the fact that Cowley walked 7 batters  during the game, including walking the bases loaded in the 6th and then giving up a bases-loaded sacrifice fly to future Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson so not only did Cowley give up a run in his 9 innings of no-hit ball; he managed to give up an earned run. He wouldn’t win another major league baseball game in his career.

Baseball can be wacky like that.

Speaking of wacky, Joe Cowley was widely considered by many of his teammates to be just that.

During his 2 seasons (’84-’85) with the New York Yankees, there was hardly a funnier sight that watching manager Yogi Berra visit the mound to either talk to Cowley or remove him from the game.  Berra was all of five-seven and Cowley six-five.  When Yogi would get to the mound, Cowley would rest his hand on Yogi’s shoulder giving the crowd the impression that it was Berra getting the talking-to and not the other way around.

In 1985, Yankee manager Billy Martin spent most of the season trying to figure Cowley out. After heading to the mound to remove Cowley from a game, Martin was taken aback as Cowley greeted the manager by saying, “Hey Skip – don’t feel bad.  You’re making the right move getting me out of here.”

That season, Cowley would go 12-5 with the Yankees and his coaches and teammates all felt that he would have performed even better had he been able to keep his concentration on the mound.  As he demonstrated in his unconventional no-hitter a year later, Cowley had an infuriating penchant for walking batters.

Yankee teammate Don Baylor who at the time was the leader of the clubhouse as well as judge and jury of the Yankee kangaroo court would fine Cowley repeatedly for his bone-headed play.

After walking the lead-off hitter in fifth inning of a game, Cowley looked over to the Yankee dugout to see Baylor standing at the top of the steps with his hands on his hips glaring out at the pitcher’s mound.  Cowley  yelled over to Baylor, “I know, I know…I owe you ten for that one!”