Bob Shaw, RIP: Bon Vivant

For awhile, Bob Shaw, who died of cancer 23 September at 77, was a pretty good righthanded pitcher, a sinkerballer with a companion biting slider, whose crowning season was 1959---he helped pitch the "Go-Go" White Sox to the American League pennant.

The refugee Detroit Tiger became a mainstay on a pitching staff that included Hall of Famer in waiting Early Wynn and reliables Billy Pierce, Dick Donovan, and Gerry Staley, pitching for a team that included such grinding hustlers as two more future Hall of Famers, second baseman Nellie Fox and shortstop Luis Aparicio.

Shaw led the 1959 American League in winning percentage (.750)---one of only two times in his career he would lead his league in any significant category. (He would lead the league with the lowest walks per nine percentage---1.8---in 1962, for the Milwaukee Braves.)

His crowning moment was the 1959 World Series, when he held his own against Sandy Koufax---who was only then beginning to find hints of what would make him transcendent, if not quite figuring out the flaw that kept him from going from serviceable to Hall of Fame great---and beat him, 1-0, in Game Five, on an afternoon when Koufax turned the hideous Los Angeles Coliseum into his own pitching clinic.

Earlier in that Series, Shaw had started and lost Game Two, after dueling Johnny Podres (the hero of the only World Series conquest by the Brooklyn Dodgers) through six with a 2-0 lead. (The White Sox jumped Podres for a pair in the first, Ted Kluszewski pushing home Aparicio on an infield out, and Sherman Lollar following up with a single to send home Jim Landis.) But with two out in the seventh, Shaw got jumped bigtime---a solo bomb from pinch hitter (for Podres) Chuck Essegian, a walk (to Junior Gilliam), and a two-run bomb (from Charley Neal) chasing Shaw for Turk Lown, who held fort while Series MVP Larry Sherry did likewise to the Sox, the only blemish coming in the bottom of the eighth, when Al Smith doubled home Earl Torgeson.

That might have tied the game except that Sherman Lollar was indistinguishable from Sherman the Tank on the basepaths and got thrown out at home trying to score behind Torgeson. Sherry locked down the White Sox from that point onward.

Against Koufax in Game Five, in Koufax's only Series start, Shaw was outpitched. He scattered nine hits to Koufax's five but struck out one against Koufax's six. The game was decided pretty much in the top of the fourth, its only run coming when Fox and Landis pried singles out of Koufax before Lollar sent Fox home while grounding into a second-to-first double play; the Sox got nothing else out of either Koufax or his relief (in the eighth), Stan Williams, the Dodgers got nothing else out of Shaw or Game Three losing pitcher Dick Donovan (pitching the ninth).

The Dodgers went on to win the set behind Podres and Sherry back in Comiskey Park in Game Six; after yet another future Hall of Famer, Duke Snider, hit Wynn for a shot over the left centerfield fence with Wally Moon aboard in the third, the Dodgers climbed all over Wynn and Donovan in the fourth---an RBI single (Maury Wills, with Don Demeter aboard) and an RBI double (Podres, scoring Wills) back to back, chasing Wynn; a two-run double (Neal, with Podres and Gilliam aboard) and a two-run bomb (Moon) at Donovan's expense, leaving Turk Lown, Gerry Staley, and Billy Pierce to damage control, purely.

All Kluszewski's mammoth three-run bomb in the fourth could do was shorten the gulf to 8-3, Dodgers, and help send Podres out of the game . . . for Larry Sherry, who shut the Sox out the rest of the way while the Dodgers added insult to injury in the ninth, Essegian leading off with a solo bomb off yet another White Sox bull, Ray Moore.

It was Shaw's only grasp toward World Series glory in an eleven year career which proved useful if not necessarily equal to his 1959. He went from the White Sox (who acquired him from Detroit early in the 1958 season) to the Kansas City Athletics (in an eight-player swap that also sent Staley and Wes Covington to the A's and Ray Herbert, Andy Carey, and former World Series perfectionist Don Larsen to the White Sox) in 1961. He went to the Braves after that season in the deal that made an Athletic out of future Miracle Met Ed Charles.

Then, he went to the San Francisco Giants after the 1963 season in another eight-man swap, a swap that made Braves out of future respected Show manager Felipe Alou, veteran catcher Ed Bailey, and useful reliever Billy Hoeft, and Giants out of veteran catcher Del Crandall and Bob Hendley, who would face Koufax in an even more historic moment two years later, by which time Hendley would be a Chicago Cub.

The 1966 Mets, beginning something of a turnaround into a team living on nascent but strong pitching and a hit-and-run offence, bought Shaw from the Giants, and he pitched usefully for the Mets, tying Dennis Ribant for the team lead in wins (11---the first time any Met pitchers had won more than ten), finishing third among the team starters in ERA (3.98, behind Ribant and former Baltimore Baby Bird Jack Fisher; Jack Hamilton led the staff's relievers with 3.92, in a career year that also saw him throw the second one-hitter in Met history), and second in strikeouts (104, behind Fisher's 124).

But he faltered early in 1967 and the Mets---with a kid named Tom Seaver having arrived and begun his Hall of Fame march---sold him to the Cubs after he went 3-9/4.29 by June, and Shaw finished 0-2 for the Cubs before they released him to the land of trivia contests.

And, to the land of the legends. Before he married and raised a family of his own, Shaw was a handsome bachelor with a reputation as a ladies' man that took an intriguing extreme, at least in the eyes of his manager.

Al Lopez, who had managed the 1954 Indians to that stupefying 111-win season (and four-game World Series sweepout at the hands of the New York Giants), and managed the Go-Go Sox to the 1959 pennant, was going slightly nuts. He saw Shaw having breakfast one morning with a lovely young lady. Then he saw Shaw having lunch that afternoon with another lovely young lady. Finally, he saw Shaw having dinner with a third lovely young lady.

According to Bo Belinsky's biographer, Maury Allen (in Bo: Pitching and Wooing), Lopez saw this pattern so often with Shaw at the height of his career that he finally couldn't stand it anymore.

"I have got to find out," Lopez is said to have muttered, "whether he is the lousiest lay on earth or the cheapest sonovabitch in baseball. Why else wouldn't a girl date him twice?"

You know you're getting old when you think of baseball races in the late 50's as being recent. I still perceive the classic 1960 World Series as not that long ago in my memory.

I suppose the generational difference is defined as reading this obit and remembering him as a player vs. hearing about Lady Ga Ga and saying "Lady Who Who". :-)

Following up to my own post, the death of Bob Shaw made me think about Nellie King's passing a month ago at 82.

Since you're both a baseball fan and a broadcaster, BluesDuke, you might find it interesting that I always thought of Nellie as the "new guy" in the booth with Bob Prince. Of course, to me even Prince seemed like the newbie since Rosey Rowswell was the play-by-play guy I associated with the Pirates.

Open the window, Aunt Minnie...

I agree. I remember about 50 years ago I got a my baseball history book. 50 years before that was John MCGraw, Cy Young was just retiring and it was Tinker to Evers to Chance(the cubs actually won pennnats then). Now the 59 Sox and the 60 Pirates let alone Mantle and Maris are as far away from us now as the old days in 1910 were then. That is scary I noticed the article mentioned Billy Pierce his career stats are amost idntical to Jim Bunning. Yet he is not in the Hall of Fame.

I saw Billy Pierce outduel Frank Sullivan, 6-0, in 1960 at Fenway in 1:57 minutes. Fastest game I ever saw. Pierce had four hits and four strikeouts. I was 12 and my brother was 11 and we rode 12 miles on the trolley from Newton and Brighton, paid 5 cents each way.

RIP Nellie King, too-—I must have missed that one. I used to be able to hear Pirate games on the radio even on Long Island, since if the currents blew right and you had a shortwave band on your set (we did), you could pick up good out of town stuff. They were quite a pair, Prince and King . . .

I noticed the article mentioned Billy Pierce his career stats are amost idntical to Jim Bunning. Yet he is not in the Hall of Fame.

Billy Pierce and Jim Bunning finished with identical earned run averages . . . but Bunning has a slightly better WHIP (walks/hits per inning pitched) ratio and a lot more black ink in his lifetime stats than Pierce did. It's possible, too, that Hall of Fame voters took note of Pierce once leading his league in losses without enough big seasons (or league-leading wins seasons) to offset it, but I don't know for sure. It's also possible that voters were more impressed by Bunning's strikeouts than Pierce's (Bunning has over 100 strikeouts more and led his league in strikeouts three times---all with 200+ punchouts---compared to Pierce doing it once and with under 200 punchouts).

I think, too, that voters were more impressed with Jim Bunning's gray ink (finishing top ten in league leaderships) than Billy Pierce's. Pierce was an excellent pitcher who fell just short of a Hall of Fame berth, though not by much, and one considers that it took a long time and a lot of review and re-review before people were truly convinced about Jim Bunning as a Hall of Famer. I'm not about to make a case one way or the other involving Billy Pierce, but he was an excellent pitcher.

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