Posted on 11/27/2001 5:17:15 PM PST by dighton
Bo Belinsky, whose pitching prowess as a rookie with the Los Angeles Angels catapulted him to the life of a Hollywood playboy and the fleeting glitter of a 1960's celebrity, died Friday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 64.
The cause was apparently a heart attack, The Associated Press reported. Belinsky had been treated for bladder cancer and vascular problems and had undergone hip-replacement surgery. He had been dependent on alcohol and drugs, but said last year that he had been sober since 1976.
A one-time teenage pool hustler, Belinsky experienced a tumultuous ride; he was lionized by Walter Winchell, greeted by J. Edgar Hoover and linked with a host of Hollywood actresses.
It began the night of May 5, 1962, when major league baseball on the West Coast was in its fifth year.
Pitching for the Angels, a second- year expansion team, against the Baltimore Orioles, Belinsky threw a 2-0 no-hitter for his fourth straight victory of the season. It was the first no-hit game pitched in the majors in California, and the lefty with the outstanding fastball and screwball did it at the newly opened Dodger Stadium — or Chavez Ravine, as it was called by the Angels, who shared it with the Dodgers.
Among the 15,886 fans that night was Winchell, who wrote of Belinsky's feat in his widely read newspaper column.
"Walter took a liking to me and we became good friends," Belinsky once recalled. "Walter did a lot of writing about me. He used to get letters from women all over the world saying they wanted to meet Bo Belinsky. I'd go over to his hotel room and he'd have this stack of letters about me with all these pictures."
Belinsky was soon driving a red Cadillac on Sunset Strip and was dating Ann-Margret, Tina Louise and Connie Stevens.
He was engaged to the actress Mamie Van Doren.
"Our life was a circus," Ms. Van Doren said Saturday. "We were engaged on April Fool's Day and broke the engagement on Halloween. It was a wild ride, but a lot of fun."
Belinsky was also a V.I.P. in Washington, courtesy of Winchell's friendship with Hoover.
One time when the Angels were playing the Washington Senators, two F.B.I. agents came into the clubhouse and told Manager Bill Rigney that they wanted to see Belinsky and pitcher Dean Chance, Belinsky's partner on many late-night adventures.
As Belinsky recalled it, "Rigney goes, `What did they do wrong now?' "
"They take us to F.B.I. headquarters, and it turns out that Walter told J. Edgar to call us down and razz us a little bit," Belinsky told The Washington Times in a 1995 interview. "He had a picture taken with us. And we went down to the firing range and got to shoot some machine guns."
Amid the hoopla and the night life, Belinsky's pitching quickly went into decline. He started the 1962 season 6- 1, but was 10-11 when it ended. He switched from a red to a gold Cadillac in 1963, then fell to a 2-9 record.
Belinsky was 9-8 with a 2.86 earned run average in 1964, but his season ended in August when the Angels suspended him after he had slugged Braven Dyer, a 64-year-old sportswriter for The Los Angeles Times. Dyer had sought a comment on a report that Belinsky was about to retire.
Belinsky was gone from the Angels after the 1964 season, then pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies, Houston Astros, Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds with little success. He had a record of 28-51 in eight major league seasons.
He was born Robert Belinsky on Manhattan's Lower East Side, then moved with his family to Trenton while a youngster. He was nicknamed Bo for the middleweight boxer Bobo Olson in tribute to his street brawling. His favorite sport in high school was pool, and he hustled with his pals Cincinnati Phil, Norm the Farmer and Goose McDonald.
He pitched in the minor leagues for the Orioles' organization, then was obtained by the Angels.
Belinsky told of developing a drinking problem late in his major league career, then using drugs as well. He said he ended his chemical dependency in 1976 after awakening under a freeway bridge outside Akron, Ohio, clutching an empty wine bottle. He worked in recent years as a community-relations representative for auto dealerships in Las Vegas and became a born-again Christian three years ago.
His marriages to Jo Collins, a former Playboy centerfold model, and Jane Weyerhaeuser, of the family owning the building-materials company, ended in divorce. Last year, Belinsky said that he had made an unsuccessful attempt to contact twin daughters from his marriage to Ms. Weyerhaeuser, not having seen them since 1989. He said he was also out of touch with a younger sister, Lorraine.
Last June, when he attended Bo Belinsky Night at the Pacific Coast League ballpark in Las Vegas, Belinsky reflected on his life.
"We spend the first 40, 50 years satisfying our egos and the next 20 or 10 trying to wipe the slate clean," he said. "I'm at that second stage."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
There.....flame away, puke-admirers. The lad was nothing in the scheme of things, unless you had a Walter Mitty thing.
No one was watching our game before that except a couple of coaches. After about 45 minutes we were back to normal. I will never forget being mesmerized by Bob Gibson. He struck out 5 of 6 and the 6th went out on a weak pop up.
OK, I'm ready to take the big, dirt sleep.
Nothing like a great set of cans!
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