St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Darryl Kile dead.

I have to tell you that I dont know much about baseball, but I do personally know one former baseball player, Denny McLain, and Denny pitched 28 complete games in just ONE SINGLE SEASON!!! Complete games are pretty much a thing of the past. Roger Clemens won 20 games, and the Cy Young Award, last season, and he didn't have a single complete game that year.

As I understand it, you cannot get credit for a no-hitter or a shut out, UNLESS you complete the game, so it is not totally a thing of the past. "Sharing" a no-hitter does not really count.

As great of a pitcher as BAbe Ruth was, "his no-hitter" was not totally deserved since he left the game in the first inning, and Babe Ruths no-hitter was "shared".

From the stltoday.com website:

Kile autopsy shows hardening of coronary artery

By Jeremy Kohler, Joe Strauss and Rick Hummel,
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/23/2002 02:30 PM

CHICAGO — An autopsy today on Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile showed the 33-year-old pitcher had severe coronary atherosclerosis, or hardening of the coronary artery.

Dr. Edmund Donoghue, the Cook County Medical Examiner, said the hardening of the coronary artery could very likely have caused a heart arrythmia. The cause of death has not been officially determined and Donoghue said toxicology tests would be done. Those tests could take several weeks.

The medical examiner also said some marijuana was found in Kile's hotel room.

He stressed that he did not believe there was any relation between the marijuana and Kile's death. He didn't know if Kile had smoked any recently.

Hardening of the coronary artery is very rare in younger people, Donoghue said, although it's a common cause of death among older people.

Donoghue said it appeared that Kile died peacefully, not painfully.

Kile's brother, Dan, told officials that his brother had been complaining of pain in his right shoulder and of being very tired. Donoghue said those are signs he might have been having heart failure.

He also said that it takes years to develop hardening of the coronary artery. Kile had an 80 percent to 90 percent narrowing of two of the three branches of the coronary artery.

< snip >

Team officials said police had told them that Kile probably died eight to 10 hours before his body was discovered. He went to dinner Friday night with his brother at Harry Caray's restaurant and returned to the Westin Michigan Avenue hotel by 10:30 p.m., when he told shortstop Edgar Renteria that he was tired and was going to bed.

< snip >

Kile was married and the father of three young children. His wife, Flynn Kile, was in San Diego, attending to details for their new residence there, and was to fly to Chicago later Saturday.

Dr. James Loomis, the Cardinals' assistant team physician, said he could not speculate on a cause of death. Loomis added that heart arrhythmia and brain aneurysm are typically first pursued as the cause of death for men of Kile's age and fitness.

Kile's father, David Kile, was only 44 when he died Feb. 24, 1993, five days after suffering a blood clot in his brain.

Loomis said Kile occasionally took anti-inflammatory medication but was on no other prescription drugs.

Loomis said Kile had last undergone and passed a physical during spring training. Kile underwent arthroscopic shoulder surgery in November that left him on a more conservative schedule early this season. . . .

I'd call Kile at least "above average."

No one would call him A Hall of Famer. But he was a solid #2 prototype pitcher - not necessarily an ace, but a dependable guy with some very good stuff and win you some games. You don't win 20 games without some good stuff. Take away his Denver starts and he's got some impressive numbers.

Doing precisely that - taking away his Colorado seasons - I come up with these for him:

ERA: 3.83
League ERA: 3.93
Kile's difference: -.10

A -.10 difference between your ERA and your league's ERA is not a difference that will classify you as beyond an average pitcher. Not even with a) a 20-win season, and b) Kile's 1997 season, which was actually far better than his 20-win season thanks to 1) his 2.57 ERA (the single best of his career) and 2) a strikeouts-to-walks performance that was way over his head (205 strikeouts to 95 walks), even allowing that walk totals less than ten below 100 are not good walk totals. Minus Kile's two Colorado seasons, his ERA is only -.10 below his league's ERA; with his two Colorado seasons, Kile's ERA through the end of 2001 was -.13 below league. Over his eleven seasons prior to 2002, Kile's ERA was below his league's average in only four of them; in only two of those was the difference -1.00 or better. I really can't see where the evidence says he can be classified above average to any extent.

His impact, however, transcends his very good if not spectacular stuff. It's obvious that he was tremendously well liked and respected around the league and there are not many guys like that. I would wager, for example, that DK's passing will be felt much more deeply more more widely than, say, Barry Bonds - a sure-fire Hall of Famer - might.

Of course it will be. It is already. There's no crime in a man being a better human being - on the field and off (I've spoken of his apparently league-wide reputation for being willing to help any and everyone joining his teams, from the freshest rookie to the lowest-totemed veteran to the highest-touted star or star-in-waiting) - than he was a pitcher.

Unfortunately, an awful lot of wonderful human beings have played baseball without being great baseball players, and it's no crime against their persons or their memories to say so. (For that matter, an awful lot of wonderful human beings have also managed to be great baseball players, and it's a crime that the jackass class among the superstars tarnishes them, too.) That Darryl Kile was an exemplary man by most definitions is pretty self-evident; that he was significantly more than an average pitcher (who had his moments here and there) when all was said and done is, by the available evidence, not.