Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm Dies

Yahoo! News ^ | 23 August 2002 | Associated Press

[BluesDuke]

SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) - Knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm, the first reliever elected to the Hall of Fame and the last pitcher to throw a no-hitter against the New York Yankees, has died.

Wilhelm died Friday, but the cause of death was not released. Baseball records listed him at 79 years old, though the funeral home handling the arrangements said he was 80.

Wilhelm played from 1952 and 1972 and when he retired, he held the major league record for games pitched at 1,070. Jesse Orosco and Dennis Eckersley have since passed that mark.

While known for his fluttering pitch — it was because of him that catchers began using an oversized mitt — Wilhelm had a smashing debut as a big leaguer.

On April 23, 1952, Wilhelm hit a home run in his first major league at-bat, connecting for the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. That turned out to be Wilhelm's only career homer.

Wilhelm was 143-122 with 227 saves and a 2.52 ERA for nine teams. He played mostly for the Giants, Baltimore and the Chicago White Sox.

Wilhelm was elected to the Hall in 1985. Rollie Fingers is the only other reliever in the Hall.

Though he made his mark as a reliever, his best game came as a starter. On Sept. 20, 1958, while with the Baltimore Orioles, he pitched a no-hitter against the Yankees at old Memorial Stadium.

Born as James Hoyt Wilhelm, he is the third Hall of Famer to die in the last two months. Ted Williams and Enos Slaughter also died.

Wilhelm began experimenting with his unorthodox pitch after reading a story about knuckleballer Dutch Leonard while playing high school ball in his hometown of Huntersville, N.C.

Wilhelm, who won a Purple Heart at the Battle of the Bulge, got a late start to his major league career. He was in his late 20s when the Giants decided to give him a chance in their bullpen in 1952.

The Giants were glad they did, as the rookie went 15-3 with 11 saves and a league-leading 2.43 ERA in 71 relief appearances.

A year after his no-hitter, the Orioles kept Wilhelm in the starting rotation. He went 15-11 and led the AL with a 2.19 ERA — it was the last year in his career in which Wilhelm did not record a save.

Orioles catchers, however, had a tough time handling Wilhelm's dancing knuckler that year. They set a modern record with 49 passed balls in 1959.

The next year, on May 27, 1960, Baltimore catcher Clint Courtney broke out an oversized mitt designed by Orioles manager Paul Richards.

Wilhelm also pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals, Cleveland, California, Atlanta, the Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles. He pitched for the final time on July 21, 1972, for the Dodgers.

Wilhelm is survived by a son, two daughters, two brothers and six sisters. Funeral services will be 11 a.m. Tuesday at Wiegand Brothers Funeral Home in Sarasota.

[BluesDuke]

The Wilhelm grip reminds me that there may not be a single uniform knuckleball grip. (Note the AP story indicates Wilhelm was inspired to try the pitch after watching Dutch Leonard.) Some pitchers have used three or even four fingertips beneath the seam to throw it. (Jim Bouton showed his knuckleball grip on the cover of Ball Four; Bouton used three fingers and the inside of his pinkie on the side of the ball.) And, of course, Burt Hooton with his "knuckle curve" pitch held the ball in his knuckles with fingertips turned in. Don't know how the man threw that pitch without breaking his fingers!

I learned to throw a knuckleball growing up (Wilhelm, Phil Niekro, Eddie Fisher of the White Sox, Bob Purkey - who included a knuckleball in his repertoire of so-so fastball, snappy curve, and slithering slider - and Hal Woodeshick were role models for us guys who couldn't throw too hard or fast); my grip was four fingertips lined up together and slightly slanted, under the seam where the seam curved outward from my fingertips, and instead of throwing with the fingertips up top as I released mine would be held sideways to push the ball. Got decent movement on it when I threw it right, which wasn't, alas, that often...

[4.1O dana super trac pak]

His name escapes me, but the player who was traded for himself(to be named later), also passed away.

[Chi-townChief]

When I first moved to Chicago in '63, Wilhelm was what we would call the closer today. At the time, the White Sox had a catcher named J.C. MArtin who couldn't hit worth a damn but was the only guy who could catch Hoyt's knuckler at least most of the time.

When Wilhelm got the call, J.C. would come in with him with this MASSIVE catcher's mitt and the ones he couldn't catch, he'd at least try to knock down.

I always thought he should have used a first baseman's glove.

RIP Hoyt Wilhelm.

[BluesDuke]

His name escapes me, but the player who was traded for himself(to be named later), also passed away.

That was Harry Chiti. The Cleveland Indians traded him to the New York Mets in 1962 for a player to be named later. After about a month (including an incident in which Chiti asked manager Casey Stengel, who prohibited card playing on team flights, if he could get up a gin game, with Stengel suggesting instead that a catcher with nothing to do might think about studying a little about opposing hitters), the Mets shipped him back to the Indians as the player to be named later. If it tells you anything, Chiti was a former Chicago Cub.

[BluesDuke]

I'm told that Bob Uecker (who could handle the knuckleball; it was probably the ability above all others which kept him in major league baseball for any length of time) once did walk out behind the dish with a first baseman's mitt to catch Hal Woodeshick's knuckleball in a spring game. My source told me Woodeshick was laughing too hard to be able to concentrate and, what a surprise, he got clobbered.

It should also be said that Bob Uecker, believe it or not, almost sent one Hall of Fame pitcher to the rye bottle, hitting .400 lifetime against this fellow. Jeff Torborg, Los Angeles Dodgers reserve catcher: We tried everything. Curves and fastballs. In, out, up, down. Nothing worked. Bob Uecker owned Sandy Koufax.

[TN4Liberty]

I forget who gave the advice on the best way to catch a knuckleball, "Wait 'til it stops rolling and pick it up".

Wasn't that Bob Eucher? I believe he held the record as a catcher for most passed balls in a game while catching a knuckleballer. (If somebody says I am wrong, believe them... I'm not much of a triva guy).

[BluesDuke]

The comment about waiting until it stops rolling does sound like something Bob Uecker would say. He may have the single-game passed ball record but then he may not - as I said earlier, it was his ability to handle the knuckleball that kept him in the majors as long as he stayed in the majors. I'm trying to find who does hold the single-game record, but I won't be surprised - considering the single-season record the poor schnook set trying to handle Hoyt Wilhelm with the 1959 Orioles - if it, too, turns out to be Gus Triandos.

Heard a story that Johnny Romano, freshly acquired by the Chicago White Sox (from the Cleveland Indians, in exchange for Rocky Colavito, who had come up earlier with the Tribe but was dealt away in only the most dumb of Frank Lane's numerous illogical trades), got one gander at Eddie Fisher's knuckler and came out behind the plate with a fruit basket to catch them during spring training for a laugh. Have no idea if this is true but it is a cute story...

[crz]

Eddie Stanky was the manager of the Sox when Hoyt, Tommy John, and Wilber Wood and one other I cant think of were the big pitchers. The Sox were not a hitting team at that time..but boy did they have pitching and fielding and base running. Next we will hear of Harmon Killebrew et al, passing to the big leagues in the sky. All the good ones are leaving us..all the players who played for the FANS.

[CARDINALRULES]

I'm fairly sure it was Uecker that said that.
When the Card's play the Brewers, Mike Shannon usually has him on one of the pre-game shows. I think I have heard them talk about this a few times, along with other funny stories from when they were teammates in the 60's.

Found this site of his quotes and it is on there.

[BluesDuke]

Eddie Stanky was the manager of the Sox when Hoyt, Tommy John, and Wilber Wood and one other I cant think of were the big pitchers. The Sox were not a hitting team at that time..but boy did they have pitching and fielding and base running.

Jim Bouton, in Ball Four, has recorded the White Sox' alleged attack of those years...

Talking about his White Sox days, (Gerry) McNertney said that Eddie Stanky always insisted there was only one excuse for not being in the lineup - if there was a bone showing. Stanky was also responsible for storing the baseballs in a cool, damp place. McNertney: "You had to wipe the mildew off the balls before the game. First you'd take them out of the boxes, which were all rotted anyway, wipe the mildew off and put them in new boxes. Then you gave them to the umpires and they never suspected a thing."

The idea, of course, is that cold, damp baseballs don't travel as far as warm, dry baseballs, and the White Sox were not exactly sluggers.

And people thought that trick was invented by the Colorado Rockies...the fools!

Bouton in the same book also related this from a chat he was able to have with Wilhelm and Eddie Fisher about throwing the knuckleball:

I asked Fisher about the curse of inconsistency. "Everyone has the same problem," he said. "Hoyt has it and I have it. I'll pitch for three weeks and it'll be going real good for me and then for ten days I can't throw one worth a damn and they hit me all over the place."

And Wilhelm said: "You know you can throw a bad one once in awhile if you're throwing a lot of good ones. But you can't throw two or three bad ones in a row. Sometimes when I go out there I throw just about every one of them good. At other times, it's just nothing. And I get hit. It takes a lot of work and a lot of concentration. It's that delicate a pitch."

Fisher came in to relieve tonight and got clobbered...And when I came in I pitched two scoreless innings, striking out three. Like Fisher said, that's the way it goes.

Note: The clobbering against Fisher was done by Seattle Pilots pitcher Fred Talbot - who smashed a grand salami off Fisher and made $27,500 for a contest entrant in a thing the Pilots had going called "Home Run For The Money." If it tells you anything, that contest entrant made more money off that one swing of Fred Talbot's bat than Fred Talbot was actually making as a swingman and spot starter for the Pilots that season.

By the way, a White Sox pitcher of Wilhelm's time with the team, Bob Locker (good relief pitcher), told Bouton a story which should tell people, also, why there became at last a Major League Players Association:

Bob Locker told this one about a contract argument with Ed Short, general manager of the White Sox. This was after Locker had had his best season in 1967 - 77 games, 125 innings, a 2.09 ERA. It was a year after Phil Regan of the Dodgers had his super year - 14-1, 1.62 ERA - in relief. Short offered Locker $16,000 and he was asking for $18,000. Short said he was asking a lot and that, what the hell, Regan had just signed a contract for $23,000. "If Regan is making only $23,000 then I'm asking too much," Locker said. "You check that. If he signed for $23,000 I'll sign for $16,000."

The next day Short called him and said, "I called Buzzie Bavasi (the Dodger GM) and he told me Regan was making $23,000 this year."

"All right," Locker said. "I'll take the $16,000."

After he signed he got to thinking about it and just for the hell of it he wrote Regan a letter. He asked if Regan would mind telling him about what he had signed for. And Regan wrote back saying he signed for $36,500.

"You know, you don't mind a guy deceiving you a little during contract negotiations," Locker said. "You get used to it. They all do it. But when a guy just outright lies right to your face, that's too much."

[crz]

I still cant think of that other pitchers name!!! They had FOUR really good pitchers..heck they all were good. What the heck was the starting ptcher line up for the Sox back then? Man does that gripe me..you know I have lost all interest in Baseball because of all those strikes and now I have forgotten all the great players. What have they done to the game?!

[TN4Liberty]

I'm trying to find who does hold the single-game record,...

Look what I found!

Most passed balls, game

A.A. - 12 - Gid Gardner, Washington, May 10, 1884

N.L. - 10 - Pat Dealey, Boston, May 1886

A.L. - 6 - Gino Petralli, Texas, August 30, 1987

Source: http://members.tripod.com/bb_catchers/catchers/

Encyclopedia of Baseball Catchers

[crz]

Casey Stengle/Stengel when I think he was the skipper of the Mets. Talking to a player in the dugout after a game. "Funny thing happened today. One of us got traded."
I nominate Casey, Bob Ueker, Yogi Berra, to a special caracter team...Joe G..also I wont even try to spell his name as I've already wrecked that prior ones enough. You know not spelling a name right is just like misspelling them.

[BluesDuke]

You're thinking, I think, of Gary Peters.

[foreverfree]

bump

[is_russia_western]

Eddie Stanky was the manager of the Sox when Hoyt, Tommy John, and Wilber Wood and one other I cant think of were the big pitchers I belive the other good pitcher was Gary Peters.

[BluesDuke]

Casey Stengle/Stengel when I think he was the skipper of the Mets. Talking to a player in the dugout after a game. "Funny thing happened today. One of us got traded."

The actual quote was from Stengel's latter years managing the Yankees. Outfielder Bob Cerv was sitting at the end of the dugout before a game when Stengel came up from the clubhouse and sat beside him, saying, "Nobody knows this, but one of us has just been traded to Kansas City." (This was in 1957; Cerv returned to the Yankees in 1960.) Some other Stengel gems:

I got the smartest pitcher in the world until he goes out to pitch. - About Jay Hook, the pitcher who won the first game the Mets ever won, but who frustrated Stengel because he didn't like to back hitters off the plate.

Now, just go out and make like you're pitching against Harvard. - To another early Met, Ken McKenzie - a Yale graduate.

I'm the manager. I'm the fella in charge. It's kinda like being the Mother Superior. - To a nun related to his wife, trying to explain what he did with the Yankees.

Blanchard! Do you see them white lines? Do you know what they are for? They are there to hit the ball on. An' them fellas in the middle are called fielders. - To Met first baseman Jim Marshall, whom Stengel often confused with reserve Yankee catcher Johnny Blanchard.

If I'm gonna be buggered I don't want an amateur holding the Vaseline pot. - Trying to back a second umpire off an argument he was having with the first umpire.

It ain't the getting it that's gonna hurt them, it's the staying up all night looking for it. They gotta learn that if you don't get it by midnight, you ain't gonna get it; and if you do, it ain't worth it. - On some of his night-crawling Yankees, especially those crawling for sex.

No. Leave me alone. I want to stay in the room with this guy for one hour without him busting up a ball game on me. - Shooing members of the Mets' party away while he was transfixed, at a traveling version of Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, in front of a wax likeness of Stan Musial.

Get your runs now - Father Time is coming! - To his Yankee hitters whenever he saw Satchel Paige warming up in the Cleveland Indians or St. Louis Browns bullpen.

They examined all my organs. Some of them are quite remarkable and others are not so good. A lot of museums are bidding on them. - After a physical exam provoked when he experienced chest pains in early 1960.

Do you see those stands out there? Do you know they are going to tear down this ball park after next year when our new one is ready? Well, you keep pitching like that to that fella and you're gonna give them a head start on the right field seats! - To pitcher Roger Craig, after Craig surrendered a second homer in the same game to San Francisco Giants slugger Willie McCovey.

And in left field, we have a splendid man and he knows how to do it. He's been around and he swings the bat there in left field and he knows what to do, and he's got a big family and he wants to provide for them, and he's a fine, outstanding player, that fella in left field, and you can be sure he'll be ready when the bell rings and that's his name - Bell! - Said while giving a reporter his first-ever home game starting lineup for the Mets, as he struggled to remember the name of outfielder Gus Bell.

Viva le France! - Whooping it up after a walkoff hit by Met rookie Danny Napoleon (about whom Curt Flood has said, memorably enough, He'd be ugly even if he was white.)

Boy never saw concrete before. I told him not to worry about it, I never had no trouble with it and I played that wall for six years. He don't believe what I'm telling him. I guess he thinks I was born sixty years old. They never believe we done anything before they did. - Explaining to a reporter why Mickey Mantle broke out laughing in Ebbets Field, before Mantle's first-ever World Series game against the Brooklyn Dodgers there, while showing Mantle how to play Ebbets Field's famous right-to-right center field wall with the beveled bottom: When Stengel came to, "Now, when I played here," Mantle cracked up laughing, gasping out, "You played here?" (Stengel, in fact, began his playing career with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1916.)

[Old Professer]

Darn, I'm so old I remember when people used to die of old age.[Wilhelm died Friday, but the cause of death was not released. Baseball records listed him at 79 years old,]

[Chi-townChief]

That was after Peters when Stanky was manager. Al Lopez was manager in '63 and '64 when the White Sox were starting Peters, Juan Pizarro, John Buzhardt, Joel Horlen, and sometimes, Ray Herbert. And these guys all hit better than the position players.

The other main reliever besides Hoyt Wilhelm was Don Mossi who came over from Cleveland. He's the guy with the ears that Jim Bouton described as looking like "a taxi coming down the street with all of its doors open."

[crz]

Thats It! I knew it was sumpin like that..Casey was a good one hey! And yup..Gary Peters! They had a heck of a bunch of pitchers on the Sox team back then.
I remember watching a game when the Braves had the likes of Joe Adcock and Lew Burdette, Del Crandall, Hank Aaron etc. They were playing the Pirates in in Pittsburgh in the old park which the name escapes me. Anyway, Ol Joe Adcock hit one that would have landed on the moon if it were not for the lights that hung out over the field? The ball hit them lights and landed in the field and the Ump called it a ground rule double or something like that. Ol Joe about burned his spikes off running to get in the umps face.
Then the time they threw Gorman Thomas the eefis pitch and he about screwed himself in the ground swinging at it. He turned to the catcher and told him to try that again and see what happens. They did and Gorman struck out. I about died laughing when I read about that one.