Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm Dies

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.

The first knuckleball pitcher I saw was Willard Ramsdell, who pitched for the Los Angeles Angels in the early fifties. He had come down from Chicago, I think, since the Angels were owned by P. K. Wrigley's Cubs. I believe he pitched for the Reds, too.

Willie the Knuck Ramsdell came up with the Brooklyn Dodgersin 1947 and was traded to the Cincinnati Reds during the 1950 season, before he was moved on to the Cubs for the 1952 season. It was in that season that occurred the incident for which he may be remembered best:

Ramsdell was the Cub pitcher when Carl Erskine tossed the first of his two no-hitters - and Erskine learned only later that one of those pulling for him to nail down the no-no was...Willie Ramsdell himself. In those years, a fellow named Happy Felton had a radio program called The Knothole Gang Show from Ebbets Field, and each day the show would decide who was the star of the day for each club in the game. For Erskine's no-hitter, the show determined the Cub star of the game would have to be Ramsdell - because he'd been the only Cub baserunner, on a walk. Felton's partner, Larry McDonald, went to the Cubs' dugout and invited Ramsdell - who was out of the game by then, lifted for a pinch hitter - to be the Cub star of the game. Each player so named got $50.

The final Cub batter was another former Dodger, Eddie Miksis. Ramsdell was watching the game on a television monitor in the Knothole Gang studio under Ebbets Field when Miksis came up to hit. Suddenly, Ramsdell started doing his math (Carl Erskine himself has confirmed this story): If Miksis should get a hit and break up the no-hitter instead of making the final out, he'd be the Cubs' star of the game. According to Erskine, Ramsdell hollered to the monitor, as if hollering at Miksis, "You lousy bum, you never hit for me. If you get a hit now and cost me fifty bucks, I'll kill you!" According to The Boys of Summer author Roger Kahn, what Ramsdell hollered was, "Come on, Ersk, you can get this bum!"

Sure enough, Erskine got Miksis to ground out to shortstop Pee Wee Reese. Kahn: "...and that was how Carl Michael Erskine got his no-hitter and Willie the Knuck Ramsdell got his $50." It may have been Willie the Knuck's only brush with honest-to-God baseball glory, even if it was a) in the breach, and b) took a book written years later to make it so. Since he ended his life as a Cub, let us be gentle and say that Willie the Knuck was, shall we say, "overdue": in five major league seasons, he was 24-39 with one shutout, five saves, 240 strikeouts, 214 walks, a .381 winning percentage, and only one appearance on the so-called Black Ink Test - he led the National League in losses in 1951, with 17. Somehow, the man was just born to be a Cub star of the game who almost wasn't...

That sounds like something the Ol' Perfesser would have said, but I haven't got that one in any of my Stengel source materials. He did say this, though, about Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek's early struggles: Lookit him - he don't smoke, he don't drink, he don't chase women, and he don't even hit .250. And then, there was the irrepressible Tug McGraw, whom Stengel managed in McGraw's rookie season in 1965.

On the one hand, the future relief star pulled off what enough Mets watchers thought might prove impossible - as a starter, McGraw nailed the first-ever Met win against Sandy Koufax. On the other hand, McGraw in another outing got shelled and re-shelled, the Met bullpen having been somewhat spent as it was and McGraw, a bulldog type, trying to keep them from getting further spent. Finally, Stengel came out to the mound to lift him.

McGraw pleaded, "Let me stay in, Skip - I know I can get this next guy out, I've struck him out twice already!" Said Stengel, "I know, but you did it in this inning!"

On seeing brand-new Shea Stadium for the first time in early 1964: Lovely, just lovely. The park is lovelier than my team.

On seeing brand-new Busch Stadium in St. Louis for the first time: It holds the heat very well.

Met Fan? &$%#^$%$%#^ ! Tommy Agee STILL hasn't touched home plate ! :)

And it wouldn't matter if he did. It wasn't Tommie Agee at the plate who cost the 1969 Cubs the National League East, it was their own manager. Next time, tell Leo Durocher to behave his bloody self with the umps and stop using them to try to reunite a team that was already becoming ground up somewhere between Durocher-inspired clubhouse greed and Durocher-inspired nervous wreckage.

He tried to use umpires as a tension target. One day he got umpire Shag Crawford so mad, by dancing around him yelling "Dummy! Dummy! that Crawford offered to fight him right there. But in the end, his umpire baiting worked against the Cubs. They were the victims of some outrageously bad calls (Tommie Agee should have been out at the plate that night, by the way. - BD), and there was no place to turn; the league had become polarised against Durocher and the Cubs. Once, Leo was overruled by the league president, Warren Giles, on a protest involving a play that cost the Cubs a run and conceivably a ball game. (It was a judgment call on how many bases a runner could advance on a ball thrown into the stands.) Less than two weeks later, exactly the same play developed again, but with the team situation reversed, so that the Cubs - on the basis on the previous precedent - would save a run and perhaps a game. "They can't have it both ways," Durocher crowed of the umpires' decision. He was wrong. They could and they did. Not only that, the league office upheld them when Durocher protested. Whether or not Durocher united the Cubs against the umpires, he certainly united the umpires against the Cubs...

- William Barry Furlong, "How Durocher Blew The Pennant", Look, 1970.

Not to mention, Durocher all but overworked his regulars, refused to use his bench, depended almost entirely on one relief pitcher [Phil (The Vulture) Regan], and by the time they went down the stretch a very good infield was losing balls they used to vacuum up, an already questionable leadoff hitter (Don Kessinger) was exhausted to the point where he couldn't bribe his way on base (a .332 on base percentage isn't exactly what you want in a leadoff man), a pitching staff was demoralised with Leo's continuous little bait-and-switch games, and Durocher was so polarising even in his own clubhouse that when he decided at last to rest one of his overridden regulars - when the National League East race was all but over - said regular, according to Mr. Furlong, played anyway...because he was in no mood to be hung as a "quitter" by Leo Durocher, who basically mismanaged a Cub team that could and probably should have won that division and, when the team began collapsing (as just about anyone who knew Durocher's style could have predicted, it seems in hindsight), charged that his team were the "quitters." Put it this way: Durocher so antagonised the league and turned his players into nervous wrecks that opposing pitchers were begging their managers to pitch them out of turn if it meant getting a crack at the Cubs, including and especially Bob Gibson.

Meanwhile, allow me to remind you that, in the end, the Mets won the National League East by eight games. Anyone who still clings to the Agee-at-the-plate game as the destruction of the 1969 Cubs is clinging to a pleasant illusion...but an illusion nevertheless. It was classic mismanagement and not Tommie Agee at the plate which did the 1969 Cubs in. Blaming one blown call for losing a pennant is like blaming Fred Merkle for the 1908 Giants losing that pennant. (As it happens, Giant manager John McGraw would have agreed: he long maintained that the Giants had lost at least twelve games they could have won just as easily excluding the Merkle game.)

Furlong's article was republished in Jim Bouton's splendid anthology, I Managed Good But Boy Did They Play Bad. Further recommended reading: David Claerbaut, Durocher's Cubs: The Greatest Team That Didn't Win. Personally, I think Leo Durocher did not and does not belong in the Hall of Fame...

>>>Hoyt Wilhelm was the original prototype for the modern day relief pitcher. He set the standards for what being a stopper was all about.

>>>It is pleasant to think so, yes...but Wilhelm missed being the prototype by only a couple of seasons.

Perhaps you're right. May be a better term for Hoyt Wilhelm is premier relief specialist, who set the standard for the career closer. The forerunner of a new breed. Perhaps.

While there were some relief pitchers around who preceded Hoyt Wilhelm, like Joe Page (#141 all-time,w/76 saves) and Jim Konstanty (#144 all-time,w/74 saves), IMO, Wilhelm (#22 all-time, w/227 saves) was the first true relief specialist. If anything, perhaps Elroy Face of the Pirates (#31 all-time, w/193 saves), could be considered the forerunner of the modern day relief pitcher. His closer stats are impressive for the second half of the 1950`s and early 1960`s. Lets not forget Ron Perranoski (#40 all-time, w/170 saves), Lindy McDaniel (#42 all-time, w/172 saves), Stu Miller (#47 all-time, w/154 saves) and Ted Abernathy (#50 all-time, w/148 saves). All contemporaries of Wilhelm's. I'm sure there are a few others I'm overlooking who deserve some consideration.

Wilhelm set the standard for those relievers that immediately followed him in the 1970`s, like Rollie Fingers, Sparkey Lyle, Mike Marshall, Tug McGraw, Kent Tekulve, Bruce Sutter, Gene Garber and Goose Gossage. The success of these pitchers led to the explosion of the relief specialist in the 1980`s and changed the game of baseball, forever.

In addition, of the top 50 relief pitchers of all-time, Wilhelm's ERA is second at 2.52 (#1 Brian Harvey @ 2.42 and #3 Mariano Rivera @ 2.58). Hoyt Wilhelm was one of a kind.

I love baseball!

..shoot, had the season lasted a week longer, the Pirates & the Cards would have overtaken the Cubs.

I'm not entirely sure how true that is. The Mets took the East with an eight-game lead. Another week might have seen the Pirates and the Cardinals make a stab at it, but the Cardinals were rent by dissent all season long, caused by owner Gussie Busch apparently turning on their "greedy" selves (his preseaon lecture to the team is a classic of the kind of paternalistic condescension that caused no few players to distrust no few owners in those days) and a few injuries (not to mention the unloading of Orlando Cepeda) while the Pirates, if I remember, had enough inconsistencies down the stretch that trying to catch up to the Mets with that super pitching staff would have been almost a pipe dream. If the Mets had any advantage, it was having a manager who was as no-nonsense as Durocher was merely reputed to be and left Durocher completely in the dust for handling a pennant contending team in 1969. I only wish I could remember if Gil Hodges was named Manager of the Year for that season...

If anything, perhaps Elroy Face of the Pirates (#31 all-time, w/193 saves), could be considered the forerunner of the modern day relief pitcher.

Elroy Face should be a Hall of Famer, as I see it, and I hope he will get in at least while he is still alive. And while I am impressed by your argument overall, the record still remains that it was Joe Page and Jim Konstanty who established the root hunger for the hotsy-totsy relief ace (we're not talking who was where on the best of all time list, we are talking about who created the hunger in the first place, which is something distinct), though it certainly wasn't very long before just who or what that ace would or wouldn't be or do began taking the forms you ascribe.

You've listed actually a couple of very underrated relief pitchers, Ted Abernathy and Stu Miller in particular. Ron Perranoski may well be one of the more overrated relievers of his era - Dick Radatz at his peak was far better than Perranoski, who had the visibility advantage of pitching for a club perenially in pennant contention and predominantly so by virtue of their starting rotation. Had Dick Radatz not let himself get horribly out of shape after his three lights-out seasons in Boston, he might well have qualified as a Hall of Famer. He had that kind of talent.

And Radatz (who made Perranoski resemble a finesse pitcher) was the actual prototype for the exploding lights-out closers who cropped up beginning in the mid-to-late 1970s...Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage, Sparky Lyle, Bruce Sutter, Dennis (the Menace) Eckersley, and all the power relievers are, for all intent and purpose, Dick Radatz's children, which would make them just about Joe Page's grandchildren. I'd love to see closers returning along the lines of a Quisenberry or a Gene Garber - finesse pitchers who can get you out with a mixup of breaking and offspeed stuff. Or, a Tug McGraw, who could go to power when he needed to and go to the finesse material when he needed to. But once a prejudice takes hold, it is worn down only arduously.

I can't see anyone seriously rating Bryan Harvey among the all-time great relief pitchers. He was great...for only a couple of seasons, really, before his arm blew out (and there remain questions as to whether his arm blew because of his own pitching style); he is more legitimately viewed as something of the Herb Score of relief pitchers: he is not a great relief pitcher merely because he might have been a great relief pitcher. Career-ending injuries aren't exactly his fault, of course, but Bryan Harvey simply did not, because he could not, make a proper case for listing among the all-time great or impact (a la Page) relievers. Mariano Rivera belongs among the all-time greats. Bryan Harvey does not.

I'd build a bullpen with Wilhelm, no question about it - but I'd have him just a shade behind Elroy Face. I haven't the actual figures, but my memory of the two tells me that Face was just a little bit better when it came to turning inherited baserunners into stranded castaways, and one of the real problems I have with the way relief pitching is viewed and used today is that we have tended to discount who can do what when they get in the game with men on base - we go for the lights-out, ninth-inning wonderboys, no disrespect to them intended, but I have noticed that the preponderance of those guys either don't get in with men on base or can't do it when they do come in with men on. (Eddie Guardado, the Twins' closer this season, has yet to come in with men on base; Danny Graves, the Cincinnati closer, by contrast has a terrible record when they bring him in with men on base; Trevor Hoffman went just over half the season before he got into a game with men on.)

Behind Elroy Face and Hoyt Wilhelm, now you're getting into the hard choices. I've always loved the finesse relievers, and whittling it down is a job, but my nickels go to Dan Quisenberry and Gene Garber. They were excellent when you brought them in with men on base and whipping out of the jam before finishing off the game. Goose Gossage was a good one for that job, too, but Quisenberry was just a little bit better in that situation. And I kind of like seeing Gene Garber get his props if only because of the (unwarranted, in my opinion) abuse he took for being the man who ended Pete Rose's hitting streak by putting Charlie Hustler on a diet of breaking balls. Rose bitched for years about it (he practically insinuated Garber had a "duty" to let him swing on a fastball or at least "challenge" him, as if Garber - whose fastball wasn't half as good as his breaking stuff in the first place - was supposed to just make himself a sacrificial lamb!), never once stopping to ask himself just why on earth a man who'd been hitting with his authority for sixteen years in the big leagues to that point suddenly couldn't get his bat on a breaking ball. Garber was a guy you could use in the middle or for the last couple of innings when you needed him; for a few seasons, he was certainly one of the five best relief men in the game.

Some relief pitchers I thought would last a little longer than they did included the two Cincinnati Reds relief aces of 1975-76, Will McEnaney and Rawly Eastwick. I should have realised that the Reds' starting pitching was so comparatively weak that Sparky Anderson in those years was bound to be as nightmarish for relief pitchers as Billy Martin ultimately proved with a good starting rotation, especially the 1981-83 Oakland rotation. But for a couple of seasons McEnaney and Eastwick looked like they were going to be the antecedents of the Nasty Boys of 1990 - and there was a lights-out bullpen which sure got broken up a little too fast. Exactly why Cincinnati thought it brilliant to break up Rob Dibble, Norm Charlton, and Randy Myers escapes me, except that Charlton developed arm trouble, Myers went through a struggle or two, and Dibble was just a flat psycho on the mound who was probably bound to blow out his arm prematurely. (In fairness, though Dibble and Charlton might have been headed for trouble even before Myers teamed up with them - when Pete Rose managed the Reds, he was so incompetent at handling his bullpen that the way you beat the Reds with him at the helm was make him warm up his pen: Rose had no concept of the idea that once you get a man warming up, you either bring him in or sit him down for the day unless you want him gassing himself. Rose would complain continuously about his pitchers telling him they were wiped and him retorting, "C'mon, you haven't even pitched." He had no clue that when you're warming up a man he's pitching, for God's sake. "I liked Pete," Whitey Herzog has said, "but boy, I loved managing against him.")

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