Two notable hurlers passed away within a day of each other; lefthander  Johnny Podres, who was part of 4 Dodger World Champion teams, and righthander Don Cardwell, who started and struggled in his early career with the Phillies but who was the first major league pitcher to toss a no-hitter in his first start with a new team having been traded by the Phillies to the  Chicago Cubs in 1960 and was an integral part of the Miracle Mets 1969 World Championship. 

Podres passed away in Glens Falls, NY. at age 75, but Glens Falls Hospital spokesperson would disclose further details.

Yahoo sports reports;

According to a report on the New York Daily News’ web site, Podres had been battling a number of illnesses and was a lifelong smoker. The newspaper also reported that Podres recently underwent a leg amputation to treat an infection.

Cardwell passed away on Monday at age 72 of causes not yet known.   The AP report for the MLB website indicates that “he had been struggling with his health lately.”  

Podres, who came from an iron mining family in Witherbee in the Adirondacks, broke in with the 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers after but two seasons in the minors.  John Madden of the New York Daily News reports;

The previous year, Dodgers GM Buzzie Bavasi turned down an offer of $250,000 from the Cleveland Indians for him after Podres had fashioned a stunning 21-3 record and 1.67 ERA in Class D ball. Podres went on to pitch 15 years in the majors, remaining with the Dodgers through 1965, and compiled a 148-116 record with a career 3.68 ERA. In 1957, he led the National League with a 2.66 ERA and six shutouts, and his best season was 1961 when he was 18-5. In four World Series with the Dodgers, Podres was 4-1 with a 2.11 ERA.

But Podres is best remembered for his performance in the 1955 World Series against the neighboring New York Yankees, the first World Championship for Brooklyn after the frustration of being soo close, soo many  times, both in their rivalry with the then-neighboring New York NL Giants as well as against the Bronx Bombers in three previous World Series.  

Podres won games 3 and 7, completing both games.  His performance in game 7, a 2-0 shutout, was the stuff of lore. 

Madden recounts that Podres;

shut the Yankees down on eight hits. The Yankees’ lone threat off him in the game was thwarted by reserve left fielder Sandy Amoros - who, just after being inserted into the game for defensive purposes for Junior Gilliam by Dodger manager Walt Alston, snared Yogi Berra’s slicing fly ball in the left-field corner of Yankee Stadium with two on and nobody out in the sixth inning to start a double play.

“When Yogi hit that ball, I thought it was out,” Podres said years later in an interview with Baseball Digest. “But then it started to slice a lot. I don’t know if Junior would have caught it, being that he was a righthanded thrower. Being lefthanded, Sandy was able to reach out at the last second and catch it.

“All I know is, we won the game, but the feeling … I don’t know. I can’t remember the feeling I had. There was too much hysteria going on.”

After retiring from active play, Johnny Podres was pitching coach for the Minnesota Twins and later, the Phillies whom he coached between 1991 and 1996, most notably the Phillies’ last NL pennant-winning season in 1993 under manager Jim Fregosi.

Pods, as he was affectionately called by the Phillies is credited with giving direction to the career of a then-young Curt Schilling who had come over in a trade with the Houston Astros.  Schill was 14-11 with a 2.35 ERA for the NL East cellar-dwellers of 1992, his first season under Podres’ tutelege.  He followed in 1993 with a 16-7 mark with a 4.02 ERA to lead the Phils into the World Series.

Schill writes on his 38 Pitches blog;

Johnny made me realize that being a man wasn’t about the macho cool stuff we think men are supposed to be, but rather compassion, care, commitment, loyalty, integrity and drive. He asked everything of me and always got everything I had. He made me realize the only limits in my life were self imposed, that pushing yourself mentally and physically were what separated players when they crossed the white line.

Yahoo’s obituary reports that “besides his wife, Podres is survived by two brothers and two sons.”

Although Don Cardwell holds the distinction be being the first pitcher to toss a no-hitter [he was one base-on-balls away from perfection], in his first outing after being traded [testament to how glad he must’ve been to be traded from that horrendous 1960 Phillies team],  he is best known for his performance down the stretch of the 1969 Miracle season for the Mets who charged by the Chicago Cubs to win the NL East division, handled the  Atlanta Braves for the NL Pennant and finally, the Met’s 4-2 pasting of the  Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.

MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo describes Cardwell’s stretch run in 1969 as well as his pitching style;

Cardwell split his career among five teams, but was perhaps best known for the role he played leading up to the 1969 World Series. After posting a 3-9 record over the season’s first four months, Cardwell strung together five straight wins down the stretch to help the Mets overtake the Cubs in the National League East.

He won just 20 total games in four seasons with the Mets, but the quality of those final five certainly trumped all else. Beginning the streak with a stretch of 28 scoreless innings, Cardwell went on to allow just one run over the five victories, good for a 0.26 ERA. By the time he finally lost a game on the season’s final day, Cardwell’s Mets — thanks also to a rotation that included [Tom] Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Gary Gentry — had clinched the division title.

He pitched one perfect relief inning in Game 1 of the World Series, marking the only postseason appearance of his career.

“He was a three-quarter-arm guy with a real good sinker, slider. Hard stuff,” former Mets teammate Ron Swoboda said. “I remember hitting off him before we got him from Pittsburgh and you really had to convince yourself from the right-hand side to stay in there against him.”

AP reports for Yahoo sports that Cardwell’s “survivors include his wife, Sylvia; three children, five grandchildren and three sisters.”

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Starter/reliever Gerry Staley, who won 88 games in 7 and a fraction seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals and later was a standout in the bullpen for the 1959 AL pennant winning Chicago White Sox, passed away this past Wednesday at age 87.

His son Brian told media on Friday that he died of natural causes at his home in Vancouver.

Baseball Library reports that Staley;

Won 19, 17, and 18 games for the Cardinals from 1951 to 1953. When he slipped to 7-13 in 1954, he was dealt to the Reds, then on to the Yankees, but he continued to be ineffective as a starter.

When he arrived with the White Sox in 1956, his old manager, Marty Marion [managed Staley on the Cards in 1951], converted him to relief and opened a second career for him. He and fellow reliever Turk Lown helped lead the Sox to the 1959 pennant. On September 22, he [Staley] made one pitch, a game-ending double play with the bases loaded, to nail down the flag. In 1960 he led the AL with 13 wins in relief.

The AP report for Yahoo sports notes;

The right-hander pitched for six teams during a 15-year career that lasted from 1947-61. He was 134-111 with a 3.70 ERA, appearing in the 1959 World Series with the Chicago White Sox.

Staley went 8-5 with 14 saves and a 2.24 ERA in 1959. He pitched in four Series games, tossing 8 1-3 innings with a 2.16 ERA as Chicago lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games.

During the pennant-winning season of 1959, Staley led the American League by pitching in 67 games. The following year, he went 13-8 with 10 saves and was named to the AL All-Star team.

Staley was born in Brush Prairie on Aug. 21, 1920. He played in the minors and served in World War II with an Army evacuation hospital unit in the South Pacific before reaching the majors with the St. Louis Cardinals. He was selected to the NL All-Star team in 1952 and 1953.

Staley’s career record is 134-111 over 15 seasons with 58 complete games, 9 shutouts, 58 saves and a 3.70 ERA.

After retiring from baseball, Staley served as superintendent of the Clark County Parks and Recreation department for 17 years, tended his garden and took up fishing and pitching horseshoes.

The AP report adds that Staley once talked about his career this way;

“I played in an era when there were a heck of a lot of good ballplayers,” he said in 2005. “You can’t single out one over all the rest.

“If you kept the ball in the park, you were doing a good deed.”

Staley is survived by his son and a daughter.

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Former Yankees lefthanded pitcher Tommy Byrne, known for his slow-working on the mound and walking tons of hitters early in his career and for his anchoring the pennant winning Yankees pitching staff in 1955, passed away at age 87.

Byrne, who after his retirement from major league baseball served two terms as mayor of Wake Forest, died Thursday. According to an AP report for Yahoo sports, Byrne had congestive heart failure and was in declining health the last six weeks.

Byrne pitched in both the 1949 and 1955 World Series winning and completing the 2nd game in 1955 series.  He was awarded a World Series ring in 1950 (although he didn’t pitch in the Series against the Phillies) and was an All Star that season as well, although he didn’t pitch in the game. 

But his slow mound work and walking slews of hitters during hte 1948-1951 season drove Yankees ownership bonkers.  Byrne walked 179 batters in 196 innings 1949 and 160 in 203 1/3 innings in 1950 after walking 101 hitters in 133 1/3 innings in 1948, his first full season with the Yanks.

New York Daily News sports writer Bill Madden reports that Byrne himself admitted;

“I drove (Yankees co-owner) Dan Topping crazy. He hated the way I pitched because my games took too long and he always had a date waiting for him afterward.”

As a result, he ended up being discarded by the Yanks to the then-St. Louis Browns, the Chicago White Sox and the then-Washington Senators during the span of the 1951 through 1954 seasons.

Madden outlines how returned to the Yankees and his critical role in the Yankees’ 1955 Pennant;

At the end of ‘54, the Yankees, at the urging of Casey Stengel, purchased Byrne’s contract from Seattle [in the minors], and the next season he rewarded the manager’s faith in him by leading AL pitchers in winning percentage with a 16-5 record. In the ‘55 World Series, Byrne pitched a 4-2 complete-game victory in Game 2 against the Dodgers, then lost the seventh game, 2-0, to Johnny Podres.

“Tommy had a great curveball and after he came back from the minors, he had a slider,”   Yogi Berra said Friday. “He was a great guy, one of my first roommates, and loved to have fun. He used to yell at the hitters, telling them what pitch was coming and they never believed him. I remember the time he came into the game and was warming up when all of a sudden he hit Mickey Vernon in the on-deck circle with a pitch because he thought Mickey was watching his pitches.”

Byrne was on the 1955 Yankees staff which included Whitey Ford (18-7) and Bob Turley (17-13).

Byrne was pretty handy with the stick as a pitcher.  Baseball Library recounts that when Byrne first came to the big leagues;

Manager Joe McCarthy tried to talk him into converting to first base, Byrne amassed 14 homers and pinch hit 80 times.

Daily News writer Madden recounts Yogi Berra’s comments on Byrne’s hitting;

Berra noted, Stengel often used the lefthanded-hitting Byrne as a pinch-hitter, and in many interviews, Byrne cited May 16, 1953 as one of his most satisfying days in baseball, when with the White Sox, he was called in from the bullpen to pinch-hit against Yankee sidearmer Ewell Blackwell and hit line-drive a grand slam [the 2nd of his career], 20 rows back in Yankee Stadium’s right-field stands.

Byrne retired after the 1957 season, finishing with a career mark 85-69 and a lifetime 4.11 ERA.

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Journeyman lefthander Joe Kennedy passed away early on Friday morning at his in-laws’ home in Hillsborough County, Florida.  Medical tests to determine cause of death have begun and will take 6-8 weeks to complete.

The death has caused shockwaves throughout the baseball world, particularly with the teams with which Kennedy played.

AP Writer Rob Gillies provides background for Yahoo sports;

Kennedy spent seven years in the majors, playing last season with Oakland, Arizona and Toronto. He also spent time with Tampa Bay and Colorado and had a 43-61 career record with a 4.79 ERA in 222 appearances.

“We were terribly shocked,” Blue Jays president Paul Godfrey told The Associated Press. “From what we understand he was in Brandon … to be the best man at a wedding today.”

“Obviously, when a 28-year-old man dies, ballplayer or not, it’s a terrible, terrible thing,” he said.

After going to bed early, Kennedy woke up at about 1:15 a.m. Friday and collapsed as he was leaving a bedroom at the home of his wife’s parents, Hillsborough County sheriff’s spokeswoman Debbie Carter said. Hillsborough County Fire Rescue took Kennedy to Brandon Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, she said.

Craig Weissmann, the Tampa Bay scout who signed Kennedy, described him as a fierce, determined competitor.

“He really dedicated himself and was really on a mission to become a major league pitcher,” Weissmann said. “You wish as a scout and a major league organization, you wish every kid could develop that fast.”

Godfrey said Toronto was interested in bringing Kennedy back.

Kennedy made his major league debut in June 2001 and made his last appearance in relief on Sept. 29 in a 5-3 win over Tampa Bay.

“We had every intention to speak to him,” he said. “We had him on our list to talk to.”

Rockies team president Keli McGregor extended his sympathies through a statement released by the team.

“Joe was a great husband, father, teammate and friend to so many in our organization and throughout the baseball world,” McGregor said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family, wife, his young son and all those whose lives were touched by Joe over his life.”

That family meant everything to Kennedy, Weissmann said.

“He was a great father. He loved that boy and his wife both more than anything in the world. That son of his was the apple of his eye,” Weissmann said. “He just was really looking forward to everything that a father shares with a son.

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Joe Nuxhall, a lefthander who pitched his first major league game 1 1/2 months short of his 16th birthday and who was a prominent part of the  Cincinnati Reds’ scene both as a player and broadcaster for 60 years, passed away while hospitalized for treatment of pneumonia.  Nuxhall was awaiting surgery to insert a pacemaker, and was suffering from a recurrence of cancer since September.

AP Writer Terry Kinney provides background on Nuxhall’s playing career for Yahoo sports;

Brought up by Cincinnati to pitch during World War II — just out of junior high classes, he unraveled at the sight of Stan Musial in the on-deck circle — Nuxhall worked more than six decades for the Reds. He continued to pitch batting practice into the 1980s and was a member of the team’s Hall of Fame.

While he won 135 games, it was on the radio where he became best known. On a franchise filled with Hall of Fame players and big personalities, Nuxhall might have been the most popular of all.

“This is a sad day for everyone in the Reds organization,” outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. said in a statement. “He did so many great things for so many people. You never heard anyone ever say a bad word about him. We’re all going to miss him.”

Reds owner Bob Castellini said Friday that “Joe exemplified everything baseball’s all about, from the mound to the broadcast booth.”

At 15 years, 10 months, 11 days old, Nuxhall was big for his age. He was 6-foot-3 and his parents let him join the Reds when school let out.

Nuxhall spent most of the time watching from the bench, assuming he’d never get into a game. The Reds were trailing the St. Louis Cardinals 13-0 after eight innings when manager Bill McKechnie decided to give the kid a chance.

Nuxhall was so rattled when summoned to warm up that he tripped on the top step of the dugout and fell on his face in front of 3,510 fans at Crosley Field. He was terrified when it came time to walk to the mound.

“Probably two weeks prior to that, I was pitching against seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders, kids 13 and 14 years old,” he recalled. “All of a sudden, I look up and there’s Stan Musial and the likes. It was a very scary situation.”

Nuxhall walked one and retired two batters before glancing at the on-deck circle and seeing Musial. Nuxhall unraveled — Musial hit a line-drive single, and the Cardinals scored five runs as the young pitcher lost his ability to throw a strike and failed to get another out. In all, he walked five and threw a wild pitch in two-thirds of an inning.

“Those people that were at Crosley Field that afternoon probably said, ‘Well, that’s the last we’ll see of that kid,”‘ Nuxhall said.

The Reds sent him to the minors, but eight years later he was back with the Reds. Nuxhall spent 15 of his 16 big league seasons with the Reds, going 135-117 before his retirement in 1966.

Baseball Library provides this bit of history on Nuxhall’s career;

He won a career-high 17 games in 1955, leading the league with five shutouts, and pitching 3-1/3 scoreless innings in the All-Star Game. He began having arm trouble in 1960, was traded to the A’s in 1961, and hooked on with the Angels briefly in 1962. A lifetime .198 batter with 15 home runs, in 1961 he hit .292 and contemplated continuing his career as a pinch hitter/first baseman. But he bounced back as a pitcher, returning to the Reds for the 1962 stretch drive and going 5-0. In 1963, he was 15-8, with a career-low 2.61 ERA. Nuxhall retired just before Opening Day 1967, to make room on the roster for rookie Gary Nolan.

Nolan, by the way, went on to be the ace of the staff during the Big Red Machine days of the mid-70’s.

I remember Joe Nuxhall; he beat the Phillies in a number of games in the 1950s both with his pitching and his hitting.  In one memorable game in 1958 written up on this blog, Nuxhall pitched the last 2 2/3 innings of a wild game with the Phillies won by the Reds by a 12-11 score.  The “the ol’ left-hander” gave up but one hit while striking out three to emerge as the winning pitcher in that game.  Nuxhall went 12-11 with a 3.79 ERA for the 1958 season.

Nuxhall was with the Reds when Pete Rose began his career in 1963.  Nuxhall hit 15 career homers, including 3 homers each during the  1953,  1954 and 1955 seasons along with a career high 14 RBIs in 1955.

AP’s Kinney also recounts Nuxhall’s post-playing years;

Nuxhall started doing radio broadcasts, describing games in a slow-paced, down-home manner that caught on with listeners. Marty Brennaman became the play-by-play announcer in 1974, and the “Marty and Joe” tandem spent the next 28 seasons chatting about their golf games, their gardens and some of the biggest moments in franchise history.

Nuxhall retired as a full-time radio broadcaster after the 2004 season, the 60th anniversary of his historic pitching debut. Since then, he was heavily involved in charity work, especially his scholarship and character education programs.

He had surgery for prostate cancer in 1992, followed by a mild heart attack in 2001. The cancer returned last February, when he was preparing for spring training in Sarasota, Fla.

Nuxhall called some games last season even though his left leg was swollen by tumors. He was hospitalized again this week.

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“The Scooter,” diminutive shortstop and leadoff hitter Phil Rizzuto, of the Yankees’ golden era teams which won 11 pennants and nine World Series between 1941 and 1956, passed away in his sleep late Monday night while fighting a bout with pneumonia.

AP baseball writer Ben Walker highlights both Rizzuto’s playing career and his 40 year distinguished broadcasting career for Yahoo sports;

Rizzuto was the oldest living Hall of Famer. He played for the Yankees throughout the 1940s and ’50s, won seven World Series titles, was an AL MVP and played in five All-Star games.

Rizzuto later announced Yankees games for four decades and his No. 10 was retired by baseball’s most storied team.

“I guess heaven must have needed a shortstop,” Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said in a statement. “He epitomized the Yankee spirit — gritty and hard charging — and he wore the pinstripes proudly.”

At 5-foot-6, Rizzuto was a flashy player who could always be counted on for a perfect bunt, a nice slide or a diving catch in a lineup better known for its cornerstone sluggers. He played 13 seasons alongside the likes of Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle in a career interrupted by Navy service in World War II.

“Phil was a gem, one of the greatest people I ever knew — a dear friend and great teammate,” said Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, who frequently visited Rizzuto in his later years.

“When I first came up to the Yankees, he was like a big — actually, small — brother to me. He’s meant an awful lot to baseball and the Yankees and has left us with a lot of wonderful memories,” he said.

Rizzuto was equipped with a productive bat, sure hands and quick feet that earned him his nickname and a mention on his Hall plaque that he “overcame diminutive size.”

A leadoff man, he was a superb bunter, used to good advantage by the Yankees teams that won 11 pennants and nine World Series between 1941 and 1956.

“He was a Yankee all the way,” Indians Hall of Famer Bob Feller said.

“Phil could hit, he could run, he was good on the basepaths and he was a great shortstop. He knew the fundamentals of the game and he got 100 percent out of his ability. He played it hard and he played it fair,” he said.

Born in Brooklyn, Rizzuto tried out with the Dodgers and New York Giants when he was 16, but because of his size was dismissed by Dodgers manager Casey Stengel, who told him to “Go get a shoeshine box.” Rizzuto went on to become one of Stengel’s most dependable players.

A Rizzuto bunt, a steal and a DiMaggio hit made up the scoring trademark of the Yankees’ golden era, and he played errorless ball in 21 consecutive World Series games. DiMaggio said the shortstop “held the team together.”

Rizzuto came to the Yankees in 1941 and batted .307 as a rookie. After the war, he returned in 1946 and became the American League MVP in 1950. He batted .324 that season with a slugging percentage of .439 and 200 hits, second most in the league. He also went 58 games without an error, making 288 straight plays.

He led all AL shortstops in double plays three times and had a career batting average of .273 with at least a .930 fielding percentage. He played in five All-Star games.

Rizzuto remembered Aug. 25, 1956, as a day he thought was the “end of the world,” the day Stengel released him to make room for clutch-hitting Enos Slaughter in the pennant drive.

Rizzuto then began a second career as a broadcaster, one for which he became at least equally well known. His voice dripped with his native Brooklyn.

In his decades on the radio and TV, Rizzuto’s favorite phrase was “Holy cow!” He trotted it out when calling Roger Maris’ record-breaking 61st home run in 1961 and the saying became so much a part of him, the team presented him with a cow wearing a halo when they held a day in his honor in 1985. The cow knocked Rizzuto over and, of course, he shouted, “Holy cow!”

In an age of broadcasters who spout statistics and repeat the obvious, Rizzuto loved to talk about things like his fear of lightning, the style of an umpire’s shoes or even the prospect of outfielder Dave Winfield as a candidate for president.

He liked to acknowledge birthdays and anniversaries, read notes from fans, praised the baked delicacies at his favorite restaurant and send messages to old cronies. And if he missed a play, he would scribble “ww” in his scorecard box score. That, he said, meant “wasn’t watching.”

His popularity was such that at a recent auction a Rizzuto cap embedded with a wad of chewing gum sold for more than $8,000. In the New York area, Rizzuto’s antics became a staple for TV ads.

Despite his qualifications, Rizzuto was passed over for the Hall of Fame 15 times by the writers and 11 times by the Veterans Committee. Finally, a persuasive speech by Ted Williams pushed Rizzuto into Cooperstown in 1994.

Williams, a member of the committee, argued that Rizzuto was the man who made the difference between the Yankees and his Red Sox. He was fond of saying, “If we’d had Rizzuto in Boston, we’d have won all those pennants instead of New York.”

“I never thought I deserved to be in the Hall of Fame,” Rizzuto once said. “The Hall of Fame is for the big guys, pitchers with 100 mph fastballs and hitters who sock homers and drive in a lot of runs. That’s the way it always has been and the way it should be.”

Rizzuto is survived by his wife, Cora, whom he married in 1943; daughters Cindy Rizzuto, Patricia Rizzuto and Penny Rizzuto Yetto; son Phil Rizzuto Jr.; and two granddaughters.

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