The Cubs, the Indians, and their worst. trades. ever.

[EasyAce]

. . . and no, I am not trying to put the whammy on either team!
By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/10/28/the-cubs-the-indians-and-their-worst-trades-ever/

Colavito for Kuenn. Brock for Broglio. Decades to recover. Of all the actual or alleged curses inflicted upon the Indians and the Cubs,
maybe none of them impacted each franchise the way those two deals did.

One involved a slugging, run-productive outfielder who seemed Hall of Fame bound until injuries finally took their toll. The other
became a Hall of Fame outfielder whose particular stock in trade was leading off magnificently, with a little power and a lot of contact
ability, then turning games into track meets and crime scenes with his stolen base virtuosity.

Here, the stories behind each staggering deal. I leave it to you to decide which one left the deepest stings.

Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio

Eavesdrop in Chicago even now and you’d swear the real name of a certain Hall of Famer is Lou Brockforbroglio.

Brock in June 1964 was a young Cub with upside obvious to everyone except, perhaps, the insane revolving head coaches in the 1960-
64 experiment known as the College of Coaches. (By 1964, Bob Kennedy was the sole “head coach.”) Ernie Broglio was a Cardinals
righthanded pitcher with a quietly impressive resume heading into 1964.

The ’64 Cubs hungered for veteran pitching. They acquired Lew Burdette, the longtime Braves bellwether, in a deal with the Cardinals
earlier in 1964. Now, they had eyes for Broglio, who’d bounced around the Reds and Giants organisations before coming up with the
Cardinals in 1959.

Basically using that season to round himself into full major league shape, Broglio in 1960 tied with Warren Spahn with 21 wins and led
the National League outright with a 148 ERA+ and 7.2 pitching wins above a replacement-level player (WAR). After a down 1961, the
righthander whose calling card was a monstrous curve ball compiled 9.6 WAR in 1962-63, winning 30 games (including 18 in 1963)
and with a 2.99 ERA over the span.

The Cubs knew Brock’s talent but the College of Coaches left him an inconsistent mess, uncertain whose teaching was the right one.
“I saw Lou’s talent,” said Hall of Fame third baseman Ron Santo to Peter Golenbock, for Wrigleyville. “For some unknown reason they
thought Lou wasn’t going to make it . . . Sometimes you have to leave people alone. And they didn’t do that.”

But Burdette—once a pitching bellwether with the Braves (and the MVP of the 1957 World Series, beating the Yankees thrice in the set)
—knew something the Cubs’ brain trust didn’t: Broglio was damaged goods, taking cortisone shots for what proved an ulnar nerve injury.
Telling anyone who’d listen did Burdette no good. Two weeks after landing him, Cubs general manager John Holland traded Brock for
Broglio.

Brock promptly became a linchpin of the Cardinals’ slightly surprising 1964 World Series winner, with a staggering .387 on-base percentage
and 33 stolen bases in his first four months as a Cardinal, and helping them to two more pennants and one more World Series ring before
his career ended.

Broglio went just as Burdette tried to warn the Cubs. His miserable 1964 ended with his undergoing ulnar nerve surgery after the season.
By the end of 1966—having won eight games as a Cub with a jarring 5.77 ERA over the same period—he was back in the minors, trying to
regain what he lost until he called it a career after the 1967 season.

Brock would remember his time with the Cubs as one in which they tried desperately to set up for power hitting and teaching and exercising
very little concurrent small ball. “All they ever needed was a good leadoff man,” he would recall. “If I’d been there, the Cubs would have won
the pennant in ’68 and ’69.”

(The Cubs’ actual leadoff man in ’68 and ’69, shortstop Don Kessinger, had a .307 OBP in those seasons, seven points lower than his lifetime
OBP. Brock? .338, a mere five points off his lifetime OBP. Since Kessinger wasn’t half the hitter Brock was, Brock just might have been right.
Might.)

Broglio would look back at his aborted career with a cheerful sense of humour about it. “I played with a lot of Hall of Famers,” he said a few
years ago, “and I helped put a lot of them there.”

Rocky Colavito for Harvey Kuenn

There was one thing Indians general manager Frank Lane hated more in 1960 than the remnant of the team his predecessor Hank Greenberg
had built and sustained as a pennant contender who’d won 111 games and the pennant in 1954: his star right fielder, Rocky Colavito.

Power hitting, run productive, and personably handsome while he was at it, Colavito was a Cleveland matinee idol. Entering spring training
1960 he was the defending American League home run champion who’d missed by one tying Red Sox outfielder Jackie Jensen for the league
RBI leadership.

As had happened before the previous three seasons, Colavito and Lane haggled over contract terms, with Colavito mistrusting completely the
GM he believed had made and reneged on too many promises.

In Detroit, Tigers GM Bill DeWitt was no more thrilled to be haggling contract with his own veteran Harvey Kuenn, the Tigers’ first Rookie of the
Year winner (in 1952), who entered spring training 1960 as the defending American League batting and hits champion.

According to Terry Pluto in The Curse of Rocky Colavito, Lane that spring began floating rumours that he’d deal Colavito to the Yankees for Hall
of Famer Mickey Mantle and pitcher Art Ditmar, rumours the Yankees all but laughed off. Then Lane showed up in the Tigers’ camp pitching a
rumoured Colavito-for-Kuenn deal.

It had the unintended effect of getting Kuenn, a veteran shortstop turned outfielder whose gaudy batting averages masked his lesser run production
than Colavito’s, to end his contract holdout. Kuenn and his family came to like Detroit and Kuenn liked being a Tiger.

Lane and DeWitt told the press any Colavito-for-Kuenn trade rumours were dead. They stayed dead just long enough to make the deal anyway—the
day before the season was to begin.

The Indians were playing the White Sox in Memphis in an exhibition game. Colavito homered his first time up and reached on a fielder’s choice his
second time up. Manager Joe Gordon trotted out to first base to tell the right fielder he’d just been traded for Kuenn. Colavito’s shock included having
to deny what Gordon attributed to him, that he’d asked, “Kuenn and who else?”

“I just couldn’t believe they did it,” Colavito would remember. “It caught me totally by surprise. I heard one rumour in spring training, but that had
died down. But I never said anything negative about Harvey Kuenn. After that, I never had any stomach for Gordon or Lane.”

Cleveland went ballistic over the deal. Colavito’s roommate and best friend on the Indians, the ill-fated lefthander Herb Score, believed Lane simply
couldn’t stand Colavito as a person—the clean-living Bronx native wasn’t the rowdy, hard-drinking type Lane believed ballplayers ought to be.
Colavito’s overwhelming popularity also burned the GM.

Score also revealed Indians co-owner Nate Dolan was against dealing Colavito and that Lane essentially defied his boss. Not that Lane cared. “What’s
all the noise?” he wondered indignantly about the outrage over the deal. “I’ve just traded hamburger for steak.”

Steak did hit .308 with a .379 on-base percentage while producing 119 runs in 1960. Hamburger---who once smashed four home runs in a
single game as an Indian--- had a slow start but finished with 35 home runs, 87 runs batted in, and 154 runs produced, in an injury-interrupted
season. (“I happen to like hamburger,” DeWitt cracked when learning about Lane’s remark.)

Other than Kuenn’s batting average, Lane never quite explained how -35 runs produced equaled steak.

The Aftermaths

Both the Indians and the Cubs would make a few more foolish deals in the years that followed Brock for Broglio and Colavito for Kuenn.

Occasionally, they’d make solid deals. The Cubs did in 1982 when they swapped infielder Ivan DeJesus to the Phillies for Hall of Fame second baseman
Ryne Sandberg. The Indians did in December 1989, when they traded Joe Carter to the Padres for a package including infielder Sandy Alomar, Jr.
and a promising minor league second baseman named Carlos Baerga.

Sandberg became the anchor of several Cub contenders in the 1980s including their 1984 and 1989 National League East winners. Alomar and
Baerga became linchpins to the Indians’ run of dominance in the 1990s, ruined only by going to two World Series and winning neither before a)
the decade ended, and b) both Alomar and Baerga were ground down by injuries.

Both the Cubs and the Indians also faced unspeakable tragedies. Cubs second baseman Ken Hubbs, the 1962 National League Rookie of the Year,
was killed in a private plane crash in spring 1964.* (The irony: Hubbs took up flying to beat his fear of it.)

In 1970, the Indians watched in horror as slugging first baseman Tony Horton fell apart and left baseball behind entirely. And, in spring 1993,
they were stricken by the deaths of relief pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Crews in a Jose Fernandez-like boat crash.

Postscripts

Lou Brock—The Hall of Famer made a successful post-playing career as a florist and in other business interests, becoming a spring instructor for
the Cardinals in 1995 and, with his wife, an ordained Abundant Life Church minister.

Ernie Broglio—He made a career of working in the liquor warehouse business in which he worked off-seasons during his pitching days, before
investing in his son-in-law’s winery. He has alsostruck up a long standing friendship with Brock.

Harvey Kuenn—Before his playing days ended, he became, strangely enough, the final out in two Sandy Koufax no-hitters including the perfect
game against the Cubs—became one of the group of players (including Hall of Famers Robin Roberts and Jim Bunning) behind the move to bring
Marvin Miller in to administer the embryonic Major League Baseball Players’ Association.

A decade and a half later, despite losing part of a leg to circulation issues, the easygoing Kuenn managed the Milwaukee Brewers to their only
World Series appearance, in 1982 . . . with, ironically enough, a team so stocked with power hitters they were nicknamed Harvey’s Wallbangers.
Fired after 1983 when the Brewers sank to fifth despite a winning record, Kuenn became involved in the team’s scouting before his death at 57
in 1988.

Rocky Colavito—He coached with the Indians and the Kansas City Royals in the 1970s and 1980s, and had done occasional television work in
the interim. Otherwise, he helped his father-in-law run a successful Pennsylvania mushroom farm.

Before he retired as a player, Colavito became the last position player to win a game pitching in relief until Brent Mayne did it for the Rockies in
2000. As a Yankee, Colavito—who’d bombed a three-run homer in his first game with the team—relieved starter Steve Barber and pitched two
and two-thirds innings of one-hit shutout relief in August 1968.

Colavito and Brock have something sadder in common than the deals which wreaked havoc on their teams.  As happened to Kuenn in 1980, each
man lost half a leg in 2015; in their cases, both due to complications from diabetes.

John Holland—Somehow, he survived Brock-for-Broglio to help build the Cubs’ 1969 pennant contender, and survived the 1969 collapse as the
Miracle Mets surged. Holland remained the Cubs’ GM until 1975; he died in Chicago four years later.

Bill DeWitt—He pulled another significant deal with the Indians days before Colavito-for-Kuenn: he landed Norm Cash for obscure infielder Steve
Demeter. Cash would win the 1961 American League batting title and hit 373 home runs for the Tigers, and be part of the Tigers’ 1968 World
Series winner.

DeWitt left the Tigers at the end of 1960 to run the Reds. He made several deals that winter that helped mean a surprise pennant for the 1961
Reds, including the one that brought over pitcher Joey Jay.

After that World Series loss, DeWitt bought the Reds from Powell Crosley’s estate. Before selling the team to a group including his son in late
1966, DeWitt made a deal almost as disastrous as Brock-for-Broglio or Colavito-for-Kuenn: he traded his future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson
as “an old 30″ to the Orioles for pitchers Milt Pappas and Jack Baldschun plus outfielder Dick Simpson. He died in 1982.

Frank Lane—He would move from Cleveland to run the Kansas City Athletics in 1961, and last exactly eight months before clashes with owner
Charlie Finley led to his departure. He’d spend the next decade as an Orioles special assistant before the Brewers hired him as general manager
in 1971. Lane’s early Brewers hires included Harvey Kuenn, of all people, to the coaching staff. After leaving the Brewers, he scouted for the
Angels and the Rangers.

Lane’s baseball reputation became so diminished by his trigger-happy tradings that, when he died in a Texas nursing home in 1981, only one
baseball official would attend his funeral, and that at the formal request of commissioner Bowie Kuhn: Bobby Bragan.

And there was no small, sad irony in that, either. In Cleveland, Lane fired Bragan as manager in 1958. “Bobby, I don’t know how we’re going
to get along without you,” Lane was said to have told Bragan, “but starting tomorrow we’re going to try.”

To his dying day Bragan denied putting a curse on the Indians after the firing, as longtime Cleveland myth held. ”I didn’t put a hex on the club,”
the loquacious Bragan wrote in his memoir, You Can’t Hit the Ball with Your Bat on Your Shoulder. “Having Frank Lane as the general manager
was curse enough.”

The Indians after Colavito for Kuenn

Between 1960 and 1990, the Indians would finish as high as third place in the league or in their division exactly once. They would have six
fourth place finishes, eight fifth place finishes, and seventeen finishes in sixth or seventh place. (They’d also have baseball’s first black manager,
Frank Robinson, from 1975-77.)

After 1990, the Indians would make a slow surge back to greatness and, starting in 1995, win five straight American League Central crowns
and two American League pennants, losing the World Series both times.

After the turn of the century, they would rebuild and become competitive again, winning the 2007 AL Central but losing the American League
Championship Series to the Red Sox, en route the Red Sox’s second World Series title in four years. The Indians would also lose the American
League wild card game to the Rays in 2013, the first year they were managed by former Red Sox Series-winning skipper Terry Francona.

And, after two straight third place finishes that still showed the makings of a new great team, the Indians now have an American League pennant
and are in the World Series against . . . the Cubs, of all people.

The Cubs after Brock-for-Broglio

Two years after the trade, the Cubs earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first non-expansion team in baseball history to finish dead
last in their league.

From 1964 until their National League East title in 1984, the Cubs would have three third place finishes, three second place finishes (including
the heartbreak of 1969), and thirteen finishes fourth or lower.

After 1984, the Cubs would have six division-winning seasons (including the surrealistic heartbreak in 2003), losing four National League
Championship Series and three division series—all three in sweeps.

Five Cubs not named Lou Brock would become Hall of Famers without once going to, never mind winning a World Series in a Cub uniform: Ernie
Banks, Billy Williams, Ferguson Jenkins, Ryne Sandberg, and Ron Santo.

Conclusion

Based on the records after each of those pivotal deals, you’d have to say the Cubs have had the harder time of things. The Indians at least have
one streak of five straight division titles to show for their post-Colavito travails.

Now, they’re even up in the World Series.

That’ll teach them.

 

 

* There was a bizarre postscript to Ken Hubbs's tragic death: In 1966, the Topps chewing gum and baseball card company
issued its first cards of spring, including the card for Dick Ellsworth, a Cubs pitcher.

There was one problem with the card: the photograph on the front wasn't Ellsworth---it was Hubbs, in a picture that
actually appeared on his 1963 card. The mishap embarrassed everyone in baseball.

You want to talk about Cub curses? Ellsworth had been a useful pitcher for the Cubs and, in fact, was a 22-game winner
for the Cubs in 1963 while leading the National League with a 167 ERA+ and producing a neat 2.11 ERA. He was also
worth 10.2 wins above a replacement-level player in 1963. But in 1966, the year Ken Hubbs's picture appeared on
Ellsworth's baseball card, Ellsworth led the National League in losses---with 22.

[Jazzhead]

On the subject of "worst trades",  probably the two worst transactions the Phillies ever made provided two Hall of Fame ballplayers to the Cubs.   The Cubs traded an old Larry Jackson to the Phils for a young Ferguson Jenkins,  and years later practically stole Ryne Sandburg.   So call the Cubbies lovable losers, but they may have denied a pennant or three to the Phillies along the way.   

[EasyAce]

On the subject of "worst trades",  probably the two worst transactions the Phillies ever made provided two Hall of Fame ballplayers to the Cubs.   The Cubs traded an old Larry Jackson to the Phils for a young Ferguson Jenkins,  and years later practically stole Ryne Sandburg.   So call the Cubbies lovable losers, but they may have denied a pennant or three to the Phillies along the way.

The emphasis might be on "may." Larry Jackson might have been aging, but he proved a very useful third starter
for the Phillies behind Jim Bunning and Chris Short; Met fans remember Jackson as a Met-killer (they never beat
Jackson), but Jackson often pitched in hard luck before his retirement after 1968. (Jackson actually finished second
in the 1964 Cy Young Award voting, behind winner Dean Chance of the Los Angeles Angels, who probably won
the award only because Sandy Koufax went down for the season in early August---when he had 19 wins and
the league strikeout and ERA leads---when his elbow arthritis made itself only too manifest following, of all things,
a baserunning mishap.)

If you want to look at deals that really hurt the Phillies, most of them other than the Jackson deal came in
the wake of the 1964 pennant collapse:

* They traded a gifted outfielder, Alex Johnson, plus pitcher Art Mahaffey---whose doghousing by Gene Mauch
after Chico Ruiz stole home for the only Reds run in the game that started the notorious ten game losing streak
---to the Cardinals for two truly aging veterans, Bill White and Dick Groat, plus the ever-talented Bob Uecker.
Mahaffey began experiencing arm trouble, the worst thing that could happen under a Mauch who genuinely
thought injuries were an affront to his authority, before he was traded.

* They traded formidable Wes Covington to the Cubs for nondescript outfielder Doug Clemens. Covington
probably got himself in hot water with the Phillies after the '64 collapse by saying Mauch lost control of the team
in 1965 and allowed them to become less cohesive and more each man for himself.

The Phillies may have dealt for veteran help who had experience on previous pennant winners in St. Louis and
(in the case of Covington and pitcher Bob Buhl) Milwaukee, but those players were close enough to the end of the
line that they couldn't help a team that was becoming rent by racial issues, especially over the mistreatment
involving star third baseman/first baseman Dick Allen. Bill White, for one, would find his usefulness short-short
lived when a ruptured Achilles tendon ended his career.

The real issue otherwise was Gene Mauch. After the 1964 collapse, Mauch developed the nasty habit of dressing
his players down over the slightest matters---especially injuries, and especially on days a player had a bad
game. Lovely morale boosts.

Did you know---The players who were involved with Harvey Kuenn in bringing Marvin Miller to the players'
association included two Phillies legends: Jim Bunning, Kuenn's former Tigers teammate, and Robin
Roberts, plus longtime Pirates pitcher Bob Friend and longtime Senators mainstay Eddie (The Walking Man)
Yost.

Bunning, in fact, was close to the Phillies' then-owner Bob Carpenter while he pitched for the team. Phillies
players found it easier to deal with Carpenter directly than his GM John Quinn. When Carpenter told
Bunning the players' union didn't need Marvin Miller, Bunning gave it to him straight: No, Bob, if
you were the owners and I were the player representative we wouldn't need Marvin Miller. But you don't
own the other teams and I'm not the player representative on all the other teams . . . If I had a dispute
with you, I wouldn't worry. We'd solve it. Not everybody has that kind of relationship, though.

You can get the whole story of the 1960s Phillies in Mr. William C. Kashatus's September Swoon: Richie
Allen, the '64 Phillies, and Racial Integration.

[goatprairie]

The Brock-Broglio trade is the one people bring up the most. But you can't fault the Cubs thinking. Hitting might bring fans to the ballpark, but pitching wins WSs. The Cubs had hitters in Banks, Santo, Williams, and a few others. They needed a strong pitching staff.
 Obviously, things didn't work out. Broglio had 18 and 21 win seasons for the Cards. He had lousy seasons after that for the Cubs. Brock went on to help the Cards win the WSs and a hall of fame career. Them's the breaks.

[EasyAce]

The Brock-Broglio trade is the one people bring up the most. But you can't fault the Cubs thinking. Hitting might bring fans to the ballpark, but pitching wins WSs. The Cubs had hitters in Banks, Santo, Williams, and a few others. They needed a strong pitching staff.
 Obviously, things didn't work out. Broglio had 18 and 21 win seasons for the Cards. He had lousy seasons after that for the Cubs. Brock went on to help the Cards win the WSs and a hall of fame career. Them's the breaks.

Actually, you could and can fault the 1964 Cubs' thinking, on two grounds I observed in my essay:

1) Keep in mind what Brock himself observed: the Cubs had hitting but no solid leadoff hitter at the time, and they
were too interested in cultivating power hitting to bother themselves about a leadoff man. Brock had a little power
(he once hit one out in the Polo Grounds to a spot where only two players had ever reached previously, dead
center field into the bleachers sitting 460 feet from the plate) but power wasn't his game. The Cubs' brain trust
of 1962-64 (still in some thrall to the hideous, inconsistent College of Coaches) were still in thrall to big swingers
with big power bats and had no taste for an outfielder whose game was slap hitting, reaching base by hook or
crook, and making things happen on the bases. The Cub players saw Brock's obvious talent but the brain trust
really fell asleep at the switch on him.

2) The Cubs needed pitching but they kept going at the time for veterans who were mostly passing their prime;
except for Dick Ellsworth (a 22-game winner in 1963), the Cubs had no solid young pitching and stocked up
on aging veterans like Bob Buhl and Lew Burdette. (Larry Jackson---who ended up finishing second
in the 1964 Cy Young voting, mostly because Sandy Koufax was taken out for the season that August because of
his now-manifest elbow issue---was a notable exception, and even he was coming toward the end of his line.)

The Cubs looked only at Broglio's previous solid seasons and ignored a warning from a guy who was in position
to know that he was damaged goods, as my article said---Burdette, whom they got from the Cardinals two weeks
before Brock-for-Broglio. When he heard the Cubs had eyes for Broglio, he warned anyone who'd listen not to
do it because Broglio was taking cortisone shots for what proved his ulnar nerve issue. And Broglio himself,
fearing as many players did in those years for his job if he spoke up about his injury, was foolish enough to
try pitching through it anyway. Offseason surgery, no more effectiveness, career over. It wasn't rocket science,
but the Cubs' administration of the time lacked the foresight to see it coming despite being warned by a man
in the know. It took the Cubs another two or three years to wake up about their pitching.

[Wingnut]

On the Brock trade....It wasn't so bad that he was traded.  What stinks about it back then and still does to this day...They traded him to ST LOUIS for christsakes.   

[goatprairie]

Actually, you could and can fault the 1964 Cubs' thinking, on two grounds I observed in my essay:

1) Keep in mind what Brock himself observed: the Cubs had hitting but no solid leadoff hitter at the time, and they
were too interested in cultivating power hitting to bother themselves about a leadoff man. Brock had a little power
(he once hit one out in the Polo Grounds to a spot where only two players had ever reached previously, dead
center field into the bleachers sitting 460 feet from the plate) but power wasn't his game. The Cubs' brain trust
of 1962-64 (still in some thrall to the hideous, inconsistent College of Coaches) were still in thrall to big swingers
with big power bats and had no taste for an outfielder whose game was slap hitting, reaching base by hook or
crook, and making things happen on the bases. The Cub players saw Brock's obvious talent but the brain trust
really fell asleep at the switch on him.

2) The Cubs needed pitching but they kept going at the time for veterans who were mostly passing their prime;
except for Dick Ellsworth (a 22-game winner in 1963), the Cubs had no solid young pitching and stocked up
on aging veterans like Bob Buhl and Lew Burdette. (Larry Jackson---who ended up finishing second
in the 1964 Cy Young voting, mostly because Sandy Koufax was taken out for the season that August because of
his now-manifest elbow issue---was a notable exception, and even he was coming toward the end of his line.)

The Cubs looked only at Broglio's previous solid seasons and ignored a warning from a guy who was in position
to know that he was damaged goods, as my article said---Burdette, whom they got from the Cardinals two weeks
before Brock-for-Broglio. When he heard the Cubs had eyes for Broglio, he warned anyone who'd listen not to
do it because Broglio was taking cortisone shots for what proved his ulnar nerve issue. And Broglio himself,
fearing as many players did in those years for his job if he spoke up about his injury, was foolish enough to
try pitching through it anyway. Offseason surgery, no more effectiveness, career over. It wasn't rocket science,
but the Cubs' administration of the time lacked the foresight to see it coming despite being warned by a man
in the know. It took the Cubs another two or three years to wake up about their pitching.

Didn't know about Broglio's arm problems. Thanks for the info. I remember the trade at the time, and the results. For Cubs fans it was not only losing a future hall of famer for a guy whose career was basically near the end, it must have really hurt to see Brock help the Cards to the WS win.
But I was a Milwaukee Braves fan at the time, and they had one of the best hitting teams in the league. But after Spahn, Buhl, and Burdette lost their stuff, they were just an above average team. Then they got rid of Juan Pizarro and Joey Jay two pitchers who had some good years with their new clubs. Jay had two 20 win seasons in a row with the Reds (although he was mostly mediocre after that.) Pizarro had four pretty good years with the White Sox after the trade. Those two could have made the difference for the Braves in the early sixties.
Moral of the story: you never have enough good pitchers.

[EasyAce]

Didn't know about Broglio's arm problems. Thanks for the info. I remember the trade at the time, and the results. For Cubs fans it was not only losing a future hall of famer for a guy whose career was basically near the end, it must have really hurt to see Brock help the Cards to the WS win.
But I was a Milwaukee Braves fan at the time, and they had one of the best hitting teams in the league. But after Spahn, Buhl, and Burdette lost their stuff, they were just an above average team. Then they got rid of Juan Pizarro and Joey Jay two pitchers who had some good years with their new clubs. Jay had two 20 win seasons in a row with the Reds (although he was mostly mediocre after that.) Pizarro had four pretty good years with the White Sox after the trade. Those two could have made the difference for the Braves in the early sixties.
Moral of the story: you never have enough good pitchers.

Joey Jay was always a fascinating story to me. He was the first Little League alumnus to make the
major leagues, and he was one of the 1950s-1960s Bonus Babies who had to be kept on a major
league roster for two seasons if he signed for higher than a $4,000 bonus. Jay also experienced
trouble in his Little League days because he was big and tall for his age, prompting him as an
early major leaguer to write a scathing article advising parents to think twice before letting their
kids play Little League baseball.

Jay had a live fastball, a serviceable curve ball, and developed a wicked changeup, but other than
the resentments veterans felt toward the bonus babies* he had a whale of a time cracking a Spahn-
Burdette-Buhl rotation. By the time he got to pitch in earnest in 1958, that rotation was still a tough
nut to crack. Plus, until Del Crandall settled in as the Braves' regular catcher Jay had few oppor-
tunities to throw that changeup. Crandal stunned Jay in a 1958 game with Stan Musial at the
plate, a game that just so happened to be Jay's first start of the year---he called for a changeup.
Jay threw it, and Musial flied out to right to end that inning. From then on, nobody catching Jay
was afraid to call for his changeup.

The Braves were silly enough to think Carlton Willey would be a better fit than Jay in 1961,
hence trading Jay to the Reds. Finally allowed to be a regular pitcher, Jay probably meant the
pennant for those Reds, who'd had several solid hitting teams but dubious pitching the previous
decade. He wasn't an overpowering pitcher and usually pitched to his defenses, but he did tie
the National League in shutouts (4, with erstwhile teammate Warren Spahn), and only (in
descending order from the top) Don Cardwell (his career year), Sandy Koufax (his coming-out
party, busting as he did the NL strikeout record), Don Drysdale, teammate Jim O'Toole, and
Stan Williams had more wins above a replacement-level pitcher than Jay in 1961.

Jay was only 25 in 1961. (He also won the only World Series game the Reds would win against
the Yankees in 1961.) What happened to him?

Easy. He was given a whopping workload in his back-to-back 20+ winning seasons, after never
having thrown more than 136 major league innings in any previous season. He pitched through
shoulder trouble in 1963 and it showed. ("It looks as if I'm going to have my third 20-game
season---20 losses," he cracked in August 1963.) Between the shoulder trouble and a small
controversy over the quick-stretch, no-windup pitching style he developed with men on base
in 1962 (Giants manager Alvin Dark and Dodger manager Walter Alston complained so incessantly
that the National League ended up adopting a rule that effectively terminated Jay's no-windup style.)

Either way, Jay would never again be the same pitcher he was in 1962-63. He was finished after
1966 at age 30. He left baseball to make a life in Florida, including becoming wealthy as a result
investments going back to his earlier Braves years: he spent his bonus money on a poultry farm
and grew it to include an oil-drilling operation that helped him make a killing when he was able
to invest some of the profit into oil wells himself.

I don’t live in the past, like most ballplayers. I don’t wear my World Series rings, my mother has
my scrapbooks, and if someone offered me a baseball job, I’d turn it down in a minute. When I made
the break, it was clean and forever. It’s infantile to keep thinking about the game. It gets you nowhere.
Most ex-ballplayers keep on living in some destructive fantasy world. Not me. I’m happier than ever
since I left. And do me a favor. Don’t mention where I live---Joey Jay to an interviewer a few years
ago. Which didn't stop him from accepting gladly when inducted into the Reds' Hall of Fame.

Jay's shoulder trouble also points up a bugaboo affecting Reds' pitching for years to come: whenever
the Reds found a live arm and repertoire, almost invariably those pitchers would develop arm and
shoulder trouble. Previously, Ewell (The Whip) Blackwell flamed out due to shoulder and elbow
trouble. (That fabled near-submarine delivery probably factored in when you consider Blackwell
threw a deadly fastball in his prime.) Jim Maloney, a rook on the 1961 Reds who'd come into his
own in 1963 just as Jay's shoulder began resigning its commission, looked like a Cincinnati Koufax
for a few years until he, too, developed shoulder issues. Gary Nolan, Mel Queen, Don Gullett, Will
McEnaney, Mario Soto, Tom Browning, Rob Murphy, Rob Dibble---all ruined by injuries, and those
are just the best known of the lot.


Jay (far right) with (from left) Jim O'Toole and Bob Purkey (who probably should have won the
1962 Cy Young Award).

[goatprairie]

Joey Jay was always a fascinating story to me. He was the first Little League alumnus to make the
major leagues, and he was one of the 1950s-1960s Bonus Babies who had to be kept on a major
league roster for two seasons if he signed for higher than a $4,000 bonus. Jay also experienced
trouble in his Little League days because he was big and tall for his age, prompting him as an
early major leaguer to write a scathing article advising parents to think twice before letting their
kids play Little League baseball.

Jay had a live fastball, a serviceable curve ball, and developed a wicked changeup, but other than
the resentments veterans felt toward the bonus babies* he had a whale of a time cracking a Spahn-
Burdette-Buhl rotation. By the time he got to pitch in earnest in 1958, that rotation was still a tough
nut to crack. Plus, until Del Crandall settled in as the Braves' regular catcher Jay had few oppor-
tunities to throw that changeup. Crandal stunned Jay in a 1958 game with Stan Musial at the
plate, a game that just so happened to be Jay's first start of the year---he called for a changeup.
Jay threw it, and Musial flied out to right to end that inning. From then on, nobody catching Jay
was afraid to call for his changeup.

The Braves were silly enough to think Carlton Willey would be a better fit than Jay in 1961,
hence trading Jay to the Reds. Finally allowed to be a regular pitcher, Jay probably meant the
pennant for those Reds, who'd had several solid hitting teams but dubious pitching the previous
decade. He wasn't an overpowering pitcher and usually pitched to his defenses, but he did tie
the National League in shutouts (4, with erstwhile teammate Warren Spahn), and only (in
descending order from the top) Don Cardwell (his career year), Sandy Koufax (his coming-out
party, busting as he did the NL strikeout record), Don Drysdale, teammate Jim O'Toole, and
Stan Williams had more wins above a replacement-level pitcher than Jay in 1961.

Jay was only 25 in 1961. (He also won the only World Series game the Reds would win against
the Yankees in 1961.) What happened to him?

Easy. He was given a whopping workload in his back-to-back 20+ winning seasons, after never
having thrown more than 136 major league innings in any previous season. He pitched through
shoulder trouble in 1963 and it showed. ("It looks as if I'm going to have my third 20-game
season---20 losses," he cracked in August 1963.) Between the shoulder trouble and a small
controversy over the quick-stretch, no-windup pitching style he developed with men on base
in 1962 (Giants manager Alvin Dark and Dodger manager Walter Alston complained so incessantly
that the National League ended up adopting a rule that effectively terminated Jay's no-windup style.)

Either way, Jay would never again be the same pitcher he was in 1962-63. He was finished after
1966 at age 30. He left baseball to make a life in Florida, including becoming wealthy as a result
investments going back to his earlier Braves years: he spent his bonus money on a poultry farm
and grew it to include an oil-drilling operation that helped him make a killing when he was able
to invest some of the profit into oil wells himself.

I don’t live in the past, like most ballplayers. I don’t wear my World Series rings, my mother has
my scrapbooks, and if someone offered me a baseball job, I’d turn it down in a minute. When I made
the break, it was clean and forever. It’s infantile to keep thinking about the game. It gets you nowhere.
Most ex-ballplayers keep on living in some destructive fantasy world. Not me. I’m happier than ever
since I left. And do me a favor. Don’t mention where I live---Joey Jay to an interviewer a few years
ago. Which didn't stop him from accepting gladly when inducted into the Reds' Hall of Fame.

Jay's shoulder trouble also points up a bugaboo affecting Reds' pitching for years to come: whenever
the Reds found a live arm and repertoire, almost invariably those pitchers would develop arm and
shoulder trouble. Previously, Ewell (The Whip) Blackwell flamed out due to shoulder and elbow
trouble. (That fabled near-submarine delivery probably factored in when you consider Blackwell
threw a deadly fastball in his prime.) Jim Maloney, a rook on the 1961 Reds who'd come into his
own in 1963 just as Jay's shoulder began resigning its commission, looked like a Cincinnati Koufax
for a few years until he, too, developed shoulder issues. Gary Nolan, Mel Queen, Don Gullett, Will
McEnaney, Mario Soto, Tom Browning, Rob Murphy, Rob Dibble---all ruined by injuries, and those
are just the best known of the lot.


Jay (far right) with (from left) Jim O'Toole and Bob Purkey (who probably should have won the
1962 Cy Young Award).

I don't follow of baseball nearly as much as I used to, but one thing I've noticed over the years is the precarious situation of pitchers. There have been a great many of whom started out as phenoms but had their careers ended early due to arm problems i.e. Mark Fydrich, Jim Maloney, and a lot more.
I remember in particular two young pitching prospects from my hometown of La Crosse, Wi., Tony and Andy Ghelfi. Tony made it to the majors with the Phillies and pitched about two games total. And then arm problems. His younger brother Andy at one time was rated the best prospect in the Indians org. Arm problems wrecked his career before he made it to the majors.
I guess if any prospect has a chance to make it to the majors as either a pitcher or some other player, he should choose the latter option.

On an aside, like me you've probably read articles about who was the fastest pitcher ever. Invariably, the name of Walter Johnson cropped up as maybe the fastest. But some baseball historian checked one instance of Johnson being tested for his speed. IIRC the test was done in 1917 after Johnson had already pitched a full game. I don't remember how they did the test, but Johnson's fastball was measured at about 92 mph. On that one test many "experts" concluded that while Johnson was fast for his day, he didn't measure up to modern pitchers.
I then later checked Johnson's career and found some interesting things.
For one thing the test done in 1917 was done ten years after Johnson had been in the league with over 3,000 innings pitched. I also discovered that was about the time that his yearly strikeout totals started to rapidly diminish.
From a pitcher who had  twice struck out over 300 batters in a season in a league where many batters choked up and just tried to slap at the ball, his strikeout totals after ten years and 3,000 innings were basically halved. He never again struck out over 200 batters in a season. And he was only 29 when he started to lose speed.
What could have happened? Well, it sure looks like Johnson had pitched too many innings and  lost speed on his fastball. He remained a real good pitcher because 92 mph was still fast for those days, and Johnson had excellent control.
I would bet that in his prime Johnson probably threw around 100 mph on his fastball. Even Ty Cobb said in 1907 Johnson's rookie year that nobody on the Tigers had ever seen that kind of speed.
I've read some stuff on the internet that some other tests taken on Johnson's fastball four or five years earlier had him at around 100 mph. But those tests were considered unscientific unlike the one from 1917.
I'm wondering if Johnson's sidearm motion allowed him to avoid many of the arm problems of modern pitchers who today almost exclusively throw  overarm putting more stress on their arms. How some overarm pitchers like Warren Spahn could pitch effectively into their 40s is a mystery. But it sure looks like keeping young pitchers from pitching too many innings is the smart thing.

[EasyAce]

I'm wondering if Johnson's sidearm motion allowed him to avoid many of the arm problems of modern pitchers who today almost exclusively throw  overarm putting more stress on their arms. How some overarm pitchers like Warren Spahn could pitch effectively into their 40s is a mystery. But it sure looks like keeping young pitchers from pitching too many innings is the smart thing.

Things were different when men like Spahn, Johnson, Satchel Paige, Don Newcombe, Whitey Ford, Lefty Grove, and
Bob Gibson grew up---you did a lot more throwing just playing the game on the sandlots or in the schoolyards than
kids do now. You built up shoulder and arm strength that way. (You also didn't try throwing curve balls until you were
about 16, either.)

With Warren Spahn, he developed a way to throw the screwball without stressing his shoulder and almost as an off-
speed pitch. Tug McGraw, whom you might remember as an excellent relief pitcher, had a long career throwing the
screwball, too, and likely learned about it from Spahn himself, when they were teammates on the 1965 Mets. Fernando
Valenzuela ended up compromised by the screwball, too; he probably lasted a lot longer than he should have, but he
was just a journeyman pitcher after only a couple of seasons in the bigs.

A lot of off speed pitchers tend to have shoulder and arm trouble because they throw with odd movements or motions.
Remember Randy Jones? Mid-1970s Padres. Bagged a Cy Young. Can't hurt your arm throwing that slop, they said.
A year or so later, pretty much cooked and done.

Curve ball specialists don't normally last very long. (Bert Blyleven, whose money pitch was a monstrous curve ball,
was a notable exception.) Two pitchers who threw the pure overhand curve---Sandy Koufax and Carl Erskine---had
comparatively short careers, though in Erskine's case he suffered an early shoulder injury and had a manager
(Burt Shotton) who believed the way you got over shoulder trouble was to throw through it, which left Erskine to
pitch most of his 13-year career (including two no-hitters) with a barking shoulder. I don't know if the pure overhand
curve contributed to Koufax's elbow issues but it probably didn't help him.

I think the shock of Koufax's early retirement scared the living shit out of baseball people, enough that, gradually,
they began the five-man rotation and paying more strict attention to pitching shoulders and elbows. Not always,
and not always well, though in Mark (The Bird) Fidrych's case his shoulder ended up shredded because he was
fool enough to come back prematurely from a knee injury and other subsequent injuries. (Something similar
happened to Craig Swan, a promising Met pitcher whose shoulder issues shortened his career---only after he
retired did he realise his rotator cuff no longer existed.)

Even now, pitchers are still stubborn enough to try pitching through injuries. You wonder what it's going to do
to young Met pitchers today like Steven Matz and Noah Syndergaard, both of whom tried pitching through
issues this season. Live arms, pitching through injuries, not good.