Luis Tiant Red Sox Pitcher dies at 83
twentyfive
Living well and enjoying my retirement
Damn he was a giant in his time he played 19 seasons I believe 8 with the Red Sox, guy had the most unusual pitching motion we ever saw. He won 229 games in his career and I believe was the American League MVP 3 times
R. I. P. Luis Tiant
R. I. P. Luis Tiant
13 comments
Joe Morgan at the plate.
I do remember hearing Castro was a huge baseball fan.
he was a 3 time all star, never won the CY and certainly never won MVP
I remembered three time winner my bad he was a three time all star thanks for the correction
It was more than that though. He was a young fireballer with the Clevelnad Indians, including a 20 win season. He nthen lost 20 games, was a medicore nothing the next 2 years, as he lost his fastball and then became a Red Sox. He invented a bizarre warm-up during which he would actually look at second base and because it was so wierd it was tough to pick up the pitch out of his hand and he became a winner again. In Boston we love those who excel, without apparent great physical skills, see Larry Bird, Tom Brady, and that is why we loved Luis Tiant who by the way after failing came back to suck in his first uear in Boston, going 1-7, resulting in a 3 year mark of 17-30. Then he exploded to go 134-72 over the next 8 years. He was a fucking horse with 187 complete games in 19 years and 49 shutouts.
Nowadays pitchers melt if they throw 100 pitches on 4-5 days rest, In the 1975 world series he threw a complete game shutout in game one. A complete game with in game 4, throwing 153 pitches and then followed it up with 8 innings and 113 pitches in the single greatest baseball game of all time: Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, which most people remember for Carlton Fisk's game winning homerun in the bottom of the 12th, one minute before curfew would have ended the game.
In Boston we know that Fisk's moment gets the most hype, but that the real hero of the game was Bernie Carbo, a bench player. I doubt anyone knows who he was but he was part of a group of red sox players called the Buffalo Heads, led by pitcher Bill "spaceman" Lee. Carbo used to travel with a stuffed gorilla who sat in the middle seat next to him on flights. In game 6 he decided to "fix" his bat so he put it on a lathe and smoothed it out beautifully. Rick Wise a pitcher said: " loos great, but you lathed off the logo so you can't use it cuz its now illegal". Carbo wrote "Louisville Slugger on it with a magic marker.
Now it is game 6, bottom of the 8th, 2 outs, 2 men on base ans he is told to go pinch hit. He thinks the Red's will change pitchers so he doesn;t take it seriously until the Ump says: "hey you were announced get in the batter's box". The video is worth watching because he wasn't even close to being ready to hit, there were 2 striles on him and his next swing was described by Pete Rose as "the worst swing I ever saw", by Johnny bench as "he looked like a little leaguer learning how to hit" and his teammate Rico Petrocelli as" apitcher who had hurt his arm and was failing in his comeback as a hitter". Of course it ended up in the centerfield bleachers for a 3 run homerun tying the game and setting the stage for Fisk's heroics.https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/re…
On a side note: After Fisk's homerun and with the streaking craze going wild about 2-3,000 of my fellow Umass students and I took off our clothes and ran around outside naked.