An end for Don Newcombe … and a new beginning

The major league pitching career of the once-dominant Don Newcombe comes to an end 63 years ago today as Cleveland releases the former National League rookie of the year, MVP and Cy Young Award winner.

Newcombe spends eight of his 10 seasons in the majors with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers before drifting off to Cincinnati and Cleveland, and ending his major league career with a 153-96 record.

Newcombe’s first win as a pro comes in 1944, when five days after his 18th birthday he leads the Newark Eagles over Josh Gibson and the Homestead Grays 9-2 in a Negro League game played on Harrisburg’s historic City Island.

Newcombe may be done as a pitcher in the majors after his release from Cleveland in 1961, but not as a hitter.

Newcombe, a lifetime .268 hitter in the majors, reinvents himself as a first baseman-outfielder in 1962 and hits .262 with 12 homers in 81 games for Chunichi of the Japanese Central League.

Alas, he is done as a player after 1962 at the age of 36 as his abilities erode in part due to his alcoholism.

Newcombe reinvents himself once again after getting help from Alcoholics Anonymous and then reaching out to countless others both in and out of the game, telling them of his struggles and warning against following in his missteps.

“What I have done after my baseball career,” Newcombe later tells the Los Angeles Times, “and being able to help people get their lives back on track (and) become human beings again means more to me than all the things I did in baseball.”