Breaking into the majors … literally
Not many folks at the dawn of the 1960s throw a baseball harder than Sam McDowell, the pride of Pittsburgh’s Central Catholic High School.
McDowell is 6-foot-5 and 195 pounds with a naturally blessed left arm found on few pitchers not named Sandy Koufax.
With seemingly every team from the major leagues showing interest in McDowell, the Cleveland Indians get him for a $75,000 signing bonus just as soon as McDowell finishes up his high school days at Central Catholic.
McDowell is all of 17 years old when that happens as he turns pro in 1960.
Cleveland promptly sends him to the Class D Florida State League to finish that summer and then bump him all the way to Class AAA to start the 1961 season.
McDowell continues to impress everyone with how hard he throws the ball, no matter where it goes – and it goes a lot of places.
Sometimes way inside. Sometimes even farther outside. Sometimes to the backstop. And even sometimes over the plate.
McDowell works 280 innings in his first season-plus in the minors with sporadic brilliance as he wins 18 and loses 16. He strikes out 256, but also walks 132.
The Indians, though, hardly are deterred from rushing the development of the consistently inconsistent McDowell.
Not like they are going anyplace late in the summer of ’61 in the American League.
The Indians are 28 games behind the first-place New York Yankees when they decide 63 years ago today to summon McDowell from the minors.
And the early results are incredibly encouraging as McDowell – making his major league debut in front of a sparse Friday night crowd of only 4,503 at Cleveland Stadium – limits the Minnesota Twins to three singles and nary a run over the game’s first six innings.
McDowell then starts the top of the seventh by striking out Jim Snyder, walking Rich Rollins and then wincing in discomfort.
Seems McDowell – he of the 100-mph fastball – is throwing so hard that he is cracking ribs.
Namely, his own.
Turns out McDowell ends up fracturing two ribs and leaves the game ahead 2-0.
The Indians’ bullpen cannot hold the lead and spits up three runs in the ninth as the Twins win 3-2.
Nonetheless, the legend of Sam McDowell is just beginning.
After splitting the next three seasons between Class AAA and Cleveland, McDowell becomes an American League All-Star in 1965, the first of six such selections in a span of seven seasons.
During that time, he leads the American League in strikeouts five times.
And, in keeping with his consistently inconsistent self, he also leads the American League in walks allowed over five of those seven seasons.
McDowell lasts 15 seasons in the majors before retiring after the 1975 season with a 141-134 career record, 2,453 strikeouts over 2,492 innings.
Oh, yeah, he also walks 1,312 batters.
His greatest opponent at the end of his careers is not anyone with a bat in his hands, but by the alcohol abuse that ends his career at the age of 32.
“I was the biggest, the most hopeless and the most violent drunk in baseball,” McDowell says after his career ends.
After being confronted by his family over his problem, McDowell pursues degrees at the University of Pittsburgh in sports psychology and addiction and eventually returns to baseball as a substance abuse counselor.
The glory of strikeouts past morph into the satisfaction of helping others, who like McDowell, are trying to beat their own inner demons.
“I don’t think about the past very much. Today is all I care about,” McDowell, now 81, later says in a SABR research project. “I’ve been very lucky because I believe seriously in my heart that this had to be, that my calling in life is what I am right now.”