brainwagon

I was bored with the scouting reports on XM this morning, so I surfed over to channel 200 where Bob Dylan was playing music with a baseball theme. One of the songs that he played was Teddy Reynolds singing “Strike one”, which is all about pitcher Don Newcombe. I wasn’t paying too much attention, and I had only the vaguest recollection of who Don Newcombe was, so I decided to do a little bit of research to educate myself. It turns out that Don was a pretty interesting guy. He first played for the Newark Eagles in the Negro Leagues, and then came up through the Nashua Dodgers (a racially integrated team) in the old New England League before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949. In his rookie year, he had 17 wins with 5 shutouts, and pitched a string of 32 scoreless innings. He is the only player to win Rookie of the Year, the Cy Young, and MVP (he won the MVP and the Cy Young in 1956). In 1957 he posted a record of 27-7, with an ERA 3.06 with 18 complete games. His Wikipedia bio has some cool facts: he was apparently a good enough hitter that he was used as a pinch hitter, he once stole home (the only NL pitcher in the 1950s to do so, despite only having two career steals), and he hit two homeruns in a game three different times. He’s apparrently now 80 some odd years old, and still in the Dodgers organization.

Hats off, Don!

2007 Veterans Committee Profile: Don Newcombe
Wikipedia’s Don Newcombe page

[tags]Baseball[/tags]