BETTER PRAY FOR MORE RAIN:

Hall of Famer, 82, won 363 games (Associated Press, , November 24, 2003)

Warren Spahn, the Hall of Fame pitcher who won more games than any other left-hander in history, died Monday. He was 82. [...]

Spahn was the mainstay of the Braves' pitching staff for two decades, first in Boston and then in Milwaukee. He pitched for 21 seasons, winning 363 games and posting 20 or more victories 13 times.

The remarkable part was that he was 25 before he got his first major league win. [...]

In 1943, Spahn went into the Army. He served in Europe, where he was wounded, decorated for bravery with a Bronze Star and Purple Heart and was awarded a battlefield commission. He fought at the Battle of the Bulge and in the battle for the bridge at Remagen, Germany, where many men in his company were lost.

Spahn returned to baseball in 1946, and had an 8-5 record for the Braves.

The next season, he emerged as one of baseball's best pitchers with a 21-10 record. He led the NL with a 2.33 ERA and became part of a pitching partnership with Johnny Sain that took Boston to the NL pennant the next year. Because of the Braves' thin staff, Boston's pitching was described as "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain."

Starting in 1947, Spahn won 20 or more games in 13 of the next 17 seasons. Only Christy Mathewson had as many 20-win seasons in the NL. Strangely, one of the years he missed that plateau was 1948, when he was 15-12 as the Braves won their first pennant since 1914.

Equipped with a high-kicking delivery that baffled batters, Spahn became a dominant pitcher after that season, a consistent 20-game winner. Only once between 1953 and 1961 did he fail to win 20 games.

Spahn led the NL in victories eight times, including five in a row from 1957-61, and led the league in strikeouts from 1949-52.

He once said, "When I'm pitching, I feel I'm down to the essentials -- two men with one challenge between them."