November 25, 2003
PRESSURE COOKER:
Hall of Fame Pitcher Warren Spahn Dies (Bart Barnes, , November 25, 2003, Washington Post)
His first major league season was in 1942, when he broke in with the Braves in Boston and made four uninspired starts. He was sent down to the minor leagues by manager Casey Stengel, reportedly for refusing to brush back Pee Wee Reese of the Brooklyn Dodgers.He spent the next three years in an Army uniform, fighting in World War II in Europe. More than a half century later, Mr. Spahn was asked at a news conference in his native Buffalo if he'd ever felt more pressure than pitching in the World Series.
"Well, there was the Battle of the Bulge," Mr. Spahn answered, according to the Buffalo News. His Army service included duty with an engineering unit that worked on the bridge at Remagen, the last bridge left standing over the Rhine River, and he was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
After the war, pitching major league baseball seemed easy, he said. "After what I went through overseas, I never thought of anything I was told to do in baseball as hard work. You get over feeling like that when you spend days on end sleeping in frozen tank tracks in enemy-threatened territory. The Army taught me something about challenges and about what's important and what isn't," Mr. Spahn was quoted as saying in Gary Bedingfield's "Baseball in World War II."
That seems a compelling reason for the draft--to teach an ever more juvenile citizenry what really matters in life. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 25, 2003 1:18 PM
Also note Ted Williams who served in both WWII and Korea which lead some to believe that he would have much higher stats had he not served.
I remember shortly after 9-11 the articles that pointed out movie stars from the 40s and 50s who served in the military during their careers - the same can be said of a lot of professional ball players.
Spahn was 1/2 the inspiration for one of Casey Stengel's best lines. In 1965, both Spahn and Yogi Berra were making their last hurrahs as players with the Mets. One day, Stengel played Spahn and Berra. After the game, a reporter asked Casey if that was the oldest battery he had ever used in a game, and he replied "I don't know about that, but it sure was the ugliest."
Posted by: Foos at November 25, 2003 6:20 PMI forget who postulated the theory, but someone said that one reason for Nolan Ryan's ability to pitch so effectively into his 40s was because he didn't pitch all that much in his early 20s and do any damage to his arm before it was fully developed, thanks to his role with the Mets as the "other" starter, behind Seaver, Koosman and Gentry.
If that's true, the same thing could hold true for Spahn -- even though he was wounded while in WWII, the lack of stress on his pitching arm until he was in his mid-20s may have helped extend his career into his mid-40s, the same way it did for Ryan.
Posted by: John at November 25, 2003 6:36 PMBill James points out that pitch counts kill young pitchers but are fairly easily borne once older.
Posted by: oj at November 25, 2003 7:14 PM