SPIT ON MY GRAVE (via Glenn Dryfoos):

Bamberger tutored multitude of 20-game winners (ESPN.com, 4/06/04)

George Bamberger, a former major league pitcher who became a coach and managed Milwaukee's "Bambi's Bombers" teams in the late 1970s, died of cancer. He was 80. [...]

Bamberger was Earl Weaver's pitching coach with the Baltimore Orioles for 10 seasons, during which he produced 18 20-game winners, including four for the 1971 American League champions -- Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar, Dave McNally and Pat Dobson.

In all, Palmer won 20 games seven times under Bamberger's tutelage. Cuellar and McNally were four-time 20-game winners, while Dobson, Mike Torrez and Wayne Garland won 20 once each for Bamberger. As manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, Bamberger produced 20-game winners in Mike Caldwell and Teddy Higuera.

Bamberger first came to the major leagues in 1951, briefly, as a member of the Bobby Thomson-led New York Giants, pitching in two games. He pitched in five games for the Giants in 1952, three games for the Orioles in 1959, all without winning or losing game, and spent most of his pitching career in the Pacific Coast League.

There he had more success, reputedly because of his reliance on his "Staten Island sinker" (he was born on Staten Island in New York City), a euphemism for a spitball.

His major league ERA was 9.42 and his winning percentage as a major league manager was .489, but as a coach he was very highly regarded, even if some of his pitchers' successes may have come from using the Staten Island sinker.

Frank Cashen, who spent many years with the Orioles organization and who as GM of the Mets hired Bamberger to succeed Joe Torre as New York manager, said "he was absolutely the best pitching coach I ever saw."

Speaking to Newsday on Monday, Cashen said, "Some of his theories were revolutionary. He grew up in the era of the four-man rotation and believed in it passionately." [...]

"He taught me a lot," Selig said. "There's nobody who knew pitching like he did. He believed pitchers should throw more. He didn't like the five-day rotation."

As he once told Tom Boswell: "A guy who cheats in a friendly game of cards is a cheater. A pro who throws a spitball to support his family is a contender."

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 6, 2004 8:21 PM