1960 Profile Luis Arroyo

 EL ZUDO DE TALBABOA

That's Enrique Arroyo, The Pudgy Lefty From Puerto Rico, The Freshman 'Stopper' On The Cardinals' Staff

"Luis Enrique Arroyo thumbed slowly through the pages of the Houston, Texas, telephone directory.

'What's going on, Yo-Yo?' he was asked.

'I'm trying to find Mrs. Willey's phone number,' Arroyo answered. 'I may need a room I had last year.'

Only a couple hours before, the St. Louis Cardinals had played the Chicago White Sox in an exhibition game in the Texas city. Yo-Yo Arroyo had been pounded freely.

Seven hits in four innings, not to mention bases on balls and an apparent lack of 'stuff' had caused him no little dismay. And, among top officials of the Cardinals, the consensus was that the pudgy Puerto Rican southpaw still wasn't ready for the major leagues.

'I thought for sure they would leave me in Houston,' Arroyo now laughs about the incident.

And he still wasn't so sure when he got back from St. Louis that he might not wind up in the Texas League where he had been an impressive pitcher for Dixie Walker (a Cardinal coach this spring) in 1954.

Eddie Stanky, still manager of the Cardinals, was fuming. Everyone had told him that Arroyo was quite a pitcher; that Arroyo could win in the National League. But in 18 innings of exhibition work, Arroyo had been pounded hard. His control was terrible, and when he did get the ball over the plate, the enemy hit it for distance.

When the exhibition schedule was completed, Arroyo had an unimpressive earned run average of 7.00.

Seven games of the National League schedule had been played and Arroyo had warmed the bench, fidgeting, squirming, wondering when he'd get the news- 'Back to Houston.'

Then it came. Stanky pointed to him and announced, 'You're pitching the game in Cincinnati.' It would be his first start for the Cardinals, his first chance in the majors.

In the very first inning, he almost got his ticket to Houston- and Mrs. Willey's rooming house.

Johnny Temple, the pesky leadoff hitter of the Redlegs, opened the inning with a single. Arroyo uncorked a wild pitch and Temple reached second base. Wally Post stood with this bat on his shoulder and took four straight wide pitches.

Gus Bell didn't move as Yo-Yo missed with three straight pitches for ball three.

'For criminy sakes, Dixie' Stanky directed Walker, 'go out there and talk to that guy. He's driving me crazy.'

All spring Walker had told everyone, 'Arroyo will be all right. That fellow can pitch.' But now it was time that Arroyo should prove it.

Walker, the soft-spoken Alabaman strode to the mound.

'Look here, Luis, there's no sense in you being so nervous out here. You've been pitching like you're scared all spring.

'Now either you do or you don't. That's all there is to it. Start throwing that ball like you did last year, and if you get it over, you'll get them out. I know that. Now get going!'

Luis got going. He struck out Bell, and Temple helped when he tried to steal third and was thrown out. Ted Kluszewski grounded out and Yo-Yo still was in the major leagues.

It's important, of course, that he stayed for seven and two-thirds innings in that game, gave up five hits, walked six, but then Herb Moford went to his rescue in the eighth inning, and between them, they had a shutout, 3-0.

It was after that game that Yo-Yo became the 'stopper,' the pitcher who could bring a losing streak to an end. The Cardinals had lost seven straight when Arroyo turned in a five-hitter and beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-3.

They lost three more, Arroyo won. Another three-game losing streak was halted by the pudgy Puerto Rican.

Nearly four months after Yo-Yo had looked up Mrs. Willey's phone number, he was leading the National League in earned runs. He had ten victories at mid-season against three defeats.

And then, when Leo Durocher, manager of the New York Giants and the National League All-Stars, started picking pitchers for the annual classic, Luis Enrique Arroyo was one of several selected for the mid-summer game.

It was with great surprise that Arroyo received the announcement that Durocher had picked him for the All-Star Game.

'How come he took me?' Arroyo asked in a puzzled manner. 'Why, he's always on me, riding me good when I pitch against the Giants.'

'That's because he always picks on the good players, Yo-Yo,' Stan Musial, his more illustrious teammate, told him.

Yo-Yo more or less guffawed, poked Musial in the ribs as the slugger went on his way.

'You know, there's my favorite. In my book, he's the best. He always has a new joke for me, him and Red (Schoendienst)- they're great guys.'

It was then that Arroyo, who had never seen too many major leaguers in action, picked his favorite pitchers- the fellows he'd like to follow in the majors.

'I was always crazy to see Robin Roberts. He's great. He knows how to pitch.'

And who was his favorite southpaw?

'Ed Lopat,' he came right back. 'I saw him this spring and was disappointed in the way he throws, the stuff he had. But I wasn't disappointed in the way he threw what he had. He threw it where he wanted.'

Arroyo's career wasn't always successful. There was the time, in 1952, when he turned up with a sore arm while he was with the Cardinals' American Association farm club, then at Columbus, Ohio.

During the spring, after several games had been postponed because of rain, Harry Walker, his manager there as well as now, scheduled a workout at a high school gymnasium.

Yo-Yo took part, worked real hard for twenty minutes or so, took his hot showers and walked out into a cool mist. He failed to put on a coat or jacket.

Some 24 hours later, Arroyo had a sore arm. The pain was terrific and not until late the next season did it begin to show signs of getting better.

It was about this sore arm that Arroyo chided an Eastern baseball writer this season. The writer insisted on obtaining the story as to how Arroyo had regained his strength.

So Yo-Yo started out, telling about a little man in Puerto Rico who had told him to get some leaves from a particular native tree; that the leaves applied in a hot poultice would cure the arm. And sure enough, it worked, Arroyo told the writer.

But when the story appeared in print, and the St. Louis writers started to verify it, Arroyo had a big laugh.

Here's what he related:

'The fellow, he stayed around for two or three hours, trying to find out how my arm got all right. I tried to sleep, but he kept right on talking.

'Finally, I say to myself, 'I fix him, I throw the bull.' Good story, eh?

'Yeah, good story, but not true.'

It was after the sore arm that Arroyo claims that he became a pitcher.

'Before the arm went bad, I threw much harder. After, I tried for control. I put the ball now where I want it, almost every time.

'Gus (Mancuso), the Cardinal scout, taught me how to throw a better curve ball. He worked with me at Houston and taught me to throw the curve ball low. It's one of my best pitches now.'

But enemy hitters still think Luis can throw a fast one, one that does tricks as he pitches to left-handed hitters; one that looks like a screwball to right-handers.

Down in Puerto Rico, the five-foot, eight-inch 178-pounder is quite a hero and the newspapers elaborate on his conquests. He's 'Tite,' a Spanish takeoff on his middle name of Enrique, and 'El Zudo De Talbaboa,' meaning simply, southpaw from Talbaboa, a town near his home of Penuelas in Puerto Rico.

Yo-Yo got his start in baseball in the Puerto Rican professional league, quitting school in the ninth grade and accepting a $500 bonus from the Ponce club.

'I was only the second player ever to get a bonus from the league,' he tells proudly.

And in the spring of 1948, the Ponce club financed a trip to Florida for Arroyo, sending him to a baseball school conducted by George Stirnweiss, the former Yankee infielder.

Bob Doty, president of the Greenville, South Carolina, club, saw him, liked what he saw, and signed him. When Doty transferred to Greensboro, North Carolina, that same year, Arroyo went with him.

It was in the Carolina League where the fans nicknamed him 'Yo-Yo.' He won 21 games in 1949, and in 1950 he was drafted by the Cardinal organization.

He won only seven games in the next two seasons and then came the sore arm.

But things have happened fast since then. He started the 1954 season with Columbus, Ga., in the Sally League where he won eight, lost six and had an earned run average of 2.49 when Houston put in a call for him.

He won eight, lost only three the rest of the year, struck out 130 Texas League hitters in the 115 innings he pitched, and turned in a no-hitter against Dallas, the second of his career. The other was against Burlington in 1949 when he was with Greensboro.

Arroyo didn't lose this year until June 1- after he had won six straight. Home runs by Jackie Robinson of the Dodgers and Gail Harris of the Giants cost Arroyo his first two losses, 5-4 and 2-1.

The Cubs shellacked him for good in his third defeat. 'That game was in the daytime, but I showed 'em and I beat 'em, too, in the daytime,' he said about that one. That was when he beat them, 7-2.

That's a far cry from that night in Cincinnati when he was thinking about his ticket to Houston, which caused Birdie Tebbetts, Cincinnati manager,  to say afterward, probably in a mood of disgust about losing, 'That guy will be back in the minors before the first of July.'

Well, there's nothing minor about the major league All-Star Game, and Tebbetts later altered his opinion about Yo-Yo after the southpaw had beaten Cincinnati for the third time.

'I'd say he's looking like one of the league's better left-handers, who, I'm sorry to say, will be around all year, at least.'

And probably then some."

-Ellis Veeck, Baseball Digest, September 1955

WHAT A RELIEF

"Just in the nick of time, the Yankees picked up little Luis Arroyo, veteran Puerto Rican southpaw with the tantalizing screwball. Arroyo has had several previous major league trials and was quite effective for a spell with the Cardinals and Pirates. But he improved his screwball at Jersey City and has proved quite a 'relief' to Manager Casey Stengel.

Father of five children, 'Tite' (as he is called) resides in Ponce, P.R. He is 34 years old."

-1960 New York Yankees Official Program and Scorecard

"Little Luis Arroyo, a former Pirate, was purchased from Jersey City late in July. His screwball, control and pitching know-how made him a valuable left-handed relief man for manager Stengel. He posted a low earned run and hits-per-inning average and steadied the pitching staff for the run on the pennant. The native Puerto Rican had flashes of success in earlier National League trials with St. Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh."

-1960 World Series Official Souvenir Program