"Veteran outfielder Bob Cerv, now in his third separate tour of duty with the Yankees, has a unique position with the World Champions. He's paid to be a utility man. Once again, big Bob will come in when the big hit is needed from a right-handed batter. He'll fill in now and then in the outfield, especially in certain parks where his power gives him a special advantage. But his main job with the World Champions is to come into the game in a key situation and deliver the big hit.
Bob underwent surgery to remove cartilage from his right knee during the Series in 1961. During the winter, he followed orders, took off some 15 pounds and gradually strengthened his knee. Bob is confident that he will be able to deliver the big blow again this summer.
Bob, the champion father on the Yankee club with eight children, owns the American League record for most pinch-hit homers for his career- 12. Two more will tie him with George Crowe for the major league record of 14.
Cerv's biggest season was in 1958 with Kansas City when he hit .305, slugged 38 homers and drove in 104 runs. Big Bob is not expected to do that again, but he does expect to help the Yankee pennant drive in 1962."
Born May 5, 1926, in Weston, Nebraska, resides in Kansas City, Mo. Height: 6-0, weight: 243.
Married and the father of five girls, Sithay (13), Sandra (12), Denise (10), Karen (9) and Phyllis (1) and three boys, Robert, Jr. (8), Joe (6) and John (3).
Holds American League record, most pinch-hit home runs, lifetime (12).
ROBIN ROBERTS
"Faster than most pitchers, the pudgy Phillies bonus baby also throws plenty of breaking stuff. In a hole, however, he'll always return to his fast ball, which is his number one pitch. Batters don't take too many pitches against him because his control is good."
-Milton Richman, United Press, from Here's What N.L. Aces Throw (Baseball Digest, January 1951)
FIRST ROBIN OF FLING
"On the night of June 17, the Phillies' clubhouse in Shibe Park, Philadlelphia, took on an aura of Times Square on New Year's Eve. Robin Roberts had just beaten the Cincinnati Reds, 4-2, for his 25th victory of the season, and it seemed that most of baseball's elder statesmen had jammed into the steam-shrouded room to join in the horraying.
'Roberts is the best pitcher in baseball today,' proclaimed Bullet Joe Bush, the old A's and Yankees' pitching star. 'He would have been great in any era.' Hans Lobert, once a teammate of Grover Cleveland Alexander's, agreed. So did Cy Perkins, the whilom A's catcher, now a coach with the Phillies.
Another old catcher- Manager Steve O'Neill of the Phillies- summed it all up. 'Robbie,' he said, 'compares with any pitcher who ever lived.'
And what was Roberts doing while the talk was at its height? He was sitting in front of his locker, wearing an expression of perplexity and very little else.
'Hey Robbie,' someone said. 'Why so sad?' The big six-foot, 190-pound right-hander looked up and grinned.
'I'm not sad,' he replied. 'I'm just trying to figure how to get to a television set right after tomorrow night's game. I want to watch Chuck Davey lick Rocky Graziano in Chicago. Chuck's my boy.'
Ask Robin Evan Roberts about his 1952 record of 28 victories and seven defeats, and he gives you a 'what's-so-wonderful-about-it' answer. But mention Chuck Davey and Robin talks like a press agent.
Five years ago Davey and Roberts were classmates at Michigan State College. Chuck was the big wheel of the boxing team, and Robbie was an equally outstanding baseball and basketball player. Yet, to hear Robbie tell it, Davey was the undisputed big man on campus, and his climb to the position of challenger for a world boxing championship is much more noteworthy than the development of another ex-Spartan into one of the best pitchers major league baseball has known in years.
Which is typical of the young man. At 26, Robbie has won 20 or more games in each of three consecutive seasons; he is the first National League pitcher to win 28 games in one season since Dizzy Dean did it in 1935, and he is being hailed by many as the modern-day Grover Cleveland Alexander. But Roberts appears eminently unimpressed by Roberts. A highly articulate fellow, he has a light, deprecating way of talking about himself.
'So I'm supposed to be another Alexander,' he says. 'Why, Alexander won 28 games in his first year in the majors. I didn't do that until my fourth full season.'
Or, on the possibility of his winning 30 games in 1953: 'Look, I got as many breaks last season as I could hope to get. So, how can I say I'll be able to win 30 in any year? What a lot of people don't know is that I got rocked pretty hard in a lot of games last season, but usually the boys got me enough runs to win.'
Which does not imply that Roberts doesn't believe he will ever be a 30-game winner. As Eddie Sawyer, his former boss on the Phillies once put it: 'The thought of failure never occurs to Robbie.' It's just that Roberts is a realist. 'You simply keep going, taking one game at a time,' he says. 'You can't be thinking of whether you're going to win 20 or 25 or even 30 games in a season. You try to win today's game and not look ahead. Certainly, I'd like to win 30 some season. But I know very well that I'll have to have a lot of luck running for me to do it.'
Off the statistical evidence adduced from his 1952 performances, it would seem that Roberts gives too much credit to good luck and not enough to his good right arm. In notching his 28 victories, Robbie started 37 games and went the route in 30 of them, including a 19-inning job in which he outlasted the Boston Braves. He had an earned run average of 2.62 and in 330 innings allowed 104 runs, 292 hits, fanned 148 and- get this- walked only 45.
'And the most amazing thing about the guy,' says Benny Bengough, the one-time Yankees catcher who is now a Phillies coach, 'is that he wins big without knocking anybody down. He simply won't brush those hitters back from the plate. So they dig in on him and look for that good fast ball. But even then they can't hit it.'
When he first came up to the Phillies in midseason of 1948, Robbie pitched as though he considered it cowardly to throw a curve. His fast ball whistles like the wolf of Company A, and virtually the only condescension Roberts made to the niceties of pitching in those days was to come in with a change-up now and then. Now he throws a good curve, the development of which he credits to Ken Johnson, a scattershot southpaw who failed to stick with the Phils because, ironically, he couldn't control his own curve.
'Last season,' Roberts says, 'I threw a lot more curves than ever before. I wanted to break the hitters of the habit of always looking for the fast ball.But whenever I got into a jam, I gave them the fast one.'
Probablly nothing is so illustrative of the quiet confidence Robbie has in himself as an incident that took place in the training camp of the Wilmington Blue Rocks, of the Class B Inter-State League, one afternoon in late March 1948.
Robbie, fresh out of Michigan State with a degree of Bachelor of Science in Education in his pocket, had gone south with the Phillies, and during the first portion of the Grapefruit League season had done nothing to make any member of the organization regret the $25,000 bonus paid Roberts for signing. In fact, he had been the most impressive pitcher in camp. Therefore, there were expressions of astonishment with the club when the then manager, Ben Chapman, announced that Roberts was being farmed out to Wilmington. Chapman explained the Roberts would derive more benefit from taking a regular turn with the Blue Rocks than from sitting around in Shibe Park, awaiting a relief job now and then.
So Roberts reported to the Blue Rocks at their camp in Sumter, South Carolina. On his first day there, Roberts pitched in batting practice, then set out to jog around the field. Sunning himself in left field was one Al Cartwright, sports editor of a Wilmington newspaper, who gave the youngster a big hello.
'Glad to have you with us,' Cartwright said. 'By the way, what's this story about you being disappointed at being sent down by the Phillies?'
'I am- a little,' Roberts replied.
'Well, look at it this way,' Cartwright said. 'Would you rather be pitching regularly in Wilmington, or sitting on the bench in Philly?'
'I'd rather be pitching regularly in Philadelphia,' Roberts said with a shy grin. 'I know I can win up there.'
He got to Philadelphia sooner than expected. He won nine of his first ten starts with the Blue Rocks, prompting one rival manager to suggest that the Phillies were trying to break up the Inter-State League by stationing Robbie at Wilmington. On June 18, however, the Phils recalled him, and he made his first major league start the following night, losing to Pittsburgh, 2-0, although he pitched a five-hitter. On June 23 he beat Cincinnati, 3-2, and was on his way.
Roberts won seven and lost nine that first year. In 1949 he had a 15-15 record, and in 1950, when the Phillies won the pennant, he made his first entry into the 20-game circle, winning 20 and losing 11. In 1951, he won 21 and lost 15.
It would appear that some strange fate has decreed that Robbie be more or less overlooked in times of his greatest achievements. Take his 4-1 victory over Brooklyn on the final day of the 1950 season that enabled the Phillies to clinch the pennant. Making his fourth start in eight days, he pitched masterfully, and would have won, 1-0, had not Pee Wee Reese hit a freak homer in the sixth inning; the ball lodged on a ledge at the base of the screen in right field at Ebbets Field, instead of falling back for a single or double, and the score was tied.
Then, in the tenth inning, Dick Sisler walloped a three-run homer for the Phils, and that was the ball game. Sisler was the talk of baseball, and Robbie, who had pitched out of a bases-loaded jam in the ninth to carry the game into overtime, was sort of a secondary hero.
'But I didn't mind,' he says. 'We won, didn't we? That game was the greatest experience of my life.'
Last season it wasn't until the final weeks that baseball fandom came to the realization that Roberts was pitching as no National Leaguer had pitched since the days of Dizzy Dean, Paul Derringer and Bucky Walters.
For Bobby Shantz, the A's great little left-hander, had captured the public's fancy, in Philadelphia as elsewhere. So Robbie went along winning game after game- he won 20 of his last 22 outings- and not until his victory total topped Bobby's was there much made about him.
'I don't blame anyone for going overboard for Bobby,' Roberts says. 'He's a great pitcher, and if I were a sports writer, I'd have given him a big play myself. It's a spectacular thing to watch a fellow of Bobby's stature beat big men. It's not so spectacular to watch a big guy like me work against other big guys. So I give Shantz all the credit due him, and I hope he goes on winning for many years.'
Roberts hands credit lines like a photography editor; coming from many other big name athletes, this would sound like the tall, tall corn, but when you listen to Robbie you get the feeling he means it.
He credits his parents, Thomas and Sarah Roberts of Springfield, Illinois, with having given him and his three brothers and two sisters a desire to do their best in whatever they undertake. Thomas Roberts, a Welshman, and his wife, a Briton, emigrated to this county in 1921, became citizens and reared their family. It wasn't always easy for them, and young Robin was aware of this. So when he received the first half of his bonus from the Phillies in the autumn of 1947(he got $12,500 that year, the other $12,500 in 1948, for tax purposes), a major portion of the money went toward building his parents a new home.
Robbie credits C.B. Lindsay, who taught him in grammar school in Springfield, with having first aroused his interest in baseball. He gives credit to John Kobs, his baseball coach at Michigan State, for having insisted he be a pitcher instead of the first baseman he aspired to be when he entered Michigan State under the Army Specialized Training Program in 1944, after having starred in football, basketball amd baseball at Springfield's Lanphier High School.
And he credits Ray Fisher, the University of Michigan baseball coach, who was his manager for two summers in Montpelier, Vermont, in the independent Northern League, with polishing his pitching style. 'I guess Ray must have thought me ungrateful,' Robbie says, 'because the spring following my first season with him in Vermont, I beat his Michigan team twice.'
In the autumn of 1948, Robbie went back to Springfield to prepare for his first full season with the Phillies. One evening he went out on a blind date with Mary Ann Kalnes, from McFarland, Wisconsin, who taught history in one of the Springfield junior high schools. Mary didn't know a bunt from a Buick, but was willing to learn. She's still learning, but she is certain of at least one thing; her husband is the best pitcher in baseball. Robbie and Mary were married December 27, 1949.
There is young Robbie now- Robin Evan Roberts, Jr., who was born October 20, 1950, just after his daddy had pitched in the World Series, losing his only start against the Yankees, 2-1, in ten innings. Not long ago the Roberts family moved into a new ranch home in one of the Philadelphia suburbs. Aptly enough, the house is located on Robin Hood Lane. In the house next door live Curt Simmons, the Phillies southpaw, and his wife.
During the season, Robbie has a definite routine for days he is scheduled to pitch. He rises early, putters around the house and yard, and if it's a day game, eats a steak 'dinner' at about 10 A.M. If the game is to be played at night, he downs the steak at about 2 P.M., takes a nap and goes the ball park two hours before game-time. He dresses leisurely, participates in batting practice, then retires to the clubhouse to read a newspaper. With 20 minutes to go before the start of the game, he goes on the field to warm up.
During the off-season, Robbie is employed as a salesman by a manufacturer of corrugated boxes in Philadelphia. He works as hard at selling as he does at pitching, and his employer says he would be a successful salesman even if he didn't have his name going for him. Nearly every afternoon he goes to a midcity gymnasium for a two-hour workout.
Roberts isn't much of a hobbyist. He describes himself as an unusual ball player because he doesn't care for hunting or fishing. He is an eager, if not accomplished, gardener. He enjoys reading light fiction, but he merely scans the sports pages. He makes numerous unpublicized visits to hospitals, and has been known to go to considerable inconvenience to visit shut-ins.
He goes to the movies only when the team is on the road. He and Mary spend most of their evenings at home watching television. On nights when a Chuck Davey fight is televised, visitors are warned not to approach Robbie, lest they get themselves conked by one of the haymakers he throws by way of helping Chuck- vicariously, of course.
And when the fight ends and Davey is announced as the winner, Robbie settles back in his chair, grins broadly and says:
'What a fighter. There's a Michigan State boy who made good.' "
-Edgar Williams, Baseball Digest, January 1953
CAN ROBERTS WIN 30 IN '53?
"Ask Robin Roberts about the possibility of his winning 30 or more games in 1953, and chances are he will parry with: 'Who do you think I am, Grover Cleveland Alexander?'
It would appear that the late, great Alexander, whom Roberts never saw pitch, and met only once, is the yardstick against which Robbie measures his own achievements. On the basis of such measurements, Roberts may still at least a year or two away from a 30-game season.
Alexander was 28 years old when he first entered the 30 circle with the Phillies in 1915, compiling a 31-10 record. In 1916 and 1917 he turned in 33-12 and 30-13, respectively.
Roberts attained his 26th birthday last September 30, just after completing his 28-7 season, best of his career to date. Inasmuch as Alexander was 24 when he compiled a 28-13 record in 1911, the beginnings of the pattern might indicate that Robbie is running about one year behind Old Pete, with regard to age and accomplishment. If the pattern proves valid, Roberts figures to enjoy a 30-game season no sooner than 1954.
However, Robbie has already topped one Alexander record and tied another. His winning percentage of .800 in 1952 was the best ever turned in by a Phillies pitcher, beating the mark of .756 set by Alexander in 1915. Also, Roberts' 28 victories last season represented the most triumphs by a pitcher on a fourth-place team since Alexander's 1911 season.
Eddie Sawyer, under whom Roberts became a star with the Phillies, thinks Robbie has a 'fine chance' to win 30 games in 1953. 'Why not?' says Eddie. 'He has all the equipment. He's big, durable and intelligent. If he can get off to a good start and avoid pitfalls, he may top the 30 mark.'
Had Roberts been able to avoid a pitfall or two in late May and early June last season, he would have breezed into the ultra-select circle. After losing his first start, he won his next six, and writers were doing pieces on the possibility of Robbie becoming a 30-game winner. Then things began to happen, and by mid-June the big right-hander's record was 8-5. From that point he was all but unbeatable, winning 20 while losing only two.
Leo Durocher hasn't come out with a flat-footed prediction that Roberts will win 30 games in 1953, but the Giants manager has tabbed Robbie as the modern pitcher most likely to wind up his career with 300 major league victories- which means that Roberts, with 91 triumphs to his credit thus far, must turn in at least one or two 30-game seasons before his fast ball loses its hop.
'The first thing a guy needs to be a 300-game winner is a strong arm,' says Durocher. 'Roberts has that. Next is consistency. He has that, too. The other factor Roberts can't control. That's luck.' "
-Edgar Williams, Baseball Digest, January 1953
ROBIN WITH AN EAGLE EYE
"Steve O'Neill, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, was asked what made Robin Roberts such a great pitcher. 'He's got all the basic natural ability,' Steve told us, 'plus the two extra essentials- heart and control. He can put that ball exactly where he wants to. Let me tell you what happened his last time out against Boston. It was the bottom of the ninth, Philadelphia ahead by one run, men on second and third, two out. Ed Mathews, a dangerous left-handed hitter, was up, to be followed by Walker Cooper, a right-handed hitter.
'I sent Eddie (Mayo) out for a talk with Robbie. I told Eddie to tell him that if he wanted to pitch to Mathews, okay. But that I preferred him to pitch to Cooper. Eddie came back to the bench. 'What did he say?' I asked.
' 'Robbie said he's going to give Mathews four straight balls three inches on the outside. If he swings he'll never get a piece of the ball. If he doesn't, he'll walk and Robbie'll pitch to Cooper.'
'And you know that sonuvagun pitched four balls exactly three inches outside! Mathews had the itch but held back. Robbie then whiffed Cooper and that was the ball game.' "
-Herman L. Masin in The Scholastic Coach (Baseball Digest, February 1953)
HIS CONTROL'S BUILT IN!
Phillies' Amazing Roberts Could Always Put The Ball Where He Wanted It
"The shouting and the tumult died. The handshakers and the backslappers departed. And now Robin Roberts went about the business of getting dressed, as casually as if this had been just another ball game, and not one which had marked the passage of one of the most important milestones in a young man's pell-mell dash to baseball greatness.
This was June 6, 1953, the day Robin Roberts beat the Milwaukee Braves, 6-2, to record his 100th major league victory- 12 days short of five years after the big right-hander had pitched his first game for the Phillies. He had limited the Braves to three hits, fanned six, issued no walks and made exactly 90 pitches, only 27 of which had been called balls.
Robbie's entry into the '100 Club' was cause for jubilation in the Phillies' clubhouse at Connie Mack Stadium, of couse, for, at 26, Roberts figues to have at least ten highly productive seasons ahead of him, which he means that he could become the first pitcher since Lefty Grove to post 300 victories during his major league career. Thus, the hubbub over Robbie's 100th triumph was even more by anticipation than by celebration.
But to your true figure filbert, especially one that dotes on statistics dealing with control pitching in this era of scatter-arm throwers, many of whom need radar to locate home plate, Roberts' victory total is of secondary interest. What really intrigues the figure bug is the statistical evidence that Robbie is capable of throwing the ball exactly where he wants it approximately nine out of ten times on average.
As he recorded his 100th victory, Roberts had pitched 13 games in as many outings this season (one was a five-inning contest, called because of rain with the score tied, 1-1) for a total of 113 innings and had walked 18 batsmen for an average of 1.43 walks per nine innings. Last season he walked 45 in 330 innings for a nine-inning average of 1.22, and since he estimates eight of those 45 walks to have been intentional, the true average was merely a fraction above one per nine innings.
From June 18, 1948, when Roberts bowed in as a major leaguer by losing, 2-0, to the Pittsburgh Pirates, through last June 6, the deceptively powerful pitcher, who always appears to be just moseying along, had worked 1,437 innings and allowed 340 walks, which figures out to 2.37 bases on balls in nine innings- and that figures drops slightly every time Robbie pitches these days. It is reasonable to expect that within a few more seasons Robbie will be challenging the lifetime control records of such pitchers as Christy Mathewson, who averaged 1.53 walks per nine innings, and Grover Cleveland Alexander, who turned a mark of 1.64.
So there was Roberts, getting ready to go home after notching his 100th victory, and here was one of the aforementioned figure filberts, who figured that this was the time to ask Robbie how he did it.
'Tell me,' the guy said, 'what is the secret of your control?'
'Secret?' Roberts replied amiably. 'There's no secret. I throw the ball, that's all.'
'Come on,' the guy persisted. 'There must be a gimmick. How long have you been able to make the ball go where you aim it consistently?'
Roberts grinned. 'That,' he said, 'is like asking how long Stan Musial has been able to hit or how long Country Slaughter has been hustling. I've always been able to put the ball where I wanted it, even when I was a kid back in Springfield, Ill. There's no gimmick, honest. I guess the only secret to my control is a pretty obvious one: I'm lucky to be blessed with that ability.'
As Robbie tells it he used to engage in the nameless game all boys play: to liven up a game of catch, one participant acts as a catcher-umpire and the other assays the role of pitcher. This situation continues until either the pitcher strikes out the 'side' on called strikes or walks enough 'batsmen' to force in a run, after which the participants switch roles. Roberts remembers issuing very few walks in such games on a lot near his house in Springfield.
Even then he could throw hard, but he never imagined he would ever be more than an occasional pitcher in a regular ball game. The story of how he became a pitcher at Michigan State and was eventually signed by the Phillies for a $25,000 bonus has been told and re-told with only one principal variation. One version is that Roberts was so wild when he began pitching at Michigan State that John Kobs, his coach, expressed the fear that he would be brought up on manslaughter charges if he dared use Robbie in a game. The other- and correct- version is that Robbie needed only to develop a curve to go along with his fast ball, which he threw with pin-point accuracy.
It took time to develop that curve, and Roberts admits it wasn't until 1950, the season he entered the 20-victory circle for the first time, that he reached the point where he could get the curve over the plate with any degree of consistency. Now he gets both the fast one and the Number Two pitch across with equal facility, taking something off the curve when he delivers a change-up.
'I used to depend entirely on the fast ball when I got in a jam,' he says, 'but now I mix them up. Of course, being a control pitcher has its drawbacks. Sometimes I come in too true and somebody knocks the ball out of the lot.'
There are many baseball men, including some of Robbie's teammates, who say that if the big guy would exhibit just a touch of wildness now and then, he would be all the better for it. As it is, enemy batsmen know that Roberts always keeps the ball around the plate, and they dig in. Consequently, Robbie usually ranks high among National League pitchers rapped for home runs in any one season. Even so, 19 of his first 100 victories were shutouts, no small feat in the age of the rabbit ball.
Probably the poorest game Roberts has turned in since he attained stardom came last May 9 in Brooklyn when he lost to the Dodgers, 7-6, the crusher being Roy Campanella's home run with Jackie Robinson on base and two out in the ninth inning. That day, Robbie made 160 pitches, walked four and rarely was ahead of any batter. It was the fourth time in the still-young season that he had started a game with only two days' rest, and while Roberts is the acknowledged workhorse of the National League, not even he could maintain that pace.
'I smelled out Ebbets Field that day,' he says. 'I simply had been pitching too much.'
Rain and a couple of scheduled off-days kept Robbie idle for nearly a week after that Brooklyn performance, and when he went out to face the Cubs in Chicago on May 15 he had regained his touch. He won, 1-0, threw only 86 pitches and yielded no walks.
For his normal pitching schedule, with three days' rest between starts, Roberts has established a routine. 'Routine is good, if it doesn't become boring,' he says. 'And baseball never gets boring to me.'
Let's say Robbie pitched last night. Tonight he will report with the other members of the team, suit up and go on to the field. But, except for lobbing the ball back toward the infield after shagging flies during batting practice, he will do no throwing. Most of the time he will run in the outfield, working up what would be called a healthy perspiration. Then he will return to the clubhouse, shower and put on a fresh uniform, after which he will go out to the dugout to watch the game.
Tomorrow, his second day off, he will vary the routine. During the pre-game warmup he will throw to a catcher for 20 minutes, pitching to spots but never bearing down. Then he will run in the outfield, get his shower and change his uniform, returning to the field to sit in the dugout. Once in a great while, he may be ordered to the bullpen to loosen up if the Phillies are in a tight game and Manager Steve O'Neill figures Robbie may be needed.
Robbie doesn't object to relief assignments, which rarely are given him (through June 7 he had warmed up on three occasions for possible relief duty but had not been called into action). 'I'd just as soon throw in a game as on the sidelines,' he says.
On his third 'off day,' Roberts ordinarily does no throwing at all. He runs briskly for 30 minutes and calls it a workout. Then he takes to the dugout to watch the enemy hitters in action.
During a game in which he isn't pitching, Roberts is a picture of absorption. He observes every move of the opposing team's batsmen, making mental notes on what the hitters are hitting and what they are missing. After a game he can tell you the type of pitch every batsman hit.
Sometimes Robbie is delayed in the clubhouse at the start of a game, but he makes certain he gets coverage of the action he misses. One of the other players, usually utility infielder Jack Lohrke, makes notes of what transpires before Robbie shows up in the dugout, then gives him a fill-in.
On days or nights when he is pitching, Roberts rarely watches the opposing team take batting practice. 'If I haven't learned something about batters through watching them under game conditions,' he says, 'there isn't much I can learn by watching them take batting practice cuts.' Usually Robbie gets in his own licks during Phillies batting practice, then retires to the clubhouse where he remains until 20 minutes before game time, when he goes on the field to warm up.
Roberts is inclined to scout the theory that a pitcher who makes fewer than 100 pitches in a nine-inning game has good 'stuff.' 'Sometimes, yes,' he says, 'but in my own case I have often found that when I can't get much on the ball, I make fewer pitches than when I have good stuff. I'm not blowing the ball by the batters, and they're not hitting it. When the batter hit it right at somebody, I'm doing all right. It's when they rap the ball into the wide open spaces that I'm not doing so well.'
Probably no better explanation has been given of Robbie's mastery than that by Ken Silvestri, the Phillies' catcher-coach, who warms up the big pitcher before each game and spends hours with him during the team's road trips discussing how to pitch to certain opposing players.
'That Roberts,' Silvestri says, 'is always improving himself. When he first came up he had just a good fast ball. He developed his curve, and then he added a change-up curve. After that he figured out what so many pitchers never seem to realize- that you have to pitch differently at night than you do in the daytime.
'At night he gives the batters that fast ball, down low. With the floodlights beaming down on the ball, the batter sees only about half of it. But in the daylight, when the entire ball can be seen, Roberts goes to the curve mainly. He gives the wide curve outside to right-handed batters and breaks the sharp one down over the knees of the left-handers.
'Sounds easy, doesn't it?' Silvestri concludes. 'And Robbie makes it look easy. But he's got a secret. He can put those pitches where he wants them. That's his secret.'
But Robbie avers that it isn't a secret at all. He isn't, it would appear, trying to fool anyone. In fact, just about the only people he is fooling are National League batters."
-Edgar Williams, Baseball Digest (August 1953)
REFRESHING ROBIN - MODEL WORKMAN
"It is a pity there is not a motion picture of Robin Roberts, baseball pitcher, for distribution among the younger athletically-inclined males of the country, for such a film would be certain to have an immediate and forcing effect on the working habits of all those who aspired to toe a rubber.
Not that Roberts, who hurls for the Philadelphia Phillies in a desperate attempt to salvage some gold out of the shallow baseball mines in the Friendly City, is an emotional sort or an actor in the accepted sense of paint and pathos.
He is simply, first and last, a master workman at his trade and his greatness need not be measured only by the number of games he wins each season. I should merely see more and more pitchers- nearly all, in fact- adopt the Roberts mechanisms. The draggy, dull games of today's major league baseball are the fault of the pitchers in nearly all cases. Few are the games in which Roberts put the clients into a stupor.
In no sense is Roberts a freak, though he does not adhere to the pitching code of today- the stall, the dilly-dally, the step-off-the-rubber tactic and all the other miserable forms of exhibitionism without which the modern pitcher thinks he will fail. You have a pretty good idea of the skills of this 29-year-old right-hander who came off the Michigan State campus to become the best pitcher in the National League.
Each year he wins more games than any other pitcher in his league- 28 or 23 or any number above 20. (Heaven knows how many he would win with a better team behind him than the .500 Phillies). Each year he pitches more complete games- he started 38 games last season, pitched 26 complete games. Each year he pitches more innings than anyone else- always 300 or more. Each year he allows more hits than any other pitcher- in the high 200's or even 300. Sometimes he leads in strikeouts, though he is not a blazer in the Herb Score tradition.
Robin Roberts just pitches the ball towards the plate, without fuss or frills. In this era when pitchers are scared to get the ball over, when three-and-two counts light up every scoreboard in America, Roberts throws the ball to a batter with the idea the bum should hit it some place or miss it, but not stand there and let it slide by. He takes a short, quick windup, somewhat like Steve Gromek of the Tigers. He throws fast balls that dip, fast balls that twist, curves that break rather sharply ... but most of all and best of all he throws.
After a foul, when the umpire throws a fresh ball to Robin, he doesn't turn his back on the audience and rub up the shiny agate. He may pound it into his glove once or twice, smooth his pant legs at the knees in manifestation of a nervous habit and then look sharply at his catcher. But he doesn't make a federal case out of every pitch.
He pitched 305 innings last year (for a 23-14 record) and walked only 53 batters. Figure it out yourself; that's almost the same as 34 nine-inning games. His walks were about one and a half per every nine innings. The only other pitcher in the majors who disdains the three-and-two count as much, who concentrates upon throwing the ball over the plate and to hell with all the corners, is Don Newcombe of the Dodgers. Match Roberts and Newcombe and the Little Woman's roast will never burn while that tramp of a husband gets stuck at the ball yard.
You don't hear a rap at Roberts throughout the National League. In the manner of Stan Musial, he is a 'very nice guy.' He is a big man in Philadelphia, not only because he pitches good and speedily, but because he lives there and has a variety of interests other than baseball. These do not affect his pitching, quite obviously. He probably makes more money, total, than any other pitcher, even if his salary might not have equaled that of Bob Lemon in the last year or two.
The mahatmas of major league baseball could do a lot worse than selling the Robin Roberts style of pitching not only to stars of tomorrow but also to hurlers of today. At a time everyone is proposing artifices to speed up games, to eliminate the delay that infects nearly every contest, ot would be most simple to apply Roberts' yardstick to other pitchers. For it is on the mound that 99 per cent of the delays occur, or, at least, are born.
When you mention Roberts, you have mentioned the Phillies, who wouldn't be anywhere without him. Where he would be without the Phillies is something else. He'd probably win at least 30 games each year pitching for the Dodgers, Braves, Yankees, Indians, White Sox or Red Sox. And certainly he would pitch the same way he does now. He would be hit freely at times, but he would outlast the other side by getting the ball over in knowledge that no matter how often or how hard the ball might be hit, someone in the back of him might catch it.
It's too bad Robin cannot pitch in both leagues as a way-shower to the cautious three-and-two pitchers who beg for an injunction every time they cut a ball loose."
-Franklin Lewis, Cleveland Press (Baseball Digest, June 1956)
HAS ROBERTS LOST HIS FAST BALL?
Or Did He Merely Suffer An Off-Year?
"One evening last winter your agent sat with Robin Roberts and discussed- of all things- pitching. We had just come from a meeting of a church young people's group at which the big right-hander of the Philadelphia Phillies had delivered a talk on sportsmanship.
During the talk, Robbie had come out four-square against intolerance. 'Prejudice of any kind is bad,' he said. 'We should all guard against it.' Then, to hammer home the point, he joshed himself.
'Look at me,' he told the kids. 'I'm just about the least prejudiced fellow you ever saw. Protestent boys, Catholic boys, Jewish boys, Negro boys- they all hit home runs off me.'
Now, as we chatted (as Roberts, incidentally, devoured a couple of dozen of my frau's freshly baked Welsh cookies), I asked Robbie about the home run ball, of which he had delivered 41 during the 1955 season for a new major league record. Did the gopher pitch worry him, and did he anticipate improvement in that regard in 1956?
'Certainly it bothers me,' Roberts replied. 'I've got to do something about it. I hope you'll see improvement next season.'
And what about those 20-victory seasons? By winning 23 games in 1955, Roberts had become only the fifth pitcher to notch 20 or more triumphs for six consecutive campaigns. Did he expect such success to continue?
'If I stay healthy,' said Robbie, 'I see no reason why I can't keep up the pace for several more years.'
It was a statement of candor, not of boastfulness. I have always found Roberts a confident man, but never a braggart.
Now let's jump to Opening Day of the 1956 season. Roberts pitched against Brooklyn at Ebbets Field and went all the way as the Phillies won. But the score was 8-6, and Robbie was cuffed for nine hits, including two home runs and three doubles. In their clubhouse after the game the Dodgers expressed incredulity.
'What's happened to Roberts?' Jackie Robinson asked. 'His fast ball is gone. He was a junk ball pitcher out there today.'
'All he had,' Duke Snider said, ' was heart. He just stood out there and battled us.'
Let's make another jump. This one puts us in Cincinnati on July 14. Roberts worked against the homer-happy Redlegs in their built-for-blasting park and set them down with four hits while recording a 2-0 victory, his only shutout of the season. He did it on 89 pitches, none of which was a genuine fast ball.
'Does Roberts have a sore arm?' Birdie Tebbetts, the Cincinnati manager, asked Mayo Smith, his opposite number on the Phillies.
'He says he hasn't,' Smith replied.
'Well,' Tebbetts said, 'if he doesn't have a sore arm, he must be getting ready for his old age, the way he pitched today.'
One more jump. Now it's September 30, the closing day of the season, at Philadelphia's Connie Mack Stadium. Roberts, having beaten Brooklyn four days earlier for his nineteenth victory- almost derailing the Dodger pennant express- went out against the New York Giants. He didn't get it. The Giants won, 8-3, clubbing Robbie for 13 hits, including three homers that sent Roberts' gopher ball deliveries for the season soaring to 46, five more than the previous year.
Said Wes Westrum, the New York catcher: 'Either something is wrong with Roberts or he's lost it. The old burner isn't there.'
What DID happen to Roberts between that winter meeting when he spoke confidently of his future and the final game of the season? Did he really lose something, notably the fast ball that has been his money pitch? Or did he merely suffer an off-year? Baseball history shows that such pitchers as Cy Young, Walter Johnson and Warren Spahn, to name only a few, endured sub-par seasons at the peak of their careers, then snapped back to become big winners again.
First, leave us do a quick wrap-up of Roberts' 1956 record. He won 19 and lost 18- his first under-20 season since 1949, and his greatest number of defeats in any campaign since he came into the big show with the Phillies in June 1948. He was hammered for those 46 home runs, gave up 328 hits in 297 innings and finished with an earned run average of 4.45.
Still, as the sainted Dr. Einstein demonstrated, everything is relative. For Roberts, this was a 'bad' season. Yet, with a light-hitting, fifth-place team he won 19 games. Seven of his 18 defeats were by the margin of one run, and- get this- four times he was beaten 2-1. It takes no bulging brain to perceive that if just one of those 2-1 jobs had gone the other way, Robbie would have wound up on the alkaline side.
But fie on statistics and what-might-have-been. To get a reasonably accurate line on the Roberts riddle, you have to probe beyond the box scores and the theories advanced by practically everyone who ever heard of Roberts.
Since last May, when it became apparent that Robbie wasn't exactly kissing sweet on occasion, it has not been possible to talk baseball with the butcher, baker or upstairs maid for more than a few minutes without being pelted with postulates regarding the big guy.
There is one school of thinkers that holds that Roberts labored throughout the season with some mysterious injury. Others maintain that Robbie was more concerned with the off-the-field enterprises, including the Georgia shrimp-packing company which he heads and a thriving laundry in his native Springfield, Ill., than with baseball. Still others- and these are in the majority- contend that 1956 merely was the season in which Roberts paid the price for either leading or being near the top of the National League in innings pitched, games started and complete games in every campaign since 1950.
'One thing about it,' Roberts says, almost grimly, 'I got more attention in 1956 than I ever did in any season in which I won 20.'
Often, when a previously big winner doesn't win so big, you hear rumors to the effect that has taken his substance in the high life. In Roberts' case, there has not been the slightest hint of dissipation- and with good reason. You can't hang the dissipation rap on a fellow who not only looks but lives like the All-American Boy.
Roberts is an authentic family man who lives simply, doesn't hang around gin mills and considers it debilitating not to sleep at least 10 hours out of every 24. He is careful of his diet, drinks moderately and drinks no hard liquor. He will sip a can of beer on a hot day after he has pitched; otherwise, as far as he is concerned, the brewer's big horses might as well remain in the stable.
'I'm lucky enough to have something pretty valuable,' Roberts has said pretty frequently. 'I'd be a fool not to take care of it as long as possible.'
Last August a Philadelphia newspaper carried a front-page story revealing that Roberts had pulled a buttock muscle during spring training and that the injury was hampering him. The story was factual, insofar as the original injury went. But Roberts insists the trouble was cleared up early in the season and was not a factor in his comparatively lackluster year.
'The story was overemphasized,' declares Robbie. 'I was asked about the injury in such a way that I knew the story was going to be written. So I tried to explain in such a way that it wouldn't be overemphasized. All I did was make the story look more important than it was.'
In the wake of that story came whisperings that Robbie had injured his back, that he had developed leg trouble and that his arm had gone dead. Roberts says there is no basis in fact for any of these reports.
'There was only one thing that bothered me physically during the season,' he adds. 'I had an arm that was sore but I didn't have a sore arm.'
There's a difference?
'There certainly is,' says Roberts. 'If you have a sore arm, you can't throw at all effectively. With an arm that becomes sore after pitching, you generally work most of the aches out before your next turn and throw almost normally.
'I've had an arm that was sore after pitching for the last three years. That isn't good, because if you're really right, your arm shouldn't become sore. But, even so, it didn't hamper me much until this past season. It used to be that I'd get in a game and my arm would tighten up, but when I'd get in a spot I didn't think about it. I just fired for three or four pitches and got them out. But last season, when I tried that, they belted me.'
To anyone who knows Roberts, the idea that he is more concerned with his extra-baseball endeavors than with the business of pitching is ridiculous. A diligent man, Robbie works hard at his off-season jobs, but when he goes to training camp each February he is all baseball.
'The only paper work I do during a season,' Roberts says, 'is that which has to be done in connection with my position as National League Player representative.'
As ventured above, the majority opinion about Roberts is that his salary whip is beginning to show the effects of sustained iron man performance in an era that has produced few iron men. From 1950 through 1955, Robbie pitched a total of 1,938 innings- an average of 326 innings a season. Over the same period he turned in 161 complete games- an average of 26 a year.
'I didn't see much of Roberts when he was great,' says Fred Hutchinson, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. 'But I can understand how a fellow who has worked as much as he has can lose that extra something on his fast ball.
'Sometimes it takes a pitcher a year to find out that his fast ball is gone. He's throwing just as hard and he doesn't know there's a difference. It's just like a shortstop who doesn't know it when balls are skipping by him that he used to get.'
At 30, Roberts refuses to admit that the good fast ball is gone for good. Indeed, there are other National Leaguers who say that at times last season Robbie's burner was as hot as ever. Last September, after Roberts had beaten the Pirates, 5-2, Pirate shortstop Dick Groat commented: 'If he's lost the fast one, you can't prove it by me. He was blazing out there tonight.'
Roberts will tell you, however, that the good fast ball was in evidence last season only when his pitching rhythm was right. To him, rhythm is all-important.
'Actually,' Robbie says, 'my trouble goes back to the 1955 season, just after I won my 20th game. I got out of my natural groove, just like a golfer who starts swinging differently and doesn't know why. Sometimes I'd regain my rhythm last season and I'd figure I was all right. But it wouldn't last. Then I'd stumble around. I'd get to thinking about throwing hard and that's not natural with me. When I'm throwing right, I don't have to think about anything except where I want to put the ball.
'It seems to me,' adds Roberts, 'that in six of my last seven starts, in September, the rhythm was better than it had been all season and that I had the good fast one when I needed it. I'll admit I don't throw as many fast ones as I used to, but when the rhythm is right, I can still fire.'
Baseball men are pretty generally agreed that if the hop on Roberts' fast ball isn't in evidence consistently this year, Robbie will have to make radical adjustments to his pitching style.
'I know what Roberts is up against,' declares Warren Spahn. 'The same thing happened to me, and I'm certain that I couldn't have won 20 games last season if I had not developed a new pitch. I went to a sinker and it was my big pitch all year. If things don't improve for Robbie next spring, I think he's gonna have to get a new pitch.'
Whitlow Wyatt, the Phillies' pitching coach, thinks Roberts could solve his problem not so much by mastering a new pitch as by turning mean. 'Roberts won't knock down a batter,' Wyatt says. 'So those sluggers dig in on him and powder the ball. Roberts says knocking down batters wouldn't do him any good. Well, it helped me. I would have knocked down my own brother.'
This, of course, is an old plaint, and Roberts feels that his views on the matter of brushing back the hitters have been misunderstood.
'I've said that I'd never try to hit a batter, and I won't,' he declares. 'But I'll pitch inside when I figure that's the right pitch. If I do, I think it's the batter's lookout to get out of the way. There have been a lot of pitchers who have operated the same way, so I don't think I'm any different.'
Roberts had been the recipient of enough advice to fill several chapters of the Baseball Encyclopedia. But he has always been a fellow who makes up his own mind, and he seems bent on doing just that in this case.
'If I get off badly next spring,' he says, 'then I'll have to go to a new pitch. But I'm not going to start fooling around until I'm convinced that I can't pitch the way that I have in the past.
'It's been my observation that a lot of fellows who have four or five pitches get themselves mixed up because they don't know what their best pitch is. I don't mean that there haven't been fellows who have mastered a lot of different deliveries. But in most cases, using a lot of different pitches can be dangerous.'
This winter Roberts is busy with his business enterprises, but he generally finds time each day to play golf or work out in a gymnasium. He will do no throwing, however, until he reports to training camp.
Then he will cut loose- with fast balls, he hopes."
-Edgar Williams, Baseball Digest (January 1957)
THEY NEVER REFUSE
Robin Roberts, Philadelphia: "I've never gotten turned down myself, and I have never turned down any other pitcher who wants advice. Further, I don't know of anyone who has refused to share secrets."
-Baseball Digest, August 1957
HOW ROBIN ROBERTS WRESTLED HIS WAY TO A COMEBACK
Inside Story Of A Return To Stardom
"It was the early winter of 1957-58. This was at a quiet dinner party attended by Robin Evan Roberts. There were just three couples present, and for a long time there was no mention of baseball.
After the 1957 season that Robin Evan Roberts, pitcher, had endured, it would have been like pouring pickle juice on an open wound.
So the talk was mostly about a frozen seafood concern with which Roberts is concerned because he is its president. Finally, however, a lady who doesn't know a change-up from a chemise inquired: 'How's business?'
Roberts grinned wryly. 'Business,' he answered, 'is like I pitched last season.'
'Oh,' the lady said somewhat vacantly, 'Is that good?'
'No,' Roberts replied, 'It's NOT good.'
Comes now the early winter of 1958-59. There have been no recent reports on the state of business which concerns Robin Evan Roberts, executive. It is devoutly to be desired, though, though, that business is as good as Robin Evan Roberts, pitcher, was this past season.
'If Robbie does not get elected Comeback Player of 1958,' remarked one of his teammates on the Philadelphia Phillies as the season ended, 'then somebody should be investigated.' And lest this be regarded as merely an expression of parochial pride, consider the opinion of one Stan Musial.
'Roberts,' declared Stan the Man after the Phillies ace had beaten the St. Louis Cardinals for the fourth time (without a loss) in 1958, 'is every bit as good a pitcher today as he was during all those seasons when he won 20 or more games.'
At first glance, Robbie's 1958 record wouldn't appear to be that of a ringtail wonder. The fellow won 17 and lost 14, a pretty far cry from his glory span of 1950 through 1955, when he never failed to grab at least 20 victories a season. But, as the late Dr. Einstein was wont to observe, everything is relative.
For one thing, this is the same pitcher who, winning only ten games and absorbing 22 thwackings in 1957, was written off in many quarters as being deader than yesterday's newspaper. 'Too bad about Roberts,' some of the experts intoned, 'He was great when he had it, but now it's gone.'
Bright in memory is a conversation your agent had last winter with a knowledgeable baseball veteran who is now a scout for a National League team. 'Just suppose,' it was suggested to the scout, 'that the Phillies decided to deal Roberts. Would your club be interested?'
'Maybe,' was the reply. 'But it would be a big gamble. Roberts can't fire the ball anymore, and he either won't or can't learn a new pitch. I think he'll be lucky if he wins eight games in 1958.'
Pursuing the business about everything being relative, let us examine Roberts' 1958 record. For the first time since coming to the Phillies in midseason of 1948, Robbie toiled for a last-place outfit. Yet he won those 17 games, compiling a 3.27 earned average. And with almost any other team he conceivably could have returned to the 20-victory lodge.
Consider: (1) during the season Roberts was involved in four 1-0 games; he won just one of them, driving in the run himself, incidentally. (2) He lost three other one-run decisions. (3) Over one stretch of 33 consecutive innings, his teammates didn't score a single run for Robbie.
Last August 1, Roberts achieved a major milestone in his career. Just ten years and 43 days after he had pitched his first game for the Phillies he scored his 200th big league victory, beating the Chicago Cubs, 3-1, with a three-hitter. He was- well, he was Robin Roberts. His fast ball hummed. His curve broke sharply. Every movement was smooth and rhythmical.
'It was,' Phillies manager Eddie Sawyer said in the clubhouse later, 'the greatest game I've ever seen Robbie pitch.'
And how did Roberts feel?
'I feel good,' Robbie said. 'I haven't felt this good in a couple of years.'
When the season ended, a man said to Roberts: 'You really got it back this year. With any kind of luck, your log would have shown at least 20 victories.'
'I don't care what the log shows,' Robbie answered, almost exultantly. 'The important thing is, I feel good.'
So, how did he get to feeling good? Or rather, how did he get to feeling good again?
The principal figure in the Roberts resurgence is a Phillie whose name never appears in a box score. His name is Frank Wiechec, and he is the team's trainer, an acknowledged master in the art of physical therapy.
Before relating Wiechec's contribution to the Roberts comeback, however, it is important to know something about the Roberts character. Roberts is a rugged individualist, a man who stands on his own feet. He has been called stubborn, and to a degree, he is. Since this is written by one whose four grandparents were Welsh immigrants, it cannot be considered defamatory to state that stubbornness is a Welsh trait.
In 1956, therefore, when Roberts fell off the 20-victory standard and finished with 19 wins and 18 defeats, there were reports that he was suffering from an ailing salary wing. Roberts brushed off the stories.
'I'm all right,' he would say. 'Next year, I'll be back on the beam.'
'Next year'- 1957- came and Roberts didn't get back on the beam. Now and then he came up with a well-pitched game, but for the most part he was pretty awful. The fast ball, his money pitch, was gone. But Robbie still insisted that there was nothing wrong with his arm.
'It's just a matter of getting my rhythm back,' he told me on one occasion last winter. 'I keep reading that I have to change my style and get another pitch. Well, I know only one way to pitch. I'm sticking with that.'
See? The stubborn Welshman.
Under this facade, though, was a shook-up Roberts. He had labored with Spartan-like intensity to regain his former skills. He had driven himself, determined to fight his way back via the only road he knew: hard work and more hard work. But things didn't improve.
Roberts will discuss the situation freely now: 'I didn't know what was wrong,' he says, 'but I knew I was in trouble. From midseason on last year, I couldn't get loose at all. My arm, back and shoulder were stiff. It hurt me to throw. I lost my natural motion. I'd get into a tough spot, and I'd reach back for the fast ball, and it wasn't there.'
So finally the stubborn Welshman sought help. He went to Wiechec.
'I had felt it all along,' the trainer declares, 'that Robbie's trouble stemmed from an old muscle pull in his back. He was no longer able to throw overhand, as he always had done. That indicated atrophy- wasting of muscle tissue- in the back. The back muscles had tightened and went into spasm when Robbie threw.'
The solution, as Wiechec saw it, was to build up the healthy muscle tissue in the back, restoring the natural rhythm of Roberts' delivery by freeing the arm. This, he felt, could be accomplished by a series of 'resistance exercises,' a rugged routine which Wiechec calls 'wrestling matches.'
Roberts didn't agree immediately to undergo such a regimen. 'You can understand that,' Wiechec says. 'After all, this was a big decision for him to make. He had to make up his own mind.'
The pitcher did agree, however, to be examined by specialists. Quietly last winter he and Wiechec made the rounds. 'We went everywhere, or so it seems,' reports Wiechec. 'We saw specialists in several cities, and I guess at least a hundred X-ray pictures were made. We got a lot of opinions, many of them conflicting. But they all contributed to the solution of the problem.'
When the Phillies went to their training camp last March, Roberts still hadn't made up his mind as to the course of action he should take. The varying opinions as to what ailed him had left him perplexed as ever, and once he decided, he would take his customary tack: he would work hard and hope for the best. Still, he made an agreement with Wiechec.
'I told Frank,' Roberts says, 'that I would pitch one game in spring training. If I didn't feel right, I'd know that I'd have to do something.'
'I've never seen him work harder,' Wiechec recalls. 'He really poured it on.'
This was a proud man, fighting for his baseball life. Now, at 31, he was slipping toward oblivion. There was both desperation and poignancy in his self-imposed bear-down-harder program.
Then came Roberts' first appearance of the exhibition season, against Detroit. The Tigers belted Robbie for seven hits and three runs in three innings. Not only that, but Roberts, despite an extra-long warmup, never 'got loose.'
Robbie went to Wiechec. 'I've made up my mind, Frank. What we do now?'
'First,' the trainer said, 'we take a little ride tomorrow.'
The little ride was to the town of Largo, Florida, not far from the Phillies' training base in Clearwater. In Largo, there is an osteopathic physician whose opinion Wiechec values.
The osteopath examined Roberts, then delivered an opinion that concurred with Wiechec's long-standing belief. The muscular spasms in the back had 'jammed' the arm. If the back muscles weren't loosened, the condition would become even worse.
'Well,' Roberts told Wiechec on the way back to Clearwater, 'let's start those wrestling matches of yours.'
The damage hadn't been done overnight. It was a cumulative thing, and so it wouldn't be expected that improvement would be immediate. Patiently, Roberts and Wiechec did the resistance exercises for 15 minutes daily. Then, one night in Pittsburgh, exactly two months after the exercises had been started, Roberts reached what he recognized as the turning point.
It was May 9, and Robbie had a record of one victory and three defeats when he went out to pitch against the Pirates. Through nine innings he shut out the Bucs on three hits. But Ronnie Kline was pitching a shutout for Pittsburgh, too, and the game went into overtime. Finally, in the home half of the 12th inning, Ted Kluszewski banged a home run, and Roberts lost, 1-0.
It was heartbreak stuff and Roberts would have won no award for a toothpaste grin. But there a measure of solace for him. 'For the first time in two years,' he says, 'my arm was flapping loose and free. I could throw normally again.'
The exercises were continued through the season, although eventually Wiechec cut them down to every other day. Also, just before he was succeeded by Eddie Sawyer at the helm, Mayo Smith began giving Roberts four days' rest instead of three between starts. Sawyer continued the policy.
'That extra day,' Roberts declares, 'helped my speed.'
With all the past talk about the necessity of Robbie's mastering a second pitch, there are some National League batsmen who maintain that the man has come up with a new delivery. Both Duke Snider of Los Angeles and Irv Noren of St. Louis were heard to remark last season that Robbie has taken to throwing a screwball to left-handed batsmen.
Roberts turns cagey as a cougar when interrogated on the subject. 'I'm pitching as I always have,' he tells you, then changes the subject.
Assuming that you can believe what you see, however, Roberts in 1958 didn't pitch EXACTLY as he always has pitched. He had the old burner working in the clutch, right enough. But in most games he changed speeds frequently, displaying an improved curve ball and worked the corners with the fast one.
There is a school of thinkers that holds that Robbie's physical troubles were not caused by anything he did while on the pitchering mound. Unlike many another pitcher, Roberts came to play the entire game. When he bats, he goes for base hits, and no mistake. And when he runs the bases, he displays the fervor of a sophomore. He dives headfirst into bases, and if a defender is blocking the bag there invariably is a crash. The fellow has a passion to score.
Laudable as this might be, there are baseball men who feel that the damage to Roberts' muscles was done on the basepaths. Nevertheless, Robbie continues to go all out.
'I do not,' he says, 'know any other way to play.'
Not long ago, somebody remarked to Frank Wiechec that the Phillies should reward him a medal for the job he did in the Roberts reclamation project. 'You deserve more credit than you have been given,' he was told.
Wieched is a genuinely modest man. 'The credit doesn't belong to me,' he says. 'Robbie deserves it all. Those excercises weren't easy. It was a tough grind. But Robbie stuck it out.'
And what does Roberts think of Wiechec?
'He's the greatest,' Robbie declares. 'And I have a hunch he's the strongest. That man could outwrestle a bear.'
And what about next season, Mr. Roberts?
'Just say that I feel good.'
Anything to the rumor that you will definitely come up with a new pitch in 1959?
'Well, now- say, did I ever tell you about the time I was playing golf with a fellow named Polite?'
End of interview."
-Edgar Williams, Baseball Digest, December 1958-January 1959
The Phillies' Robin Roberts: "A pitcher can make the majors quicker than any other player, because all he has to have is an arm."
-Baseball Digest, July 1959
"Robin Evan Roberts is the best of all National League right-handers. The control artist who put together the finest pitching string in the post-war period has won more games (221) than any other National League righty. He reached the 20-game barrier from 1950 to '55, turning in more than 300 innings in each of these six seasons. He won 28 in '52, the best in the NL since Dizzy Dean had 30 in 1934. He has pitched 33 lifetime shutouts, second only to Warren Spahn.
Strictly a fastballer at the peak of his career, Robin has now developed a change-up and a slider.
Born in Springfield, Illinois, Robin had one year in the minors before his 1948 bow. He begins his 13th year."
-Don Schiffer, 1960 Mutual Baseball Annual
Roberts leads all active National League right-handed hurlers with 233 triumphs, getting 12 in 1960, his 13th year as a Phillie.
Born in Springfield, Illinois, he signed a bonus contract while at Michigan State. He pitched 11 games in the minors before coming to the club in 1948. Roberts put together six straight 20-game seasons, bagging 28 in '52, the highest one-year total since Dizzy Dean's 30 of 1934.
Noted as a control artist, he has now added additional pitches to make up for the loss of a disappearing fast ball."
-Don Schiffer, The Major League Baseball Handbook 1961
ROBERTS' STYLE BOWS TO TIME
Phillies' Ace Slows Up Curve Now As Change-Up
"Thirteen years isn't a long time in a man's life, but it's a lifetime in baseball, and Robin Roberts has lived it. He is still living it as a kind of stranger to the collection of kids who surround him on the Phillies.
He is at once a teammate and a legend, an old man at 34 as time is measured in the big leagues. He is lonely because he is a pitcher from another age, who lingers in this one and yet he is the best the Phillies have. There is pride in Roberts because of it.
'My position here could be peculiar if I didn't like to pitch,' Roberts says, 'but I keep coming up every year and pitching as good as anybody they've got. As long as I'm the best one they have, I can keep going.'
We were sitting in the Phillies' clubhouse this spring among such as Dallas Green, who had won three games in the major leagues; Art Mahaffey, who had won seven, and so many who had won none and may never win any, yet Roberts sat alone.
There is nothing but the uniform he wears to connect him with this team that has finished last three years in a row, yet he is its only link with whatever glory the Phillies have had in relatively recent seasons.
'You see all these kids coming up,' Robin says, 'and you wonder who's going to do it and who is not.'
'Whom do you pal around with?' I asked him because since last May, when Curt Simmons was cut loose from the Phillies and signed with the Cardinals, Robin has had no teammate who could help him recapture the highlights of a career during which he has won 233 games, second in the National League only to Warren Spahn's 288.
'I have no associations now,' he said. 'There is no closeness now off the field with the other boys. I don't have anybody special now I can pal around with.'
It was not said in complaint or regret, but merely in recognition that time, which has molded his legend, has stripped him of whatever common ground he could have had with his teammates.
Consequently, Roberts is a man apart and one wonders if he continues to pitch only because, like Stan Musial of the Cardinals, there will always be a place for him on the only team for which he has played since he made the big leagues.
'No,' said Roberts, 'I'm staying because I can still pitch regularly. When it happens that I can't, we'll see what goes then.'
I told Robin that most baseball people feel he has some sort of agreement with the Phillies that he would not be traded. 'That's not true,' he said. 'I've no agreement that would keep me here after I can't play or while I still can. I wouldn't want to be traded, but if it happened, I'd go wherever I was sent.
'I had a 12-16 record last year,' said the veteran who won 28 games in 1952 and for six straight years, starting in 1950, won 20 or more, 'but I believe I can do better than that. I've had stretches, of course, where other people may have thought or written that I was thinking of quitting, but I never reached that point. I never said to myself, 'What are you still doing here?' If that point ever comes, I'll know it as soon as other people.'
Oddly enough this is the first spring in his career that Roberts was told to do something about his pitching to which he listened. Always before, he'd come into spring training and be advised that he'd have to add another pitch to his repertoire to keep winning. For the most part he'd ignore the advice. Now, Roberts admits he's altered his thinking and changed his style.
'I don't try to challenge the hitters consistently with a fast ball, he says. 'I'll stick it in there when I'm able, but now I'm varying the fast ball and curve ball. I'm spinning the curve up there slower as a change-up- mostly for left-hand hitters.'
Most people have felt in recent seasons that if Roberts had a weakness, it was his stubbornness in refusing to concede that this approach to his work should have been made a long time ago.
'I can see now that maybe I should have,' Robin says, 'but I had a fast ball, and I started throwing it, and nine innings later I still was throwing it. When I was winning big, I had no idea of the technique of pitching. To me it was a physical thing. I wasn't a finesse pitcher. I just started pumping and the ball came up there faster than the hitters thought it would. I had an easy delivery and quick success. I just wasn't going to take the chance of losing the good delivery to add something that might hurt me in the long run.'
I mentioned Warren Spahn, who added a screwball and added victories and years to his baseball life. We talked of Early Wynn of the White Sox, who is 41 and is pitching and winning long after his time because he perfected a slider.
'The scroogie just fits into Spahnie's delivery,' Roberts says, 'I'd watch Early, and his rhythm and pattern were the same even with the slider. I didn't think it would be with mine. I was different.'
He still is, and so he sits alone among players whom he'll continue to be a legend long after he stops being a teammate."
-Milton Gross, New York Post (Baseball Digest, June 1961)
SPLIT WITH MAUCH HASTENED ROBERTS' EXIT FROM PHILS
Behind-Scenes Discord Sent Hurler To Yankees
"The classic line that finished arguments in the old Westers was: 'Pardnuh, this heah town ain't big enough for both of us- draw!' Baseball's vendettas don't end so bloodily.
The Phillies' clubhouse was not spacious enough for both Robin Roberts and Gene Mauch. Rather than resort to Colt 45's or fungo bats, the personality clash was resolved by Mr. Roberts' ecstatic exit to the New York Yankees. If every divorcee in America were as happy as Roberts looked when he heard the deal, Reno would have to build 50 new hotels.
The discord between Mauch and Roberts did not flare publicly, but the bitterness was strong enough to prod the pitcher into asking for a transfer. There are other reasons for Roberts' disenchantment- as an aging, losing pitcher on a dead-last team, he knew he was an unwanted luxury- but his soured relationship with Mauch became the No. 1 reason for a trade.
'My performance made life with the Phils bad,' was all Roberts would say. 'It was simply no place for me to be a starting pitcher. The situation became untenable. On a team like that, it's not the same if you lose two straight and you're 35 years old as losing two straight when you're 21.'
The pitcher's discontent led to one of the strangest moments in baseball- an owner grudgingly selling a player in a deal that pleased the player, the manager and the general manager. Bob Carpenter would have kept Roberts until his arm turned to peat moss had the pitcher not asked for release from the Phils' troubled kindergarten.
'Robbie and I have been talking about this for about a month or so,' said Carpenter, sitting across from his estranged right-hander in a corner of Philadelphia's Warwick Hotel after the deal was announced. 'This is a helluva time to say you're happy, when a guy's leaving- but I'm happy he's going with a team that will win a pennant. Let's face it, the Yankees will win unless they're in a train wreck.'
Someone mentioned to Roberts that it would be pleasant to have Maris and Mantle on his side- and Roberts grinned so hugely he was inarticulate with delight. 'I just want to be part of a thing I like,' he said soberly. 'If you can't there, you can't do it.'
The owner had been surprised the new National League clubs spurned Roberts in the draft and that all nine teams waived him to the Yankees, but it merely took a phone call to Roy Hamey to put Robin in Pinstripes.
Had Roberts been a 20-game winner instead of a baffled, searching loser the last two summers, he would be signing a 1962 Phils' contract- and his life with Gene Mauch would have been angelic. Indeed, the two got along famously when Mauch arrived, spending long sessions discussing pitching theory- Mauch's theory, that is. In essence, the Boy General wanted Roberts to pitch more coyly- 'quit challenging those big hitters with the fast ball.' When Roberts was beaten by such titans as Ernie Banks and Willie Mays, the manager's disgust was not always hidden.
It was only natural that Roberts would privately match Mauch against the man he replaced, Eddie Sawyer- a manager who went a season without speaking to Roberts except to say, 'Hello,' 'You'll be pitching again in four days,' and 'Good-bye.' Baseball was beautifully simple for Roberts in those sunny years- and he feels alien to 'angle players' such as Mauch, who would complicate it now.
'I felt every time I walked out there I would win,' says Roberts of the Mauch years. 'Then I got clobbered and I couldn't wait until the next chance.'
Sometimes the waiting hurt. Early in Mauch's regime Roberts was silently snubbed in the pitching order. It was the first time he asked Carpenter to be traded. ('Keeping me here is making us both look bad,' Robin said.)
Under any manager, Roberts' 1960 and 1961 seasons would have been acridly painful- losing 26 games would make Norman Vincent Peale snarl- but the divergence with Mauch sharpened the ache.
'People accused me of holding onto Robbie because I was sentimental,' sighs Carpenter. 'Maybe so- but I never became sentimental about .500 pitchers. When I think of all the great games this guy pitched, I owe him the best.'
'Remember that first day,' Roberts said, as he and the owner sat long into the dusk, dredging up 1948 memories like carp from a dark pool. 'I got off the train from Wilmington with three hours' sleep and you signed me to a contract and I pitched that night.'
'I remember it vividly as though it were today,' said Carpenter. The ball player and the owner, so curiously in their fierce respect for the past, didn't have to say the rest: AH, THAT IT WERE TODAY."
-Sandy Grady, Philadelphia Bulletin (Baseball Digest, February 1962)
Led National League in complete games, 1952.
Named top pitcher in the National League by The Sporting News, 1952.
Named Major League Player of the Year by The Sporting News, 1952.
Led National League in complete games, 1953.
Named top pitcher in the National League by The Sporting News, 1953.
Named Major League Player of the Year by The Sporting News, 1953.
Led National League in complete games, 1954.
Led National League in complete games, 1955.
Named top pitcher in the National League by The Sporting News, 1955.
Named Major League Player of the Year by The Sporting News, 1955.
Led National League in complete games, 1956.
Purchased from Philadelphia Phillies, October 16, 1961.
-1962 New York Yankees Press-TV-Radio Guide
He didn't suspect, he says, that he'd be playing for the Red Sox last season, but he was willing. 'I thought I would play pretty good ball,' he says, 'but the thing that scared me most was all those people. It didn't look right to see so many folks at a ball game.'
Ahoskie High was never much accounted for in football till Umphlett got there. Then things perked up. 'We built a team around Tommy,' says Mr. Woodley, who is president of the High School Athletic Association. Apparently it was a good team. Tommy was their tailback in the single wing, the busiest boy on the field. He took care of the passing, kicking and most of the running. Ahoskie High came up fast. It won 24 in a row in its high school conference and was unscored on in 13 straight games.
Red Sox Manager Lou Boudeau was willing to accept Umphlett's fine batting average, but admitted he couldn't fathom it. In July, he said, 'Umphlett is the worst-looking good hitter I ever saw. I don't know how he gets all those hits, with his arms all crunched up like that.'
