Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities. I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 16 of the 2009 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 2 week of April.
April 8
1969 The Royals play their first game in the history of the franchise and joins the winner circle along with the other three new clubs making their debuts today Reliever Moe Drabowsky picks up the win as Kansas City beat the Twins in 12 innings, 4-3.
Myron Walter Drabowsky, nicknamed “Moe” was born July 21, 1935 in Ozanna, Poland.
He is one of only four players who played for both the Kansas City Athletics and the Royals.
He came to the U.S. with his parents in 1938, living in Wilson, Conn. While at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, he pitched a no-hitter in which he struck out 16, and shortly thereafter accepted a reported $50,000 bonus to sign with the Cubs.
Drabowsky skipped the Minor Leagues and started pitching for the Cubs in August of 1956. He joined the Cubs’ rotation immediately in 1957 posting a 13-15 record while managing to record a 2.47 Earned Run Average as a rookie. His 170 strikeouts placed him second in the National League behind another rookie, Jack Sanford of the Philadelphia Phillies, who had 188. Inclined to work inside, Drabowsky led the National League with 10 hit batsmen in that rookie season, hitting a record four men on June 2, 1957.
A sore arm cost Drabowsky his fastball in 1958, and over the next seven seasons he pitched for four different teams before the Orioles signed him for the 1966 season.
Now pitching out of the bullpen, Drabowsky turned his career around with a 6-0 won/loss record and a 2.81 earned run average to go along with seven saves. He struck out 96 in 98 innings pitched for the 1966 World Champions.
He also had one of the best games for a relief pitcher in the 1966 World Series opener against the Los Angeles Dodgers. He entered the game in the third inning and set a still-standing one-game World Series record for relievers by striking out 11 batters. He also walked Jim Gilliam with two out in that third inning to force in Lou Johnson for a run that, although it cut the Orioles’ lead to 4-2, would be the last run the Dodgers scored. The Orioles would sweep the Dodgers 4-0, their next three wins coming on shutouts from Jim Palmer, Wally Bunker and the man Drabowsky had relieved in Game 1, Dave McNally.
He won his first 12 Baltimore decisions, achieving Earned Run Averages of 1.60 and 1.91 in 1967 and 1968. Doing it all, Drabowsky also batted .364, .350, and .286 in 1966 through 1968.
Over the next two seasons, Drabowsky continued to perform well in relief. In 1967 he posted a 1.60 earned run average and struck out 96 in 95 2/3 innings pitched, and in 1968 he posted a 1.91 Earned Run Average.
Selected by the Royals in the 1969 expansion draft, Drabowsky led the American League with 11 relief wins, saving 11 with a 2.94 Earned Run Average in 52 games. Pitching in relief, he won the first-ever game in Royals history, on April 8 against the Minnesota Twins.
He returned to Baltimore to post a 4-2 record down the stretch in 1970, climaxed with two more clutch relief performances in that World Series.
In 17 seasons Drabowsky won 88 games, lost 105, and saved 55 to go along with a 3.71 Earned Run Average.
Drabowsky was well-known as a flake whose jokes involved, among other things, being rolled to first base in a wheelchair after being hit on the foot by a pitch while with the Cubs. Teammate Dick Drott obtained the wheelchair and pushed Drabowsky to first-and was ejected from the game.
After retiring, he once called the bullpen phone and imitated Oriole manager Earl Weaver to get a reliever working. Weaver was shocked to see a reliever warming up in the pen and called his bullpen coach to find out what was going on.
He served as a Chicago White Sox coach in 1986. In 1987 he returned to Poland as a baseball ambassador and helped his birth nation form its first team for Olympic competition.
He later became a coach again with the 1994 Cubs.
Moe Drabowsky died in Little Rock, Arkansas on June 10, 2006 at age 70.
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: B
bag
1. A square canvas sack filled with light material used to mark first base, second base, and third base since the earliest days of baseball.
1st use is from 1857 in Spirit of the Times by David Shulman. “The first, second, and third bases shall be canvas bags, painted white, and filled with sand or sawdust”.
2. The base itself.
3. A stolen base. Jeffrey Hammonds was quoted in the Baltimore Sun, Mar. 8, 1996: ”What if I go 4-for-4 with three bags?”
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Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
