Vintage Fridays: Milt Pappas, 1962 Topps #75

Earlier this week the Orioles family lost one of its first prominent young pitchers. Milt Pappas died on Tuesday at age 76. If you're anything less than a diehard baseball fan, you probably know Pappas as the chief outgoing player that the O's sent to Cincinnati in the Frank Robinson trade. But if you dig a little deeper, you'll see that Milt was plenty successful in his own right: in a career that spanned 17 big league seasons, he won 209 games and lost 164 with a 3.40 ERA (110 ERA+). He completed 129 of his 465 starts, including 43 shutouts, and twice made the All-Star Game as an Oriole. Most famously, he no-hit the Padres while pitching for the Cubs on September 2, 1972...but lost his perfect game bid on a full-count offering to pinch hitter Larry Stahl with two outs in the ninth. Home plate umpire Bruce Froemming ruled that Stahl had checked his swing and called it ball four, to Pappas' vociferous objection. The pitcher rallied to retire Garry Jestadt on a popup to seal the no-hitter, but it was of little consolation.

In researching tonight's blog entry, I found a great anecdote relayed by MLB.com writer (and former Orioles beat reporter) Richard Justice. On April 18, 1962, longtime Baltimore sportswriter John Steadman approached Milt prior to the righty's first start of the regular season against Mantle, Maris, and the vaunted Yankees. He asked Pappas, still just 23 years old and already in his sixth season in the majors, "How do you beat the Yankees?". In his own blunt and self-assured manner, the O's young starter replied: "If I pitch a shutout and hit a home run, we'll probably win."

Of course, Pappas couldn't quite finish the job. All he did was hold New York scoreless on two hits over six innings before turning things over to Hoyt Wilhelm. But before he left the game, Milt did hit a solo homer off of Yankee starter Bill Stafford. The O's won, 1-0.

Vintage Saturdays: Chuck Estrada and Milt Pappas, 1961 Topps #48

I goofed last night and didn't post. I enjoy Vintage Fridays most of all, so I'll just make Vintage Saturday a one-time special attraction. Even better, you get two Orioles for the price of one, as 18-game winner Chuck Estrada and 15-game winner Milt Pappas rub elbows with the rest of 1960's top winners in the American League: Jim Perry, Bud Daley, Art Ditmar, and Frank Lary. All of them are floating on a blood-red background, which is a tad unsettling. It's also worth noting that 1960 represented only the second full season in American League history without a 20-game winner. In 1955, Whitey Ford, Bob Lemon, and Frank Sullivan all tied for the loop's top win total with 18. Estrada was the first Oriole to pace the A.L. in wins, doing so as a rookie; he'd follow up with 15 wins in 1961, but only totaled 17 thereafter. Pappas, however, won at least 15 games in seven different seasons and retired in 1973 with 209 W's.

Vintage Fridays: Milt Pappas, 1958 Topps #457

This is Milt Pappas' rookie card, depicting the righty as a skinny 18-year-old "bonus baby". Some 55 years and 209 career wins later, he celebrates his 73rd birthday today. Your humble blogger offers a tip of the cap to Milt.

Fun fact: Milt got a start at second base against the Athletics on September 11, 1958...in a manner of speaking. Two of the Orioles' weaker-hitting regulars were second baseman Billy Gardner (.225/.271/.298) and center fielder Jim Busby (.237/.320/.330). With the O's playing on the road, manager Paul Richards optimized his offense by writing pitcher Jack Harshman into the lineup as the center fielder batting fifth. Pappas was penciled in at second base batting seventh. If their spots came up in the first inning, Richards could pinch-hit with his preferred bench bats. If not, the pitchers could be pulled, and none of the bench players would be burned needlessly. With two runners on base and two out in the first inning, Gene Woodling indeed pinch-hit for Harshman and flied out to left to end the inning. Busby and Gardner took the field in the bottom of the first, so Pappas was subbed out without his spot in the order coming up. It was all for naught, as the Birds lost 7-1.

Vintage Fridays: Milt Pappas, 1964 Topps Giants #5

It's like Christmas Eve up in here. Tomorrow morning I'm journeying up to King of Prussia, PA for the fall installment of the Philly Card Show. I've been waiting for this since March, and when I finally set foot on the convention floor, I expect the experience to be roughly akin to Homer Simpson frolicking through the Land of Chocolate...or maybe the MacManus brothers shopping at the weapons cache in Boondock Saints. I've been saving my money like a good boy, and I'm ready to splurge. The five-page want list is printed, so let's do this thing. My chief aim is to put a dent in some of the vintage sets I'm collecting and to maybe finish off my 2010 Topps Update Series with help from the dime boxes. But if I see any nifty oddballs like this postcard-sized Milt Pappas card, I'll wander off the beaten path to pick them up...if the price is right.

Milt Pappas, 1991 Crown/Coca-Cola All-Time Orioles #351

72 games into the 2011 season, I’m getting a creeping sense of familiarity. The Orioles, for all the talk of prospects and youth and rebuilding and ooh shiny new manager, are and forever have been taking one step forward, two steps back. Injuries spread like a fungus through the pitching staff, veteran free agents wheeze along on fumes, the expensive and well-maintained juggernauts in Boston and New York plow the rest of the league under, and we count the empty green seats downtown. For the 14th consecutive summer, it looks like I will be grasping for things to cheer about: individual achievements, quirky statistical anomalies, funny little moments in the midst of otherwise ignorable three-hour games. Celebrate each and every one of those hard-earned wins, because here in Baltimore you only get 65 to 75, never any more than that. Who knows when that next “W” will appear.

So here’s your anomaly for the week: today, Oriole rookie pitcher Zach Britton went 2-for-3 at the plate with a run scored. With 3 interleague games left to be played in National League parks (July 1-3 at Atlanta), Baltimore pitchers have collected 7 hits in 15 official at-bats, a .467 average. They’ve had a pair of doubles, a pair of RBI, and the run that Britton scored. The lefthander got the party started last Friday with an RBI double in his first major league at-bat, and is 3-for-5 (.600) on the year. On Sunday, first-baseman-turned-journeyman-pitcher Chris Jakubauskas collected a pair of singles in three trips to the plate. Jake Arrieta dumped a shallow fly ball into no-man’s land to plate a run on Monday. Last night, Jeremy Guthrie doubled in three at-bats in a losing effort. The only O’s pitcher to bat this year without producing a hit is Brian Matusz, who had a groundout and a flyout in two AB’s on Sunday.

Since interleague play began in 1997, Birds pitchers had never totaled more than five hits in any season. What's more, pitchers on the other 13 American League clubs had combined for 9 hits in 120 at-bats (.075) in 2011 entering play today. Of course, the current batch of slugging Oriole pitchers are not going to threaten Milt Pappas' 11 career homers any time soon - that's the team record at the position. But it's better than watching Daniel Cabrera alternately flail away at the plate or refuse to lift the bat from his shoulder.

Vintage Fridays: Milt Pappas, 1965 Topps #270

This fine Milt Pappas card just happens to be featured in my next post for my other blog, The Great 1965 Topps Project. It should be ready to go later this weekend. It may be hard to remember back this far, but I actually started that blog before this one, all the way back in November 2007. I wanted to build a vintage 598-card set, one that was over four decades old, completely from the ground up. I would not buy cards from eBay or hobby shops (aside from my set starter, Steve Barber, which was an eBay purchase); I would only supplement the set with trades and/or donations from my readers. Things started slow, and by last September I'd only acquired about fifty cards. I was struggling to find a good format, eventually deciding upon full biographies and separate posts for each card. But in the past few months, things have really taken off.

Currently, I've completed nearly 37% of the set: 219 cards. After sometimes going a month or more without a card to write up, I've now got a list a page long of cards that are backed up and need to be posted. Even though I've been steady enough to update the blog three or four times per week, I'm actually falling further behind (I have two more trades in the works right now). It's a great problem to have, and it's encouraging to know that more collectors/readers are finding my blog and enjoying the work I'm putting into it. Some contributors have even suggested that my writing is a major reason that they're sending the cards; they're curious to see what I have to say about that particular player. I'm glad that I started the Project; not only am I making great strides in what had been a fairly sparse vintage collection, but I'm learning a lot about the men that populated the baseball universe in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Now I can tell you who the previously-unknown-to-me Duke Carmel and Gary Geiger are, in addition to pretty good players that had also escaped my attention (Al Worthington, Tony Taylor, et. al.). I've also gotten some awesome cards of Hall of Famers that I thought I would be waiting on forever (Whitey Ford and Willie Mays are two of the biggest thrills, even if Whitey is a Yankee).

If you're a regular reader of my Orioles blog but you'd somehow missed out on The Great 1965 Topps Project, I hope you'll give it a look and that you might enjoy tracking my progress. As I've learned in the past year, the Internet is full of incredible and generous people, if you know where to look.

Vintage Fridays: Milt Pappas, 1964 Topps #45

10 Fun Facts About Milt Pappas:

1. His birth name is Miltiades Stergios Pappastediodis.

2. Milt is from Detroit. As a high school senior, he took the advice of former Tigers pitcher (and Orioles scout) Hal Newhouser and signed with the O's. Thirty-five years later, Newhouser became enchanted with another local high schooler named Derek Jeter. When the Astros ignored Hal's advice and drafted Phil Nevin instead, Newhouser retired.

3. To protest commissioner Ford Frick's "ridiculous" ruling that Roger Maris would have an asterisk by his name in the record books if he took more than 154 games to break Babe Ruth's home run record (the regular season having been expanded from 154 to 162 games since Ruth set the record of 60 in 1920), Pappas threw Maris nothing but fastballs in an O's-Yankees game - game 154, to be exact. Maris just missed a homer in his first at-bat, but bashed #59 in his second at-bat. Pappas was removed in the third inning.

4. Milt lost a no-hitter in the eighth inning against Minnesota on September 2, 1964, when Zoilo Versalles singled with two out. Eight years later (as a Cub), he no-hit the Padres. In that game, he lost a perfect game with one out to go by throwing four straight balls with an 0-2 count on pinch hitter Larry Stahl. Home plate umpire Bruce Froemming has received a lot of scrutiny for squeezing the strike zone in that at-bat, especially from Pappas.

5. On September 24, 1971, he became the 16th pitcher in major league history (and the 10th in the NL) to strike out the side while throwing the minimum nine pitches. The Philly batters were Greg Luzinski, Don Money, and future Oriole Mike Anderson.

6. Milt collaborated with Wayne Mausser and Larry Names on a memoir entitled Out at Home.

7. His brother Perry was a minor league pitcher in the Yankee organization.

8. Milt hit 20 home runs in his career, including a two-run shot off of Hall-of-Famer Gaylord Perry. He also victimized Perry's brother Jim for a two-run home run.

9. Speaking of Jim Perry, according to Baseball Reference, Pappas' career statistics are most similar to those of Perry, with Don Drysdale, Orel Hershiser, Catfish Hunter, and Bob Welch rounding out the Top Five.

10. His son Steve has his own website, which contains several more interesting facts and photos of Milt, as well as material relating to one of Steve's own passions, the APBA baseball board game.