For one day, Milt Wilcox was nearly perfect. Pitching for the Detroit Tigers against the Chicago White Sox on April 15, 1983, Wilcox retired 26 batters in a row. He was just one out away from a perfect game when pinch-hitter Jerry Hairston hit a clean single through the infield. Wilcox retired the next batter and had to settle for a one-hit shutout.
Wilcox’s 1983 Donruss card features a really cool photo of him. He has a look of grim determination on his face as he’s just delivered a ball to the plate. The crowd in the background is blurred and out of focus. I’m a sucker for that type of sports photography, where the player is in focus, but the background is blurred and indistinct. It’s sort of a visual metaphor for how I imagine sports must be for professional athletes—the crowd fades into the background; what’s in focus is only what is right in front of you. All that matters is getting this batter out.
The back of Milt Wilcox’s 1983 Donruss card also features one of my favorite random facts. After recapping some of Wilcox’s career, the final sentence tells us: “Once raised chinchillas during off-season.” What?? Was there a Milt Wilcox Chinchilla Farm? Why did he only raise them once? Are chinchillas that troublesome or unprofitable? I have so many questions.
Rediscovering this baseball card made me think more about Milt Wilcox’s career. Wilcox had a 16-year career in the major leagues, finishing with a career record of 119-113. He never won 20 games in a season; he was never an All-Star. He was just a gamer who battled arm and shoulder injuries throughout his career. Wilcox had a taste of glory at the very beginning of his career, as he first came up with the Cincinnati Reds at the end of the 1970 season. He won a game in the NLCS against the Pirates and pitched in two games in the 1970 World Series. But after that promising start, Wilcox was traded to the lowly Cleveland Indians. Wilcox spent the entire 1976 season in the minor leagues. His fortunes started to turn around when the Tigers purchased him from the Chicago Cubs in June of 1976. His major league record at that point was a pedestrian 22-30.
Wilcox recovered some of his arm strength during the winter of 1976-77 through bowling. By the time spring training started, his arm finally felt healthy again. In June 1977, Wilcox was called up to the Tigers and appeared in his first major league game in two years. In 1978, Wilcox won 13 games, his first time in double digits for a season. He threw 16 complete games, pitching a career-high 215 1/3 innings. From 1978 to 1983, Wilcox won between 11 and 13 games every season. Wilcox was the Tigers’ union representative during these years, including during the 1981 baseball strike. After the 1981 season, Wilcox suffered what his 1982 Donruss card called a “career-threatening” injury, as he sprained ligaments in his right index finger during a charity basketball game. Fortunately, Wilcox healed over the offseason.
In 1984, Wilcox and the Tigers had an amazing season. The Tigers opened the season with a 35-5 record and never looked back. Wilcox won his first 6 decisions. Wilcox was pitching through an immense amount of pain—he later revealed that he received 7 cortisone injections in his shoulder during that season. Wilcox slowed down during June, and after a loss to the White Sox on July 4, 1984, his record stood at 8-6. Wilcox was on fire for the rest of the year, as he went 9-2 in the second half of the season, to finish with a record of 17-8. Wilcox had won the deciding game of the 1970 NLCS that sent the Reds to the World Series, and in 1984 he threw 8 shutout innings, beating the Kansas City Royals to send the Tigers to the World Series. Wilcox joked that he couldn’t wait for the 1998 postseason, to continue his trend of winning a Championship Series every 14 years. In the 1984 World Series, the Tigers and the Padres split the first two games in San Diego. Wilcox started Game 3 in Detroit, the first World Series game in the city since 1968. He threw 6 innings, scattering 7 hits and giving up just 1 run, as the Tigers won, 5-2. The Tigers won the next two games to win the World Series.
After his triumph in Game 3 of the 1984 World Series, Milt Wilcox won just one more major league game. He missed most of the 1985 season and signed as a free agent with the Seattle Mariners for 1986. In 13 games with the Mariners, Wilcox went 0-8 with a 5.50 ERA. The Mariners released him in mid-June. But the competitive fire was still there. Wilcox had a tryout with the Giants in 1988, which didn’t lead to him being signed. In 1989, Wilcox pitched for the St. Petersburg Pelicans of the Senior Professional Baseball Association and had a fantastic season, going 12-3 with a sparkling 3.19 ERA. Wilcox was 3-1 in 1990 when the league folded, bringing his professional baseball career to an end. Wilcox’s baseball career began in 1968, a pretty remarkable run.
While researching Milt Wilcox’s career for this article, I discovered that Milt Wilcox said he had no superstitions. It was just a coincidence that he ate blueberry pancakes on the days that he started and never stepped on the foul line. I appreciate someone with a sense of humor like that.
Milt Wilcox is just a great baseball name. When I was a kid collecting baseball cards, there were players I was just drawn to because they had cool names: Julian Javier, Mike Lum, Bill North, Kurt Bevacqua, Chris Chambliss. Milt Wilcox had a cool name. He was a player whose cards I would buy when I found them in the commons bin. I doubt that I’m related to Milt Wilcox, but my great-grandmother's maiden name was Wilcox, so maybe that accounted for some of my affection for Milt Wilcox.
Finding this baseball card yesterday was a great reminder that a baseball card set is really 600 or 700 individual stories, each with their own points of interest.
No comments:
Post a Comment