Johnny Sain
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| Johnny Sain | ||
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| Pitcher | ||
| Born: September 25, 1917 Havana, Arkansas |
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| Died: November 7, 2006 (aged 89) Downers Grove, Illinois |
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| Batted: Right | Threw: Right | |
| MLB debut | ||
| April 24, 1942 for the Boston Braves |
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| Final game | ||
| July 15, 1955 for the Kansas City Athletics |
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| Career statistics | ||
| Pitching record | 139-116 | |
| Earned run average | 3.49 | |
| Strikeouts | 910 | |
| Teams | ||
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| Career highlights and awards | ||
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John Franklin Sain (September 25, 1917 – November 7, 2006) was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball who was best known for teaming with left-hander Warren Spahn on the Boston Braves teams from 1946 to 1951. He was the runner-up for the National League's Most Valuable Player Award in the Braves' pennant-winning season of 1948, after leading the National League in wins, complete games and innings pitched. He later became further well-known as one of the top pitching coaches in the majors.
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[edit] Pitching star of postwar Boston Braves
Born in Havana, Arkansas, Sain pitched for 11 years, winning 136 games and losing 116 in his career and compiled an earned run average of 3.49. His best years were those immediately after World War II, when he won 100 games for the Boston Braves, before being traded to the New York Yankees during the 1951 season for Lew Burdette and cash.
In 1948, Sain won 24 games against 15 losses and finished second in the voting for the Most Valuable Player Award behind the St. Louis Cardinals' Stan Musial, who had won two legs of the triple crown. Sain and teammate Spahn achieved joint immortality that year when their feats were the subject of sports editor Gerald V. Hern's poem in the Boston Post which was eventually shortened to the epigram, "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain." According to the Baseball Almanac, the original doggerel appeared in Hern's column on September 14, 1948:
First we'll use Spahn
then we'll use Sain
Then an off day
followed by rain
Back will come Spahn
followed by Sain
And followed
we hope
by two days of rain.
The poem was inspired by the performance of Sain and Spahn during the Braves' 1948 pennant drive. The team swept a Labor Day doubleheader, with Spahn throwing a complete 14-inning win in the opener, and Sain pitching a shutout in the second game. Following two off days, it did rain. Spahn won the next day, and Sain won the day after that. Three days later, Spahn won again. Sain won the next day. After one more off day, the two pitchers were brought back, and won another doubleheader. The two pitchers had gone 8-0 in twelve days' time.[1]
That year, Boston won its second and last National League pennant of the post-1901 era, but fell in six games to the Cleveland Indians in the 1948 World Series. Sain won the first game of the Series, a 1-0 shutout at Braves Field that included a memorable play in which Boston catcher Phil Masi was called safe after an apparent pickoff at second base. Masi went on to score the game's only run.
With the Yankees, Sain became a relief pitcher and enjoyed late-career success, leading the American League in saves with 22 in 1954. He finished his career in 1956 with the Kansas City Athletics.
[edit] Pitching coach
After retiring as a player, Sain spent many years as a well-regarded but outspoken pitching coach for the Athletics, Yankees, Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, Chicago White Sox and Atlanta Braves. During the 1960s, Sain coached the pitchers of five of the American League's ten pennant-winning teams. An independent thinker among coaches, Sain tended to be admired by his pitchers, but he battled with at least two of his managers — Sam Mele of the Twins and Mayo Smith of the Tigers — when he disagreed with them. In each case, Sain was fired, but the manager's dismissal soon followed when his pitching staff suffered from Sain's absence. Sain did not make friends among owners and general managers, either, when he would advise pitchers to "climb those golden stairs" to their teams' front offices to demand more money in salary talks.
Jim Bouton, in his book Ball Four, expressed unreserved admiration for Sain, who had been his pitching tutor in New York in 1962-63. Bouton openly wished to pitch for the Detroit Tigers in order to have a chance to benefit from Sain's coaching.
Sain died at age 89 in Downers Grove, Illinois.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference
| Preceded by Ewell Blackwell |
National League Wins Champion 1948 |
Succeeded by Warren Spahn |
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