MLB history: Forgotten stars of the current AL East teams

Larry Gardner, Red Sox

Many somewhat casual fans of MLB history will recall that the Boston Red Sox – then known as the Americans – won the first World Series contested in 1903, and some will likely even tell you the great Cy Young pitched for that team.

What few can tell you is when the Sox won their next championship, although if given the year, 1912, some might be able to guess one of the stars of that team was Tris Speaker. However, despite the fact that a writer for the respected Sabr.org once wrote the final game of that Series was “one of the most dramatic games in baseball history, and one for which Larry Gardner will be forever remembered,” few alive today could tell you what Gardner did, or even what position he played.

Ruth’s called shot is recalled, Williams’.406 season is recalled, Gardner’s story is not. But it’s a good one, a shining moment in the 17-year career of one of the game’s early stars. And calling Gardner an early star is not an overreach in his context. Remember that the modern game as we know it, including the foul strike rule, had only been played for a dozen years when Larry Gardner found himself, in his fifth season as the Red Sox third baseman, driving for a spot in the championship series with his team in September.

On September 21, however, Gardner dove for a ball hit down the third base line. Tiger Donie Bush’s grounder must have been hard hit since it caught Gardner’s right pinky, fracturing the digit at the first joint and “causing the bone to protrude through the skin.”

It was feared that the Sox would be without their third baseman for the Series. This was not good. Gardner hit .315 that season, and was, despite his smallish frame, an above average fielder.

However, the infielder taped his fingers together for the Series after some days recuperating in his native Vermont, and one final game in the regular season against the Athletics.

When the Series reached eight games, the Giants’ Fred Snodgrass and Fred Merkle put themselves into the pages of MLB history with defensive lapses. Their team was up, 2-1, and Christy Mathewson was pitching in the 10th inning. First, Snodgrass made his infamous muff on a soft fly to center; then Merkle didn’t make much of an effort on a lazy foul pop by Speaker near first base, his position, leaving his desperate catcher to chase and lunge unsuccessfully at the ball.

Speaker then singled, tying the game, and eventually, Gardner came to the plate with one out and the bases loaded following an intentional walk.

The 165-pound infielder, with his recently fractured finger stabilized with tape, muscled the great Mathewson’s fourth pitch deep to right. It was caught, but the runner on third tagged and scored.

Gardner’s $4000 bonus nearly doubled his salary, and he went home to Vermont on a train covered with red lights from the engine to the last coach, surely a first in MLB history.

Larry Gardner retired a .289 lifetime hitter after departing Boston in 1917 for a year with the Athletics, then six more with the Indians. In 1920 he bettered his .315 in that championship season by posting a .319 average, but surely, 1912 was his favorite year.

Steve Barber, Orioles

The discussion of star pitchers from the mid-1960s always seems to begin and end with Sandy Koufax. Of course, there were other pitchers worth remembering from that specific era, including a right-hander in Baltimore named Jim Palmer.

However, Palmer is too high-profile a figure, partly because of his underwear ads, to be considered a “forgotten star” even more than half a century later. One of his fellow pitchers from the world champion O’s of 1966 definitely qualifies, though: Steve Barber.

Barber is perhaps partly forgotten because there were two Steve Barbers in MLB at the same time, for a brief period, but the one considered here had a fairly lengthy career in the ’60s and ’70s. (The other played only briefly in 1970 and ’71 for the Twins.)

And our Steve Barber, while definitely not as high profile a player as Koufax, is no negligible figure in MLB history.

A native of Silver Springs, Maryland, Barber jumped from high school to what was then D-level ball to the Orioles by the time he had only three seasons under his belt, none of them with a winning record. The left-hander threw very hard and featured a “cannonball sinker.” But he was wild.

That term applied to his personal behavior as well as his baseball life. But he wasn’t as wild on the mound, or elsewhere, as Steve Dalkowski, another O’s farmhand, the truly legendary minor leaguer and alcoholic who allegedly threw over 110 mph.

So, Barber was the one the O’s promoted. He was expected to be the hardest thrower in baseball before he ever pitched in an MLB game, which occurred when he was 22 in 1960. He went 10-7 in 27 starts (36 appearances) with a 3.22 ERA. But he walked an MLB-worst 113 for the 112 he struck out. In other words, he literally needed relief pitchers, even as he contributed to Baltimore’s second-place finish.

The following season he found the plate a little better, striking out 150 to the 130 he walked while going 18-12. He had an MLB-leading eight shutouts, but in both seasons with the Orioles, his WHIP exceeded 1.300.

In 1963, though, Barber won 20 games – still with a less than ideal WHIP – and by 1966, when Baltimore captured baseball’s biggest prize, he had lowered his WHIP to a team-leading 1.148 among the starters. Two of those starters were Palmer and Dave McNally.

However, in ’66 the hard-thrower developed elbow tendonitis, and basically pitched in pain for the rest of his career.

The following season player representative Barber created a kerfuffle by announcing the Orioles wanted to be paid for media interviews. The players eventually backed down (MLB history would wait on such rights), and the pitcher went on to flirt with no-hitters twice in the season, eventually becoming only the second pitcher to lose a no-hitter. Wildness and an error behind a reliever did him in against Detroit.

Interestingly, he said later, “I was pitching so bad that day that I should have gotten beat 10-1.”

It was the kind of remark a supreme natural talent will sometimes make, if he is honest.

In the middle of the season, Barber was traded to the Yankees, and then bounced around among several teams for the rest of his career. Still, he finished 15 MLB years with 121-106 record – not so bad for a guy who never bested .500 as a minor leaguer.

Scott Kazmir, Rays

The Tampa Bay Rays are such a new part of MLB history that their forgotten star, Scott Kazmir, may actually still be active. That isn’t entirely clear because he is a free agent in a lockout year, and he would be entering his age-38 season.

Kazmir is currently 108-97 with a career ERA of 4.02 – quite decent for a 13-year career largely in the AL – but certainly not a Hall of Fame career. So, it might be easy to forget that he was once an extraordinarily promising young pitcher and a mainstay of Tampa’s rotation for several years in a row, including the first year the team made it to the World Series.

Taken 15th by the Mets in the 2002 amateur draft, Kazmir was traded before he ever reached the majors, much to the chagrin of New York fans. He then became, almost immediately, a high-profile example of a young pitcher somewhat terribly overused.

Three years out of high school in 2005, and having thrown exactly 261.2 innings in professional competition altogether, the left-hander was pressed by the Rays to pitch 186 innings at baseball’s highest level.

Not surprisingly, the following year his starts dropped from 32 to 24, but he remained one of the Rays luminaries on a fairly bad team, a team that would eventually assemble a talented core of young and underappreciated players who won the AL crown, the first in their brief MLB history.

Between 2004 and ’08, Kazmir was assembling a 47-37 record and 3.61 ERA for a team that finished last in their division three times, fourth once, and first once. In 2008, of course, the team advanced to the World Series and lost to the Phillies. In that five-year stretch, Kazmir was twice an All-Star.

The lefty didn’t pitch terribly for the Rays in that Series, but he was charged with the first game loss after giving up three runs in six innings. He also started the Series’ final game, which was suspended by a dreadful, freezing rain before Philadelphia’s ultimate win.

Baseball-Reference understates the matter of the pitcher’s overuse as follows: “In 2009, Kazmir began to show the strain of having thrown so many pitches at a young age. He made 20 starts for the Rays, but his ERA was a terrible 5.92….”

Scott Kazmir has endured for 13 years in MLB, largely as a starting pitcher, throwing baseballs for seven different teams. However, in only four of those campaigns has he managed to exceed 180 innings. Perhaps that might have been different if two of those seasons had not occurred before he turned 24.

Perhaps he might have been a little sharper for those two starts against the Phillies in 2008, following a season in which he pitched only 152.1 innings, which in turn followed 206.2 innings for a last place team.

So, the next time somebody wants to tell you about some game in which Nolan Ryan threw 650 pitches, just say, “Yeah, yeah – two words: Scott Kazmir.”

Duane Ward, Blue Jays

The Toronto Blue Jays of 1992 and ’93 were so loaded with greatly talented offensive players that their forgotten star, reliever Duane Ward, has truly flown under the radar in terms of fan memories outside of Toronto, and perhaps even there for some.

Part of this may result from the fact that Ward’s career was cut short by injury almost immediately after the Jays’ back-to-back World Series titles. However, for a seeming moment or two, Ward was one of the most effective relief pitchers in MLB history.

Ward came into the 1992 season with a decent track record as a reliever but no especially flashy numbers, aside from his MLB-leading 81 appearances and 2.77 ERA in ’91. He had been something of a workhorse, and had accumulated an average of 16 saves for four straight years, largely as a set-up man for Tom Henke.

He threw hard, consistently in the low to mid-nineties, with “good, heavy life.” The 6-foot-4, 210-pounder, however, had been a 9th overall pick a decade earlier, and one has to wonder if he was satisfied with his overall performance.

In the year of the Jays’ first world championship, he once again set up Henke, but surely opened some eyes with his sterling 1.95 ERA. His FIP figure suggested he got some help defensively, but was still a very good 2.58. He won 7 games in the regular season and saved 12.

The following year, however, he took over as the Jays closer from Henke, and truly dominated his opposition, leading the AL with 45 saves while booking a 2.13 ERA. That season the FIP figure (2.09) suggested he was slightly better than his fielders. He was an All-Star and finished fifth in the Cy Young voting.

Ward was at his best in the World Series as well, first against the Braves, the team that had originally drafted him, and then against the Phillies. In eight appearances in the two Fall Classics, he posted a 3-0 record and 1.13 ERA, striking out 13 in eight innings. He also saved two games.

However, after the 1993 World Series the right-hander never saved another game, a result of biceps tendinitis. He retired after appearing in just four games for Toronto in 1995.

Nonetheless, Duane Ward will be inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame this coming June, having been elected in 2020. Thus, weirdly, his proper place in MLB history was affected by COVID decades after he had retired.