Wright was having the greatest year of his career in 1970, a season after posting a dismal 1-8 record, with the team releasing him before he went to play Winter Ball where he developed an off-speed repertoire, making it back to the Big Leagues in star fashion.
On July 3rd, against a powerful Oakland A’s line-up, he put it all together and threw the first no-hitter at Anaheim Stadium, striking out one batter while walking three, improving his record to 12-5 and lowering his earned run average to a nifty 2.90.
The big blow of the game was a 4th inning three-run home run by third baseman Ken McMullen, while eventual league batting champ Alex Johnson also chipped in an RBI in the first.
For Wright, it was a season that would see him win the A.L. Comeback Player of the Year Award, as he posted a record of 22-12 with a 2.83 ERA over 39 starts and 260.2 innings of work.
He’d go on to post two more seasons of sub-3.00 ERA’s in 1971 and 1972, at 2.99 and 2.98 while putting up 16 and 18 wins respectively.
Come 1973 however, his ERA would go up nearly a full run while posting a record of 11-19, only to see him lose 20 games with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1974, before a final season, this one with the Texas Rangers in 1975, finishing up with a record of 4-6, which would be the last action he’d see as a Major Leaguer.
He would take his talents to Japan, where he pitched with the Yomiuri Giants for three years, winning 22 games, before retiring for good.
For his MLB career, he won exactly 100 games against 111 losses, with an ERA of 3.50 over 329 appearances, 235 of them starts, with nine shutouts and 667 strikeouts in 1728.2 innings.
