Thursday, October 20, 2022

1970 "IN-GAME ACTION": DAVE McNALLY

Adding to my on-going 1970 "In-Game Action" thread, spotlighting individual cards from my two-series custom set released over the past few months, we have Baltimore Orioles pitching great Dave McNally:

 
McNally was in the middle of a tremendous four-year run by the time this card would have come out, posting four straight 20+ win seasons along with three wins spread over three World Series (1969-1971) and a World Championship.
Between 1969-1971 he finished in the top-5 in Cy Young voting each time, with a second place finish in 1970 behind Jim Perry.
Along with Jim Palmer and Mike Cuellar he formed one of the most talented pitching rotations in the game, and in 1971 was one of FOUR Oriole pitchers to post 20 or more wins.
By the time he retired after the 1975 season, he finished with a 184-119 record, with a 3.24 earned run average, 33 shutouts and 1512 strikeouts.
Some of the other highlights of his career are pretty nifty: still the only pitcher to hit a Grand Slam in a World Series game; he had three different streaks of 12 or more wins in a row during his career (Roger Clemens would later match this) including a 17-game streak between 1968-69; and he threw a Series-clinching shutout against the Dodgers in the 1966 World Series to match teammates Jim Palmer and Wally Bunker, completing an improbable sweep of the reigning champs and their staff which had future Hall of Fame pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.
Quite a career for the man from Billings, Montana.

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