Up on the
blog today, adding one of my all-time favorite players, Warren Spahn,
to my on-going "Minor League Days: Legends Edition" set, celebrating his
time in the Minors before moving on to greatness on the Major League
diamond:
Spahn is shown here suited up for the Hartford Bees of the Eastern League in 1942 at the age of 21.
It
was his only season with the team and he did not disappoint, going
17-12 over 33 games with a brilliant 1.96 earned run average over 248
innings of work.
This
earned him his promotion to the Majors later in the year, appearing in
four games for the Boston Braves, getting hit hard to the tune of a 5.74
ERA over 15.2 innings.
Sadly,
with the onset of World War II, Spahn, as well as so many others, found
themselves trading baseball cleats for army boots, serving his country
for the next three years before returning in 1946, now 25 years old.
Anyone
who has followed this blog long enough knows by now that any time I can
create a card for the mighty lefty, I will take it!
The man was amazing, flat out, and by the time he retired in 1965 he posted a 363-245 record, with a 3.09 ERA, 63 shutouts, 28
saves and 2583 strikeouts over 750 appearances, 665 of which were
starts.
Oh yeah, he also hit 35 career home runs along with 189 runs batted in with (coincidentally) 363 hits!
And again, remember he didn’t win his first game until he was 25 years of age, as he served in the military from 1943 to 1945.
His first 20-game season was 1947 (at the age of 26), and he kept right on rolling until his final 20-game season in 1963!
In between, he ended up posting 13 such campaigns, leading the
league eight times (with five of those coming consecutively from 1957 to
1961).
Just
an incredible career for the lefty from Buffalo, New York, who would
have easily posted over 400 wins had it not been for a World War.
