Time today to spotlight my 1961 "career-capper" for Don Newcombe, baseball's first Cy Young Award winner, from my recent custom set "The Whole Nine: Series 2":
Newcombe
finished up and excellent 12-year career with 36 games split during the
1960 season with the Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians, posting a
record of 6-9 with a 4.48 ERA over 136.2 innings at the age of 34.
He'd
put in a year in the Minors in 1961 with Spokane before playing one
game overseas in Japan with Chunichi in 1962, thus ending his playing
career.
The
N.L. Rookie of the Year in 1949 when he posted 17 wins for the Dodgers,
he followed that up with 19 wins in 1950 before the first of his three
20-win seasons the following year.
Sadly
for him, he would spend the next two years in the military, losing two
peak seasons to serving his country before coming back in 1954 when he
would go 9-8 over 29 games.
In
1955 he'd be in the 20-win circle once again, helping the Dodgers win
the World Series as he would go 20-5 and finishing seventh in the MVP
race, the last year without an Award dedicated to pitchers.
And then came 1956...
For
Don Newcombe, 1956 was a magical year. He was a monster on the mound,
going 27-7 with a 3.06 earned run average and five shutouts and leading
the Dodgers to another face-off with the New York Yankees in the World
Series.
Not
only did that get him the very first Cy Young Award, but it also bagged
him a Most Valuable Player Award, thus making him the answer to a
clever trivia question: who was the only pitcher to win a Rookie of the
Year, Cy Young and M.V.P.? (He would be joined
in this by Detroit Tiger pitcher Justin Verlander in 2011).
However, it would be the peak, followed by a quick decline at
only 31 years of age, winning 11 games in 1957 before managing just 26
wins over the last three years of his career, which came to a close in
1960 after that split year with the Reds and
Indians.
All
told, the man won the aforementioned awards while posting 153 wins
against just 96 losses, good for a very nice .614 winning percentage,
with a 3.57 earned run average and 24 shutouts over 360 games.