Who is the man: In what was his second full season in the majors, Mike Torrez started 28 games for the Cardinals in 1970. He struck out 100 in 179 innings but walked 103.
Can ya dig it: Take Torrez out of the photo and that picture looks like a photo I took earlier today.
Right on: Torrez was traded to the Expos in mid-June of 1971, so he probably was not with the Cardinals when kids were pulling his card out of packs.
You see that cat Torrez is a bad mother: Torrez pitched two complete-game victories for the Yankees in the 1977 World Series.
Shut your mouth: Torrez threw a pair of fateful pitches: one that Bucky Dent hit for a 3-run homer against the Red Sox in the 1978 one-game playoff, and one that hit the Astros' Dickie Thon in the head in 1984. Of the pitch that hit Thon, Torrez said: "He would lunge into the plate. He was always on top of the plate. ... He lunged, thinking (the pitch) was going to be away, on the outside corner of the plate. I came in and nailed him."
No one understands him but his woman: Torrez's ex-wife, Danielle, wrote a book in 1983 about the life baseball wives must endure. But she added in an interview about the book that she gained more from that life than she lost.
(A word about the back): Torrez is from Topeka, Kansas. St. Louis was his hometown team. But he spent the rest of his career far from Kansas: New York, Baltimore, Boston, Montreal and Oakland.
Torrez was a work horse in the 70s and early 80s. He logged in excess of 3,000 innings in his career and notched 185 wins. He'd probably command a salary of 25 million per year today.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe he had a 1972 card.
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