Routine Moments in Baseball History: Art Mahaffrey's Salad Days

Welcome back to Routine Moments in Baseball History, a running weekday feature that looks back at plays that have been ignored by the history books because history books only talk about things that are important or interesting. Today's installment is "Art Mahaffey's Salad Days."

Pitching prospects are fragile things, athletes whose ability is concentrated in their all-too-breakable arms. A single tear or tweak turns a fastball slow and a slider into a lob. There's an old Sports Illustrated cover from 1963 that shows Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Art Mahaffrey in mid-windup, right arm curled behind his back, left leg stretching out toward home plate as he delivers the ball. It's a nice action shot, but looking closely at his arms you worry for him—his wrists are so thin, his arms seem so vulnerable, he's like a toy that you know is going to break as soon as you get it out of the box.

OK, that's hindsight talking: I know, 50 years later, that persistent arm injuries would take away his fastball and leave him out of the majors just three years after that photo was taken. He took good care of his arm, he told the St. Petersberg Times in 1964 ("He avoids open car windows and tries not to sleep with his arms stretched above his head"), but that didn't help. At age 28, he was gone from baseball, another coulda been, another example of the Sports Illustrated cover curse.

But go back to 1960 and you won't find any foreshadowing of that future. Mahaffrey was 22 that year, a Midwestern-looking fella who could have wandered in of a Frank Capra movie set. He had a vicious fastball and a looping curveball and those two pitches, plus one of the best pickoff moves in the league, made him a rising young star. In 1960, his first year in the majors, he started 12 games, won seven, and finished third in the Rookie of the Year race. In 1961 he struck out 17 batters in one game (a team record that still stands), and made his first All-Star Game though he'd wind up losing 19 games. The next year he had a career-high 177 strikeouts, another All-Star appearance, and a 19-14 record; you might have thought that if he improved his control just a little bit and stopped giving up so many dang home runs (his weakness in 1962) he could be a hell of a pitcher. Then came the nagging injuries, the sore arm, the cycle of reassuring everyone that he was fine, only to tweak his arm again and have to adjust his pitching motion again, and he was pitching fewer and fewer innings for the team…

But we're getting ahead of ourselves—back to 1960, August 15 to be exact, when he was having one of his good days. He went eight innings against the Pittsburgh Pirates and got the win. Throughout the game he kept getting himself into jams and pitching out of them, the way many young pitchers do, but in the early innings he was sharp; in the third he faced Rocky Nelson, the Pirates' big-hitting first baseman, and struck him out swinging. A big swing, a big miss, like the ball had been jerked away by magic from that heavy bat. It was an exciting moment for a young guy, and if Mahaffrey had been a modern player he would have pumped his fist and whooped. They were made of more disciplined stuff than that back then, though, and his celebration would have been an inward-focused thing, maybe a smile on his way back to the dugout. Got 'em, he thought. This is what it's gonna be like from here on out. 

This has been Routine Moments in Baseball History. Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.