Diamondbacks Bullpen

[David B]

Don't know how I missed this. He was a very good pitcher, and one of the few truly great pitching coaches...

Johnny Sain, a three-time All-Star who teamed with Warren Spahn to make up one of baseball's most fabled pitching tandems, died Tuesday 11/07/06. He was 89.



Sain's best year was 1948, when he and Hall of Famer Spahn led the Boston Braves to the World Series, where they lost to Cleveland. It was during that season when the famous saying was born: "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain".



The Boston Post ran a poem by sports editor Gerald Hern that led to the catchy phrase about the Braves' two dominant pitchers - and the rest of their unheralded rotation. "First we'll use Spahn, then we'll use Sain, Then an off day, followed by rain. Back will come Spahn, followed by Sain, And followed, we hope, by two days of rain," it read.



Sain was 139-116 with a 3.49 ERA in 11 seasons in the 1940s and 1950s, mostly with the Braves and New York Yankees. He won three straight World Series titles with Casey Stengel's Yankees from 1951-53.



The right-hander made his major league debut in 1942, then spent from 1943-45 in the military during World War II. He returned to the big leagues in 1946. Sain was a four-time 20-game winner and later became a top reliever, leading the AL with 22 saves in 1954.



Sain topped the majors with 24 victories and 28 complete games in 1948. He beat Hall of Famer Bob Feller and the Indians 1-0 in Game 1 of the World Series that season.



Later, Sain became a popular pitching coach with the Yankees, Chicago White Sox, Minnesota, Detroit and Atlanta.

[David B]

A nice tribute to Sain, including the following...

Jim Bouton

Johnny was a philosopher. He was interested in things beyond baseball. He cared about the players as people. He understood baseball politics. He wouldn’t tell you what to do. His genius was that he would make you think.

Pitchers loved Johnny. He was known as the pitchers’ pitching coach. He had more allegiance to the pitchers than he did to the managers.

He had this practice of not saying anything bad about a pitcher. Even if you got bombed. You’d come in and throw your glove and get all upset. At some point after the game, or maybe the next day in the airplane he’d sit next to you and he’d say, “You know, that was a hell of a curve ball you threw Norm Cash in that fourth inning there. Hell of a curve ball.” He’d pick out some one thing that you did well, and get you thinking about that.

To me, Johnny Sain belongs in the Hall of Fame because of the combination of being such a great pitcher, and being to me the greatest pitching coach ever. How many people have excelled in two areas like that?

Leo Mazzone

I was going to pick his brain and, and learn everything I could from him because he offered everything except the usual clichés. He said, "When you're good at your job, it hardly looks like you're working."

He said, “If you’re working with a pitcher you say ‘Do this or do that’, but then you have to explain to him and teach him how.”

He said, “When you’re dealing with a pitcher’s psyche, you go about it different ways depending on their personalities.” And he’d talk about dealing with different managers and front office. He covered the whole gamut. A lot of it was new. He was able to explain how you work with pitchers and how you teach, coach, support, instruct, mental, physical, dealing with managers, dealing with general managers..

He was looking for someone to hand down all his pitching knowledge to. There were a whole bunch of people that were fools for not taking advantage of his knowledge. They didn’t want to be open-minded about anything. At the beginning it puzzled me, but now that I've been in the game this long it doesn't. Johnny was a little bit of a rebel and there were people at the time that didn't particularly care for his methods.

[shoewizard]

good stuff

thanks for posting David