Baseball’s Great Hispanic Pitchers by Lou Hernández

Author:Lou Hernández [Hernández, Lou]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-11-19T08:00:00+00:00

Legacy

In 1980, New York left Tiant off its playoff roster for its American League Championship Series against the Kansas City Royals. The pitcher had posted an 8–9 record for the campaign with a 4.89 ERA, the highest of his career.

The Yankees did not try to re-sign the 40-year-old hurler after the season. Tiant hung on for two more seasons, but they were nothing more than brief hook-ups with clubs looking to supplement their pitching depth in the latter months of the season.

Tiant obtained his last major league win, 10–2, versus the Boston Red Sox on August 17, 1982, pitching for the California Angels. The West Coast club had recently purchased Tiant from the Tabasco franchise of the Mexican League. At Anaheim, the starter hurled eight innings and allowed one earned run, striking out eight. Less than three weeks later, Tiant was the losing pitcher in his last appearance on a major league mound. On September 4, Tiant, permitting seven of the runs, was defeated by the Milwaukee Brewers, 8–2. Robin Yount, who was eight years old when Tiant debuted in the big leagues, sent Tiant to the showers with a single in the sixth inning. The 27-year-old Yount was the last major league batter to whom Tiant pitched.

Luis Tiant, who may be the only pitcher in history to hurl shutouts the first time scaling the mounds of Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium and Fenway Park, as he did in his rookie season, felt he could still pitch, and did so in the winter of 1982 with the Santurce Crabbers. Tiant squeezed 112 more innings from his arm, pitching in Mexico in 1983, and then the 43-year-old stopped pitching competitively.

Apparently the scouting job with the Yankees did not pan out, and as often unjustly happens to former players who want to stay close to the game after they retire, there were no jobs in baseball available or offered to Tiant. He took a position with the Massachusetts Lottery to support the family that had grown to three children with the addition of a second boy, Daniel, in 1974.

It was not until 1992 that Tiant re-entered the game, at the calling of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who hired him as a minor league pitching coach. After six years as pitching coach, Tiant found a college managerial job in Georgia with the Savannah College of Art & Design. It was a brief tenure that Tiant enjoyed, especially in his second year when his eldest son joined him as an assistant at the NCAA Division III baseball program. Prior to the manager’s stint, Tiant had been elected to the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 1997.

During the internet-enthusiastic period that followed, Tiant linked his named to a personalized website, where one could purchase a custom brand of cigars—not too unlike the victory cigars Tiant used to smoke in the showers and whirlpools to the gleeful amusement of clubhouse reporters.

Finally, in 2001, Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette brought Tiant back into the Red Sox family,

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