R.I.P. Bill Denehy: One Half of a Rookie Card, One Hell of a Story

Bill Denehy, the former Mets pitcher whose story was stitched together with promise, pain, perseverance, and redemption, passed away on June 27, just days after proudly marking 34 years of sobriety. It’s impossible not to feel both the weight of loss and the light of legacy in the same breath.

If you’re a Mets fan, chances are you know Bill’s face—perhaps even more than his stats. It's there, staring back at you from the iconic 1967 Topps rookie card, alongside some guy named Seaver. Yes, that Tom Seaver. That little rectangle of cardboard, in PSA 9 condition, has fetched as much as $14,400. Not bad for a two-player card where only one went to Cooperstown—although it was Bill who, at the time, had the bigger buzz.

“I was on the cover of the yearbook, not Seaver,” Bill said to me in a 2014 interview . “If you looked at the press clippings, the expectation was mine to carry.” And for a time, he did. A $20,000 bonus baby, straight out of Middletown, Connecticut, Bill went 13-6 with the Auburn Mets in his first pro season. The next year he went 9-2 with a 1.97 ERA at Double-A Williamsport. The Mets thought they had their left-handed ace of the future. Unfortunately, fate—and one very large, very mysterious pill—had other plans.

If you're under 40 and need a comp, imagine if Matt Harvey’s story ended before The Dark Knight even got his cape.

On a Wednesday night in 1967, the 21-year-old rookie was scheduled to pitch against the Giants and the great Juan Marichal. Yogi Berra, then a Mets coach, handed him the ball. “Go out and pitch us a shutout,” Yogi said. Don Cardwell handed him something else. “Here, take this little pill,” Cardwell told him. “Adds three feet to your fastball.”

“I was 21, naïve,” Bill admitted. “We didn’t have drug education back then. And I trusted my teammate.”

That pill—and the power surge it delivered—would ultimately cost Bill his career and, in time, his eyesight.

His recollection of that night is seared in baseball lore. He struck out Willie Mays. Twice. But then, "it felt like someone stabbed me in the back of the shoulder." He walked off the mound. X-rays were inconclusive. The cortisone shots began. And so did a downward spiral, both physically and emotionally.

By the time he was traded to the Washington Senators for Gil Hodges (yes, that Gil Hodges), the damage was done. “Fifty-seven cortisone shots in 26 months,” Bill told me. “I was a pincushion. My arm wasn’t mine anymore.” His control was waning, and not just on the mound.

Fifty-seven cortisone injections in 26 months. His arm—once electric—was never the same. He was traded to Washington for Gil Hodges, an irony not lost on Mets historians. Then came brief stints with Detroit and the minors before baseball moved on without him.

But Bill’s stories never stopped.

And like everything else in his life, they came with edge, humor, and a heavy dose of truth. One in particular, buried deep in his memoir Rage, is so outrageous, so wonderfully baseball, it deserves to be in Cooperstown's oral history wing—if not a scene in a future Judd Apatow movie.

Let’s rewind to a night in Homestead, Florida, where the Mets held their minor league spring training.

Bill and a crew of Irish-American prospects—including Tug McGraw, Kevin Collins, Hank McGraw, and Terry Christensen—nicknamed themselves “The Irish Mafia.” One Saturday, without a curfew, they piled into a car and headed for a night out in Fort Lauderdale.

After several stops and several drinks, around 2 a.m., Tug spotted a sign for a marina.

“Tug says, ‘Let’s stop,’” Bill recalled. “We’re like, ‘What for?’ Tug just says, ‘Last stop.’”

At the marina, hanging by its tail was a massive, dead shark—about seven or eight feet long. The fishermen were planning to use it for bait on their next trip, but Tug had a better idea.

“Can we have it?” he asked.

They talked the guy into it. Somehow, they managed to shove the shark into the trunk of their car, its head and tail sticking out like a low-budget horror movie.

Back at the Homestead complex, Joe McDonald—the Mets' minor league administrator—had a strict morning routine: up at 7 a.m., swim laps in the pool before breakfast. The Irish Mafia decided to... spice that up.

They dragged the shark to the pool, rigged a lifeguard chair underwater, and perched the shark on it like some half-submerged offering to Poseidon.

“We figured Joe would dive in, eyes closed, and come up face-to-face with Jaws,” Bill said, laughing.

But fate had other plans.

That night, a busload of senior citizens checked into the facility. Like Joe, they were early risers. Unlike Joe, they weren’t expecting a dead shark in the deep end of the pool.

“They screamed. Total chaos. It’s lucky nobody had a heart attack,” Bill said.

At the ballpark later that morning, Joe McDonald sat the five of them down.

“I know it was you,” he told them. “It’ll go a lot easier if you admit it.”

They didn’t.

“We played dumb. ‘Shark? What shark?’” Bill said. “But Joe told us, ‘I’m gonna run you until your tongues fall out of your mouths.’ And he damn near did.”

Bill couldn’t finish the story without laughing—and making sure you understood the punchline.

“The only thing we regretted was that Joe didn’t jump in first,” he said. “That would’ve been perfect.”

That was life for Bill Denehy: a movie script written in tobacco spit and pine tar, with plot twists involving Mickey Mantle’s locker (which he dressed in during a Yankee tryout), Ted Williams’ roommate (Charlie Wagner), and a comeback that never quite came.

But the heart of Bill's story came after baseball.

When the cortisone wore off and the lights dimmed, Bill spiraled into addiction. Painkillers, anger, self-doubt. He lost jobs, his marriage, and nearly his children. But eventually, Bill fought back. Rage, the 2014 memoir he co-wrote with Peter Golenbock, is more than a baseball book. It’s a warning. A redemption story. A gut punch from a man who lost his vision but never his voice.

“Don’t play if you’re hurt,” he told me, flat out. “One game isn’t worth your life. Or your future. I was 21, and they never gave me a choice. It should’ve been my decision. Not theirs.”

He may not be enshrined in Cooperstown, but Bill Denehy’s legacy lives on in every young pitcher who learns to speak up, ask questions, and say no to shortcuts. He was a teacher, a coach, a broadcaster, a fighter. Most of all, he was a truth-teller.

Baseball, he once wrote, took his sight. But it gave him purpose.

Rest easy, Bill. And thank you—for your honesty, your humor, and your heart. You were always more than a rookie card.

And for the record? You struck out Willie Mays. Twice.

That’s a hell of a line for any pitcher’s final box score.