R.I.P. Sudden Sam McDowell : The Man Who Walked Willie Mays in His First At-Bat as a Met
Sam McDowell died Monday at his home in The Villages, Florida. He was 84.
If you're under 50, that name might not ring a bell, which is a crying shame, because for about a decade Sudden Sam McDowell threw a baseball harder than any living human, and he did it while essentially being a character from a movie. (In fact, he was partly a character from a TV show. We'll get to that.)
They called him "Sudden Sam" because of exactly one spring training outing in 1961. A Cleveland sportswriter watched this calm, easy-delivery kid and then — suddenly — the fastball arrived. Nickname done. One outing.
The Indians gave him a $75,000 bonus out of high school, outbidding 14 teams, and he debuted in the majors at 18. The career line — 141-134, 3.17 ERA — doesn't look like much until you see the rest: 2,453 strikeouts, five American League strikeout titles, an ERA crown in 1965 (2.18), six All-Star teams, a 325-strikeout season. Luis Aparicio, who faced everybody, including Koufax, said: "I never saw anybody so fast." Let that one sit for a minute.
Oh, and on July 6, 1970 — stop me if you've heard this one, because you haven't. Indians nursing a 6-4 lead over Washington in the eighth, runners on second and third, two outs, and here comes Frank Howard. Frank Howard was roughly the size of a toolshed, and he owned the left-handed McDowell. So Alvin Dark pops out of the dugout and tells his ace: "I'm putting you on second base."
McDowell, to his eternal credit, gulped, blinked, and once he could talk again said, "That's fine. I can handle it."
The plan: right-hander Dean Chance comes in for the righty-on-righty matchup against Howard, while McDowell stays in the game at second so he can return to the mound. Chance walks Howard intentionally to load the bases — Dark is praying Washington skipper Ted Williams pinch-hits a lefty for Rick Reichardt, which would let McDowell pitch again right away, but Williams lets Reichardt hit. Chance gets a grounder to third. Eddie Leon's throw comes in low. McDowell loses it for a heartbeat in a sea of white shirts, drops to both knees, and takes it for the force. His wife Carol told reporters she couldn't even watch.
Then McDowell trots back to the mound for the ninth and strikes out the side. Win number twelve. Fifteen strikeouts. 148 pitches. He remains the last left-handed second baseman in major league history, because of course he is. (He also played first base two months later, because Alvin Dark was apparently managing via Mad Libs.)
Now the Mets part.
May 14, 1972. Mother's Day. Shea Stadium. 35,505 people. Willie Mays — Willie Mays — is playing his first game as a New York Met, and the starting pitcher for the visiting Giants is Sudden Sam McDowell, who had been Mays' teammate until three days earlier, when San Francisco traded Willie to the Mets.
First inning. Mays steps to the plate to a standing ovation. McDowell walks him.
I'll say it again, because it's perfect: Sam McDowell's permanent contribution to Mets lore is walking a 41-year-old Willie Mays in his first at-bat as a Met while 35,000 people lost their minds. (Mays would homer in the 5th against Don Carrithers)
It got worse. Rusty Staub hit a grand slam off him. Mets won 5-4. Somehow McDowell escaped with a no-decision.
He came back to Shea on July 12, and Jon Matlack hung a 4-0 complete-game shutout on him in front of 33,227. Final career line against the Mets: two starts, 0-1. Let the record show the New York Mets owned Sudden Sam McDowell — a sentence no American League hitter from 1965 ever got to utter.
The Mets threads don't stop there. In the 1969 All-Star Game, McDowell pitched for the AL while Jerry Koosman pitched and Cleon Jones started in left for the NL. In 1970, McDowell threw three scoreless innings for the AL in a game started for the National League by Tom Seaver, managed by Gil Hodges. The man kept showing up in the Mets orbit .
But here's the thing about Sudden Sam. The fastball was the least interesting thing about him.
"I was the biggest, most hopeless and most violent drunk in baseball," he told the Post years later. This was not colorful-athlete talk. This was a man describing a war. He quit drinking in 1980, went and got a degree from the University of Pittsburgh in sports psychology and addiction, and then spent thirty years — 1987 to 2016 — as baseball's counselor to players fighting the same demon, winning a lifetime achievement award for it in 2022.
Bob DiBiasio of the Guardians said it best this week: "Most importantly, Sam's life was a story of redemption." And Sam himself, with the clarity of a man who'd seen both ends of it: "I truly believe that the best thing that ever happened to me was being an alcoholic and discovering it."
Oh — and the TV show? Sam McDowell was one of the real-life ingredients in Sam Malone, the ex-ballplayer bartender on Cheers. Which means in some alternate universe, Ted Danson is playing Sudden Sam, and frankly the 100-mph fastball would have been the least believable part.
So long, Sam. You walked Willie Mays in his Mets debut, you gave up a grand slam to Rusty Staub on Mother's Day, you played second base against Frank Howard because why not, and then you spent three decades pulling other people out of the hole you'd climbed out of yourself.
The Mets still owe you one for Willie. Rest easy, Sudden Sam.
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