Word: pitcherful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Aside from 1950, when he pitched the Phillies to the National League pennant, Roberts has been playing for a club that has never wound up better than third. But over the years he has started, finished and won more games than any other active major-league pitcher. And always, even losing, he has found the plate with such grim routine that in an astonishing total of 2,272 innings of big-league ball, he has been charged with only 500 walks (less than two a game), has made only 19 wild pitches, hit only 28 batters. He has thrown...
...Philadelphia fans have learned to appreciate him, and now they understand what his opponents mean when they call Righthander Roberts an old-fashioned pitcher. He never bothers with fancy stuff but makes do with what he has: a dinky curve, a sneaky but unspectacular fast ball, and a frustrating change of pace. He offers no single dramatic talent-he has no counterpart of Carl Hubbell's spectacular screwball, Walter Johnson's terrifying fast ball, Bobby Feller's strikeout touch. Pitch for pitch, many of his contemporaries have what the trade calls "more stuff," pitches that are harder...
Play It Mean. Today occasional pitchers may still get away with an occasional outlawed spitter, but that dangerous pitch has all but vanished. Just about the only survival from baseball's rowdy youth is the "accidental" beanball, the close pitch that keeps a batter honest by forcing him back from the plate, that keeps him from taking a toehold and getting set to powder the ball. If the Phillies' Coach Whitlow Wyatt, who learned his baseball manners as one of Leo Durocher's Dodgers, had his way, Philly pitchers would put the brush-back pitch to constant...
Dainty Switch. A calm man, Roberts recovers quickly from even the most awesome shellfire. This season, after winning his first three games, he was beaten in the next three, knocked out of the box twice. Another pitcher might have wondered whether that inevitable slide down had begun. Not Roberts. One night last week, with his cool and easy motion on the mound and his reckless behavior on the base paths, he beat the league-leading Milwaukee Braves almost singlehanded, 2-1. He struck out ten men, allowed only eight hits, tore home from second on an eighth-inning infield single...
...unspectacular success as a college pitcher, Roberts got his big break when the University of Michigan's baseball coach Ray Fisher took him to New England in the summer of 1946 to play in the old Northern League. Roberts balked often out of sheer awkwardness, fell down fielding bunts, was so eager he threw before he got the catcher's sign. But Fisher saw things worth working on-a tireless arm, an indomitable will to win. An ex-major-leaguer (with the New York Yankees and Cincinnati), Fisher put the finishing touches...