Whether Warren Spahn was on the mound or in World War II trenches, his opponents agreed that no one was tougher.
Spahn’s 363 career wins are the most of any left-hander, and he dominated during the modern post-1920 era, an exceptional achievement since he didn’t win his first game until age 25. Analyzing Spahn’s record shows that he deserves inclusion among baseball’s top 10 pitchers.
By 21st-century standards, Spahn’s achievements will never be matched. He holds or shares modern major-league records for 20-win seasons (13), most years leading the league in games won (eight), career innings thrown by a lefthander (5,246), single season wins after reaching age 40 (21) and at age 42 (23), and, unofficially, most double plays that a pitcher started (82).
He tossed no-hitters at ages 39 and 40. The lefty won 75 games after his 40th birthday, and often helped his own cause with 35 homers, the most four-baggers any National League pitcher hit.
Spahn often joked with scribes about his pitching arsenal — fastball, curve, circle curve, slider, screwball, knuckleball and change-up that he delivered overhand, three-quarters motion or sidearm, and at speeds ranging from 75 mph to 90 mph.
In all, Spahn could fool batters with an assortment of 40 different pitches. But he said that despite his deep bag of tricks, he only needed two pitches — “the one they’re looking for and the one to cross them up.”
On July 2, 1963, pitching for the Milwaukee Braves, the 42-year-old Spahn faced San Francisco Giants pitcher Juan Marichal, 25 years his junior. Sixteen innings later, and after four hours and 15 minutes, both eventual Hall of Fame pitchers were still toiling away.
Giants manager Alvin Dark wanted to pinch hit for Marichal in the 13th inning. But an outraged Marichal, who threw 227 pitches that night, refused: “A 42-year-old man is still pitching. I can’t come out!”
Willie Mays’ bottom-of-the-16th home run hit off Spahn’s first pitch — his go-to screwball — into fierce Candlestick Park winds ended the marathon game, 1-0.
Spahn threw 201 pitches, allowed nine hits and issued one intentional walk. When he entered the clubhouse, his teammates applauded, and shook his hand; some had tears in their eyes.
Five days later, Spahn made his next scheduled start, and his 22 complete games led the National League that year.
During WWII, Spahn showed the same determination and grit that foreshadowed his extraordinary baseball career.
At the war’s outbreak, he enlisted in the Army, and received combat engineering training at Camp Gruber, near Tulsa, Oklahoma. Two years later, Spahn arrived in France as part of the 1159th Engineer Combat Group’s 276th Battalion and was assigned to repair Nazi-demolished roads and bridges.
Spahn fought in and was injured during the Battle of the Bulge and at the Ludendorff Bridge. Defending the bridge, vital to the allies, Spahn was struck in the foot by incoming shrapnel that surgeons later removed. He remembered that, when the day’s fighting ended, he went to sleep with his feet frozen, and woke up with them still frozen.
The first lieutenant deflected praise for his bravery. He later said that he served with “a tough bunch of guys. We had people who were let out of prison to go into the service … they were tough and rough and I had to fit that mold.”
Knowing that Nazi soldiers often disguised themselves in U.S. Army uniforms, Spahn’s unit developed a plan to weed out imposters. If a suspected Nazi couldn’t name the Brooklyn Dodgers shortstop, Eddie Stanky, the fraud’s fate was sealed.
The most decorated baseball player in WWII, Spahn earned a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and a presidential citation.
Spahn’s war heroism cost him three full seasons, and 400 wins. But, career-wise, he viewed his war experiences positively.
“After what I went through overseas, I never thought of anything I was told to do in baseball as hard work,” he said. “You get over feeling like that when you spend days on end sleeping in frozen tank tracks in enemy-threatened territory.
“The Army taught me what’s important and what isn’t.”
True heroes, Spahn added, never returned.
As Spahn continued to pitch effectively year after year, his long-time nemesis Stan Musial predicted that the Braves’ ace would never get to the Hall of Fame because “he won’t stop pitching.” But Spahn’s career finally ended after the Braves sold him in 1964 to the New York Mets, which soon released him.
The Giants signed Spahn, age 44, and after compiling a combined 7-16 record in 1965, he was given his release.
As Spahn explained: “I didn’t retire from baseball. Baseball retired me.”
Spahn pitched a handful of games in the early 1970s for the Mexico City Tigers and for the AAA Tulsa Oilers before spending a few tumultuous seasons as a pitching coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Cleveland Indians and in the Los Angeles Angels minor league system. By then, Spahn was outspoken about his dislike for air travel, long-haired players and designated hitters.
In 1973, the Hall of Fame inducted Spahn, who joked that his career lasted so long that he was the only man in baseball history to play both before and after Casey Stengel was deemed a genius.
In 2003 Spahn, by then wealthy from his 2,000-acre Oklahoma cattle ranch and oil leasing, died in Broken Arrow from multiple medical complications. Numerous posthumous awards followed, including statues in Oklahoma City and Guthrie of Spahn in his intimidating high-kick motion.
For more information, read the Society for American Baseball Research biography, “Warren Spahn,” by Jim Kaplan.
— Joe Guzzardi is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America who now lives in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at guzzjoe@yahoo.com, or follow him on Twitter: @joeguzzardi19. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.