Friday, July 23, 2010

George Bamberger The Staten Island Sinker Bye Bye Baseball Boy!

 George Bamberger Oriole Pitcher 1959. Oriole's Earl Weaver's pitching coach from 1968-77. Produced 18 times  20 game winners. Created the famed Staten Island Sinker pitch. As stated in     He flourished, however, as pitching coach of the Orioles from 1968 to 1977, his pitchers winning at least 20 games in a season 18 times. Jim Palmer won the American League Cy Young award three times under Bamberger and Mike Cuellar was a co-winner in 1969. Palmer, Cuellar, Pat Dobson and Dave McNally were each 20-game winners for Bamberger in 1971, when the Orioles won a third straight pennant. Richard Goldstein in http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/07/business/george-bamberger-80-pitching-coach-dies.html  "He was the best pitching coach I ever saw,'' Frank Cashen, the former general manager of the Orioles and the Mets, said in a telephone interview yesterday. He recalled that Bamberger gave his pitchers plenty of work. ''He believed in a four-man rotation,'' Cashen said. ''His theory was, the arm was a muscle, and the more you used it, the better off you were, as long as you didn't abuse it.'' Cashen remembered that Orioles Manager Earl Weaver ''was very flamboyant and not afraid to take pitchers to task vocally,'' but that ''George was very quiet; he was their friend.'' In 1979, Bamberger told Dave Anderson of The New York Times: ''My whole idea is to throw the ball over the plate. The most important pitch is a strike. But the trick is to change speeds. Trying to pinpoint a pitch is crazy. Throw the ball down the middle, but don't throw the same pitch twice. Change the speed.''  Soooo he pitched and passed it on in effort, ability and character. He gets his spot in my "HALL OF FAME HEROES LINKED TO BALTIMORE"! So if you are interested in bidding on the baseball card click here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290457019317&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:1123

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