With his whirling, twisting delivery — strikingly unique from any other pitcher in history — Luis Tiant turned his performances into theater. During the peak of his career in the 1970s, you didn’t need a radio or television to know that Tiant was pitching at Fenway Park.
Throughout the packed houses he pitched in front of, cries of “Looie, Looie, Looie!” echoed around Kenmore Square and other parts of Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.
Luis led the AL in earned run average twice, for two different teams, both times below 2.00.
He had four seasons of 20 wins or more. (Greg Maddux had only two – in a much longer career. 1)
Luis is not in the Hall of Fame, but he’s certainly a decent candidate. Here is how he compares to two Hall of Fame pitchers:
Tiant: 229-172 3.30 (ERA+ 114) WAR 66
Catfish Hunter: 224-166 3.26 (ERA+ 104) WAR 36
Jim Bunning: 224-184 3.27 (ERA+ 115) WAR 60
Catfish is the weakest of the three, but is in the Hall based on five consecutive 20-win seasons, five rings, and various post-season heroics (he was undefeated in the three World Series he won with the As). It’s good to pitch for great teams.
The comparison with Bunning, however, makes it difficult to explain why he’s in while Tiant is out. Tiant won two games without a loss in his only World Series, while Bunning never played on a pennant winner. Bunning had only a single 20-win season 1, and never led his league in ERA. I’m not suggesting that Bunning was undeserving, but that he and Tiant are about equally deserving (or equally undeserving, if you’re of that mind).
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Footnote 1: Those facts about 20-win seasons are accurate, but a bit misleading on my part. Maddux won exactly 19 games in five different seasons in a career in which he won at least 15 for 17 consecutive seasons. Similarly, Jim Bunning won 19 in four different seasons.
Great pitching in 1972. Apart from Carlton and Tiant, that was the year Gaylord Perry made the Tribe respectable every four days,
Tiant should be “enshrined” even before you thrrow in points for total coolness.
When the Widow Yawkey and her minions let Tiant go FA (and to the Yankees yet), Yaz, not generally a critic of ownership, made some pretty caustic remarks to the effect that the front office had let NY rip out the team’s heart.
Now just watch, they’ll put him in the Hall next year. Hope the same thing doesn’t happen to Dwight Evans.
There was a joke about how no matter where you sat in the stadium, at some point during his delivery Tiant was looking you in the eye.
As I understand it, Jim Bunning was popular with both his teammates and opposing players. Since he was elected by the Veteran’s Committee, not the Baseball Writers, that probably had something to do with his election, given that his statistics were only borderline HOF-worthy. Bunning was also a serving Congressman (and future senator) when he was elected. I wonder, in between his congressional elections did he have any staffers run a Vote Jim Bunning for the HOF campaign on the veterans committee? Strictly on their own time without informing the congressman, of course.
Bunning was part of the answer to a trivia question. Name the men who played in the major leagues, NBA, and NFL, and went on to serve in the House, in the Senate, and on the Supreme Court.? The answers, of course, were Jim Bunning, Bill Bradley, and Byron “Whizzer” White. Jim Bunning is still an answer to that question, but he was also a Senator, which complicates the question a bit.