April 19, 2016

Pappas Passes

Milt Pappas died today, Tuesday.

Milt Pappas, who came within a disputed pitch of throwing a perfect game for the Chicago Cubs in 1972 and was part of the lopsided trade that brought Frank Robinson to Baltimore, died Tuesday. He was 76.

Pappas died of natural causes at his home in the northern Illinois community of Beecher, said his widow, Judi Pappas.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

Pappas was a bonus baby, players who signed for a high amount of money and had to play on the major league roster. He was in the majors at age 18, but didn’t come into his own until age 24, when he found his control. Over the next six seasons (ages 24-29), he posted a 3.26 ERA, walking just 1.9 batters per nine innings. That helped him to an 85-62 record. If he had been allowed to develop in the minors, I suspect his career ERA would have been lower than his 3.40 career mark.

5 thoughts on “Pappas Passes

  1. tom

    I haven’t read his obit yet but what I remember about Pappas is that his wife disappeared (maybe his kid too but I don’t think so). It was a big mystery until, years and years later, her body was found in her car at the bottom of a lake. I must have been a teenager when I heard she was missing but even at that obtuse age it struck me as unbearably sad.

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  2. tom

    Memory is a fallible thing. His obit says his wife disappeared in 1982 and her body was found in ’86. My teenage years were ancient history by then, alas.

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  3. Gary

    Since I started following the Orioles in 1969 when I was 6 years old, I didn’t know too much about Pappas other than the trade. The trade worked out well for Baltimore. Pappas was no slouch. Seven seasons at 15 or more wins and more 200 wins overall is a good career.

    I wonder if a couple of years in the minors would have helped him become an even better pitcher. By the time he was 20 he was throwing 200 innings a year.

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  4. M. Scott Eiland

    Pappas was always a tad bitter about being summarily dismissed from the Hall of Fame ballot, pointing out that his career line looked a lot like Don Drysdale’s. Bill James spent a fair amount of time on this argument in his book on the Hall of Fame, IIRC (of course, the fact that he concluded that Big D shouldn’t be there either didn’t help the case for MP much).

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