The First Closer

Way back then there were no closers, only starters and relievers.

The starter started the game and pitched until he got into a jam. Then a reliever or two came in to end the game. Nobody got a save. The statistic didn’t exist.

In 1962, the Red Sox usual starters were Bill Monbouquette, Earl Wilson, Don Schwall and Gene Conley, not exactly a formidable lot. Monbouquette was the Sox ace, at age 25 just coming into his own. Wilson, 27, achieved his greatest success six years later as a 20-game winner for the World Champion Tigers. The relievers, the guys who weren’t good enough to be starters, were pitchers like Arnold Earley, Chet Nichols and Mike Fornieles, who was an all-star the previous year because they had to take somebody from the Red Sox.

One of the rookie relievers on this eighth-place ballclub was Dick Radatz. At 6-5, 245 with a fastball that probably averaged high-90s (no radar guns then), he quickly was nicknamed The Monster.

There aren’t a lot of revolutionary moments in baseball, but 1962 was one of those moments. The new thinking said that you should have at least one good reliever to use when you really needed some outs, say at the end of the game. The Dodgers were using Ron Perranoski in that role, the Yankees had Luis Arroyo and Elroy Face was the ace reliever in Pittsburgh. Radatz was given that role for the Red Sox.

The Sox got Radatz his first action on opening day. He pitched the ninth of a 4-0 loss to the Indians and struck out Ty Cline, the first batter he faced. And while the other relievers would come in whenever needed, Radatz would usually be saved for the end of the game. During April he made seven appearances, all at the end of the game, had a win and three of what would later be called saves. In 7.2 innings he struck out 13. The pattern continued through the year, mostly end-of-game work when the team was ahead, mostly one or two innings of work.

Except for that one time. It was a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. The lowly Sox had beaten the mighty Yankees 9-3 in the first game and had a 4-3 lead in the seventh inning of the second game when Radatz was brought in. With two out he gave up a walk and two singles to tie the game. Today, that would be it for the pitcher, but Radatz pitched on. He had a 1-2-3 eighth, and survived in the ninth when Tony Kubek tried to score from second on a single. Radatz pitched on, throwing a 1-2-3 10^th and getting a double-play ball to get out of the 11^th. Through the 11^th and 12^th Radatz pitched on, retiring all six Yankees. He gave up a hit in the 13^th and another in the 14^th, but pitched on. In the 15^th, his ninth inning of work, the equivalent of a complete game, he got three fly ball outs.

In the top of the 16^th, with a runner at third and one out Radatz left the game, removed for pinch hitter Billy Gardner, who singled home Bob Tillman with the lead run. Radatz got the win.

Radatz ended the year 9-6, 2.24 with 24 of those things that would in the future be called saves. IN fact, he won or saved 33 of the Sox 76 wins that year. Along the way he picked up his signature move: When he ended a game with a win he would throw his arms high up in the air, which for him was very high.

It only got better the next season, when his role was established as the pitcher that came in late in the game to preserve a win. He was called the closer. By that time, The Sporting News, then known as “The Bible of Baseball,” had started tracking saves, although MLB would not officially until 1969. But in 1962, The Monster had a monster year, going 15-6, 1.97 with 25 saves. He had a win or save in 40 of Boston’s 76 wins! In 1963 it was 45 of 72 as Radatz pitched 157 innings and struck out 181.

But in 1965, the decline began. Pitching for a horrible Sox team (62-100) Radatz threw only 124 innings and struck out 121, the first time in his career that his strikeouts were less than his innings pitched. In four seasons he had thrown 537 innings, mostly fastballs.

In 1966, the fastball was gone. All those innings and all those pitches sucked the life out of his arm. Radatz was giving up runs like never before, and his ERA was over 5. At the end of May he was traded to the Indians for Don McMahan and Lee Stange, both of whom would be key players on the next season’s Impossible Dream team. The Monster held on for a few more years, pitching for the Indians, Cubs, Tigers and Expos, but was released in August 1969, going 3-9 with only 18 saves after leaving Boston.

Dick Radatz was around for just a short time, but had a great impact. The Sox have never been without a closer since, with pitchers like John Wyatt, Sparky Lyle, Bill Campbell, Jeff Reardon, Heathcliffe Slocomb and Ugi Urbina leading up to Keith Foulke and Jonathan Papelbon. Even starters like Bill Lee, Bob Stanley, Derek Lowe and Tim Wakefield served in the closers role. And they can all trace their lineage back to the guy that invented the position, Dick Radatz.