The baseball establishment doesn't like guys who think differently. They'll put up with such guys if they can win because of it. But when the winning stops, goodbye.
Mike Marshall thought differently. And, on occasion, it worked superbly for both him and his team.
Michael Grant Marshall was born on January 15, 1943 in Adrian, Michigan, outside Detroit. At the age of 11, he was in a car driven by his uncle, who tried to cross railroad tracks ahead of a train, and didn't make it. The uncle was killed, and Mike was left with a severe back injury. His long hospital stay and treatment led him to develop an interest in the mechanics of the human body.
He graduated from Adrian High School, which had previously produced Dorne Dibble, a receiver with the Detroit Lions' NFL Championship teams of the 1950s. Later, in the same class, 2003, it would produce tight end Kellen Davis of the Chicago Bears and New York Jets, and defensive end Marcus Benard of the Cleveland Browns and the Arizona Cardinals.
Marshall graduated from Michigan State University in 1965, at a time when their football team was one of the best in the country, coached by Duffy Daugherty and known as "Duffy's Toughies." His degree was in kinesiology (Kin-EE-see-OL-oh-jee), the scientific study of human or non-human body movement.
According to Wikipedia, "Applications of kinesiology to human health include biomechanics and orthopedics; strength and conditioning; sport psychology; motor control; skill acquisition and motor learning; methods of rehabilitation, such as physical and occupational therapy; and sport and exercise physiology."
He was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies, then sold to his almost-hometown Detroit Tigers. He made his major league debut on May 31, 1967. It didn't go so well for the Tigers: They lost at home, 9-0 to the Cleveland Indians. Luis Tiant pitched a 6-hit shutout, striking out 13. Mickey Lolich started for the Tigers, and didn't get past the 3rd inning. Leon Wagner hit a home run off Pat Dobson. Wearing the Number 28 he would wear for most of his career, Marshall pitched the top of the 9th inning, resulting in double, groundout, strikeout, RBI single, strikeout.
Marshall appeared in 37 games that season, all in relief, going 1-3 with 10 saves. The Tigers overcame the Detroit Race Riot in July, and came within 1 game of the American League Pennant. They won the World Series the next season, but Marshall spent it entirely in the minor leagues, as mainly a starter, with the Tigers' top farm team. Ironically, it was the Toledo Mud Hens, who, despite being across a State Line (Ohio), were half as close to his hometown of Adrian as Tiger Stadium was.
Marshall was left unprotected in the expansion draft, and was chosen by the Seattle Pilots. He shared a bullpen with, among others, former Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton, who had switched to a knuckleball after wrecking his elbow in 1965.
The Pilot staff, including manager Joe Schultz and pitching coach Sal Maglie, a former All-Star pitcher for the New York Giants with a great curveball, didn't trust the knuckler. They considered it an oddball pitch, favored by oddball pitchers, and pretty much froze Bouton out. Marshall, too, had an oddball pitch: The screwball, a "reverse curveball." It was considered such an oddball pitch, the word "screwball" came to mean a strange person.
Whereas the other Pilots, less intellectual, mocked Marshall, calling him "Brains," Bouton saw in him a kindred spirit, a man who thought well about many things, not just baseball. In his journal of that season, published the next year as the book Ball Four, "Mike Marshall is probably the most articulate guy on the club, so I asked him if he had as much trouble communicating as I've had and he said, 'Of course. The minute I approach a coach or a manager, I can see the terror in his eyes.'"
Marshall appeared in 20 games, starting 16, going 3-10 with a 5.14 ERA. Late in the season, the Pilots traded Bouton to the Houston Astros. In the off-season, the Pilots, desperate for cash, sold Marshall to Houston as well, but moved during 1970's Spring Training, becoming the Milwaukee Brewers.
The reunion didn't last long: By late June, Bouton had been sent down to the minors, never to return (or so everyone thought, but he made a comeback with the Atlanta Braves in 1978), and Marshall had been traded to the Montreal Expos. Now, he was with a team that knew what to do with him: In 1971, he had 23 saves. In 1972, he made 65 appearances, all in relief, a huge number for the time, going 14-8 with 18 saves and a 1.78 ERA.
Against conventional wisdom, Marshall didn't ice his arm after games and he pitched in short sleeves even in the coldest of weather. He believed that pitchers should throw more often, not less; and more pitches, not less.
Jim Fanning, the Expos' general manager at the time, would later said, "Marshall had fantastic stuff, the best screwball I've ever seen in my life. You would see him on a cold night at Jarry Park and no sweatshirt, just a short-sleeved uniform top."
In 1973, he practiced what he preached, setting a new major league record with 92 pitching appearances, going 14-11, a 2.66 ERA and a National League-leading 31 saves. He broke the record for pitching appearances set in 1969, 90, by Wayne Granger, then with the Cincinnati Reds. In postseason award voting, he finished 2nd for the Cy Young Award and 5th for the Most Valuable Player.
That got the attention of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who traded Willie Davis to the Expos for Marshall on December 5, 1973. On a franchise that had Dazzy Vance, Don Newcombe (those 2, in Brooklyn), Sandy Koufax, Don Dyrsdale, and, currently, Don Sutton and Tommy John, and would eventually have Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser, Pedro Martinez, Eric Gagne * and Clayton Kershaw, the 1974 season of Mike Marshall may be the most remarkable in Dodger pitching history.
He made 106 appearances, finishing 83 games, both new major league records. It remains the only 100+ pitching appearance season in history. From June 18 to July 3, he pitched in 13 games in a row, a record that still stands.
"I had a deal with (manager) Walter Alston," Marshall said in a 2003 interview. "If I warmed up, I was getting into the game."
He went 15-12, with a 2.42 ERA and a 1.186 WHIP. He led he NL with 21 saves. Not since Dizzy Dean in 1934 (30-7, 7 saves) had a pitcher had a combined total of more wins and saves. He struck out 143, and walked 56. He made his 1st All-Star Game, finished 3rd in the MVP voting, and became the 1st relief pitcher ever to win the Cy Young Award, in either League.
The Dodgers won the Pennant, their 1st in 8 years. Marshall pitched in all 5 games of the World Series, facing 32 batters, striking out 10 and walking only 1. He saved Game 2 for Sutton, including the famous pickoff of Charlie Finley's "designated runner" Herb Washington. But that would be the only game the Dodgers would win. He allowed just 1 run in the Series, but it was a home run by Joe Rudi in the 7th inning of Game 5, and that made the difference, as the Oakland Athletics on, 3-2 to take the Series.
Also that year, through his acquaintance with Dr. Frank Jobe, he recommended to Tommy John that he get the career-saving surgery that now bears John's name. So that's another piece of baseball history connected to Mike Marshall.
But the trouble with being the smartest guy in the room is that you tend to start acting like everybody else around you is dumb. Although named to the All-Star Team again in 1975, he wasn't nearly as good, as Dodger management trusted him less. He made 58 appearances (a little over half as many as the year before, but still a big number compared to pre-Marshall pitchers), but only went 9-14 with 13 saves.
And he wasn't especially friendly -- not to his teammates, not to the media, and not to fans. Once, when a boy asked Marshall for his autograph, he told the kid, "Go get your math teacher's autograph. He's the hero you should be seeking out." (University of Alabama football coach Bear Bryant once famously said, "Nobody ever cheered a math department.)
Marshall's iconoclasm finally ticked off the conservative Dodgers to the point where they traded him to the Atlanta Braves in 1976, getting Lee Lacy and Elias Sosa in the deal, both of whom would help the Dodgers win Pennants in 1977 and '78.
The Braves gave up on him early in the 1977 season, and sold him to the Texas Rangers. Between the 2 teams, he made only 16 appearances that season. After it, the Rangers gave up on him. He wasn't signed for 1978 until May 15, by the Minnesota Twins, and they trusted him enough to make 54 appearances, going 10-12 with a 2.45 ERA and 21 saves. That same year, he got his Ph.D. in exercise physiology from Michigan State, making him Dr. Mike Marshall.
In 1979, he struck again. He went 10-15 for a weak Twins team, but led the AL with 32 saves. He pitched in 90 games, so he holds the record for most games pitched in a season in each League. He finished 84 games, a major league record that still stands.
But he was 37 years old before the next season started, and all his pitching may have finally caught up with him. In 1980, he pitched in 18 games for the Twins, going 1-3 with 1 save and a 6.12 ERA. He was released on June 6, and did not return to the major leagues until August 19, 1981, when the Mets signed hi as a free agent. He appeared in 20 games, going 3-2 with a 2.61 ERA, but no saves. He was released after the season. That was it, except for 1 game with the Edmonton Trappers, the Class AAA farm team of the California Angels in 1983, in which he was terribly ineffective.
His career record is an unflattering 97-112, but he had 188 saves at a time when that was a big number. His ERA was 3.14, his WHIP was 1.294, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio was 1.71.
Aside from Marshall, 4 pitchers have appeared in at least 90 games in a season. One was the aforementioned Wayne Granger. Kent Tekulve of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitched in 91 in 1978 and 94 in their World Championship season of 1979, and reached 90 again with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1987. Salomón Torres appeared in 94 for the 2006 Pirates. And Pedro Feliciano appeared in 92 for the 2010 Mets. The Yankee record is 86, by Paul Quantrill in 2004.
*
Officially, Mike Marshall was never banned from baseball. But he was blackballed, because he knew more about pitching motions than anybody, and wasn't afraid to say so. Never publicly say that you know more than the establishment does: If you do, they will consider it an embarrassment. You can do almost anything in sports, as long as you don't embarrass the establishment. It's why Tim Tebow keeps getting new chances in football, but (for different reasons) Colin Kaepernick and Johnny Manziel do not.
"I know the injurious flaws in the 'traditional' baseball pitching motion that injure baseball pitchers and how to eliminate all pitching injuries," he said on his website, drmikemarshall.com. "I also know the mechanical flaws in the 'traditional' baseball pitching motion that decrease release velocity, release consistency and the variety and quality of pitches pitchers can throw and how to correct these mechanical flaws."
And so, he was never again hired by "organized baseball." But he coached in college. In 1984, he was an assistant coach at the University of Tampa, an NCAA Division II school. From 1984 until 1988, he was head coach at St. Leo College, also a Division II school in the Tampa Bay area.
From 1989 to 1991, he was head coach at Henderson State University, another Division II school, in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. When Jim Bouton tried to contact his former teammates for a 20th Anniversary update of Ball Four in 1989, Marshall told him of his new word, and Jim said, "Arkadelphia! Sounds like a happening place!"
This was the time of the brief Senior Professional Baseball Association based in Tampa Bay, which attracted several former MLB players, including Hall of Fame pitchers Rollie Fingers and Fergie Jenkins. Mike told Jim -- this is how the quote appeared in the book -- "And I personally am throwing the dog doo-doo out of the ball." (He was 46, and hadn't thrown a professional pitch in 6 years, but there have been plenty of pitchers that age and older who have pitched effectively in the majors. Given his conditioning, Mike could have become one of them.)
Jim asked Mike if he was going to try out for the senior league, and he said, "I just might, if they can get their act together." They didn't, and he didn't.
Jim and Mike are linked in another way, a considerably less flattering one. Each man's 1st wife, Bobbie Bouton and Nancy Marshall, came from small towns in Michigan, married pitchers with unusual pitches and unusual outlooks, and saw their husbands cheat on them on the road. In 1983, they collaborated on a book, Home Games. Mike Marshall made no public comment about the book. Jim Bouton wished Bobbie well, and suggested that everything she wrote was true.
Mike's last coaching job was in 1993 and 1994, at West Texas A&M University, in Canyon, Texas, in the Panhandle, near Amarillo. Affiliated with the regular Texas A&M in College Station, it, like the other schools he coached at, is in NCAA Division II.
He should not be confused with Michael Allen Marshall, an outfielder from the Chicago area. This Mike Marshall also played for the Dodgers, making his debut for them during their 1981 World Championship season. While he was on the postseason roster, he only played in 1 game, in the Division Series against the Houston Astros.
He later helped the Dodgers win the NL West in 1983, '85 and '88, and with them, he won the 1988 World Series, a feat denied to the pitcher Mike Marshall. He was named to the NL All-Star Team in 1984. In 1990, he was traded to the Mets, but only played 53 games for them before being traded to the Boston Red Sox, helping them win the AL East that year.
He retired after the 1991 season, with a .270 batting average and 148 home runs. He is now 61 years old, has since worked in the front offices of various teams in "independent leagues," and has also coached in college baseball. The pitcher's last season, 1981, was the outfielder's first, and I don't know if they ever met.
If not, it will never happen now. Mike Marshall the pitcher settled in the Tampa suburb of Zephyrhills, Florida, with his 2nd wife Erica. With Nancy, who died this past April 30, he had daughters Deborah, Rebekah and Kerry. Mike fell ill, and was taken to hospice care, and died on Tuesday, June 1, 2021, at age 78.
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