Former big league knuckleballer Wilbur Wood passed away on Saturday at the age of 84.
Wood led the Major Leagues in games pitched twice and games started four times over the course of his 17-year MLB career, including time with the Red Sox, Pirates and a 12-year stint with the White Sox.
Wood had died Saturday at a hospital in Burlington, Massachusetts. The New York Times reports this.
In 1972, Wood set the record for most innings pitched by a pitcher since 1917, when he threw 376 ⅔ innings for the White Sox that season and made 49 starts that year – the most since 1908 – two marks that have not been matched since.
A native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wood was a star player for Belmont High School during his youth.
During his professional career, he was a three-time American League All-Star and posted four 20-win seasons.
His career lasted from 1961 to 1978 and he finished with a record of 164-156.
Wood made his Major League debut at the age of 19 in 1961 with the Red Sox.
“He was a real hot-shot pitcher,” says Roland Hemond, the former Sox executive who was then minor league director for the Milwaukee Braves, told the Chicago Tribune.
“I first met Wilbur in 1960 when our scout Jeff Jones sent him to Milwaukee for a tryout right after he graduated from high school. He was a chubby little guy with a bleary face who didn’t throw very hard. I watched him take batting practice, but I couldn’t get very excited about him.
“After his practice, I took him with my wife to the press room at County Stadium, and we gave him hot dogs. We found he had a good appetite. He was such a likable guy, it was hard to tell him he wasn’t throwing hard enough and we weren’t interested.”
Wood had become known for his knuckleball, which he had thrown from time to time early in his career, but he began working on it with Hoyt Wilhelm when Wood arrived in Chicago.
“I was lucky because when I came to the Sox, Hoyt Wilhelm was still with them — probably the greatest knuckleball pitcher of them all,” Wood said, according to the Tribune. “He told me that if I was going to throw the punching bag, I should throw away the rest of my throws. I wasn’t doing anything good with it anyway, so I followed his advice. I had nothing to lose.”
After his baseball career ended, he went to work for a pharmaceutical company.
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