(Note from John Eisenberg: This week I’m handing the Bird Tapes keyboard to Jim Considine, a lifelong Baltimorean and Bird Tapes subscriber whom I’ve known for many years. Jim has authored a two-part series on Wally Bunker that I think you’ll find interesting. Click here for Part 1, which was published Wednesday and focuses on Bunker’s 19-win season in 1964. See below for Jim’s bio of himself, which I think you’ll also find interesting.)
By Jim Considine
During the next-to-last start of his magical season in 1964, Wally Bunker felt a piercing pain in his right shoulder. It was as if he “had been shot with a .22,” he said.
Although he yielded a home run, he left with a lead in the sixth inning and earned his 18th win of the season— quite a performance for a 19-year-old.
Five days later, he took his regular turn in the Orioles’ rotation, making what turned out to be his final start of 1964. He pitched all nine innings of an 8-4 victory for the Orioles against the Washington Senators.
In an interview years later, Hank Bauer, the Orioles’ manager in 1964, defended his handling of Bunker. “I always started Bunker with plenty of rest [that year]. He always had three, four, or even more days between starts,” Bauer said.
It was a talking point years later because Bunker never again pitched without a sore arm after the 1964 season … and also never again pitched as effectively.
The concern Bauer showed for him in 1964 was admirable, but Bauer probably didn’t know that Bunker had thrown 126 innings in 1962 and 215 innings in 1963 as a high school pitcher in California before logging 234 innings (counting spring training) as a pro in 1964. Pitching nearly continuously after he finished high school in 1963, he tossed over 100 innings combined at Single-A and in Florida’s winter instructional league before joining the Orioles for spring training in 1964. Then he was in the rotation by May and never missed a turn.
Graphic courtesy of James Considine
Bauer also may not have known that the elbow wasn’t designed to sustain the torque and strain that the pitching motion imposes on a human arm. Only later was it understood that teams needed to take far greater care with young arms. Former Orioles beat writer and Baltimore Sun sportswriter Mark Hyman said this about the prevailing science of handling pitchers in the ‘60s: “If a guy pitched well into the ninth, he pitched the ninth. If he pitched well into the 11th, he pitched the 11th. No thought, or not enough, was given to long-term consequences.”
The sore shoulder Bunker experienced near the end of the 1964 season prompted him to change his delivery, which eventually resulted in a sore elbow that bothered him until his major league career ended in the early ‘70s.
“He probably tore his ulnar collateral ligament, but nobody knew,” said Jim Palmer, who also experienced serious arm problems in the ‘60s before emerging as an ace in the ‘70s. “Was it just that he had a bad elbow? Was it treatable? Nobody ever knew. You just tried to pitch through it, and when you couldn’t get anybody out, your career was over.”
For whatever reason, Bunker was never again as effective as he was in 1964. Not that he was terrible. At age 20 in 1965, he made 27 starts for the Orioles and went 10-8 with a 3.38 ERA. The next year, he made 24 starts and went 10-6 with a 4.29 ERA. In the 1966 World Series, he gave his greatest performance, beating the Los Angeles Dodgers, 1-0, in Game 3, as Baltimore edged closer to a sweep.
His catcher in the World Series outing, Andy Etchebarren, called it “one of the most courageous acts I have ever seen in sports because Bunker’s arm was hurting.”
Bunker allowed six hits, struck out six and needed just 92 pitches to retire 27 Dodgers. Steve Barber, Bunker’s teammate, was in the stands for the game due to his own arm problems. He was awed by what he saw, calling it “the best-pitched game I’d ever seen. The average pitcher makes between 12 to 15 mistakes a game. I went down to the clubhouse after the game and said, ‘Great job, but you’re not that [expletive] good, and you know it!’”
By the next year, though, Bunker’s arm was so sore that he made just nine starts, earned just three wins and lost his spot in the rotation. The Orioles suffered through a letdown season, winning just 76 games, and the 1968 season arrived with a feeling that changes were afoot. Bauer’s likely replacement, Earl Weaver, had been added to the coaching staff. George Bamberger replaced Harry Brecheen as the pitching coach and longtime trainer Eddie Weidner retired, replaced by Ralph Salvon, a bon vivant of gastronomy who became the pitchers’ confidant. (Weaver would replace Bauer as the manager by midseason.)
Baltimore pitchers had been dropping faster than GM Harry Dalton could sign them, with many suffering season-ending injuries. One reason the popular Brecheen was replaced was Bamberger was a proponent of his pitchers being physically fit. He was one of the first to emphasize leg strength to help the pitcher “drive” his body to throw the pitch.
Salvon credited the increased conditioning with the decrease in sore arms that ensued. “The coaches did a fabulous conditioning job. It’s all in the legs. When the legs are in shape, there is no strain on the arm,” Salvon said.
Under Bamberger’s tutelage in 1968, Bunker said he was pain-free during spring training. “This is the first time I haven’t lived with a sore arm since the big year in 1964,” he said. The club still sent him to Triple-A to start the season, but he was recalled after going 6-1 with a 2.70 ERA. Although one of his first starts resulted in a complete-game shutout against the Boston Red Sox, the reigning American League champions, he spent the season shuttling between the minors and majors, pitching 141 innings in all with a 2.57 ERA. But he won just two games for the Orioles. He was no longer a key player.
After that season, baseball held an expansion draft to fill the rosters of four new teams. The Orioles got lucky. They left Palmer exposed and he didn’t get taken due to the arm issues that had curtailed his career for two years. The Kansas City Royals’ GM was John Schuerholz, formerly the Orioles’ minor league coordinator, and his first choice was Roger Nelson, another pitcher who’d helped plug the leaks in the Orioles’ staff in 1968. Schuerholz then snagged Bunker with a later pick.
Bunker pitched for the Royals for three seasons, posting a 16-25 record with a 3.70 ERA, before deciding his career was over. Years later, he said, “I could have been great, and I know it, and that is good enough for me. Until I hurt my arm, I was about as good as anyone ever saw. That is good enough for me.”
Biographical note from Jim Considine:
James (Jim) Randolph Considine is a retired resident of Roland Park whose connection with the Baltimore Orioles, Colts, and Ravens runs through four generations. Descended from a clan of Irish Catholics who made their way to Baltimore via County Cork, the family always lived within a block or two of wherever the Orioles played. My brother and I got our hair cut at a barbershop on Greenmount Avenue where the owner still celebrated the three consecutive world championships of the Baltimore Oriole teams of 1894, 1895, and 1896.
During World War II, my father was a pilot of a B-17 in the 8th Air Force. The pilot got the honor of naming the plane. He named the plane “The Baltimore Oriole.” On Washington’s birthday of 1944, his plane was shot down. The crew spent the remainder of the war at Stalag Luft One. In a letter he wrote to his mother, he expressed his concern for the fate of the 1944 Orioles following the fire to Oriole Park.
On summer days in the mid-1960s I rode my bike to Memorial Stadium to explore. If I found an open gate, I would ramble through the stands. A general admission game ticket cost 75 cents. After day games, we would wait to get Brooks Robinson’s autograph, which he always signed with a smile. His autograph was immaterial; connecting with Brooks for a few seconds was the prize.
In 1967, I received a tip from my father that the Colts were selling 200 “student season tickets” for $7. Every day, I rode my bike up to the Colts’ ticket window and asked one of the ladies if any student tickets were available. I was a polite child. The ladies told me no many times before I finally heard a yes. My parents offered to pay for my season ticket as a birthday present. I pedaled home and back with a check for $7. The seats were awful, but who cared?
Later on, I got my first job as a busboy at Johnny Unitas’ Golden Arm Restaurant, where I heard many tales from the sportswriters for The Baltimore Sun. I worked for Johnny Unitas and Bobby Boyd for 10 years. By then I was the manager. Eventually I hired Bob Eller for the job of line cook at our sister restaurant, “Hooligans” in Towson. Eller was a few years younger than me. We became best friends. He jumped at the opportunity to work as an intern for the Colts in 1983 and was heartbroken when the Mayflower trucks headed for Indianapolis. But the Colts hired him in Indianapolis. Eller’s career eventually took him to Cleveland, where he became the Browns’ director of operations in 1987. Nine years later, he returned to Baltimore when owner Art Modell moved the Browns and they became the Ravens. Eller asked me to help with some projects and eventually I was asked to manage the press box on game days. Eight years later, I joined the Redskins in 2004 as a member of the stat crew, a job I kept for six years.
Now, 15 years later, here I sit, typing away.
Subscribe to The Bird Tapes here: birdtapes.substack.com/subscribe
You’ll receive instant access to vintage audio interviews with Orioles legends, including:
And many more to come, added weekly
SARASOTA—In recent years, the Orioles have become more aggressive in adding former players to their…
SARASOTA--What’s happening? After a day off on Monday, the Orioles played a game that didn’t…
SARASOTA—The Orioles made their first cuts of spring training on Tuesday, optioning right-handed pitcher Chayce…
SARASOTA—Nine players from the Orioles are set to play in the World Baseball Classic. Three…
Question: I am wondering how you think playing time gets sorted out in the Orioles'…
SARASOTA—The Orioles have a day off on Monday, and with players heading to the World…