Mike Marshall used science to become first reliever to win Cy Young -

On June 18, 1974, Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander Mike Marshall pitched the eighth inning of a 2-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium. The forgettable outing marked the first of 13 consecutive games in which Marshall would appear, a record streak amid a remarkable season 50 years ago that culminated in “Iron Mike” becoming the first reliever to win the Cy Young Award.

Marshall pitched in 106 games in 1974 — 12 more than any pitcher in a single season since 1901. He earned a doctorate in exercise physiology from Michigan State four years later and claimed all pitchers could appear as often as he did as long as they applied science to their mechanics and conditioning.

Listed at 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, Marshall, who died at 78 in 2021, was often the smartest person in the clubhouse, and he wasn’t shy about letting reporters, teammates and even his managers know it. His confidence, which some interpreted as arrogance, was part of the reason he pitched for nine teams over his 14-year career and the baseball establishment never fully embraced the unconventional methods he espoused for preventing arm injuries, both as a player and as an independent pitching instructor in retirement.

“I’m afraid Mike’s problem is that he’s too intelligent and has had too much education,” Marshall’s former teammate Jim Bouton wrote in his 1970 classic “Ball Four.”

An unorthodox route to the majors

Marshall signed with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1960 as a 17-year-old shortstop out of Adrian (Mich.) High. Five years later, still dealing with lower-back pain related to a childhood car crash, Marshall informed the organization that he wished to become a pitcher. The Phillies sold Marshall to the Detroit Tigers in April 1966, and he made his major league debut out of the bullpen the following May.

“I gave up a run,” Marshall said years later when asked what he remembered about his first game.

Despite registering a 1.98 ERA in 37 relief appearances as a rookie, Marshall spent the entire 1968 season in the minors, where he worked to perfect a screwball. The pitch, which broke in the opposite direction of a curveball or slider, would become the biggest hurdle to Marshall sticking in the big leagues and eventually the greatest source of his success.

After his managers and pitching coaches in Detroit, Seattle and Houston effectively banned him from throwing the screwball in the early years of his career, Marshall was traded to Montreal in June 1970 and met the man who would unlock his potential.

“One night at Jarry Park, I was playing catch before the game in front of the dugout and was fooling around with the screwball,” Marshall told the Montreal Gazette. “[Expos Manager] Gene Mauch leaped out of the dugout and said, ‘What’s that?’ I told him. ‘Show me more,’ he said. I did. From then on I was invited to develop the screwball and use it.”

Marshall pitched in 66 games for Mauch’s Expos in 1971 and led the National League in games finished (52) for the first of four straight years. His workhorse reputation reached new heights in 1973, when he led the major leagues in games pitched (92) and games finished (73) and led the NL in saves (31). He went 14-11 with a 2.66 ERA, finishing second to New York Mets ace Tom Seaver in voting for the NL Cy Young Award.

A month after the season ended, in comments to a reporter he thought were off the record, Marshall criticized the Expos’ infield defense, describing the play of second baseman Ron Hunt and third baseman Bob Bailey as “terrible.”

Marshall called Hunt and Bailey to apologize, but he wasn’t long for Montreal. A few weeks later, Expos General Manager Jim Fanning traded him to the Dodgers for outfielder Willie Davis.

A season for the ages

Marshall missed most of his first spring training with the Dodgers while working toward his third degree from Michigan State. After not pitching in Los Angeles’s first three games of the season, he pitched in the next five and 17 of the first 25.

“I had a deal with [Manager] Walter Alston,” Marshall, who would pitch batting practice on days in which he didn’t see game action, said in 2003. “If I warmed up, I was getting into the game.”

Marshall made the Dodgers better, though he had little apparent interest in making friends.

“Knowing him is like knowing the water cooler,” a teammate once said.

“We respect him for what he does,” said Dodgers first baseman and 1974 NL MVP Steve Garvey, who was a former student of Marshall’s at Michigan State.

Two games into Marshall’s 13-game streak, which included three off days, the Dodgers opened a three-game series at home against the San Francisco Giants. Marshall was the winning pitcher in each game of the Dodgers’ sweep, earning him NL player of the week honors.

“At the moment, he is a strong candidate for the National League’s Cy Young Award and Most Valuable Player award — provided his arm doesn’t fall off by August 1, of course,” a United Press International reporter wrote after Marshall recorded five outs the next night in a 4-3 loss to the Braves.

“There’s no chance of that,” Marshall replied. “I’ve never had a sore arm, and I never will have one. The secret is training, and the secret to training is specificity.”

Marshall earned two more wins in relief June 25 and June 26 while extending his streak to eight games, one shy of the NL record. On June 29, he broke the mark previously shared by Elroy Face, George Schultz and Tom Dukes.

“It’s getting so they don’t even bother answering the phone in the Los Angeles Dodger bullpen,” the Associated Press’s Hal Block wrote after Marshall pitched four scoreless innings in his 12th straight appearance. “Mike Marshall knows the call will be for him without picking up.”

“I don’t know what the limit is, but I haven’t found it yet,” said Marshall, who sported sideburns that curved into his mustache for much of his career. “We’ve only played half a year. How can I be tired?”

Marshall’s training regimen, which was unusual for a pitcher at the time, included jogging two to three miles every day, swimming and lifting weights. Marshall didn’t drink or smoke and never went longer than three days without throwing a baseball, even during the offseason. He analyzed slow-motion film of his delivery and kept a handwritten record of each hitter he faced, and he was reluctant to share the specifics of his science-based approach to curious reporters.

“I could explain it to you, but you don’t have the time to listen that long,” Marshall said in 1974 of his unrivaled durability. “Besides, you wouldn’t understand with your lack of physiological background.”

Marshall ran his streak to 13 games in the first game of a doubleheader July 3. He didn’t pitch the second game, but the next day, he improved to 11-3 by picking up the win in two innings of relief. Marshall pitched 26⅔ innings over his record stretch, posting a 1.69 ERA, a 6-0 record and two saves.

“That and a dime will allow me to make a phone call,” Marshall, who saved both games of a doubleheader against the Expos three days later, said of his streak. “It doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

The Dodgers went on to win the NL West, the franchise’s first division or league title since 1966. Marshall’s 106 appearances were 30 more than the next-busiest relievers posted in 1974. He went 15-12 with a 2.42 ERA and 21 saves while establishing records for relief innings pitched (208⅓) and games finished (83). He was nearly as effective with no days of rest as he was with at least one day of rest, but as The Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell noted after the season, Marshall’s ERA ballooned to 3.66 in nine appearances the day after he threw at least three innings.

After pitching in two games of the NL Championship Series, Marshall appeared in every game of the 1974 World Series. He allowed the go-ahead homer to Joe Rudi in the seventh inning of Oakland’s title-clinching win in Game 5. Rudi later told reporters he was sitting on a fastball because Marshall, despite his teammates’ encouragement to stay loose, didn’t throw a single warmup pitch during a several-minute stoppage after fans in Oakland threw debris at Dodgers left fielder Bill Buckner.

Marshall returned to Michigan State the next day to prepare a lecture. Two weeks later, he received 17 of 24 first-place votes for the NL Cy Young Award.

The aftermath

Hampered by a rib injury, Marshall saw his ERA jump to 3.29 in 58 games in 1975. He missed time at the start of the 1976 season to fight trespassing and destruction of property charges related to his use of the intramural building at Michigan State. The ordeal, coupled with Marshall’s declining effectiveness, turned Dodgers fans against him, and there were reports that his teammates celebrated after he was traded to the Braves in June 1976.

On April 22, 1977, Marshall stormed off the mound and left the ballpark after being removed from a game by Braves Manager Dave Bristol. The Texas Rangers purchased Marshall’s rights eight days later, but injuries limited him to 12 games over the remainder of the season.

Marshall completed his doctorate in the spring of 1978 and he might have retired from baseball if not for a call from Mauch, who was in his third season with the Minnesota Twins. “I was tired of all that B.S. from managers who didn’t know a thing,” Marshall told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Marshall posted a 2.45 ERA in 54 games for the Twins that year. In 1979, he made 90 appearances, which remains an American League record. Marshall threw his last pitch in the majors for the New York Mets in 1981.

After playing semipro ball and coaching at three colleges, Marshall moved to Florida and opened a pitching academy in 1994. Videos of the unusual, pendulum-like pitching motion he taught — demonstrated by his former student Jeff Sparks, who pitched briefly in the majors — are available on YouTube.

Marshall considered himself an educator first and a baseball player second, and he described the mound as his lab. During his Cy Young season, Marshall offered rehab suggestions to Dodgers pitcher Tommy John, who went on to pitch 14 more seasons after undergoing the experimental reconstructive elbow surgery that now bears his name. Marshall advised NFL quarterbacks Fran Tarkenton and Billy Kilmer as well as tennis pro Stan Smith, but major league teams expressed little interest in hiring him to develop their pitchers.

“Certainly, many of Mike’s ideas are strange,” Bouton told a reporter during Marshall’s Cy Young season, “but what’s worse is he’s made those ideas work. Baseball people don’t like anybody to be different and successful. It’s bad for the game’s image — whatever that image is.”

The baseball establishment’s resistance to Marshall’s ideas was as evident during his career, including one unprecedented 13-game streak 50 years ago, as it was in his retirement, amid an epidemic of pitcher arm injuries. Since 2021, only five MLB starters have pitched as many innings in a season as Marshall did in 1974.

“The reverse rotation is destroying pitching arms, and you think I can get a single major league pitching coach to understand that or a single GM to call me up and ask me to come talk to them?” Marshall told the Tampa Bay Times in 2006. “Not at all. They’re dealing with some fantasy, Earth-is-flat reality. … The problem is, I know how to eliminate all pitching arm injuries. I know how to do it. I swear to God I do.”

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