Warren Spahn

Spahn was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, to Edward and Mabel Spahn, the fifth of six children and the first of two sons. He was named after President Warren G. Harding and his father. He attended Buffalo Bisons baseball games with his father and initially wanted to be a first baseman. However, when Spahn began to attend South Park High School, the first baseman position was already taken. Reluctantly, he took up pitching and led his high school team to two city championships, going undefeated his last two seasons, and throwing a no-hitter his senior year. ==Baseball career==

Spahn's major league career began in 1942 with the Braves organization, and he spent all but one year with that franchise, first in Boston and then in Milwaukee. He finished his career in 1965 with the New York Mets and the San Francisco Giants. With 363 wins, Spahn is the sixth-most winning pitcher in history, trailing only Cy Young (511), Walter Johnson (417), Grover Cleveland Alexander (373), Christy Mathewson (373), and Pud Galvin (364) on MLB's all-time list. He led the league in wins eight times (1949–50, 1953, 1957–1961, each season with 20+ wins) and won at least 20 games an additional five times (1947, 1951, 1954, 1956, 1963). Spahn also threw two no-hitters, in 1960 and 1961, at ages 39 and 40. He won three ERA titles (1947, 1953, and 1961), and four strikeout crowns (1949–1952). Spahn acquired the nickname "Hooks", not so much because of his pitching, but due to the prominent shape of his nose. He had once been hit in the face by a thrown ball that he was not expecting, and his broken nose settled into a hook-like shape. In Spahn's final season, during his stint with the Mets, Yogi Berra came out of retirement briefly and caught four games, one of them with Spahn pitching. Yogi later told reporters, "I don't think we're the oldest battery, but we're certainly the ugliest." Spahn reached the major leagues in 1942 at the age of 20. He clashed with Braves manager Casey Stengel, who sent him back to the minors after Spahn refused to throw at Brooklyn Dodgers batter Pee Wee Reese in an exhibition game. Spahn had pitched in only four games, allowing 15 runs (10 earned) in 15.2 innings. Spahn finished the 1942 season with a 17–12 record for the Hartford Bees of the Class-A Eastern League. ==World War II==

Along with many other major leaguers, Spahn chose to enlist in the United States Army, after finishing the 1942 season in the minors. Spahn returned to the major leagues in 1946 at the age of 25, having missed three full seasons. Had he played, Spahn might have finished his career behind only Walter Johnson and Cy Young in all-time wins. Spahn was unsure of the war's impact on his career: ==Boston / Milwaukee Braves==

Spahn's first full season as a starting pitcher came in 1947, when he led the National League in ERA (2.33), shutouts (7), and innings pitched () while posting a 21–10 record. In 1951, Spahn allowed the first career hit to Willie Mays, a home run. Mays had begun his career 0-for-12, and Spahn responded to reporters after the game, citing the distance between home plate and the pitcher's mound of , "Gentlemen, for the first 60 feet, that was a hell of a pitch." Spahn joked a long time later, "I'll never forgive myself. We might have gotten rid of Willie forever if I'd only struck him out." (In 1962, another Hall of Famer hit his first career home run off Spahn: Sandy Koufax, who only hit one other.) "Pray for rain" Spahn's teammate Johnny Sain was the ace of the pennant-winning 1948 Braves staff, with a win–loss record of 24–15. Spahn went 15–12, while contrary to legend, teammates Bill Voiselle (13–13), and Vern Bickford (11–5) also pitched well. In honor of the pitching duo, Boston Post sports editor Gerald V. Hern wrote this poem which the popular media eventually condensed to "Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain": First we'll use Spahn then we'll use Sain Then an off day followed by rain Back will come Spahn followed by Sain And followed we hope by two days of rain. The poem was inspired by the performance of Spahn and Sain during the Braves' 1948 pennant drive. The team swept a Labor Day doubleheader, with Spahn throwing a complete 14-inning win in the opener, and Sain pitching a shutout in the second game. Following two off days, it did rain. Spahn won the next day, and Sain won the day after that. Three days later, Spahn won again. Sain won the next day. After one more off day, the two pitchers were brought back, and won another doubleheader. The two pitchers had gone 8–0 in 12 days' time. Other sayings have been derived from "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain." For example, some referred to the 1993 San Francisco Giants' imbalanced rotation as "Burkett and Swift and pray for snow drift." In 1957, Spahn was the ace of the champion Milwaukee Braves. He pitched on two other Braves pennant winners, in 1948 and 1958. Spahn led the NL in strikeouts for four consecutive seasons, from 1949 to 1952 (tied with Don Newcombe in 1951), which includes a single-game high of 18 strikeouts in a 15-inning appearance on June 14, 1952. During the 1957 World Series, Sal Maglie of the Yankees, ineligible to pitch in the series because he was acquired too late in the season, watched the games with Robert Creamer of Sports Illustrated and made assessments of the players. When Spahn was pitching, Maglie observed that batters had to try to hit balls to the opposite field against Spahn, as he was more likely to get them out if they tried to pull the ball. On July 2, 1963, facing the San Francisco Giants, the 42-year-old Spahn became locked into a storied pitchers' duel with 25-year-old Juan Marichal. The score was still 0–0 after more than four hours when Willie Mays hit a game-winning solo home run off Spahn with one out in the bottom of the 16th inning. Marichal's manager, Alvin Dark, visited the mound in the 9th, 10th, 11th, 13th, and 14th innings, and was talked out of removing Marichal each time. During the 14th-inning visit, Marichal told Dark, "Do you see that man pitching for the other side? Do you know that man is 42 years old? I'm only 25. If that man is on the mound, nobody is going to take me out of here." Marichal ended up throwing 227 pitches in the complete game 1–0 win, while Spahn threw 201 in the loss, allowing nine hits and one walk. Spahn threw his first no-hitter against the Philadelphia Phillies on September 16, 1960, when he was 39. He pitched his second no-hitter the following year on April 28, 1961, against the Giants. During the last two seasons of his career, Spahn was the oldest active player in baseball. He lost this distinction for a single day: September 25, 1965, when 58-year-old Satchel Paige pitched three innings. Spahn's seemingly ageless ability caused Stan Musial to quip, "I don't think Spahn will ever get into the Hall of Fame. He'll never stop pitching." He signed with the San Francisco Giants, with whom he appeared in his final major league game on October 1, 1965, at the age of 44. With the Mets and Giants combined, he won seven games for the season—his last in the major leagues. His 363 career win total ranks sixth overall in major league history; it is also the most by a pitcher who played his entire career in the post-1920 live-ball era. ==Later life==

Spahn managed the Tulsa Oilers for five seasons, winning 372 games from 1967 to 1971. His 1968 club won the Pacific Coast League championship. He also coached for the Mexico City Tigers and pitched a handful of games there. He was a pitching coach with the Cleveland Indians, in the minor leagues for the California Angels and for six years, with Japan's Hiroshima Toyo Carp. For many years, he owned and ran the large Diamond Star Ranch south of Hartshorne, Oklahoma before retiring to live near a golf course in Broken Arrow with his half-Cherokee wife LoRene (née Southard) with whom he had one child, a son named Gregory (1948–2022). Death Spahn died of natural causes at his home in Broken Arrow. He is interred in the Elmwood Cemetery in Hartshorne. After his death, a street was named after him in Buffalo, New York, Warren Spahn Way, that connects Abbott Road with Seneca Street through Cazenovia Park in the heart of South Buffalo. The street is near South Park High School, Spahn's alma mater. ==Honors==

{{MLBBioRet Spahn's number 21 was retired by the Braves in 1965, soon after his retirement. He was selected for the all-time All-Star baseball team by Sports Illustrated magazine in 1991, as the left-handed pitcher. The other selections were: outfielders Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Willie Mays; shortstop Cal Ripken, third baseman Mike Schmidt, second baseman Jackie Robinson, first baseman Lou Gehrig, catcher Mickey Cochrane, right-handed pitcher Christy Mathewson, relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley, and manager Casey Stengel. Spahn was elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1973 and became a charter member of both the Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985, and the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame in 1991. In 1999, he was ranked number 21 by The Sporting News on their list of "Baseball's 100 Greatest Players", and was also named one of the 30 players on the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2020, The Athletic ranked Spahn at number 49 on its "Baseball 100" list, complied by sportswriter Joe Posnanski. , and is now outside of Truist Park Spahn was inducted into the Braves Hall of Fame in 1999. A few months before his death, he attended the unveiling of a statue outside Atlanta's Turner Field. When the Braves vacated Turner Field to move into their current home of Truist Park, the statue was moved, and now stands outside that ballpark. The statue depicts Spahn in the middle of one of his leg kicks. The statue was created by Shan Gray, who has sculpted numerous other statues of athletes that stand in Oklahoma, including two others of Spahn. One statue resides at the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame located at the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark and the other is located in Hartshorne, Oklahoma, at the Hartshorne Event Center. On April 4, 2009, the facilities of Broken Arrow Youth Baseball, in Spahn's longtime home of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, were dedicated in his honor. In their Naked Gun films, producers Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker sometimes included joke credits. The trio, who were Milwaukee-area natives, included Spahn in the closing credits once, with the disclaimer, "He's not in the film, but he's still our all-time favorite left-hand pitcher." Spahn also made his acting debut with a cameo appearance as a German soldier in a 1963 episode (season two, episode eight "Glow Against the Sky") of the television series Combat! In 2013, the Bob Feller Act of Valor Award honored Spahn as one of 37 Baseball Hall of Fame members for his service in the United States Army during World War II. ==See also==