One 'Eck of a Guy

He was the first man in Major League Baseball history to win 20 games in one season and save 50 in another. In his amazing 23-year career he won 197 games and saved 390. But the numbers can’t even begin to tell the story of newly-elected Hall-of-Famer Dennis Eckersley.

Any way you look at it, Eckersley was not a typical pitcher. Throughout his career with the Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Oakland A’s and St. Louis Cardinals, the kid from California known as the Eck utilized his trademark sidearm delivery to deceive hitters. Eckersley’s long black hair always hung out the back of his cap, and he would routinely pump his fist in jubilation after completing one of his 2,401 career strikeouts.

Yet Eckersley holds a particularly special place in my heart. Shortly after my father passed away in January of 1989, my father’s close friend Bill Jenkins met Eckersley at a Boston area restaurant when the A’s were in town to play the Red Sox. Eckersley still maintained a house in Sudbury, Mass. from his days playing in Boston that just happened to be less than five minutes away from where both Bill and I lived at the time.

Bill explained to Eckersley that I was an avid five-year old baseball fan who had just lost his father and asked if perhaps Dennis would be willing to sign an autograph for me. Incredibly, Eckersley instead invited Bill to bring me to his home in Sudbury to meet him in person.

Bill told me about the visit, and I was elated to have the chance to meet a real live professional baseball player, though Bill explained to me that we would just stop by for a couple of minutes.

But Eckersley is not your typical baseball player, and he’s not your typical person.

When we arrived, Dennis immediately ushered us into his trophy room.  Quite the curious five-year old, I remember walking around the room in awe, staring at his ALCS MVP and Rolaids Relief Pitcher of the Year awards.  Right away, Dennis pulled down the trophies to show me up close, and he explained how he had felt upon winning them.  Dennis’s wife took numerous pictures of Bill, Dennis and me that are still proudly displayed in my room at home.  Finally, Dennis signed numerous balls, hats and pictures, and even showed me the grips of his different pitches.  Needless to say, I was enthralled as we remained at the Eckersley home well beyond the few minutes we had expected.

Still, Eckersley did not believe he had done enough for me. He managed to get every single member of the 1989 Oakland A’s to sign a baseball for me, and he asked his friend Rich Gedman to solicit the same signatures from his teammates on the Red Sox. The next time the A’s were in town, Dennis got tickets for Bill and me right behind the bullpen and talked to me both before and after the game. Over the next couple of years, every time Dennis was in town he would go out of his way to talk to me and give me another autograph.

Eckersley’s professional career was as remarkable as the gesture he did for me. From his entrance in the league in 1975 until 1986, the Eck was a dominating starting pitcher, compiling double-digit win totals in nine of those seasons. However, Eckersley had a difficult battle with alcohol abuse in the mid-eighties that coincided with his slip from his peak as a 20-game winner in 1978 to the point where he was simply mediocre.

Eckersley finally decided to get help and went into rehab. He came out invigorated and returned in a different incarnation as a closer for Tony LaRussa’s Oakland Athletics. The Eck proceeded to dominate American League hitters for the next nine seasons in an Oakland uniform, leading the A’s to three consecutive World Series and winning a championship in 1989. Eckersley was also the last pitcher to win an MVP award, picking up the American League honor in 1992 along with the Cy Young Award in a season in which the Eck was virtually unhittable. Eckersley recorded 93 strikeouts in only 80 innings, picking up 51 saves while posting a 1.91 ERA in one of the best seasons ever recorded by a reliever.

It is no surprise that 421 out of the 506 voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America named Eckersley for induction into Cooperstown on January 6. Eckersley is only the third primarily relief pitcher to be elected to the Hall of Fame, following Rollie Fingers and Hoyt Wilhelm. In a week in which Pete Rose stole the headlines in order to try to gain his own election to Cooperstown, Eckersley’s sterling character provides a wonderful contrast.

In many ways, Eckersley spurred my life-long love of baseball and sports in general, and he was able to make a very difficult year in the lives of myself and my family somehow more bearable. For that I will be forever grateful.

The Eck remains humble and selfless. He should not only be recognized by the Baseball Hall of Fame but also by humanity at large for what a remarkable human being he is. When Eckersley is finally enshrined in Cooperstown this summer, fifteen years after he did for me what no one ever could have predicted, I will be there to thank him and to cheer him on in his greatest honor yet.

—Staff writer Rob Boutwell can be reached at boutwel@fas.harvard.edu.