It’s been a tough week. We lost three former players, each of whom were icons in their own right.
On February 28, Jean Faut, a star pitcher in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, died at the age of 98.
From The New York Times‘ obit by Richard Sandomir:
Over eight seasons, the right-handed Faut won 140 games, second to Helen Nicol Fox’s 163 for the most in the league’s history, and posted a minuscule 1.23 earned run average, a league record.
She was named the league’s player of the year in 1951, when the Blue Sox were playoff champions, and in 1953, her final season. She won at least 20 games three times.
Jesus Alou, youngest of a trio of brothers playing in the Majors at the same time for the same team (and once on the same day), died on March 10. He was 80. He’s on the left in the picture below, with brothers Matty and Felipe.
From the Times‘ obit by Richard Goldstein:
When Jesus Alou was a rookie, he and his brothers were all in the Giants’ outfield on Sept. 15, 1963. They were the only three brothers in major league history to play together in a single game.
[He] played in the major leagues for 15 seasons and was a member of the Oakland A’s teams that won World Series championships in 1973 and 1974. He had limited power, hitting only 32 home runs in his career, but he was a solid batter with a career average of .280.
Alou also played for the Astros, Athletics, and Mets over his 15 years in the bigs from 1963-79, missing the 1976 and 1977 campaigns.
Finally, one of the characters of the game, Joe Pepitone, died earlier this week at the age of 82.
From the Times‘ obit by Bruce Weber:
His renegade nature would eventually cost him. He earned a reputation for wildness and unreliability, and in the 1980s, long after his career had ended, he went to prison on a drug charge. But at the start it was big fun.
Perhaps known a bit too much for his vanity, Pepitone — who also played for the Astros, Cubs, and Braves during his 12-year career — gained his fame as a local product playing for the New York Yankees. He was part of the “new generation,” arriving on the scene when they were starting to decline in the early-60s and never quite meshing with the veterans on the team. He appeared in the 1963 and 1964 World Series and the best you could say about his performance was that he was consistent, batting .154 in each Fall Classic.
Pepitone played briefly for the Yakult Atoms of the Japan Central League in 1973 before returning the Cubs.
Among his claims to fame: “Pepi” was one of the first of his colleagues to use a portable hair dryer in the locker room. He wrote about his life in what was then a controversial memoir, Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud. This was one of the books I received when I joined the short-lived Sports Illustrated Book Club way back in the day.
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