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  Sal Maglie Photo Gallery

I’m pleased to post Ron Christensen’s essay on Sal Maglie today. As I mentioned to Ron, I’ve had a “thing” for Maglie ever since I read the wonderful biography, Sal Maglie, Baseball’s Demon Barber, by author Judith Testa (here’s my lengthy Amazon review). Sal was not only one of baseball’s most complex characters, he was also a great pitcher, as Ron vividly details. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read Ron’s fine account of one of the most intimidating pitchers ever to take the ball. –GL

Baseball’s Demon Barber:

Sal Maglie

“Sal Maglie will never be in the Hall of Fame.  Unless, that is, there’s a Hall of Fame just for pitchers you want to have the ball in a game you have to win.”- Sportswriter Bill Maddon

He was called ‘The Barber’ because of his reputation for throwing at your chin if you got too comfortable at the plate batting against him.  High inside fastballs thrown a little too high and uncomfortably too far inside that gave a batter the uneasy impression of a ‘close shave’ – hence the nickname.  It was a reputation many thought derived from meanness, but those who did mistook it for what it really was – fierceness.   And Sal Maglie played the fierceness card as well as any pitcher that ever took the mound.  When you stood in the box to face him, you knew what was coming.  You just didn’t know when.

An already imposing figure at 6’2”, Maglie exhibited a brooding countenance staring down at you from the mound, a foreboding presence that induced fear and made many a batter weak in the knees.  He wore the bill of his cap low on his forehead, his dark, laden eyebrows further shadowing angular features already hidden behind a thick veneer of black stubble.  His eyes were his tell – narrowed, angry eyes that bore through you with a glare of hostility that offered no quarter.

There is a photo of Maglie standing on the mound that Gary Livacari included in a Baseball History Comes Alive essay by Michael Keedy [See at right]. It’s frightening.  He’s Lazarus incarnate wearing a Giants uniform.  I imagine seeing flashes of lightning piercing the black veil of sky behind him, revealing him to be the Grim Reaper.  At least that’s what it must have seemed like to the batter who stood in the box when the photo was taken.  Danny Litwhiler of the Cincinnati Reds thought so.  He said of Maglie:

“He scares you to death!  He’s scowling and gnashing his teeth, and if you try to dig in on him, there goes your Adam’s Apple.  He’s gonna win if it kills you and him both.”

Maglie once said that batters expected him to knock them down, and he didn’t want to disappoint them.  He also said that to stop throwing the knockdown pitch would be like having Marilyn Monroe stop wearing sweaters.  It just couldn’t be done.  But for all his brush backs and close shaves, his hostile ferocity and his menace, Sal Maglie never intentionally tried to hit anyone.  He didn’t want to put batters on base.  He never led the league in hit batters, and over his career, averaged only one hit batter every five starts.  But he did like to scare them, or at least make them extremely uncomfortable at the plate.  And he succeeded in doing so.  Nolan Ryan once said that Maglie was the most intimidating pitcher in baseball history.

Maglie’s on-field persona, his game face’if you will, was the complete antithesis of who Maglie was off the field.  By everyone’s consensus, he was a gentleman, aptly described as congenial and courteous, soft spoken and good-natured.  Maglie’s own wife called him a teddy bear, saying he wasn’t tough at all.  Whether on or off the ball field, Maglie epitomized baseball’s version of a Jekyll/Hyde personality.

But Maglie’s reputation as The Demon Barber is, in my humble opinion, only the first of a three-pronged legacy he leaves us from his baseball career.  The second prong is that the man could just flat out pitch!  In 1950, Maglie’s first full big league season, he finished with a record of 18-4, and at one point threw 45 consecutive scoreless innings and four straight complete game shutouts.  His .818 winning percentage, 2.79 ERA, and five shutout victories were all tops in the National League that year.

In 1951, Maglie went 23-6 with a 2.93 ERA and threw 22 complete games, finishing fourth in MVP voting.  From July 1950 to May 1952, Maglie won 45 games against only seven losses and posted a 12-1 record against his arch-rival Brooklyn Dodgers, shutting them out five times.  During one stretch from September 1951 to May 1952, Maglie won 12 consecutive games – 11 of which were complete games – giving up a total of just 18 runs.  Although he finished the 1952 season with a respectable 18-8 record, he suffered a back injury that would limit his effectiveness the rest of his career.

1956 found Maglie pitching in a Dodger’s uniform, his contract having been sold to Brooklyn early in the season.  The once Dodger nemesis now played a key role in helping the Dodgers win their final pennant in Brooklyn.  During the pennant stretch, Maglie threw a no-hitter against Philadelphia and went 10-1 in August and September, finishing the season with a 13-5 record.  He started Game One of the World Series and bested Whitey Ford and the Yankees 6-3, and was runner-up in both the Cy Young and MVP awards voting.  Incredibly, he was 39 years old at the time.

The third and arguably most interesting prong of Maglie’s career legacy is his Forrest Gump-like presence at some of baseball’s most classic and iconic moments.  Here are a few of the better ones:

• He was part of the 1951 Miracle Giants team that erased a 13-game deficit in August to tie the Dodgers on the last day of the season, then beat them in a tie-breaking playoff – the game won by Bobby Thompson’s ‘The Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ home run.  Maglie pitched that game for the Giants.
• Maglie gave up the final home run of Joe DiMaggio’s career, a two-run shot at the Polo Grounds in Game Four of the 1951 World Series.
• Maglie started Game One of the 1954 World Series, and was pulled in the eighth inning for a left-handed reliever to pitch to Vic Wertz of the Indians. Wertz proceeded to hit a towering blast to deep centerfield that was hauled in with an amazing over-the-shoulder catch on a dead run by Willie Mays in what would come to be known in baseball lore as simply The Catch. Maglie was the starting pitcher in Game Five of the 1956 World Series against the Yankees, a game won by the Yankees 2-0. His mound opponent was Don Larsen, who just happened to pitch the only perfect game in World Series history that day.
• Maglie is the last of only fourteen players to have played for all three New York Teams (Giants, Dodgers, Yankees) while they were still in New York. He pitched at least one shutout with each of them.
• Maglie was chased from a game in the ninth inning against the Cubs after giving up a pinch-hit three-run home run to Chuck Connors, who would later chase bad guys out of North Fork in the television series, The Rifleman.  

A storied, history-filled career to be sure.  In his classic baseball treatise, Ball Four, Jim Bouton said of Maglie, ‘He still looks like he would knock down his grandmother.’

I suppose if she batted against him, he probably would.

Ron Christensen

REFERENCES:

1. Wikipedia – Sal Maglie
2. Baseball Reference – Sal Maglie
3. Baseball Reference – Players Who Played For The Giants, Dodgers and Yankees
4. SABR: Sal Maglie, A Study In Frustration – by Herman Kaufman
5. SABR: Sal Maglie – by Judith Testa
6. Sal Maglie: Baseball’s Demon Barber – by Judith Testa
7. Amazon Review of Sal Maglie: Baseball’s Demon Barber – Review by Gary Livacari
8. Ball Four – by Jim Bouton
9. Fun Facts: Sal ‘The Barber’ Maglie – by M.C. Antil
10. Dodger Chronicles: Sal ‘The Barber’ Maglie – by Oldbear48
11. Reddit: dirtysportshistory; Sal Maglie Post – by sonofabutch
    1. Reading this post gave me the thought to write something about Maglie.
12. Baseball History Comes Alive: Mystery Player Number Four – by Michael Keedy
    1. Seeing the photo Gary Livacari posted for the essay convinced me to write something about Maglie.
13. Baseball History Comes Alive: Random Musings of a Lifelong Giants Fan – by Bill Schaefer.

We’d love to hear what you think about this or any other related baseball history topic…please leave comments below.

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