RIP Luis Tiant (1940-2024)

Luis Tiant, the Cuban-born pitcher, and beloved cigar-chomping Red Sox personality, whose unique windup was imitated by every New England kid with a whiffle ball in the late 1970s, died yesterday. He was 83.

El Tiante's delivery was described as "begin[ning] with an exaggerated mid-windup pivot, during which he turns his back on the batter and seems to examine the infield directly behind the mound for signs of crab grass", by Roger Angell of The New Yorker. With men on base, "his stretch consists of a succession of minute downward waggles and pauses of the glove, and a menacing sidewise, slit-eyed, Valentino-like gaze over his shoulder at the base runner."

John Powers, Boston Globe:

Luis Tiant, a Cuban emigré whose pitching heroics spurred the Red Sox to the 1975 World Series and made him the city's first Latino sports superstar, died Tuesday at his home in Maine.  He was 83.

"El Tiante," as he was known by fans who relished his bewildering swivel-hitch-nod-and-fire delivery, his outsize personality, and his bravura performances under pressure, played for six major league teams during his 19-year career from 1964-82.

But his glory days were his eight seasons in Boston, where he won 122 games and was the centerpiece of several pennant races with a bewitching style that Globe writer Peter Gammons called his "marionette abracadabra." . . .

Mr. Tiant's chiropractic motion — "wheeling and rotating on the mound like a figure in a Bavarian clock tower," observed New Yorker writer Roger Angell — baffled batters who had no idea when and where the ball would be coming at them. . . .

[Tiant was a free agent after going 1-7 in 1971 and] the Red Sox picked him up to bridge a gap in their rotation . . .

"I never gave up," he said. "I kept telling myself as long as I could get the ball to home plate, I was going to stay in baseball." . . .

Mr. Tiant, who sported a desperado mustache and smoked cigars in the clubhouse shower and whirlpool, was a beloved teammate with a knack for amusing his colleagues, to whom he assigned nicknames such as "Polaco" (Carl Yastrzemski), "Frankenstein" (Carlton Fisk), and "Pinocchio" (Rico Petrocelli).

"Luis knew exactly when to turn a bus ride into something out of 'Saturday Night Live,' " said former Red Sox right fielder Dwight Evans.

But on the mound, Mr. Tiant was a relentless and riveting competitor whose virtuoso renditions fellow Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee likened to a symphony: "Hard at the start, a little sweet, slow stuff in the middle, and then the big explosion at the end." . . .

"We haven't got anybody in the National League like that," observed Reds captain Pete Rose [during the 1975 World Series]. "Nobody who throws those high-spinning curveballs that take two minutes to come down."

Though Mr. Tiant won 21 games for a third-place club in 1976 and another 25 during the two subsequent seasons — including a shutout of the Toronto Blue Jays that guaranteed the Red Sox  a divisional  playoff with the New York Yankees in 1978 — management offered him only a one-year contract for 1979, when he would be 38.

"They never took me seriously in their negotiations," said Mr. Tiant. "They treated me like some old fool."

So Mr. Tiant decamped as a free agent to the Yankees . . . "When they let Luis Tiant go to New York, they tore out our heart and soul," said Yastrzemski.

[Tiant finished his career with the Pirates and Angels.] "It's always nice to have someone on the club uglier than yourself," joked Angels teammate Fred Lynn, who'd played with Mr. Tiant in Boston. . . .

In 2001, he signed on with the Red Sox as pitching coach for their Lowell affiliate and as a special assignment adviser. "When I'm in Boston, I always feel like I'm home," said Mr. Tiant. "I almost cry, I feel so good."

Bruce Weber, New York Times:

Luis Tiant, a Cuban-born right-hander who was one of baseball’s most entertaining and charismatic pitchers, and whose personal story was among the game’s most poignant . . . won 229 games over 19 big-league seasons, playing for teams in six cities, notably Cleveland and Boston, where he led the Red Sox to a World Series and became one of the most beloved players in the team's storied history.

In a career that necessitated a long separation from his family and from Cuba, his homeland, and that was bifurcated by a serious shoulder injury, Tiant won 20 or more games four times and threw 187 complete games (more than Don Sutton, Don Drysdale, Lefty Gomez or Dizzy Dean) and 49 shutouts (more than Roger Clemens, Whitey Ford, Catfish Hunter, Sandy Koufax or Bob Feller).

But beyond his achievements, he was one of the game's memorable showmen, distinctive in almost every way — from his Fu Manchu mustache, barrel-shaped torso and ever-present mammoth cigar (ever-present, that is, except on the field, including in the locker room shower) to his dizzying repertoire of breaking balls and delivery angles, as well as perhaps the most elastic, twisty-turny windup in history. . . .

Tiant debuted with Cleveland in 1964. Six seasons later, a shoulder injury nearly ended his career, but he found a second life after landing in Boston before the 1972 season.

No longer the consistent flamethrower he was before his injury, he now deployed a full quiver of windup and delivery tricks and velocity variations, baffling hitters with hard sliders and fastballs mixed with tantalizing, off-speed stuff — looping curves, palm balls and knuckle balls. . . .

Tiant thrived in relief and in spot starts, and by late August he was again in the starting rotation and beginning a remarkable comeback. In a string of 10 starts during a tight pennant race — the Sox finished second to Detroit — he was 9-1 with six shutouts, allowing less than one earned run every nine innings, clearly the team's most valuable player.

In spite of being mostly a reliever for more than half the season, he won 15 games and lost only six, and his earned run average of 1.91 was the best in the American League. He was voted Comeback Player of the Year, and the Boston fans had found a new hero. . . .

Over the next six years, Tiant won 106 games for the Red Sox, recording at least 20 wins in each of three seasons. In 1975, he helped the Red Sox to the American League pennant, winning 18 games during the regular season and Game 1 of the American League Championship Series against the Oakland A’s, a complete game in Boston in which he gave up only an unearned run.

"He is a joy to watch, this swarthy, ample gentleman of 34 going on 44," the sports columnist Red Smith wrote in The New York Times after the game. "Black-bearded and sinister, he looks like Pancho Villa after a tough week of looting and burning. He works without waste of time or motion, glowering briefly into the sun to take the catcher's sign, pivoting on one leg to face center field, then wheeling back to deliver over the top. He is a master of every legal pitch and he never throws two consecutive pitches at the same speed."

In the 1975 World Series, one of the greatest in baseball history, which the Cincinnati Reds won in seven games, Tiant pitched a shutout in Game 1 and a complete game 5-4 victory in Game 4, in which he threw an astonishing 163 pitches and held on to a one-run lead for five innings.

He started again in the memorable Game 6, pitching seven innings in what turned out to be a 12-inning 7-6 Red Sox win that ended with a dramatic Carlton Fisk home run.

I remember watching Game 1 of the 1975 World Series, five days before my 12th birthday. Boston won 6-0, scoring all their runs in the bottom of the seventh. Tiant began the rally by smacking a high curve into left – his first hit since 1972. He slid hard into second, beating a low force attempt, and eventually scored, before setting down the next six Reds to finish the shutout.

The never-dull Bill Lee shared a few Looie stories with some Canadian friends: "He was the heart and soul of our ball club."

Cards: Topps, 1972-1979.