Johnny Sain

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Johnny Sain

John Franklin Sain (September 25, 1917 – November 7, 2006) was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball who was best known for teaming with lefthander Warren Spahn on the Boston Braves teams from 1946 to 1951. He was the runner-up for the National League's Most Valuable Player Award in the Braves' pennant-winning season of 1948, after leading the National League in wins, complete games and innings pitched. He later became further well-known as one of the top pitching coaches in the majors.

Born in Havana, Arkansas, Sain pitched for 11 years, winning 136 games and losing 116 in his career and compiled an earned run average of 3.49. His best years were those immediately after World War II, when he won 100 games for the Boston Braves, before being traded to the New York Yankees during the 1951 season for Lew Burdette and cash.

In 1948, Sain won 24 games against 15 losses and finished second in the voting for the Most Valuable Player Award behind the St. Louis Cardinals' Stan Musial, who had won two legs of the triple crown. Sain and teammate Spahn achieved joint immortality that year when their feats were the subject of a poem in the Boston Post which was eventually shortened to the epigram, "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain." That year, Boston won its second and last National League pennant of the post-1901 era, but fell in six games to the Cleveland Indians in the 1948 World Series. Sain won the first game of the Series, a 1-0 shutout at Braves Field that included the famous play in which Boston catcher Phil Masi was called safe after an apparent pickoff at second base. Masi scored the Braves' only run - and the only tally in that contest.

With the Yankees, Sain became a relief pitcher and enjoyed late-career success, leading the American League in saves with 22 in 1954. He finished his career in 1956 with the Kansas City Athletics.

After retiring as a player, Sain spent many years as a well-regarded but outspoken pitching coach for the Athletics, Yankees, Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, Chicago White Sox and Atlanta Braves. During the 1960s, Sain coached the pitchers of five of the American League's ten pennant-winning teams. An independent thinker among coaches, Sain tended to be admired by his pitchers, but he battled with at least two of his managers — Sam Mele of the Twins and Mayo Smith of the Tigers — when he disagreed with them. In each case, Sain was fired, but the manager's firing soon followed when his pitching staff suffered from Sain's absence. Sain did not make friends among owners and general managers, either, when he would advise pitchers to never fear "climbing those golden stairs" to their teams' front offices to demand more money in salary talks.

Jim Bouton, in his book Ball Four, expressed unreserved admiration for Sain. Bouton openly wished to pitch for the Detroit Tigers in order to have a chance to benefit from Sain's coaching.

Sain died at age 89 in Downers Grove, Illinois.