Bo Belinsky

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1964 Topps baseball card #315

Robert "Bo" Belinsky (December 7, 1936 – November 23, 2001) was an American left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball who had a career record of just 28-51, but threw the first no-hitter in the history of the Los Angeles Angels and the first one at Dodger Stadium, beating the Baltimore Orioles 2-0 on May 5, 1962. It was Belinsky's fourth consecutive win to start his rookie season; he would be 5-0, then 7-1, before finishing the season with a 10-11 won-lost record, a 3.56 earned run average, and the league lead in walks (122), the only time Belinsky ever led his league in any pitching category.

After the no-hitter, Belinsky said, famously enough, "If I'd known I was gonna pitch a no-hitter today, I would have gotten a haircut." Perhaps more tellingly, however, Belinsky also said, "If music be the food of love, by all means let the band play on." Born in New York City to a Polish American Catholic father and a Jewish American mother, and raised mostly in Trenton, New Jersey, a street rat and one-time pool hustler who was known notoriously enough for his night life even before he made the majors in 1962, Belinsky's rookie no-hitter climaxed a raucous season in which he was already glittering copy for southern California sportswriters with his wit and unapologetic womanising. "Within days of his no-hitter Belinsky would be heralded as sport's most original and engaging playboy-athlete," pitcher-turned-journalist Pat Jordan wrote in a striking 1971 Sports Illustrated profile. "His name would become synonymous with a lifestyle that was cool and slick and dazzling . . . But in time the name Belinsky would become synonymous with something else. It would become synonymous with dissipated talent."

[edit] Later Life

Belinsky became a kind of protege to fading but still influential and show business-connected newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. He was linked romantically, at one time or another, to such beauties as Ann-Margret, Connie Stevens, Tina Louise and Mamie Van Doren, the latter his fiancee for a year. Contemporary player Mike Hegan once said, "Bo had more fun off the field than he did on the field."

And it took the inevitable toll on the field. Belinsky fell to 1-7 in 1963 and earned a farming out to the Angels' minor league team in Hawaii, where he pitched his way back and finished the year with a 2-9 major league record. But Belinsky was 9-7 with a career-best 2.86 ERA in August 1964 when came the incident that ended his days with the Angels: a hotel room fight with elderly Los Angeles Times sportswriter Braven Dyer. Belinsky was suspended from the Angels, then traded to the Philadelphia Phillies after the season. After spending a little over a season with the Phillies, in which he was used mostly as a long reliever before his release to the minor leagues, Belinsky also pitched for the Houston Astros, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds, before his career ended in the Cincinnati minor league system in 1970.

"What was clear," Jordan wrote, "was that Belinsky had dissipated a promising career, that people had grown tired of him, and that most of the problem could be traced to his personality. He did not have the knack of such later athletes - the Namaths, Harrelsons, and Sandersons - of cultivating his personality precisely up to, but not beyond, that point at which the public became bored with it."

Belinsky married and divorced Playboy Playmate of the Year Jo Collins, then heiress Janie Weyerhaeuser. He eventually overcame alcoholism to become first a counselor and spokesman for the alcohol abuse program he entered in Hawaii and, then, an auto agency representative in Las Vegas, Nevada. Clean, sober, and a born-again Christian ("Can you imagine," he was quoted as saying, "finding Jesus Christ in Las Vegas?"), Belinsky battled bladder cancer before his death in Las Vegas of an apparent heart attack at age 64.

Veteran sportswriter Maury Allen wrote a biography of Belinsky, Bo: Pitching and Wooing, "with the uncensored cooperation of Bo Belinsky," in 1973.

I came to the Angels as a kid who thought he had been pushed around by life, by minor league baseball. I was selfish and immature in a lot of ways and I tried to cover that up. I went from a major league ballplayer to hanging onto a brown bag under the bridge, but I had my moments and I have my memories. If I had the attitude about life then that I have now, I'd have done a lot of things differently. But you make your rules and you play by them. I knew the bills would come due eventually, and I knew I wouldn't be able to cover them.---Bo Belinsky to Ross Newhan, in The Anaheim Angels: A Complete History.

[edit] Trivia

In addition to pitching the first no-hitter in Angels' history, Belinsky had the dubious distinction of also being on the losing end of the first no-hitter ever pitched against the Angels—Earl Wilson's 2-0 gem at Fenway Park on June 26 of the same 1962 season. The Boston Red Sox pitcher hit a home run in that game, the first no-hit pitcher ever to do so.

Belinsky's no-hitter was the first of eight thrown by a Jewish pitcher in a decade spanning from 1962 to 1971. The others: Sandy Koufax in 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1965; Joe Horlen in 1967; and Ken Holtzman in 1969 and 1971.

Until righthander Jered Weaver accomplished the feat June 14, 2006, Belinsky was the only pitcher in the history of the Angels franchise to start his career with a winning streak of four games or better. Forty-four years stood between Belinsky and Weaver.