Gary Lucas (baseball)

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Gary Paul Lucas (born November 8, 1954) is an American former pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for the San Diego Padres (1980-83), Montreal Expos (1984-85) and California Angels (1986-87).

Lucas began his career as a starting pitcher, but was exclusively a reliever after his first season. In an eight-season career, Lucas posted a 29-44 record with 63 saves and a 3.01 ERA in 669 innings.

Born in Riverside, California, Lucas is possibly best remembered for his role in the Angels' crucial Game 5 loss in the 1986 American League Championship Series. The Angels held a three games to one lead in the best-of-seven series and found themselves with a 5-4 lead in the ninth inning of Game 5. Needing only one more out to clinch the team's first-ever pennant, the Angels turned to Lucas to provide that out.

Angels starting pitcher Mike Witt was the team's clear pitching star and had pitched a very strong game overall. However, with the game on the line, the batter coming to the plate was the Boston Red Sox' Rich Gedman. Angels manager Gene Mauch elected to remove Witt from the game and replace him with Lucas to nail down the final out. The wisdom of the move was questioned — then and now — but it was at least consistent with Mauch's long-held managerial tendencies: managing according to the historically demonstrated strengths/weaknesses of individual players.

In this case, Gedman had historically been very successful batting against Witt, including having hit a home run off of Witt earlier in that very game. Meanwhile, Gedman had faced Lucas a total of three previous times and had struck out all three times. Also factoring in Mauch's decision to remove Witt may have been the fact that although aside from Gedman's home run, Witt had almost completely shut down the Red Sox offense entering the ninth inning, earlier in that ninth inning Witt had given up a second home run, this time to Boston's Don Baylor.

With the Angels' lead standing at only one run, and with a relief pitcher in his bullpen who had had only success against Gedman, Mauch did not want to risk having Witt face Gedman again. Mauch made the decision to put the ball in Lucas' hands.

With Lucas' first pitch, he hit Gedman, allowing Gedman to take first base and bringing the go-ahead run up to the plate in the person of Dave Henderson. Lucas was replaced with Angels closer Donnie Moore, but Moore surrendered a home run to give Boston the lead. The Red Sox went on to win the game in extra innings, and after that, the shellshocked Angels were never again close to winning the series. They were crushed in each of the series' final two games and forced to watch the Red Sox celebrate a berth in the 1986 World Series.

Witt was tremendous. But Rich Gedman was coming up, and he was the only guy that hit Witt. So Mauch brought in Gary Lucas, who hadn't hit a guy with a pitch in 100 years, and he hit Gedman. It was unbelievable.

— Bob Boone, starting catcher for the 1986 California Angels^[1]

The fans' blame for the Angels' historic collapse ultimately fell primarily upon the shoulders of Moore (for having given up the go-ahead home run to Henderson), Mauch (for having removed Witt, who had pitched so strongly overall and would have needed to claim only one more out to seal the win) and Lucas (for failing to execute in the one key situation in which he was needed). Lucas went on to pitch for the Angels for one more year, and then retired from baseball after the 1987 season.