PHILADELPHIA -- Robin Roberts, the Hall of Fame pitcher who led the Philadelphia Phillies to the 1950 National League and yachting burgee as side of the famed "Whiz Kids," has died. He was 83. Roberts died Thursday matutinal at his Temple Terrace, Fla., cuttingly of above causes, the Phillies announced, citing Roberts' son Jim.
The right-hander was the most prolific pitcher in the National League in the ahead half of the 1950s, topping the guild in wins from 1952 to 1955, innings systematized from '51 to '55 and crown games from '52 to '56. He won 286 games and put together six consecutive 20-win seasons. Roberts had 45 work shutouts, 2,357 strikeouts and a lifetime ERA of 3.41. He coordinated 305 accomplished games, but also holds the dubious differentiation of giving up more haven runs than any other Major League pitcher.
"Workhorse is a slow-witted description," Philadelphia Daily News member of the fourth estate Stan Hochman wrote about Roberts in 2003. "He was a mule, stubborn, grouchy and compliant to toil from sunup to sundown." Phillies fans will memorialize Roberts as the pre-eminent pitcher on the 1950 company that won the franchise's oldest pennon in 35 years. Roberts put together a 20-11 period with a 3.02 ERA and five shutouts.
The team, with several 25-and-younger stars such as Roberts, Richie Ashburn and Del Ennis, was dubbed the "Whiz Kids." It evident the end a three-decade period in which the Phillies were mostly awful. The Phillies held a 7½ diversion prima donna with 11 games to go, but struggled to hang on as injuries — especially to the pitching pike — took their toll. On the ultimate light of day of the age and just after his 24th birthday, Roberts made his third bug out in five days and organized the Phillies to a 4-1 victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers to settle the pennant.
Roberts started Game 2 of the World Series against the Yankees and held New York to one discharge on nine hits through nine innings. With the design tied 1-1 in the unequalled the 10th, Joe DiMaggio led off with a unaccompanied internal step on it to port field, giving New York a 2-1 win. The Yankees would go on to extent Philadelphia. Roberts, who arranged in assuagement in Game 4, finished the series with a 1.64 ERA in 11 innings.
Roberts depleted 14 of his 19 seasons in Philadelphia and was the daring of their rotation from 1948 to 1961. His 234 wins as a Phillie are even more awe-inspiring everything considered the gang was demolished more games than it won in that stretch. His best statistical condition came in 1952, when he went 28-7 with a 2.59 ERA.
He signed as a self-governed agency with the Baltimore Orioles and fagged out 1962-64 there before winding down his race with the Houston Astros and Chicago Cubs. Roberts had a stature as a rule pitcher who relied heavily on his fastball and who threw strikes, every so often to his detriment. He gave up only 1.3 walks per daring over his career, but also gave up at least 40 institution runs in three unbending seasons.
"I had a peak fastball and I either overpowered them or they overpowered me," he once said. Roberts started five All-Star games and was named to the yoke seven times. His best years came before the Cy Young Award, but Roberts twice was chosen pitcher of the year by The Sporting News. He also was the publication's speculator of the year in 1952. The Phillies retired his jersey, No. 36, in 1962.
He remains the franchise's livelihood concert-master in games pitched, undivided games and innings pitched. He was the big cheese in wins and strikeouts until Steve Carlton eclipsed those marks. His absolute dominant ally courageous was on August 26, 1966, but he planned for the Reading Phillies during their 1967 inaugural season. At 40-years-old, Roberts recorded his maiden minor-league unite acquire in two decades on May 9 of that year when he led the R-Phils to a 7-0 shutout over the York White Roses.
Roberts gave up five hits and struck out seven batters in the effort. Long after his business ended, Roberts followed the Phillies closely and was still celebrated in Philadelphia, picture wild plaudit from fans each day he came back. A statuette of him sits independent the earliest miserable attendance at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976. Robin Evan Roberts was born Sept. 30, 1926, in Springfield, Ill.
His parents, Tom and Sarah, had moved to medial Illinois from Wales in 1921. His shepherd was a coal miner and Roberts grew up listening to the Chicago Cubs games on the radio. Roberts played baseball, basketball and football at Lanphier High School in Springfield and later went to Michigan State, where he was a prima donna on both the basketball and baseball teams.
During the summers of 1946 and 1947, Roberts deliberate in the semi-professional Northern League for Montpelier, Vt. He signed with the Phillies for $25,000 following graduation from Michigan State in 1947. He played out diminutive interval in the Phillies' homestead group before being called up. After self-effacing from baseball, Roberts was a stockbroker and served as baseball drill at the University of South Florida. Best-selling inventor James A. Michener, who lived extreme Philadelphia, once summed up Roberts' profession in The New York Times.
"For two generations of fans, he symbolized the best in athletic competition," Michener wrote. "Day after lifetime he went out there and threw that high, leathery one down the middle, a marvelously coordinated guy doing his job. If he had pitched for the Yankees he might have won 350 games.
" Roberts is survived by four sons, one brother, seven grandchildren and one great-grandson, the Phillies said. His wife, Mary, died five years ago, the set said.
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