MIKE MARSHALL AND KINESIOLOGY
In 1974 Dr. Michael G. Marshall aka “Iron Mike,” set major league records for games pitched in a season (106); games pitched in relief in a season (106); innings pitched in relief in a season (208 ⅓); most decisions among pitchers who did not make a start (27); and most consecutive games with a relief appearance (13). He also holds the closer’s record for most games finished (84).
He was the National League Cy Young Award winner in ’74 — the first relief pitcher ever to be so honored — an NL All-Star, the Reliever of the Year Award winner, the NL Saves Leader and he won 15 games. (He was 15–12 with a 2.42 ERA and 21 saves).
And he finished third in the MVP balloting behind Steve Garvey and Lou Brock.
Marshall also holds — as in still holds — the American League record for games pitched in a season with 90 for Minnesota in 1979. He was named Fireman of the Year by TSN with three different clubs: the Expos in 1973; the Dodgers in 1974; and the Twins in 1979 (sharing the award with Jim Kern). His career WAR was 18.4. “Iron Mike” was voted the Expos’ Player of the Year in ’72 and ’73 and was an original member of the Seattle Pilots.
The Relief Pitcher named him one of the ten best relievers of all-time and saluted him as the most dominant reliever of his era.
Never could the good doctor be confused with the other Mike Marshall, an outfielder who donned the Dodger Blue among other unis — they were both active in the National League in 1981. The younger Marshall, a wonderful talent, was considered to be a little soft. Not tough. Unwilling to play hurt. A whiner. Said Tom Lasorda, the 1988 Dodgers World Series Champion Manager, “It was frustrating because this guy had all the ability in the world and didn’t utilize it to the extent he should have.”
Ironically Mike Marshall the reliever had modest ability enhanced by a rubber arm and an elusive screwball and maximized it by being the quintessential grinder. Mentally as well as physically.
Marshall pitched for nine teams in a career which began in 1967 and ended in 1981. In spite of posting a 1.98 ERA for the Tigers in 1967 (37 appearances; 59.0 IP) he was farmed out to AAA Toledo in 1968 by manager Mayo Smith who had no love lost for “college boys.” Dr. Mike made not a single major league appearance that season.
Interestingly, 1968 was dubbed “The Year of the Pitcher” and for good reason. Bob Gibson set a modern ERA record of 1.12 and a World Series record of 17 Ks in Game 1, while Series opponent Denny McLain won 31 regular season games, the only pitcher to reach the 30-win-milestone since Dizzy Dean in 1934. Don Drysdale of the Dodgers posted six consecutive shutouts in May and June totalling 58 ⅔ consecutive scoreless innings. Mickey Lolich, McLain’s sidekick won 3 complete games in the Series, the last pitcher to do so. And Luis Tiant of the Cleveland Indians not only registered a 1.60 ERA, the lowest in the American League, he allowed a batting average of .168, a major league record which stood for 32 seasons until Pedro Martinez barely broke it in 2000 (.167). Both regular season MVPs in 1968 were pitchers — McLain and Gibson — and Lolich was the World Series MVP.
Sidebar:
[In a nutshell Marshall espouses a pitching method which he “believes could completely eradicate pitching-arm injuries.” He advises pitchers to externally rotate early as they swing their arm up. This means lifting the hand before the elbow with the wrist facing away from the body and up. The hand then is above the elbow when the front foot touches the ground, effecting a smooth transition without a “forearm bounce.” Laying back the forearm and then accelerating by rotating the body instead of bending over, protects the elbow against (UCL) injury].
Smith may have been intimidated by Marshall and rightfully so. College-educated ballplayers were rare then and the number of college graduates in the big leagues probably hovered around zero.
Relates Marshall of the climate he was forced to endure, “Managers knew I had options. Everybody knew I had options. And it’s hard to bully a guy who has options.” Marshall attended Michigan State University and earned three degrees, including a Ph.D in kinesiology. In the months preceding his historic 1974 Cy Young season in fact, Marshall considered retirement in order to work on his Ph.D.
So immersed was he in the scientific study of human body movement mechanics that when teammate Tommy John injured his pitching arm that year, it was Marshall who strongly suggested that he undergo a radical surgery which would eventually bear his name and become more famous than even he. (John won 288 games and had a 3.34 ERA in a 27-year career).
It took some time for baseball people in particular — and people in general — to move past Marshall’s surliness, arrogance and abrasiveness and concede just a bit that he knew from whence he spoke.
As one of the most vocal leaders of the Players’ Association during the 1970s, he further distanced himself from the buttoned-up conservative baseball establishment; neither popularity nor convention were part of his DNA.
When no other major league team placed a waiver claim on Marshall following his release from the Twins in 1980 the pungent and repugnant stink and toxicity of collusion filled the air. He was being blackballed. How else to explain the collective disinterest of 25 big league teams in a workhorse relief pitcher who saved 53 games, won 20 and logged more than 240 innings in the two years prior, ’78 and ’79?
The volume and quality of his workload continued to be extraordinary.
“I was that smart-ass college kid, you know. You did not get any respect for your education within baseball. In fact, you were considered a danger. That you could actually understand what they’re saying was bullshit: They didn’t like that too much.
I wasn’t an accepting kind of person. They’d tell me what to do, and I would say, ‘What? That makes no sense whatsoever. And I want to talk to you about Sir Isaac Newton.’ You know it was not easy for them.”
And Marshall was — and still is — nothing if not resolute. “I had a plan in my mind of the pitcher I wanted to be, and people kept stepping on it, not letting me do it. And I couldn’t get to where I was doing it until finally Gene Mauch gave me that chance halfway through 1971. And from then on I was the pitcher I wanted to be.”
“I am an anatomy nerd. I will not say ‘lat’ if I can say ‘Latissimus Dorsi.’ I’ll not say ‘pec’; I’ll say ‘Pectoralis Major.’ I just can’t baby-talk to people.”
Short on diplomacy and tolerance for what he considered nonsense, but with an undying spirit and a fierce yearning to teach which has never nor will ever be dampened, defines Marshall.
“Anybody can do what I did. Anybody! I am no special human being, physically. Anybody can do what I did, and I cannot believe that baseball is so backward, especially with these new, educated general managers, that they are completely ignoring what I’m saying…I’m going to jog every day and eat correctly and do everything I can, not smoke and all that kind of stuff, to see how long this body will last, because I’ve beat the hell out of it, I’ll tell you that. I’ve used every bit of it and I love it…
What I’ve accomplished in my life surprises me, but that doesn’t deter me from wanting to make sure everybody has the same opportunity that I had, because I think they can all become more than they thought they could be, too, as a baseball pitcher. And I’d like to help them do it.
And I’ve got it out there. All my friends say, ‘You know, when you die, as soon as you die this is going to be how everybody pitches. They just don’t want to give you credit.’ I said, ‘I don’t want the credit now, but the problem is that might be true.’”
To be both a scholar and a major leaguer at the top of his game represented the theater of the absurd in the era when Marshall was displaying his talents and exhibiting — seemingly nightly — his craft. The notion is less preposterous today but still somewhat oxymoronic.
Baseball has always had difficulty absorbing the highly educated men — few though they may have been — who have entered its ranks. Way back, any player who wore glasses — illiterate or otherwise — was dubbed “Perfessor.” Marshall’s personality, demeanor and sage, nuanced approach did not win him many friends in the clubhouse and even on the diamond.
Noted Ron Fimrite in a 1979 piece for Sports Illustrated, “Alas, the Marshall’s [sic] of baseball are destined to be regarded with awe or secret laughter by some of their confreres and resented by others, who will search for chinks in their intellectual armor. An ivory tower is a safer place for a scholar than the clubhouse.”
But for those outside his family who understood him — Mauch and Michigan State University physical education Professor William Heusner to name two — Marshall was right as rain. Open-mindedness, not to mention an appreciation of intelligence as it applies to performance, strengthens one’s grasp and grip.
Marshall’s take? “…It’s wasted effort trying to explain these things, to explain why some people — my wife, Gene, Bill Heusner — are special. I should say extra special, because everyone is special.”
Kind words from a brooding intellectual, a curmudgeon. Civility, humility even flashes of self-effacing humor and wit along with a tamped down anger — personality traits thought to describe anyone but Marshall — began to surface as he mellowed.
Anomalous in the professional baseball society but just another well-read student in the halls of academia, he fought like the devil to achieve greatness on the diamond, expending more effort than was required of him to become scholarly. The unsated desire to learn fueled him in each arena.
Professor Heusner believed that for Marshall, baseball and the pursuit of his interest in kinesiology were inextricably linked — one pushing the other to help him reach his goals. “I think that Mike has improved his pitching ability enormously as a result of his studies,” he observed at the time. “He has taken relatively modest physical attributes and become a magnificent athlete.”
Today Mike Marshall is 75 years old. On the face, his career MLB statistics border on unremarkable: 97–112 W/L; 3.14 ERA; 880 Ks; 188 Saves. He has not been in the employ of a major league or minor league team since he pitched for the Mets in 1981. Astonishing given his high intelligence and expansive knowledge not to mention his extraordinary success as a premier relief pitcher.
His revolutionary level of endurance alone — he was steadfast in his belief that he could be more effective by pitching almost every day and he pitched more innings as a reliever than a great many starting pitchers — should have opened doors for him.
Instead he has worked as an independent pitching coach and consultant for numerous athletes extolling the virtues and advocating the theories of kinesiology. He has his own website @ www.drmikemarshall.com advertising his “Pitching Coach Services.”
Jacob DeGrom of the Mets is the odds-on favorite to win the 2018 NL Cy Young Award expected to narrowly edge the Nationals’ Max Scherzer, a 3-time winner. DeGrom posted a 10–9 record this season with a sparkling MLB-best 1.70 ERA pitching for a 77–85 fourth-place team which scored 676 runs (4.17/pg) and allowed 707 (4.36/pg). He deserves it.
Mike Marshall should have top-billing in a special wing of the Hall of Fame dedicated to the game’s greatest relief pitchers of all-time. He deserves that.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in October 2018.]
