Johnny Sain, a masterful pitcher who became a master at rebuilding major-league pitching staffs, has begun one of his toughest restoration projects.
Sain, 84, is rehabilitating from a stroke suffered on Easter.
A remarkably durable starter for the Boston Braves and a pitching coach for several teams, including the White Sox from late 1970 to 1975, Sain is undergoing therapy at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Wheaton.
With his wife, Mary Ann, at his side, Sain does exercises in such tasks as speaking, reading, shaving and upper-body strengthening in a wheelchair. “It’s a day-to-day thing,” Mary Ann Sain said. “One day is tremendous, the next day isn’t.”
Sain is striving to overcome partial paralysis on his left side. And he is working toward a late summer goal: an Aug. 13 ceremony in Atlanta.
“Yeah, I’m looking forward to it,” he said, with some effort.
That is when he will be inducted into the Braves Hall of Fame, joining such previous honorees as Dale Murphy of the Atlanta era; Hank Aaron, bridging the years from Milwaukee to Atlanta; and Warren Spahn, bridging the years from Boston to Milwaukee.
“John was a good pitcher who paid his way to spring training and made the ballclub on merit,” Spahn said. “He was self-taught and threw all kinds of curves and off-speed pitches. I think that experience, plus his style of suggesting rather than demanding, made him a great pitching coach.”
When the Boston Braves won the pennant in 1948, pitchers Spahn and Sain were often mentioned in the same breath and in the same catchphrase, “Spahn and Sain, then pray for rain.” They combined for 39 victories, 24 by Sain. Down the stretch, Sain pitched nine complete games in 29 days, winning seven.
He will be recognized at the induction ceremony both for his herculean efforts in Boston before he was traded to the New York Yankees in late 1951 and for his adroit coaching in Atlanta and its farm system.
Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone, a disciple of Sain’s, phoned him at the hospital recently to get a progress report and offer encouragement. The patient, whose passion remains baseball, was having a good day. He sought a different health update.
“Hey, Leo, what’s happening with [John] Smoltz’s elbow?” Sain asked about the Braves’ veteran closer. “Is he taking care of that elbow?”
Sain pitched in four World Series, and coached in five. In 14 seasons as a pitching coach with the Braves, White Sox, Yankees, Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins, he tutored 16 pitchers who won 20 or more games.
Three of them–Wilbur Wood of the White Sox, Jim Kaat of the Sox and Twins and Jim Bouton of the Yankees–credit him with rejuvenating their careers. They don’t just want him out of the hospital, they want him alongside Spahn in baseball’s Hall of Fame.
“John belongs in the Hall of Fame for a combination of being the greatest pitching coach in baseball and one of the greatest pitchers ever,” said Bouton, who has visited Sain in the hospital. “The thing that separated John from most coaches was that he had an influence on your life beyond baseball.
“He respected hard work without complaint. He’d say, `The world doesn’t want to hear about the labor pains, it just wants to see the baby.'”
Bouton, who was 21-7 with the 1963 Yankees, gained more lasting fame years later as the author of “Ball Four.” On that team, Sain was a sane voice, “an antidote to the madness.” Bouton said. “He was never a front-runner. He would spend a lot of time with the pitchers who were struggling and with rookies.”
Kaat credits Sain for his three 20-victory seasons, one with the Twins and two with the Sox. “He meant more to my career than anybody I met in baseball,” Kaat said.
In those comeback 1974 and 1975 seasons with the Sox, Sain rehabilitated Kaat’s flagging career with a no-windup delivery.
“If Johnny watched you warm up, he wouldn’t say things about your mechanics or your body or head position,” Kaat recalled. “He would ask things like, `Show me how slow you can throw the ball and how big you can make it curve, then show me how hard you can throw the ball and how little you can make it curve.’
“If he told me to stand on my head and throw, I’d do it.”
With the Sox, Sain had different approaches for Kaat, a veteran starter; Wood, a knuckleballer who was converted from reliever to starter; and Terry Forster, a fireballing young reliever.
“Johnny was his own guy and he saw pitchers as snowflakes . . . no two alike,” Forster said. “We pitchers loved it when he said, `You can’t run the ball over the plate, so why concentrate on running? You should throw every day.'”
Wood said Sain “thought pitchers should throw a little every day even if they don’t throw hard, just like hitters take batting practice every day even though they don’t face hard pitches. He taught that it is important to have a variety of movement and pace on the ball, not how fast you throw.”
In 1971, Sain and Sox manager Chuck Tanner agreed that Wood’s relaxed motion and easy-on-the-arm knuckleball would enable him to pitch more frequently than in a conventional four- or five-man rotation.
“Johnny asked me if I’d like to try pitching a couple of times every week,” Wood recalled. “I’d heard what he’d done in Boston, about `Spahn and Sain and pray for rain,’ so I said yes. Johnny would never tell you what to do. He’d ask or suggest.”
When Tanner was a minor-league manager and Sain a roving minor-league pitching coach, they spent long hours on the road together. Tanner told Sain, “When I make it as a major-league manager, you’re the pitching coach.”
The duo came to the White Sox in those roles in September 1970 along with general manager Roland Hemond. That same year, Tanner was best man at Johnny and Mary Ann Sain’s wedding.
In Tanner’s mind, Sain is “the greatest pitching coach of all time,” down to the unusual gadgets he devised to benefit pitchers.
One was a “spinner” in which a stick was poked through a tunneled baseball, permitting the ball to be spun to demonstrate the rotation effects of different grips and hand speeds.
Sain tried using a tiny mirror under the bill of his cap “so he could watch a runner at first base without turning his head,” Tanner recalled with a laugh. “It didn’t work. But it showed he was always thinking.”
Neil Shalin, co-author of “Out By a Step: The 100 Best Players Not in the Baseball Hall of Fame,” to be published this summer, says Sain is on the list.
“If you combine what he did as a pitcher with what he did as a pitching coach, widely considered to be the best ever, he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame,” Shalin said.
Hemond, now an executive adviser with the Sox, said Sain never bemoaned the three seasons he lost to military service in World War II. Instead, he credited his experience as a Navy pilot with making him a better pitcher.
“He said he really learned the mental part of pitching as a pilot, having to concentrate on all the instruments and adapt to changes under pressure and time constraints,” Hemond said.
Longtime friend Hal Naragon, a former Cleveland catcher and Sain’s bullpen coach with the Twins, said, “John was proud to tell people he was released four times in Class D minor-league ball, but still made it to the majors.”
Tanner and Bouton said hearing about baseball and hearing from those who know of his contributions to it cheers Sain and gives him resolve as he faces his personal rehabilitation project.
Drawing on his friend’s reputation as a pitcher, Tanner called Sain at the hospital to say, “Hey, John, we’re in the fifth inning and it’s a nine-inning game.”
