This is RetroSports Radio. Visit RetroSeasons.com for more sports history.
This is Ryan Durin of the New York Yankees. In a few moments I'll tell you about my greatest sports thrill.
This is Harry Wismar. What you're about to hear is a transcribed story of one of baseball's outstanding relief pitchers.
And an event our special guest Ryan Durin considers his greatest sports thrill.
And Ryan himself is here to tell us all about it. But first here is Bill Reddick with a message of interest from your United States Air Force.
In the past few years we've heard a lot about football teams with desire. A team with desire alone however will rarely defeat a team with desire and experience.
Experience is vital in the Air Force too. Some of the most important projects are experience technicians.
These specialists are thoroughly trained in electronics and missile systems.
Many of them are former service men perhaps like yourself.
Think of it your experience and background may lead to a good starting rank in the Air Force.
30 day annual paid vacations tax free allowances for food quarters and clothing.
If qualified you'll serve with volunteers and you'll advance with the space age.
Former service women are also needed by the Air Force. So why not see your local recruiter about Air Force opportunities for former service men and women real soon.
There's no obligation of course. And now back to Harry Wismar.
Prominently displayed on the bulletin board of the post office in the little town of Castanovia Wisconsin population 600 is the photograph of a solidly built handsomely featured young man with glasses.
Underneath the photograph is the young man's record.
No this young man is not wanted by the FBI. The only wrong he ever committed was confined to throttling American League sluggers and scalping the Milwaukee Braves.
Neither is considered a criminal offense since the young man is Ryan Durin the sensational relief pitcher of the world's champion New York Yankees.
The record constitutes his 1958 mound performance in the American League.
It shows that Ryan Durin was in 44 games for the Yankees, pitched 75 and two-thirds innings and struck out 86.
He won six, lost four, giving up 40 hits and allowing 17 earned runs.
He walked 44 batters, heavily encircled as a line underneath these figures which reads,
Game saved, 21. Ryan Durin's phenomenal success story is all the more remarkable because this big hulking man with the blacksmith's shoulders and piled drivers arms once lay helpless for six months a prisoner of rheumatic fever.
The disease struck him when he was 17 years old and left its affliction, a bad case of nearsightedness, which forces Ryan Durin to wear exceptionally thick lens glasses.
He can't see across a room without them.
Ryan Durin got his start in baseball with Casanovia in the Salk County League, a circuit of small town teams that played Sunday ball.
Durin struck out and walked more batters than any other pitcher before or since has done for any team in the Salk League.
He pitched three no-hit games and chalked up 30 consecutive hitless innings, whether it was because of his blinding speed or his notorious wildness, the batters feared facing him.
He averaged more than two strikeouts per inning and he finished the season winning 23 while losing only one.
The St. Louis Brown sent a scout to Wisconsin to look Durin over in 1948. Ryan made the trip to St. Louis not to play but to have his eyes checked.
A specialist advised him to give up baseball but he refused to do so.
The Browns however liked him enough to give him a $500 bonus for signing and send him to Springfield in the Class C 3I League.
That started his travels. In the next ten years, Ryan Durin bounced around the country playing minor league ball at Pine Bluff, Dayton, San Antonio, Anderson, Scranton, Seattle, Vancouver and Denver.
He ever shot at the big leagues with Baltimore in 1954 and with Kansas City in 1957 but didn't stay up.
As always, it was his wildness that kept him from making it to the majors.
Year after year, Ryan Durin either led or came close to leading his league in strikeouts but he also was among the leaders in bases on balls.
Ryan Durin landed in the American League with Kansas City in the spring of 1957 after having failed to impress manager Paul Richards with Baltimore in spring training three years before.
At Kansas City, Ryan Durin continued to harass his own team as well as opposing batters with his wildness. He walked 30 and 43 innings and lost all three decisions in which he was involved.
Despite this outwardly wretched showing, Ryan caught the eye of Casey Stingle.
When the athletics got Billy Martin away from the Yankees, wise old Casey insisted that Durin be tossed in as a throw-in before he would approve the trade.
After the deal had been consummated, Stingle sent Durin to the Yankees' Denver farm to try to refine his control.
Actually, Durin had lost his wild man tag in 1956.
Sent to Vancouver by the Kansas City Athletics, Durin came under the tutorship of manager Lefty O'Doole, a patient and understanding man and a highly successful teacher.
O'Doole taught him the value of moving a ball, of placing the pitch in several areas in the strike zone.
Just how much O'Doole's tutelage meant for him is easily understood when you examine his record at Denver in 1957.
In half a season with the American Association Club, Ryan Durin won 13 and lost only two.
He had ten complete games and fanned 116 in 114 innings. Most important, he walked only 33.
It was Ryan Durin's brilliant relief work throughout the 1958 season that not only was responsible for the New York Yankees clinching the pennant in mid-September,
but also largely accounted for the Bronx Bombers' amazing comeback in the World Series.
To pinpoint the number one hero among the New York Yankees in their seven-game World Series triumph over the Milwaukee Braves is not easy.
There were several strong candidates, but the edge in this corner at least belonged to Ryan Durin.
He was a star among stars. He was the guy in the clutch.
Were it not for his dazzling performance in the sixth game with the Yankees creating three games to two, there would have been no seventh game and no Yankee triumph.
Ryan Durin naturally didn't receive any starting assignments in the World Series,
but three times he got the nod from manager Casey Stengel to come to the rescue of a starting hurler.
In those three games, Ryan Durin hurled nine and one-third innings.
He yielded seven hits and two runs, fanned 14 while walking six.
His earned run average was the best on the club, 1.93.
He won one game and lost one. He did everything expected of a great relief hurler.
The 1958 fall classic proved convincingly that Ryan Durin had finally arrived.
Now, before you meet our special guest, Ryan Durin in person,
in an interview from Yankee Stadium and hear about his greatest sports drill,
here is a message of interest to all young men with an eye on the future.
It has been wisely said that the best things in life are worth planning for.
That's why former servicemen who are planning a successful career should look into Air Force opportunities now.
If your specialty is needed, you will have an important job with a guaranteed future.
Today there are fine career openings in electronics, missile systems and other interesting fields.
Your experience and background may entitle you to a good starting rank, a guaranteed annual income,
consistent pay increases and countless other Air Force benefits.
And of course you'll be a vital, respected member of today's great Space Age Defense Team.
Young ladies, there are fine opportunities for you in the Air Force too.
Yes, former servicemen and women are needed in many categories.
So take time to investigate the exciting Air Force Space Age positions now open to men and women with prior service.
See your local recruiter for full details.
And now back to Harry Wismer.
Ryan Durin, what was your greatest sports thrill?
Harry, I believe that would have to be the sixth game of the 1958 World Series in Milwaukee
when I pitched four and two-thirds innings and became the winning pitcher in that game.
Fine, what's the story behind your sudden emergence as an outstanding relief early,
after so many years in the minor leagues?
I would say that the reason for it was that I finally found control in 1956 at Vancouver in the Pacific Coast League under lefty O'Doole.
And then 1957, out at Denver, under Ralph Hough, I became a polished pitcher.
I think it's a combination of control, confidence, and being on a great ball club like the New York Yankees.
With all this talk about your poor eyesight, just exactly how is it?
Well, Harry, it's not really too bad when I've got my glasses on, but without them I'm in pretty bad shape.
I'm 220 in my left eye and 70-20 in my right.
But with my glasses, it's corrected to about 25-20 in both eyes.
How long does it take you to warm up in the bullpen?
That would depend a lot on the temperature, how much I'd pitched the previous day, how many days in the row I'd pitched.
All those things enter in. But usually, I can get ready in approximately 20 pitches in the bullpen,
plus the eighth that I get on the mound when I come in.
Fine, what is going through your mind when you make that long walk from the bullpen to the mound?
Well, Harry, that's the time, I guess, when you try to figure out just what kind of a situation you're walking into.
First of all, the score, who's on base, who the hitters are going to be, and maybe the possibility of who the pinch hitters might be,
and general things like that.
Ryan, what are your instructions from the manager and the catcher on the mound when they give you the ball?
Depending upon the situation, of course.
It'll be something like this, you've got to keep the ball low on this fella, or you've got to keep the ball high on him.
Or if the balls hit back to you, you go home or go first or whatever the situation would call for.
It's usually something like that.
For instance, in the sixth game of the World Series, 1958, Casey Stingel, our manager, was out in the mound,
and Adcock, the first baseman from Milwaukee, was the hitter.
And Casey asked me how I was going to pitch to him, and I told him, I thought I'd just try to get out in front of him with a good, high-fast ball,
and then I'd go low and try to make him hit a ball in the ground to keep him from hitting the ball out of the park,
because at the time, it would have been the winning run.
My daddy, he did, he hit the ball on the ground low, but he hit it hard enough for a base hit.
Ryan, why is it that a hitter and a pitcher will so often disagree on the kind of pitch the batter hit out of the ball park?
I think, Harry, the best example that I could give you on that would be something that Fred Hoffman, the old Yankee catcher,
who now is a scout for the Baltimore Orioles, told me about Lou Gehrig.
Lou would hit a ball out of the ball park, and when he'd get back to the bench, somebody had asked, what kind of a pitch was it?
And he'd say, I don't know what kind of a pitch it was, but it was a strike.
Is the game too much fuss being made over the pitcher's use of the brushback pitch?
Harry, I think there is. The good hitter is never complained.
William's never complained. DiMaggio never complained.
It's part of baseball. It always has been, and it always will be.
No pitcher I don't believe ever has intentionally thrown at a batter's head to hurt him.
I know that I haven't, and I really do believe that it's an overrated thing.
How big a part does the manager play in the success of a ball club?
Harry, I believe that the manager plays a great part in the success of a ball club.
I would say that the reason that we won the 1958 series more than any other single reason was because manager Casey Stingel was so determined
and put that determined feeling right into the boys.
I believe that they play a great part in it. This 1958 World Series, after being down 3-1, is a perfect example of that.
Casey Stingel, our manager, never quit. He instilled in that fellow the same determination that he had,
and that more than any other thing is the reason that we won the 1958 World Series.
Thank you very much, Ryan Dern of the New York Yankees, one of baseball's outstanding pitchers.
Greatest Sports Thrills with Top Personalities in the World of Sports is narrated by Harry Wismer, directed by Gene Kirby, written by Arthur Soskin Jr. and presented by the United States Air Force in cooperation with this station.
This is Bill Reddick speaking. The preceding was transcribed.