Baseball – Mike Flanagan, Tony Conigliaro, Tim Wakefield, Gene Michael

Mike Flanagan (b. 1951) pitched for 18 seasons, primarily with the Orioles.  A lefty with a big slow curve ball, he won 167 games in his career and received the Cy Young Award in 1979.  In college he played freshman basketball at the U Mass when Julius Erving was there.  After seeing Dr. J play, Flanagan said, "I better work on my slider." fairandunbalancedblog  

There have been few tragedies like that of Tony Conigliaro. By the age of 22, he had already hit 104 home runs and seemed on course to become one of the all-time great sluggers. But on Aug. 18, 1967, he couldn't elude a high, inside Jack Hamilton fastball. The ball hit Conigliaro flush in the face, badly damaging his left eye and forcing him to miss the balance of the 1967 season and all of 1968. Some skeptics felt that he would never play again, but he confounded them with productive seasons in 1969 and ‘70. The Red Sox then traded him to the Angels, where he struggled badly, perhaps dragged down further by a team filled with misery and discord. Unable to see out of his left eye, Conigliaro retired. http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/talking-about-tony-conigliaro/

Tim Wakefield’s stock rose and fell far faster than any financial index during his 19 seasons in the major leagues. How else can you explain a player who was washed up at 26 and yet was still winning games when he was 44? A knuckleballer in the age of fastballs and sliders, Wakefield was a starter, a middle reliever and a closer. In an era of tightly controlled pitch counts, he was immune, throwing 140 or more pitches six different times, once throwing 172. http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/

Gene Michael has been a member of the Yankees organization through six decades as a player, coach, scout, manager and general manager and now as a senior vice president and senior adviser. When he was the general manager in the 1990s, the club rebuilt the farm system as it drafted Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte and developed Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera, the core of the recent World Series title teams. Michael also traded for Paul O’Neill. With training camp starting, he will continue to help Brian Cashman shape this year’s roster. http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/