Ron Darling is living an outstanding baseball life.
One of the game’s smartest pitchers during his 13-year major league career that included winning a World Series with the 1986 Mets, Darling is one of the game’s best broadcasters.
Darling also is one of my favorite people to talk with about baseball and our many conversations through the years in spring training in Port St. Lucie and during Mets seasons enabled me to gain tremendous insights into the game.
With that in mind, Darling told BallNine about one of the best training routines he had in his pitching career, a routine once followed by most of the Mets pitchers, going back to Hall of Famer Tom Seaver, a routine you never hear anything about now as pitchers continue to fall to injuries in this new age.
It’s fascinating in its simplicity and strength, and could help many pitchers today. If you are a pitcher on any level or a coach, pay close attention to Darling’s words. Here at BallNine, The Story offers baseball solutions to a complex game.
This is as simple as reciting the alphabet, yet in this era of baseball technology to the 10th degree, the genius of this drill has been lost in this world of high-speed video, spin-rate and over-coaching.
Learn your ABCs.
Listen carefully. Before we go any further this is something that was gifted to Darling and those Mets pitchers during the Tommy McKenna training era.
McKenna came to the Mets as athletic trainer (back then they were just called trainers) from the Washington Senators in 1970, brought to the team by Gil Hodges. It was yet another brilliant move by Hodges – who, by the way, should be in the Hall of Fame for his playing career with the Dodgers, his managerial career, leading those ’69 Mets to the Promised Land, and his overall integrity.
McKenna, who died in 2006 at the age of 88, began his training career in 1948 with Jersey City of the International League. He also spent 13 years with Minneapolis of the American Association, before moving onto the expansion Washington Senators in 1961.
From there it was to the Mets as the head trainer for a decade.
Darling, 60, told me McKenna had an incredible impact on his career, nine years with the Mets, posting a 99-70 mark with a 3.50 ERA over that time. Overall, Darling finished with a 136-116 record and a 3.87 ERA over his 2,360 major league innings after an outstanding career at Yale. At Yale he locked horns against future teammate Frank Viola in the greatest college pitching matchup of all-time in 1981 when Yale hosted St. John’s in an NCAA Tournament game, much more on that later.
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