Womack: Baseball dismissed Leo Mazzone and Johnny Sain; the Hall of Fame doesn’t have to
From SABR member Graham Womack at The Sporting News on June 8, 2017:
Sometime after the Braves hired Leo Mazzone in 1979 to be a pitching coach within their organization, he went to see Johnny Sain.
Sain won 20 games four times for the Boston Braves between 1946 and 1950, helping lead the team to the 1948 World Series. Later, Sain embarked on a successful second career as a pitching coach. So many of the best pitchers of the 1960s crossed paths with Sain, from Whitey Ford to Jim Kaat to Denny McLain.
By the time Mazzone met him, though, Sain was living out of an RV in West Palm Beach, Fla., with only one more brief stint in the majors ahead of him.
“Johnny was a little bit of a rebel,” Mazzone told Sporting News recently from his Anderson, S.C., home. “He believed in throwing a lot and running a little. He believed in hanging with his pitchers only. He believed in making pitchers first-class citizens.”
Read the full article here: http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/news/leo-mazzone-hall-of-fame-braves-pitching-coach-1990s-glavine-maddux-smoltz/dyf7pyf9dkgs198r40rvulm7x
Originally published: June 8, 2017. Last Updated: June 8, 2017.