June 24, 1978: Jesse Orosco’s first pro game kicks off record-setting career

Major-league baseball fans had more opportunities to watch Jesse Orosco than any other pitcher. In a 24-season big-league career, the left-handed reliever appeared in 1,252 regular-season games, outpacing all other hurlers as of the 2025 season.1

Orosco’s long professional journey began quietly on June 24, 1978, playing for the Elizabethton (Tennessee) Twins of the Rookie-level Appalachian League. In his first pro appearance, the 21-year-old Orosco pitched two shutout innings of relief to keep the Twins in a game they eventually lost, 4-3. Unspectacular but effective, Orosco’s pitching stint made an appropriate start to a career marked more by consistency than eye-catching achievement.2

The Twins’ opponent that night was the Johnson City (Tennessee) Cardinals – and, had events gone differently, Orosco might have been wearing a Cardinals uniform. St. Louis chose him in the seventh round of the January 1977 draft, but the young Californian opted to stay at Santa Barbara City College. A year later, the Minnesota Twins came calling in the second round of the January 1978 draft, and this time Orosco chose to sign.

The Appalachian League played a short season, and it was just getting underway as of June 24. The Twins and Cardinals had faced off in two season-opening games in Johnson City on Friday, June 23, with Elizabethton sweeping the doubleheader, 4-3 and 8-1. Box scores indicate Orosco did not appear in either game. Twins lefty Rubio Malone, a 19-year-old in his second pro season, made the second game memorable by pitching a seven-inning no-hitter, giving up a run on a walk, a stolen base, and two fly-ball outs.3

Elizabethton manager Fred Waters had reached the majors as a player, pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1955 and 1956. Johnson City skipper Nick Leyva, aged 24, had just concluded a three-season playing career that peaked at Double A. He later spent 20 years as a big-league coach and parts of three seasons as a big-league manager with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Most of the players on both teams had careers that were closer to Leyva’s than Waters’s, as only a few reached the big leagues. Besides Orosco, the only member of the 1978 Twins who went on to the major leagues was infielder Lenny Faedo. He went 5-for-8 in the season-opening doubleheader, but injured his shoulder and did not play on June 24.4 Notable contributors in the Twins’ starting lineup included first baseman Ron Grout, who led the team that season with 12 home runs and 40 RBIs, and center fielder and leadoff man Stan Cannon, who paced the team with 19 stolen bases.

The start on the mound went to Bart Nieuwenhuis, a lefty beginning his second pro season. Drafted by the Twins in the second round of the June 1977 amateur draft out of high school in Tombstone, Arizona, he’d gone 0-2 with a 9.38 ERA in eight games with Elizabethton in 1977.5

On the Johnson City side of the ledger, two 1978 Cardinals later made the majors, and both started that night. Catcher George Bjorkman had been chosen by St. Louis out of Oral Roberts University in the fourth round of that month’s amateur draft; he reached the Houston Astros for 29 games in 1983.6 The starting pitcher, 19-year-old Puerto Rican right-hander Luis DeLeón, pitched parts of seven major-league seasons with four teams between 1981 and 1989. DeLeón’s seven wins in 1978 tied teammate Dennis Gadowski for the team lead.

Cardinals starters who made their mark in 1978 but couldn’t make it to the big leagues included designated hitter Jimmy Hickman, a .326 hitter in 67 games and the team’s RBI leader with 38, and first baseman Dave Kable, Johnson City’s homer leader with 8.

The game, Elizabethton’s home opener, began with a somber ceremony. Local resident Stewart Vaughn, considered the Twins’ Number One fan, had been slated to throw out the first ball but died of a heart attack five days before the game. The 1,008 fans on hand honored Vaughn with a moment of silence.7

The peace and quiet ended as soon as the game began, as Johnson City came out slugging in the top of the first. Left fielder Gotay Mills drew a leadoff walk, then scored as center fielder Richard Murray drove a well-hit double to left field. Two outs later, Bjorkman homered to left field, and the Cardinals took a quick 3-0 lead.8

Elizabethton second baseman Kim Nelson9 hit 11 homers in 1978, second on the Twins. He hit his first of the season, a solo homer in the bottom of the first inning, to get the home team on the board. But Johnson City got the run back in the second inning: Third baseman Claudio Brito drew a walk, advanced on shortstop Kelly Miller’s single, and scored when Mills grounded into a double play. The Cardinals led, 4-1.

Twins starter Nieuwenhuis was pulled after two innings, having given up four hits and four runs, all earned, with three walks and a strikeout. He was relieved by righty Steve Green, who cooled off the Cardinals with five innings of four-hit shutout ball.10 Green, a 20-year-old rookie, had been drafted by the Twins that January out of junior college in Modesto, California.

Meanwhile, the Twins chipped back with single runs in the second and third innings. In the second, right fielder Joe Tarver singled, advanced on a walk and a fielder’s choice, and scored from third on a single by catcher Bob Holden. And in the third, Nelson poked his second homer of the game, another solo shot, to make the score 4-3.11

After a long scoreless stretch, both teams made pitching changes in the eighth inning. For the Twins, newcomer Orosco replaced Green. And for the Cardinals, Gadowski entered in relief of DeLeón, who had scattered eight hits and three runs in seven innings. (DeLeón walked the first batter of the eighth before Gadowski was summoned to replace him.)

No news is good news for relief pitchers, and it speaks to the caliber of Orosco and Gadowski’s pitching that newspaper game stories have little specific to say about them. Gadowski pitched two shutout innings, giving up only one walk; Orosco gave up a hit and a walk, but no runs. Gadowski struck out one batter, Orosco two. In the bottom of the ninth, the Twins’ Cannon drew a two-out walk to put the tying run on base. But Gadowski got shortstop Ted Brennecke to pop up, ending the game in 2 hours and 31 minutes.

The Twins went on to win the league title with a 41-28 record, 4½ games ahead of Johnson City. Orosco went 4-4 with 6 saves and a 1.13 ERA in 20 appearances.12 In February 1979 the Twins sent Orosco to the New York Mets to complete their trade for Jerry Koosman. The unheralded Orosco made the Mets’ roster out of spring training. He pitched in his first major-league game on April 5, 1979, in front of 35,615 Opening Day fans at Wrigley Field in Chicago, fewer than 10 months after he made his pro debut in front of a thousand fans in Elizabethton.

After a few seasons trying to lock down a full-time role on the Mets’ staff, Orosco broke through in 1982, appearing in 54 games.13 He went on to win World Series titles in 1986 and 1988;14 make two National League All-Star teams; earn the NL Pitcher of the Month Award in August 1983;  lead the American League in games pitched with 65 in 1995; and pitch in the majors until he was 46. The popularity of left-handed specialist relievers – who made frequent appearances but faced only one or two lefty hitters in high-leverage situations – helped prolong his career and increase his number of games pitched.15

Orosco pitched the final eight games of his career in September 2003 with the Minnesota Twins, taking the mound at last for the team whose Rookie-level affiliate had hosted his pro debut a quarter-century before.16

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team, and season data. Rory Costello’s biography of Jesse Orosco for the SABR Biography Project also served as a primary source.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the June 25, 1978, edition of the Johnson City (Tennessee) Press-Chronicle published a box score.

Image of 1982 Donruss card #646 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 He also appeared in 24 postseason games and one All-Star Game, in 1983. (He was chosen for the National League All-Star team in 1984 but did not pitch.) Only four of his major-league appearances were starts.

2 Orosco led his league in a major statistical category only once: As mentioned later in this story, he led the American League with 65 appearances in 1995 while pitching for the Baltimore Orioles.

3 “Twins-Cardinals Play Here at 8:30 P.M.,” Elizabethton (Tennessee) Star, June 25, 1978: 5A.

4 Bill Lane, “Lucas, Lowe Big Bats Power Braves to 7-5 Victory,” Kingsport (Tennessee) Times, June 27, 1978: 3B.

5 Nieuwenhuis went 0-2 with a 4.50 ERA in five games with Elizabethton in 1978 and then left professional baseball.

6 Orosco and Bjorkman faced off twice as major leaguers. In his big-league debut on July 10, 1983, Bjorkman hit a run-scoring single off Orosco. On July 17, Orosco struck out Bjorkman looking.

7 Jimmy Smyth, “Cards Break Into Victory Column, 4-3,” Johnson City (Tennessee) Press-Chronicle, June 25, 1978: 29; Bill Jenkins, “Sports Talk,” Elizabethton Star, June 21, 1978: 5A.

8 Play-by-play action in this story is primarily taken from Smyth, “Cards Break into Victory Column, 4-3,” with additional contributions from “Twins-Cardinals Play Here at 8:30 P.M.”

9 As of June 2025, Baseball-Reference referred to the player as Miles Nelson, but listed his full name as Miles Kim Nelson. Game recaps from 1978 called him Kim and this story opts for consistency with those accounts.

10 Green also walked a batter and hit one, according to the box score.

11 The Johnson City newspaper’s game account incorrectly reported at one point that Nelson had homered in consecutive innings.

12 The Twins played a 69-game season. Extrapolated to a 162-game season, Orosco’s workload was roughly equivalent to 47 appearances.

13 Orosco pitched in 18 big-league games in 1979 and 8 in 1981, spending most of those seasons and all of 1980 in the minors.

14 Orosco appeared in 55 regular-season games and four National League Championship Series games for the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers. However, he did not pitch in that season’s World Series.

15 In Orosco’s last five big-league seasons, from 1999 to 2003, he pitched in 227 games but worked only 111 1/3 innings. (This usage pattern was typical of left-handed specialist relievers, who generally pitched to one or two key left-handed batters per game.) In 2020 Major League Baseball curtailed the use of “lefty one-out guys” by adopting a rule that a relief pitcher must either face a minimum of three batters or pitch to the end of a half-inning. This change was made to speed the pace of play and shorten game times. “Three-Batter Minimum,” MLB.com, accessed June 2025, https://www.mlb.com/glossary/rules/three-batter-minimum.

16 Elizabethton, which had begun hosting the Twins’ Rookie-level farm team in 1974, continued to do so through the end of the 2019 season.