Card
thoughts: I thought this Joe Cowley was this jerky Sun-times columnist,
but apparently I was wrong.
The player: Cowley spent 9 years in the Braves system,
but never pitched much with them in the majors—which is telling, because from 1981-1984
(when Cowley was at AAA), their major league pitching staff was no great shakes.
After essentially
being released by the Braves in 1983, Cowley was picked up by the Yankees as
AAA insurance for their starters. But the Yankees only had Ron Guidry and Phil
Neikro as regular starters that year, and Cowley was rotated into the rotation
in July. He performed surprisingly well, going 9-2 with a 3.68 ERA.
Cowley was even
better in the season shown on this card. With a 12-6 record, with winning
percentage was in the top ten in the league. He was helped by the Yankees high
power offense, however, as his peripherals that season were pretty bad: 85
walks to 97 strikeouts, and 29 home runs given up in just over 159 innings. Cowley
couldn’t even field well.
Realizing they had
lightning in the bottle, the Yankees made a rare wise trade (for the time), and
sent Cowley to the White Sox for Britt Burns and a few minor leaguers. With the
Sox, he continued to walk tons of guys, although his strikeouts were up a tad. His
11-11 record wasn’t so great, however, although some of that can be attributed
to the poor White Sox offense backing him up.
But notably,
Cowley threw one of the more improbable no-hitters in major league history. You
usually think of no-hitters as a crisp, well-thrown game. This was decidedly
not. Cowley was in trouble all game, and at one point walked three batters in a
row (with no outs). However, he got out of it by just giving up a sacrifice
fly. Those three walks were out of seven on the day, and he won the game 7-1.
Cowley would
never win another major league game. He went 0-2 the rest of the season, and
then gave up 17 hits and 21 walks in just 11 2/3 innings with the Phillies in
1987 (he only made it past the fifth inning in one of those four starts. He
gave up 7, 5, 5 and 6 runs in those starts. ). So Cowley is the last pitcher to
have his last win be a no-hitter.
Rear guard: You might think Cowley was a veteran by
looking at this card back, but no. Those are almost all minor league teams.
Topps standard back then was if a player had less than 3 years experience, they
showed the minor league record. If you squint hard, you can see he played with
the Braves (tucked away in there in 1982).
As a kid, though, all those
unknown towns were exciting. Cowley’s best minor league year as a starter was
with Greenwood Greenwood Greenwood
