Former Twins Pitcher and Longtime Great Luis Tiant Dead at 83

Luis Tiant, the 19-year MLB veteran whose poignant life story and vivid style of pitching made him one of the central characters in the greatest single-game drama in the sport's history, passed away Tuesday at age 83.

In an alternate universe where the sport came to a better understanding of the nature and prognosis of pitching injuries much earlier, Tiant might be remembered not for his heroics with the 1970s Red Sox--culminating in a great start in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series--but as the ace of the Twins during the same period. Instead, his legacy among Twins fans is as one piece of the regrettable trade in which Minnesota dealt away eventual great Graig Nettles and got long-term value back.

Tiant had dealt with a sore elbow late in his time with Cleveland, for whom he pitched most of a decade to begin his MLB career. With the Twins, what we would now diagnose as a stress fracture in his shoulder derailed his 1970 season. Back then, pitchers still in their 20s who came up with arm injuries in consecutive seasons were thought to be damaged goods, and all the blame for their inability to perform at their best tended to fall on the players.

Tiant pitched fewer than 100 innings in a Twins uniform. When he suffered what we would now diagnose as an oblique strain in the spring of 1971, Calvin Griffith grew so impatient with the hurler that the team released him outright. The owner went so far as to openly proclaim his belief that Tiant was done--washed up. By the end of that season, it would be painfully obvious how wrong he was. Tiant briefly pitched in the Atlanta organization, then landed with the Red Sox, for whom he made 21 appearances to finish the campaign. The results were mixed, but the signals were encouraging. The next year, Tiant won his second AL ERA title.

Over the next decade, Tiant won 20 or more games for Boston three times, and hung on in the majors past age 40. He pitched 2,193 innings in the majors after Griffith pronounced him professionally dead, and he did it all with ebullience, intensity, and a twisting, deceptive delivery that made him even more famous than his superb performances would have assured.

Tiant is one of the great "what-if" people in Twins history. He was exceptionally good for many years on either side of his one-year stint with the team, but things couldn't have panned out worse for the two parties when they happened upon each other. Sometimes, baseball is like that. In this case, though, all the fault falls to the Twins, who weren't a smart outfit at the time. Even with his tepid contributions, Tiant's 1970 team won 98 games and their second straight AL West championship--but that would be the last time they finished higher than third until 1984.

Still a folk hero and favorite visitor to Red Sox spring training throughout his later years, Tiant was an emblem of the vivacity Latin American players brought to the game in the 1960s and the personality and individual flair players began to demonstrate around that time, transforming the culture of the game for the better. He didn't get to give much of that illuminating effort to the Twins, but he left an indelible impression on the game as a whole.

Are you interested in Twins history? Then check out the Minnesota Twins Players Project, a community-driven project to discover and collect great information on every player to wear a Twins uniform!