LOVERRO: Tiant demanded attention, respect be paid to his artistry on the mound and off

There we were, Luis Tiant and I, sitting outside at a bar in Savannah, Georgia, drinking beer, smoking cigars and talking baseball.

That should be it right there. That should be the column. What else would there need to be said? How does it get any better than that? On the list of life experiences, hanging out with El Tiante would rank pretty high.

But, hey, they don’t pay me for writing two-paragraph columns, and, anyway, there is so much more to this great Cuban pitcher who was one of the most colorful and beloved players in the history of the game.

Like, what was Luis Tiant doing in Savannah in 1998?

Tiant passed away Tuesday at the age of 83. He was born on Nov. 23, 1940, the son of a Cuban baseball pitcher. Tiant left Cuba in 1959 after Fidel Castro took over and pitched in Mexico for three years before being signed by the Cleveland Indians.

He was a hard-throwing right-hander during his years with the Indians, posting a 66-44 record over five seasons, including a 21-9 mark in 1968 with a remarkable 1.60 ERA and 264 strikeouts. The following year, though, he developed arm problems and went 9-20, and was traded to the Minnesota Twins, but blew out his shoulder there and was released by the Twins in 1971.

Tiant remade himself with a new motion that became his signature on the mound, twisting his body toward second base before he delivered the ball to the plate. The Boston Red Sox signed Tiant to a minor league contract, and soon he was back in the major leagues, going 122-81 in eight seasons with Boston and becoming an iconic figure with his pitching performances in the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, winning two games and throwing 173 pitches in his Game 4 victory.

He would leave the Red Sox in 1979 and sign with their rivals, the New York Yankees, where he spent two seasons. He would finish his career with the California Angels in 1982. He compiled a career record of 229-172 with a 3.30 ERA and 2,416 strikeouts. But he was so much more than his record. Tiant was an artist on the mound, one of the best of his time, and beloved as a teammate.

“Unless you’ve played with him, you can’t understand what Luis means to a team, what it is to play behind him,” former Boston teammate Dwight Evans said in “Beyond the Sixth Game,” the book by Peter Gammons. “Off the field, he keeps a team loose. It is as if he knows exactly when to clown and when to be serious. If you play this game long enough, you know that the bus rides and plane rides along the road are vitally important, and Luis knows exactly when to turn a bus ride into something out of a ’Saturday Night Live’ [sketch]. And there’s no way of describing it.

“Then when it comes to going to the mound, well, as great as Catfish Hunter and Jim Palmer were, if I’d had one game I had to win, I’d have wanted Luis Tiant pitching for me,” Evans said.

Even in his brief time with the Yankees, Tiant impacted his teammates. “Even though we only played together for a couple of years, I could see he had a big impact on players,” said former Yankees catcher Rick Cerone. “He kept everybody loose.

“He loved to roller skate,” Cerone said. “It was the funniest thing to see Luis Tiant in the catacombs of Yankee Stadium, with kneepads, arm pads, shorts, and a big, old cigar, skating around the inside of Yankee Stadium.

“He’s one of the best guys I ever met in the game,” Cerone said.

Tiant is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he winds up inducted posthumously. He is up for consideration next year by the Classic Baseball Era committee.  

That would anger him because Tiant demanded attention and respect be paid to his artistry when he was alive.

“It used to bother me but not anymore,” Tiant told me. “I want to be in there, don’t get me wrong. I think I deserve to be there. Maybe in two or three years, they will put me in. If they don’t put me in one way, maybe they will another. Hopefully, I will be still alive then. What good is it to put me in the Hall of Fame when I’m dead? What are you going to do if they put you in the Hall of Fame when you’re 70 or 80 years old? How can you enjoy that? You can’t even have a beer to celebrate.”

It frustrated him that he didn’t have a bigger role in the game after he was done playing.

“You see guys in the big leagues coaching and managing, and they’ve never done anything in baseball,” Tiant said. “A lot of guys who were good or great players, they can’t have a job. And if you want a job, you have to call them. And even when you call, they tell you we don’t have nothing open. We’ll let you know. Then the next day you watch TV, and they hired somebody else for the same job you were asking about. That makes you feel upset. It make you feel bad.

“Nobody is going to tell me nothing about pitching, I guarantee you that,” he said. “The best guys, even the ones that win 300 games, they don’t know more about pitching than me.”

That’s why he was in Savannah in 1998, coaching a bunch of art students.

Where else would you expect to find Picasso?

His team of art students was struggling on the field. “You have to be ready to have some mistakes made, and that’s why we are losing this year,” Tiant said. “We are making mistakes. They know. I don’t have to keep telling them. They tell me, `Coach, we play bad, Coach we stink.’ I tell them forget about it, just try to do better next game and play a little harder.”

Tiant lasted four seasons in Savannah. His teams went 55-97. In 2002, when Larry Lucchino and the new owners took over the Red Sox, they brought Tiant home to Boston as a special pitching instructor. It helped heal an open wound the franchise suffered when he left.

Carl Yastrzemski, in Gammon’s book: “When they let Luis Tiant go to New York, they tore out our heart and soul.”

⦁ You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.