Before Luis Tiant became the darling of Boston fans, he was a pretty good pitcher with the Cleveland Indians. As you may remember, Tiant pitched some rather good post-season baseball in 1975. He beat the A’s in game 1 of the ALCS and then won 2 games against the Reds in the World Series. His complete Game 4 performance is still talked about in Boston.
On this day in 1968, Cuban-born Luis Tiant was just awesome: 19 Ks in 10 innings as Cleveland beat Minnesota 1-0! A couple of weeks later, Tiant was the AL starter in the 1968 All Star game. He pitched 2 innings and gave up the game’s only run. The NL beat the AL, 1-0.
Tiant finished the 1968 season: 21-9, a 1.60 ERA, 264 strikeouts and 19 complete games. Unfortunately for Tiant, Denny McLain won 31 games that year and ran away with the AL Cy Young award.
Tiant’s excellent pitching put the Indians in 3rd place behind Detroit in the last season before divisions. Overall, Luis Tiant won 229 games, with a 3.30 ERA and 187 complete games.
On this day in 1968, he was awesome.
