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Kent Tekulve
At the Pirates’ minor-league pitching camp in 1970, Harding Peterson, the team’s minor-league director, told two pitching prospects to abandon their side-arm pitching delivery. Fortunately, neither listened, as each would become a Pirate World Series hero, with Bruce Kison starring in 1971 and Kent Tekulve in 1979 with the “We Are Family” champs. During offseason banquets, Tekulve said, “That’s how smart you need to be as the general manager of a World Series champion.” - SABR
And from the New York Times Oct. 13 1979 in an article titled "What is a Kent Tekulve?"
PITTSBURGH, Oct. 12 — Relief pitchers come in all shapes, sizes and styles. Goose Gossage cuts down batters the way a lumberjack cuts down trees. Stu Miller was so small that a wind once blew him off the mound. Mike Marshall lectures on kinesiology. Ryne Duren could just about see the plate through his bottle‐thick glasses. Rollie Fingers waxes his mustache. Hoyt Wilhelm fluttered his knuckleball until he was 49 years old. Sparky Lyle wrote his memoirs. And now there is Kenton Charles Tekulve of the Pittsburgh Pirates, gaunt and gangling, who throws as if he were slipping $5 to a maitre d’ under the table. Including his two hitless innings in the Pirates’ 8‐4 loss tonight that moved the Baltimore Orioles into a 2‐1 lead in the World Series, he has appeared in 98 games this year without any apparent distress in his thin right arm.
“I have the kind of arm that doesn't tighten up,” Kent Tekulve says. “Maybe that's because there are no muscles in it.” At a skinny 160 pounds, Kent Tekulve resembles a cross between Gomer Pyle, Ichabod Crane and a scarecrow. He is all arms and legs and face, almost as if he had no torso. But what makes him different, as well as difficult to hit, is his delivery. “I'm somewhere between sidearm and submarine,” he says. “But the reason I'm effective is not so much where the ball is coming from, as that it's coming from a different spot.”
I did a Kent Tekulve way back on this thread when I first started posting so the "before" is my own. This time I closed the mouth so I do like it better. It's a tough one regardless. Not sure if the glasses will stick on a mac, percolaten...
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