The Arm, Not the Eye

The Herb Score story usually gets told as a tragedy with a single frame: May 7, 1957, a Gil McDougald liner, a 23-year-old on the mound at Municipal Stadium with his face broken. Everyone remembers where the career ended. Almost nobody argues with the diagnosis.

Score did. He came back in 1958, blew out his elbow, changed his delivery to protect it, and spent the rest of his life telling anyone who asked that the arm was what took the fastball, not the eye. He held no grudge against McDougald either. He called it part of the game and meant it.

What gets lost in all of it is how good he actually was. Two seasons, two strikeout titles, the first pitcher in the modern era to fan 200 in each of his first two years, 20 wins and a 2.53 ERA at 23. Against the Yankees in '55 and '56 he was 3-1 with 54 strikeouts in 56 and two-thirds innings. That is the part worth holding onto: not the what-if, but the what-was.