Johnny Podres: Pitcher, coach dies at 75

Johnny Podres, the crusty, sad-faced baseball lifer who helped transform the long-suffering Brooklyn Dodgers into world champions and Curt Schilling into one of baseball's best pitchers, died Sunday at 75.

Mr. Podres' wife, Joan, said he died at a hospital in Glens Falls, N.Y., near their longtime home in Queensbury. She said her husband, a chain smoker, had been suffering from heart and kidney ailments and was being treated for a leg infection.

A lefthander, he compiled a 148-116 record during a 15-year career in which his considerable talents often were obscured by Dodgers teammates such as Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. Still, Mr. Podres led the National League in ERA and shutouts in 1957, went 18-5 in 1961, and was a four-time all-star.

Later he became a pitching coach, working with the Minnesota Twins and the Phillies. He came to Philadelphia in 1991, left in '96 for health reasons, and remained with the club as a part-time roving instructor.

Still, Mr. Podres always will be recalled as the man whose near-mythical Yankee Stadium victory in 1955's Game 7 gave perennial bridesmaid Brooklyn - seven times a World Series loser - its first and only world championship.

"I guarantee, there was more celebrating in Brooklyn that day than there was for the end of World War II," Buzzie Bavasi, the Dodgers' general manager, once said.

Mr. Podres, who took part in that celebration and many, many more during his colorful half-century in the game, was the MVP of that World Series. Forever afterward, the personalized license plates on his cars read "MVP-55," a rare display of vanity from the self-effacing man who was a dead ringer for silent-film comedian Buster Keaton.

Four decades later, he was manager Jim Fregosi's pitching coach when the 1993 Phillies won their unlikely NL pennant. His ace was Schilling, who had come to Philadelphia the year before as a reliever uncertain of his stuff and his future.

Schilling, who became a disciple of Mr. Podres and his low-key but hyper-positive style, loved to tell the story of how that transformation began during their first meeting.

"I was coming from a bad situation in Houston," Schilling recalled in a 1995 interview. "The stadium was empty that day, and it was raining as we walked down to the bullpen. He asked to see my fastball, so I showed him a two-seamer, which is what I threw then."

"What the hell was that?" Podres barked.

"A fastball," Schilling said.

"That ain't no [expletive] fastball. That's a [expletive] sinker," replied the pitching coach, spitting out the final word.

Podres lunged for the ball, grabbed it across four seams, displayed the grip to Schilling, and handed the ball back. What followed was a fastball - and a career - that rose.

"Now that," said Podres, pacing, puffing, pleased, "is a [expletive] big-league fastball."

Yesterday, Schilling noted Mr. Podres' passing on his blog, 38 Pitches.

"Outside of the Lord, my wife and my father, there was no person who impacted my life more than Johnny Podres," Schilling, now a staple with the world-champion Boston Red Sox, wrote. "He asked everything of me and always got everything I had. He made me realize the only limits in my life were self-imposed."

Mr. Podres was old-school. He was quiet, grizzled and gruff, and disdained technological advances in the game, like computerized charts.

"I don't know nothin' about computers," he said. "I know pitchers."

He roamed the Phillies clubhouse, with one hand in a back pocket, a cigarette between his lips, blurting out often-incongruous questions to whoever crossed his path.

"Who won that game last night?" he'd suddenly ask a reporter.

"What time's the bus?" he might ask a clubhouse attendant or, "Think it might rain?"

He was friendly with reporters but always reluctant to say too much - especially about himself.

"I don't like to talk about what I do," Podres said in '95. "All I do is my job, what I'm supposed to do. The guys pitching are the ones getting people out. They're throwing the ball. I don't get complicated. I just tell them: Make your [hip] turn. Stay down. Keep your shoulder in. Extend. And throw the [expletive] ball."

That reticence came through in his dealings with the Phillies' pitchers, most of whom adored him. He kept his instructions short, sweet and uplifting.

"Sometimes," Mr. Podres said, "when a guy is going bad, you got to bull [expletive] him. Tell him how great he is. Pick him up."

That tactic worked wonders with Schilling, who had come to Philadelphia after unsuccessful stays in Boston and Houston, and others on that patchwork staff.

"He was the best pitching coach I ever had," said Mitch Williams, the ex-Phils closer who's now a Comcast commentator. "He was the only one that dealt with the mental side of the game, the most positive person and, again, hands down the best pitching coach I ever pitched for. He will be missed."

Mr. Podres smoked heavily, and, by his own admission, drank too much at certain stages in his life. He loved nothing more than watching young pitchers and betting the horses, particularly the trotters and pacers.

But he was a pitcher, not a handicapper. He'd tell anyone who would listen about just-missed quinellas or lucrative trifectas some ill-timed turn of fate had foiled.

"If Johnny's got money on the horse you like," Fregosi, another racing lover, liked to say, "you might as well tear up your ticket."

As a coach, he kept it simple. His typical message when visiting the mound was positive. When it wasn't, he would tell the struggling hurler that "Jimmy's getting [ticked]. You better start throwing it over the plate."

"He was a great pitching coach, got his points across with no pressure," said Larry Bowa, who also was on Fregosi's staff. "I know I learned a lot from him. He never talked a lot about his career but when you look at the numbers, he was special. Johnny had the knack of being dead serious about baseball and a minute later, having everyone laughing. He was a very funny man."

Mr. Podres was born in the Adirondack Mountains town of Witherbee, N.Y., where his father was an iron-ore miner. He signed with the Dodgers out of high school and made his big-league debut in 1953.

Mr. Podres was just 9-10 as a 22-year-old on that 1955 Boys of Summer team that included Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Gil Hodges.

But in the World Series, he beat Bob Turley with a complete game in Game 3, on his 23d birthday. Then, using the signature circle change-up and a fastball that darted in and out of Yankee Stadium's afternoon shadows, he shut out the Yankees in Game 7.

"When I heard of Johnny's passing, my mind went back to Yankee Stadium, 1955, the seventh game of the World Series," former teammate Don Newcombe said. "I thank God for Johnny Podres, as I do all the time. I remember how confident he was in the clubhouse before Game 7. [Manager] Walter Alston called a meeting and Johnny said, 'Just give me one run.' Well they gave him two, and we were champs. He was a man of his word, he lived up to his word, and I appreciate it."

Podres was traded to Detroit in 1966 and finished his playing career with the San Diego Padres.

"I loved the guy," Phillies chairman Bill Giles said. "He was a true character and great fun to be around. He was a great example of why working in baseball is so enjoyable. He was a great pitching coach and was able to instill confidence in the pitchers he worked with. I don't believe the Phillies would have won the 1993 pennant without Johnny."

In addition to his wife, Mr. Podres is survived by sons John Jr. of Queensbury, and Joseph of Fort Myers, Fla.; and brothers Thomas of Watervliet, N.Y., and Walter of California.

Funeral arrangements were pending.