Charlie Hough – Dodger Thoughts

Interview: The true no-spin zone with knuckleballer Charlie Hough

On December 17, 2018

In Books, Brothers in Arms, Dodgers, History, Pitching, Podcast

Hey, guess what — the third installment of the Word to the Weisman podcast is already up! Following in the footsteps of Carl Erskine and Burt Hooton is my interview of Charlie Hough, the knuckleballing great who pitched professionally from 1966 to 1994.

Because there was only a couple of pages worth of space for Hough in Brothers in Arms, there are memories galore in this conversation that didn’t make it into the book, including his journey from position player to knuckleballer, comparing and contrasting Walter Alston and Tommy Lasorda, and his thoughts on several Dodger pitchers from across the decades. Hough’s career in baseball as a player, coach and instructor covers roughly 50 years, so trust me, it’s great to hear from him.

Listen below, or click here to listen on iTunes. You can also listen on Spotify. I also recommend you subscribe to the podcast, so you know the moment a new episode is available — especially helpful now, since I don’t have a set schedule.

If you enjoyed this or would like to hear other interviews from me, please let me know in the comments below, or reach out to me @jonweisman on Twitter. Thanks!

Previewing Brothers in Arms …
Part Eight: The Bullpen

By Jon Weisman

On April 16, 2018

In Books, Brothers in Arms, Bullpen, Dodgers, Pitching

Because we already used Clayton Kershaw’s birthday as an excuse to delve into Part 9 of Brothers in Arms: Koufax, Kershaw, and the Dodgers’ Extraordinary Pitching Tradition (order now!), our series of previews ends on Part Eight: The Bullpen.

Niftily, the position of relief pitcher emerged with the Dodgers around the same time as the Dodger pitching tradition itself took root.

For nearly the entire history of the Dodgers before the end of World War II, when their pitching tradition was incubating, almost every pitcher they used in relief was a moonlighting starter. Only three players in Brooklyn history totaled more than 200 innings in relief before 1940, and two of those were swingmen — Watty Clark and Sherry Smith, who started more games than they relieved. The lone exception, Rube Ehrhardt, did mainly pitch out of the pen from 1926 to 1928, with modest effectiveness.

Starting with Hugh Casey in the 1940s, the game changed, and the Dodgers began transforming pitchers who weren’t cut out to be fulltime starters into pitchers who were primarily relievers, and later purely relievers. In the history of Dodger pitching, they play a supporting but key role, occasionally grabbing headlines—some heartbreaking, some thrilling.

Bridges to history: Last links to retired numbers

By Jon Weisman

On February 18, 2016

In History

By Jon Weisman

With the Dodgers celebrating their 10 retired numbers in a pin series this year, I was curious who was the last active player to take the field with each of these legends. Here’s what I found:

1 Pee Wee Reese
Ron Fairly, who was 19 when making his debut with the 40-year-old Reese as a teammate on the 1958 “Welcome to Los Angeles” Dodgers, was 40 himself when he played his last big-league game in 1978. Years between Reese’s first game and Fairly’s last: 38

Matt Kemp’s Opening Day visit to Dodger Stadium is unprecedented

By Jon Weisman

On March 30, 2015

In History, Opening Day

Matt Kemp first faced the Dodgers in a March 12 exhibition game. A week from today, it counts. (Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers)

For photos from Sunday, visit LA Photog Blog.

Dodgers at Diamondbacks, 1:10 p.m.
Jimmy Rollins, SS
Yasiel Puig, RF
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Howie Kendrick, 2B
Carl Crawford, LF
Juan Uribe, 3B
Joc Pederson, CF
A.J. Ellis, C
Brett Anderson, P

By Jon Weisman

If you’re like Vin Scully, and you think it’s going to be weird to see Matt Kemp suit up for the Padres against the Dodgers on Opening Day in his first official career game for another team, you’re right.

Nothing like it has ever happened.

In the history of Dodger Stadium Opening Days, no other former Dodger — let alone one of Kemp’s current magnitude — has made his debut for an opponent before Scully and friends.

There have been a few former Dodgers to play for the opposition at Dodger Stadium on Opening Day, most recently Dave Roberts for the Giants in 2008 and Ismael Valdez for the Padres in 2004, but not very many, and they were always years removed from their last appearance in Dodger blue. (If you want to include road openers, former Dodger knuckleballer Charlie Hough pitched the Marlins’ first MLB game ever, against the Dodgers in 1993.)

Steve Garvey — the biggest name to go directly from Los Angeles to San Diego before Kemp — was at first base for the Padres at Dodger Stadium on Opening Day 1986, but Garvey was already in his fourth season with San Diego.

The highest-profile Dodger ever to play his next game for an opponent on Opening Day at Dodger Stadium was Reggie Smith, who started at first base for the Giants on April 6, 1982 — Los Angeles’ first official game since winning the World Series. Even this couldn’t be considered a big a deal as Kemp. Though revered by this author, Smith was not a career Dodger, and he had already ceased to be an integral part of the team by 1981, collecting seven hits and seven walks the entire year.

To find a Dodger regular who played an Opening Day for an opponent in Los Angeles the very next year, you have to go all the way back to a different venue and the very first Game No. 1 played in Los Angeles: April 12, 1960. (The Dodgers opened on the road for their first two seasons after moving from Brooklyn.) That player was Don Zimmer, who had been pushed to the bench by shortstop Maury Wills midway through the 1959 season.

That’s not to say there wasn’t some shock for local fans: Zimmer was traded to the Cubs on April 8, only four days before the start of the season, which found him at third base for Chicago at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Still, Don Zimmer playing for the Cubs at a Dodger home opener is nothing compared with what it’s going to be like to see Matt Kemp playing right field for the Padres a week from today. Surreal is a word that comes to mind. As Scully put it, the idea of Clayton Kershaw facing Kemp with the game on the line is, for now at least, mind-blowing.

That being said, time marches on, and so eventually will our sensibilities. If we could get used to Garvey in a Padre uniform, anything’s possible. (Well, almost anything.)

June 1 pregame: Notes, notes, everywhere

By Jon Weisman

On June 1, 2014

In History, Pregame

Saturday’s Jon SooHoo photo highlights can be found at LA Photog Blog.

Pirates at Dodgers, 5:10 p.m.
Dee Gordon, 2B
Andre Ethier, CF
Yasiel Puig, RF
Hanley Ramirez, SS
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Matt Kemp, LF
Justin Turner, 3B
Drew Butera, C
Zack Greinke, P

By Jon Weisman

We’re going full notebook for today’s pregame report:

After their 12-2 victory Saturday over Pittsburgh, I had some fun looking up the Dodgers’ record when scoring at least 12 runs since moving to Los Angeles. They are now 182-4 in those games.
Hanley Ramirez, who homered twice in a game for the second time this season, had the first 4 4 4 5 line in Dodger history (since at least 1914) and 17th in MLB history. He’s the first to do it with a stolen base in National League history.
Jamey Wright had the Dodgers’ first three-inning save since Ramon Troncoso in April 2009, and the first save in a game decided by at least 10 runs since Matt Herges on September 10, 2000.
There has been one five-inning save in Dodger history, by Charlie Hough on August 14, 1970. In his shortest start of the decade, Don Sutton was knocked out of the game after retiring only one batter and being charged with five runs. Los Angeles rallied to take the lead with Fred Norman on the mound, setting him up for the win, and then Hough allowed four runs over five innings, facing 24 batters, to pick up the unusual S.

Twenty years

By Jon Weisman

On April 5, 2013

In Dodgers, Life

Twenty years ago, I ditched my graduate school classes at Georgetown to watch the Dodgers’ season-opening game, which happened to be the Florida Marlins’ franchise-opening game.

Twenty years.

That just ain’t right.

I was outlining my first screenplay and just beginning to dream of my second major life decision in a year, moving back from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles to pursue writing for the screen.

I was interested in a girl in school, whom the following month I would have my first date with, and soon fall in love with, greatly complicating the thoughts laid out in the previous paragraph.

I had already loved and lost, both in my personal life and my professional life, the culmination of which helped send me to Washington in the first place.

I was four years out of college and already so much had happened. In four years. And now it’s been 20.

How can this be?

I hardly feel any different from the 25-year-old on the futon in that Woodley Park apartment. But everything around me is so different.

On April 5, 1993, Charlie Hough and the Marlins beat the Dodgers, 6-3. Hough, almost impossibly old for a pitcher, was the same age then that I am now.

Pirates at Dodgers, 7:10 p.m.

Carl Crawford, LF
Mark Ellis, 2B
Matt Kemp, CF
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Luis Cruz, 3B
Andre Ethier, RF
A.J. Ellis, C
Justin Sellers, SS
Zack Greinke, P

Opening Day, 1993

By Jon Weisman

On April 5, 2011

In History, Life

Lynne Sladky/APCharlie Hough was 45 years old when he threw the first pitch for the Florida Marlins.

Eighteen years ago today, I took a day off from grad school classes to stay in my Woodley Park apartment in D.C. and watch the Dodgers’ first game of the 1993 season, a game that also happened to be the Florida Marlins’ first game ever. Charlie Hough, a Dodger when I first became a fan nearly 20 years before, pitched the Marlins to a 6-3 victory over Los Angeles and Orel Hershiser.

It feels like a lifetime ago. Living out of California for the last time, writing my first screenplay, no job, no kids, no girl (though I fancied one). Twenty-five years old and no idea what was to come.

I can still feel the sun coming into my barely furnished apartment, the living room wide enough to swing a bat in. My brain was heavy, as it has so often been, but I was traveling light.

Opening Day marches to March

By Jon Weisman

On January 6, 2011

In Uncategorized

In what figures to be a sterling matchup between Clayton Kershaw and Tim Lincecum, the Dodgers and Giants will play a rescheduled Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium on March 31 at 5 p.m.

Of course, Kershaw has to unseat incumbent Opening Day starter Vicente Padilla to make that matchup happen.

The new date is the result of discussions that apparently included the possibility of moving Opening Day to San Francisco for theatricality’s sake (i.e., honoring the World Series champions at home). Happily, the Dodgers were not forced to oblige. ESPN will still televise the game nationally.

Roberto Baly of Vin Scully Is My Homeboy has been monitoring this situation like no other.

* * *

You know the story, but Amy K. Nelson of ESPN.com retells the tale of umpire Jim Joyce after his missed perfect game call in moving detail.
Former Dodger Delwyn Young signed a non-roster contract with Philadelphia. Meanwhile, twice-former teammate Andy LaRoche is still out there.
Though I’m hardly tired of reading praise for Rich Lederer, let’s not forget Jay Jaffe’s contributions to the Hall of Fame campaign for Bert Blyleven.
It’s Charlie Hough Week: Evan Bladh Sr. of Opinion of Kingman’s Performance (a relatively new blog you should check out) discusses why Hough flourished as a starting pitcher only after leaving the Dodgers.

Could Eric Chavez help?

By Jon Weisman

On January 5, 2011

In Uncategorized

If Eric Chavez can perform better in a January 20 workout than, say, Chien-Ming Wang in a parking lot, the Dodgers might have a new part-time third baseman.

Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reported the scheduled workout:

Chavez has been working out at the Athletes’ Performance center in Arizona five days a week and he said that after three-plus years of injury problems, he is feeling good, he’s taking grounders at third and his problematic right shoulder, operated on twice, is much better.

“The throwing has been unreal,” he said in a text. “I need to see live pitching to judge the hitting accurately, but things look good.”

Chavez probably would be signed to a non-guaranteed deal, given his history, but the Dodgers are believed to have strong interest if his health checks out OK. Chavez has stated a preference for playing in Southern California, and he has spoken to Dodgers manager Don Mattingly and is impressed with him.

Chavez OPSed over .800 against righties every year from 2000-2006, which would make him an enticing platoon partner for Casey Blake, but he hasn’t had even a semi-productive season since 2007.

* * *

On the occasion of his 63rd birthday, here’s a great recap of Dodger senior player development advisor Charlie Hough’s career at Big League Stew:

… He’s the only pitcher ever with both 400 relief appearances and 400 starts. He was drafted as a third baseman, but his first minor league manager, Tommy Lasorda, decided to convert him to the mound. (“You might as well pitch. You can’t do anything else,” Lasorda told him.)

Hough learned the knuckler from a coach named Goldie Holt, and the Dodgers hired the 47-year-old Hoyt Wilhelm to help him master it. Wilhelm continued to pitch for two more seasons, retiring two weeks before his 50th birthday.

Hough was the last knuckleballer in the All-Star game before Tim Wakefield’s charity appearance in 2009. And Hough’s performance in the 1986 Midsummer Classic was legendary. He allowed a leadoff double to the Giants’ Chris Brown, then struck out the next two batters — except that Hough’s catcher, Rich Gedman of the Red Sox, failed to catch either of the third strikes, which meant that Brown scored the National League’s first run on a strikeout-wild pitch followed by a strikeout-passed ball. He is still the all-time leading winner in the history of the Texas Rangers, one of the best Hawaiian-born players and one of Reggie Jackson’s three victims in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series. …

* * *

Via Baseball Musings, pitcher Dirk Hayhurst has a message for youth coaches that’s a good read.

* * *

Phil Wallace offers his picks for the 10 best and 10 most disappointing Dodger acquisitions of the past 25 years at L.A. Observed’s Native Intelligence.

* * *

I can’t say good night without offering a parting salute to Mike Schneider, my Variety colleague who is leaving this month to head the Los Angeles bureau of TV Guide. Mike is simply one of the best, brightest and most fun people I have ever worked with, and though we’ll march on without him, the office just won’t be the same. But I’m wishing him the best of luck on an opportunity I know he’s so excited about, and thinking now I’ll definitely have to make time for a Great Los Angeles Walk.

Dodger Thoughts

Jon Weisman's outlet for dealing psychologically with the Los Angeles Dodgers, baseball and life

Tag: Charlie Hough

Interview: The true no-spin zone with knuckleballer Charlie Hough

Previewing Brothers in Arms …
Part Eight: The Bullpen

Bridges to history: Last links to retired numbers

Matt Kemp’s Opening Day visit to Dodger Stadium is unprecedented

June 1 pregame: Notes, notes, everywhere

Twenty years

Opening Day, 1993

Opening Day marches to March

Could Eric Chavez help?

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