Spirit of '66: Moe Drabowsky

Born in Poland, he was a World Series star and perhaps baseball's greatest-ever prankster. The post includes my narration of a feature article I wrote about him after I interviewed him years ago.

I had to make difficult editorial decisions in 1986 when I wrote a series of articles for the Baltimore Sun about players on the Orioles’ World Series-winning 1966 club and what they were doing two decades later. Thirty-four guys played on that team. I couldn't write about all of them.

It was hard to leave out the big names, but Frank Robinson, the key to the 1966 season, was on the Orioles’ coaching staff two decades later, so most fans already knew what he was doing. They also were up to date on Jim Palmer and Brooks Robinson, who were working as analysts on the club’s television broadcasts.

So while I didn’t feature Palmer or either Robinson in the series, I did write about nearly a dozen former Orioles such as Boog Powell, Dave McNally, Curt Blefary and Wally Bunker. And Moe Drabowsky, of course.

I couldn't author a series on that team without featuring Drabowsky.

No one played a more important role in the Orioles’ stunning sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1966 World Series. Drabowsky came out of the bullpen in the third inning of Game 1 with the Orioles ahead, 4-1, but with McNally, the starting pitcher, on the ropes, having already issued five walks. The day before, while giving the players a scouting report on the Dodgers, Orioles scout Jim Russo had warned that the Dodgers feasted on fastballs. But Drabowsky started throwing fastballs right by them and never stopped. He pitched the rest of the game, striking out 11 and allowing just one hit as the Orioles won, 5-2. Palmer, Bunker and McNally then followed his lead, relying on fastballs to throw shutouts in the next three games.

Six years later, Drabowsky finished his 17-year major league career with a losing record (88-105), having appeared in 589 games for the Orioles and seven other teams. But his outing in Game 1 of the 1966 World Series definitely belongs on the short list of greatest relief appearances ever.

Another reason I couldn't omit him from my Baltimore Sun series was, quite simply, I like a good story and Drabowsky was the most interesting figure I’d come across in baseball. That’s still the case nearly four decades later. There isn’t anyone else in the game with a story like his.

Mike Royko, the legendary Chicago newspaper columnist, once wrote that Drabowsky was “the best pitcher that Ozanna, Poland ever produced,” which is certainly true as there are no others. Born in Ozanna in 1935, Drabowsky and his mother, an American citizen married to a Polish citizen, escaped the Nazis and emigrated to the United States when Moe was three. His father came the next year and the family settled in Connecticut.

Early on, it appeared Drabowsky was headed for a coat-and-tie existence. Good grades at a prep school earned him an academic scholarship to Trinity College, where he studied business and finance. He would later put his degree to use as a stockbroker.

But he also played baseball, building a stellar record as a right-handed pitcher in high school, college and during stints in a summer league in Nova Scotia, of all places. That’s where a scout for the Chicago Cubs saw him and signed him to a contract with a significant bonus — so significant that Drabowsky was designated a “bonus baby,” which meant he had to begin his pro career in the major leagues.

He debuted with the Cubs at age 20 in 1956, coming straight from Nova Scotia. Such jarring transitions ruined the careers of many excellent prospect in the late ‘50s, before the ill-advised bonus-baby ruled was eliminated. But Drabowsky endured. He won 13 games for the Cubs as a 21-year-old starter in 1957.

Gradually, though his performance tailed off and he began a winding journey, bouncing between the rotations and bullpens of the Cubs, Milwaukee Braves, Cincinnati Reds and Kansas City A’s, with occasional injuries and several minor league demotions mixed in. He was a capable major league pitcher, but for a long time, he was best known as the foil in a handful of historic moments. He tied a major league record in 1957 when he hit four batters, including future teammate Frank Robinson twice, in a single outing. When pitcher Early Wynn recorded his three hundredth win in 1963, Drabowsky was the loser. A year later, he hung a breaking ball that former Oriole Dave Nicholson hit entirely out of Comiskey Park — one of the longest home runs ever.

Drabowsky mostly just laughed about making history the wrong way. He had a twinkle in his eye and a devilish sense of humor, and that side of him began to emerge in earnest when he joined the Orioles at age 30 in 1966 and became an effective reliever on a top club. Eventually, he would be best remembered as one of baseball’s greatest practical jokers — another reason I couldn’t possibly omit him from the list of players featured in my 1986 Baltimore Sun series.

“Moe was basically insane. That’s all there was to it,” Boog Powell told me.

This Bird Tapes post includes my audiobook-style narration of the feature I wrote about Drabowsky in 1986 (see below), and full disclosure, I had to stop multiple times while I was recording because I hadn’t read the story in years and was laughing so hard about Drabowsky’s practical jokes.

Early in a game in Kansas City on May 27, 1966, he picked up the phone in the Orioles’ bullpen, dialed the opposing bullpen and, imitating Kansas City’s manager, ordered a relief pitcher to warm up. Feeling guilty, he called back soon thereafter and told the pitcher to sit down. Kansas City’s players were mystified until Drabowsky admitted what he’d done.

Another time, Drabowsky used the phone to order Chinese food and have it delivered to the bullpen during a game.

These were the years before teams traveled on charter planes, so long hours were spent in airports. To amuse himself and his teammates, Drabowsky tied a string to a dollar bill and tossed it on the concourse floor. When a stranger spotted the bill and reach down to pick it up, Drabowsky yanked the string and the dollar bill flitted away from the baffled stranger as everyone roared.

When I interviewed him years later, Drabowsky explained that his pranks were his way of easing the pressure of pitching for a contending team in the major leagues. But he also turned practical jokes into a high art form.

During the 1966 season, Drabowsky brought snakes into the clubhouse to scare teammates and surreptitiously lit the shoes and pants of unsuspecting sportswriters on fire while they interviewed players in the clubhouse by giving them a “hot foot,” which was shorthand for sticking a match in their shoelaces and setting it aflame. He had to crawl up behind his target, position the match and light it without being detected, seemingly qualifying for a role in “Mission Impossible.”

“His parents obviously didn’t let him play with toys when he was little, so he had a lot of catching up to do,” Powell said.

On the last day of the 1969 season, while playing for the Kansas City Royals, Drabowsky orchestrated a mock funeral in the bullpen around a reliever who’d celebrated too hard the night before and passed out on the ground. When a television camera caught Drabowsky seemingly preaching above his prone teammate, phone lines were flooded with callers asking, “Did someone die out in the bullpen?”

When the Orioles made the World Series without him in 1969, he paid $150 to rent a plane that flew over Memorial Stadium during a game with a banner attached. “Good Luck Birds, Beware of Moe,” read the banner.

He knew he was getting old and near time to retire when he tried to toss a cherry bomb into the teepee of the Atlanta Braves’ mascot in 1972, but missed his target and almost blew up Lou Brock, his teammate on the St. Louis Cardinals.

That was his last season in the majors.

Note the twinkle in his eye

Drabowsky went into business in Chicago after he retired, but returned to baseball in 1986, the year I interviewed him for the Sun, when the White Sox hired him to coach their relief pitchers. It was an interesting and early foray into the specialization that would become commonplace in sports decades later, but the White Sox quickly soured on the idea and reassigned him to another job in the organization. In our interview, Drabowsky lamented that the game had changed since his retirement.

“The players are so serious now,” he said. “I think you could still get away with the stuff I did, but no one does.”

Practical jokes aside, Drabowsky loved studying — and teaching — the art of pitching, and was an early proponent of using film to make his points. Until his health began to fail in the 2000s, he continued to coach pitchers and, fulfilling what others expected of him, continued to bring snakes around and pull other pranks at the fantasy camps he regularly attended. Anyone who spent time with him could only agree with what a boy from South Dakota wrote Drabowsky back in 1966.

“Baseball needs more nuts like you,” the boy wrote.

(Note from John Eisenberg: Push the play button below to hear my narration of my 1986 Baltimore Sun story about Drabowsky. This is a free post, available to all subscribers. To gain access to my archive of vintage interviews with former Oriole players, managers, front office executives and broadcasters, upgrade to a paid subscription by clicking on the “subscribe now” button below. The Bird Tapes archive will grow in 2025 as I post new interviews about Orioles history with former players, executives, broadcasters and newspaper beat writers.)