Latest news with #RonTaylor
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Key 1969 ‘Miracle Mets' pitcher passes away at 87
Apr 9, 2012; Toronto, ON, Canada; Former pitcher Ron Taylor throws out the ceremonial first pitch before the Boston Red Sox game against the Toronto Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-Imagn Images The post Key 1969 'Miracle Mets' pitcher passes away at 87 appeared first on ClutchPoints. In 1969, man walked on the moon, Woodstock rocked the world, and Joe Namaith guaranteed a Super Bowl win. In addition, the 'Miracle Mets' won their first World Series in franchise history, one of the most improbable runs in all of sports. Advertisement One of their members, relief pitcher Ron Taylor, died on Monday at the age of 87, per John Sparaco of Sports Illustrated. Taylor had been battling a serious illness. Taylor was born in 1937 in Toronto, Canada. He played 11 seasons (1962-1972) in MLB as a relief pitcher. He played for the Mets, the then Cleveland Indians (now Guardians), the St. Louis Cardinals, the Houston Astros, and the San Diego Padres. He finished with an overall record of 45-43. Plus, Taylor had a 3.93 ERA, 464 strikeouts, and 47 saves. In his post-baseball years, Taylor enrolled in medical school at the University of Toronto. Advertisement In 1977, he became a physician and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 1979, Taylor was the team physician for the Toronto Blue Jays. He served in that role for more than three decades and was part of the Blue Jays winning back-to-back World Series in 1992 and 1993. In 1985, Taylor was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. He had quite the career, but his most significant legacy was being a part of that magical run in 1969. Who were the 1969 'Miracle Mets'? The 'Miracle Mets' went from seven years in last place to 100 wins in '69. They overcame a huge deficit against the Chicago Cubs to win the National League East Division by eight games. Advertisement The Mets were led by a talented group of starting pitchers, including Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, and Jerry Koosman. Not to be outdone, Taylor was an integral part of the bullpen. That year, he had a 2.72 ERA in 59 appearances and had 13 saves. Taylor recorded a save in a 2-1 win during Game 2 of the World Series against the Baltimore Orioles. The Mets went on to win the series in five games, cementing their place in the history books. Related: Mets reliever Brooks Raley takes massive step from injury return Related: Mets' Carlos Mendoza reveals date for Mark Vientos rehab stint
Globe and Mail
19-06-2025
- Sport
- Globe and Mail
Blue Jays team doctor Ron Taylor won two World Series as pitcher
Ron Taylor's major-league debut as a pitcher was so spectacular as to make the record books, even though he lost the game. The right-hander went on to win World Series championships with two different teams, the only Canadian ever to have done so. After 11 seasons in the majors, he returned to the University of Toronto as a mature student to complete a medical degree. After graduation, he spent more than three decades as the club physician for the Toronto Blue Jays, earning the nickname Dr. Baseball. Dr. Taylor, who has died at 87, was known for a quick-witted sense of humour offered with a deadpan delivery and a downcast expression that eased the sting of even the sharpest barb. In the minor leagues as a university student, he was granted permission to report late after completing his semester's exams. When he finally arrived in the clubhouse with the season well under way, he would announce, 'Okay, guys, I'm taking one of your jobs away.' Ronald Wesley Taylor was born in Toronto on Dec. 13, 1937, to the former Maude Elizabeth Evans, a Welsh immigrant, and Wesley Walter Taylor, a salesman for the Dunlop Tire and Rubber Goods Co. The skinny boy began playing organized baseball at the age of 8 in the Leaside Baseball Association, where a coach converted the budding first baseman into a pitcher. A natural left-hander, his mother forced him to use his right hand. 'Insist? She tied my left hand behind my back,' Dr. Taylor once told biographer Maxwell Kates. He worked on his pitching with his father serving as catcher in the driveway of the family home, a semi-detached, two-storey brick house at 75 Banff Rd. The house was a short walk to Howard Talbot Park, the home to Leaside baseball and a training ground for Toronto's best baseball players, though he later recalled his earliest games were played on a swampy diamond. He was dominating batters several years older even while he was earning academic honours as a high-school student at North Toronto Collegiate. His pitching caught the attention of Chester Dies, a baseball scout and retired sheet-metal worker whose own ball career ended when he lost an eye in an industrial accident. On Labour Day weekend in 1955, the scout bought the 17-year-old prospect a train ticket to Cleveland, where he was an unannounced walk-up at a tryout camp. Blue Jay Ron Taylor to relive Miracle Mets memories After watching his pitching for three days at an empty Municipal Stadium, Cleveland signed him to a US$4,000 bonus. His father had to wire approval on behalf of the underaged athlete. Of 250 players invited to Cleveland's spring training in 1956, the pitcher was assigned uniform No. 247. 'I knew that T was low in the alphabet,' he later told Mr. Kates, 'but not that low.' He was assigned to Florida's Daytona Beach Islanders, a Class-D team at the bottom of baseball's ladder, the beginning of a six-season odyssey through Cleveland's system including stints with Minnesota's Fargo-Moorhead Twins; North Dakota's Minot Mallards; Pennsylvania's Reading Indians; and Utah's Salt Lake City Bees. With management's reluctant permission to attend school, the pitcher managed to complete a science degree in engineering at the University of Toronto. 'When I graduated among the top five in my class I had job offers from 17 companies,' he told the sportswriter Earl McRae in 1972. 'They were good jobs, too, I could have made good money. But baseball was in my blood, so I listened to the offers and then chose baseball.' On April 11, 1962, the 6-foot-2, 195-pound (1.88-metres, 88-kilogram) pitcher made his debut with Cleveland in Boston. Only 2,466 fans were at Fenway Park for the day game. They saw a pitching duel for the ages. Through nine innings, Mr. Taylor (who had not yet considered a future in medicine) scattered five hits and kept the Red Sox scoreless. Alas, Boston pitcher Bill Monbouquette was even better, allowing only one hit through nine innings, an inconsequential single by his pitching counterpart in the sixth inning. The game was still scoreless in the bottom of the 12th inning when Boston's Carl Yastrzemski led off with a triple on a drive deep in the outfield that glanced off the glove of Ty Cline. The next two batters were intentionally walked before Carroll Hardy knocked the first pitch from Mr. Taylor over the wall in left field for a game-winning grand slam. 'The rookie pitched yesterday as though he's been at it 20 years,' wrote Bob Dolgan of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. 'I made two bad pitches in the 12th inning,' said the rookie. As a batter, his two singles accounted for half of Cleveland's hits. Marc Garneau, first Canadian in space, remembered for aspirations he held for his country Mohawk athlete Bev Beaver excelled on the baseball diamond and on the ice His lengthy outing remains the longest by a pitcher making a debut in the American League, according to research by sportswriter Kevin Glew, who writes the Canadian baseball history blog, 'Cooperstowners in Canada.' It is a standard unlikely to be bettered in an era when throwing arms are treated more carefully. The eager pitcher had to wait 13 days before his next assignment, during which he picked up his first win in a 3-2 victory over the Angels in Los Angeles. He appeared in eight games, going 2-2, before being sent to Florida to pitch for the minor-league Jacksonville Suns. He was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in the off-season. Converted to a full-time relief pitcher, he was runner-up to Ray Culp of the Philadelphia Phillies in National League rookie pitcher of the year voting in 1963. The following season, he had eight wins and four losses for the Cardinals, who faced the New York Yankees in the World Series. In Game 4 at Yankee Stadium, with the Cards trailing 2-1 in the series, the Yankees jumped to an early 3-0 lead. In the sixth inning, Clete Boyer hit a grand slam to put the Cards up one. Cardinals manager Johnny Keane then called on Mr. Taylor to preserve the narrow lead. He retired the first eight batters he faced before walking Mickey Mantle. He then retired the next four batters to preserve the victory, earning a save. The Cards went on to win the Series in seven games. He appeared again in the 1969 World Series with the New York Mets, perennial cellar-dwellers who were considered underdogs against a powerhouse Baltimore Orioles team. The Mets lost the first game, though Mr. Taylor threw two scoreless innings. In Game 2, New York's Jerry Koosman was nursing a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the ninth in Baltimore when he walked Frank Robinson and Boog Powell with two outs. Manager Gil Hodges called on Mr. Taylor to face the dangerous Brooks Robinson. With fans at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore hanging on every pitch, the pitcher worked the count to 3-2 before the batter grounded out to third baseman Ed Charles who threw to first to end the game. Mr. Taylor earned his second career World Series save, and the Miracle Mets, as they were known, went on to win the next three games and the championship. Former teammate Art Shamsky attributed the title to the pitcher's 'winning mentality' and previous World Series experience. 'We don't win the title without Ron Taylor,' he said in a statement released by the Mets. Earlier, he saved Game 1 of the National League Championship Series and won Game 2 against the Atlanta Braves to help the Mets advance to the World Series. He also pitched for the Houston Astros and the San Diego Padres. In his final game, he gave up home runs to Mike Jorgensen and Ron Fairly at Jarry Park in Montreal as the Expos prevailed 9-3 over the Padres on May 14, 1972. In 11 seasons, Mr. Taylor went 45-43 with a 3.93 earned-run average. He recorded 74 saves, most of those coming in five workhorse campaigns with the Mets. In 10⅓ postseason innings, he gave up just three hits, walked two, struck out nine, and surrendered no earned runs in going 1-0 and earning three saves. At the age of 34, he decided to return to the classroom. In his playing days, he took part in two United Service Organization (USO) tours of military hospitals in Guam, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam, handing out souvenir baseballs and chatting with servicemen injured fighting in Vietnam. The patients inspired him to become a doctor. The University of Toronto told him he would have to score top marks in several undergraduate science courses before he could be considered for medical school, which was a long shot for someone of his age. He managed straight As and then was accepted. He moved into his childhood home with his widowed father. 'Here I was with all these exceptionally bright kids right out of school,' he told Mr. McRae in 1981. 'I wasn't only older than them. I was older than the darn professors. At first they thought I was the janitor. That first day, the professor gave us all an anatomy chart and asked us to memorize all the terms. Hell, I couldn't even pronounce them.' He graduated in 1977 and became the Blue Jays' team physician two years later, a position he held when the club won the World Series in 1992 and 1993. Women's baseball champ Ayami Sato stars in Maple Leafs IBL debut Cathal Kelly: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s massive contract a reason for some Edward Rogers face time Dr. Taylor also operated a private practice and established the S.C. Cooper Sports Medicine Clinic at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He hung up his stethoscope in 2014. Dr. Taylor was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ont., in 1985 and Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. He has also been named to the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame (2010), the Leaside Sports Hall of Fame (2013) and the Baseball Ontario Hall of Fame (2020). In 2005, he was appointed to the Order of Ontario, the province's highest civilian honour. He was given keys to New York by mayor Bill de Blasio as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Mets' 1969 World Series championship. The Blue Jays held a moment of silence for Dr. Taylor before their game at the Rogers Centre on Tuesday. Two Blue Jays wound up leaving the game with injuries (one hit by a pitch, the other from running into the outfield wall), a reminder of the value of medical care for pro athletes. Dr. Taylor died in Toronto on Monday. He leaves his wife of 44 years, the former Rona Douglas, an emergency room nurse he met at Mount Sinai; their sons, Drew, a former left-handed professional pitcher in the minors, and Matthew; and their grandsons, Tripp and Elliott. He also leaves an older sister, Carole Mitchell. He had two earlier marriages. In 2015, the sons released a 20-minute documentary about their father titled, Ron Taylor: Dr. Baseball. In the film, Dr. Taylor tells an anecdote about a young reliever picking up his first save for the Blue Jays. The rookie came into the dressing room, spotted Dr. Taylor and said, 'Doc, you have no idea what that feels like!' 'No, I couldn't imagine,' Dr. Taylor replied. You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here. To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@
Fox News
17-06-2025
- Health
- Fox News
World Series champion Ron Taylor dead at 87
Dr. Ron Taylor, a two-time World Series champion pitcher who later became the Toronto Blue Jays' team physician, has died, the New York Mets said on Monday. He was 87. The Mets said Taylor died in Toronto after battling a long illness. Taylor got his start with the Cleveland Indians in 1962 and helped the St. Louis Cardinals to a World Series in 1964. After spending time with the Houston Astros, he joined the New York Mets and won a World Series title with them in 1969. "Ron was the only guy on our staff with postseason experience," Taylor's former teammate Art Shamsky said in a news release. "He had won a championship with the Cardinals in 1964 and brought a winning mentality. We don't win the title without Ron Taylor." Taylor was credited with being the so-called "unsung hero" of the Mets' roster. In four postseason appearances in 1969, he had two saves and did not allow a run in 5.2 innings. He finished his career with the San Diego Padres in 1972. Taylor appeared in 491 games and had a 3.93 ERA with 464 strikeouts. When his baseball career was over, Taylor enrolled in medical school and joined the Blue Jays as the team physician. He spent about 30 years with the organization. Taylor was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
Daily Mail
17-06-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Mets hero and two-time World Series winner Ron Taylor dies at 87
New York Mets hero and two-time World Series champion Ron Taylor passed away on Monday at age 87 in Toronto after a lengthy illness, the team announced. Taylor made his Major League Baseball debut with the Cleveland Indians in 1962 before joining the St. Louis Cardinals the next year. It was with the Cardinals in 1964 that he won his first World Series. Yet, Taylor was best known for his time with the Mets. Taylor played for the Mets from 1967 through 1971, including his infamous run in 1969, which helped the Queens franchise win the World Series. In 1969, Taylor led the Mets with 59 appearances and had 13 saves. He had a 9–4 record and a 2.72 earned-run average. 'Ron was the only guy on our staff with postseason experience,' said former Met Art Shamsky via news release. 'He had won a championship with the Cardinals in 1964 and brought a winning mentality. We don't win the title without Ron Taylor.' Taylor ended his playing career in 1972 after the Mets sold his contract to the Montreal Expos, who did not use him in a game. He made his final few appearances for the San Diego Padres before retiring for good. Taylor was on the Toronto Blue Jays medical staff from 1977 until his retirement in 2014. On staff with the Blue Jays, albeit not in the dugout, Toronto won the 1992 and 1993 World Series titles.
New York Times
17-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Ron Taylor, pitcher who won two World Series with Mets and Cardinals, dies at 87
Dr. Ron Taylor, a two-time World Series champion who turned to medicine after ending his 11-season baseball career, died Monday at age 87. A right-handed pitcher who was primarily a reliever, Taylor began his career with the Cleveland Indians in 1962, pitching 11 scoreless innings against the Boston Red Sox in his debut. He would play for four other clubs during his time in the big leagues, making his longest stops with the St. Louis Cardinals from 1963 to 1965, and the New York Mets from 1967 to 1971. Taylor won the World Series with both teams. We are saddened to learn of the passing of 1969 World Series Champion Ron — New York Mets (@Mets) June 16, 2025 While not a statistical giant, Taylor's career included numerous clutch performances that helped his teams bring home championship rings. He remains the only Canadian to win the World Series with multiple teams, according to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. His first title came in 1964 with the St. Louis Cardinals, who clawed their way into the World Series in the regular season's final two weeks. Taylor recorded eight wins and eight saves that season, and the Cardinals would knock out the New York Yankees in the World Series in seven games. Advertisement He also made crucial saves for the 1969 Miracle Mets. One year prior, the Mets had gone 73-89 and finished second-to-last in the National League. But Taylor helped break the slump, leading the team with 59 appearances and 13 saves. The Mets, an expansion franchise in its seventh year at the time, went on to win their first World Series in a historic 4-1 upset over a Baltimore Orioles team that went 109-53 that season. In a statement memorializing him, the Mets attributed Taylor's death to a 'lengthy illness' but did not specify a cause. The team called him an 'unsung hero' of their first title run. Taylor built a successful medical career after he retired from baseball in 1972. He received his medical degree from the University of Toronto, his alma mater, in 1977, and joined his hometown Toronto Blue Jays as a physician two years later. The Toronto Blue Jays are saddened to learn of the passing of long-time team doctor and former Major League Baseball player, Ron Taylor. Known to many as Dr. Baseball, the Toronto native won four World Series Championships during his illustrious career, including two with the… — Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) June 16, 2025 For more than 30 years, Taylor treated the team while also running his private practice in the city. He retired from medicine in 2014, though the Blue Jays still listed him as Physician Emeritus until his death. The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inducted Taylor in 1985, and he entered Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. (Top photo of Ron Taylor, right, receiving a key to the city from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2019 as part of the Mets' 1969 50th Anniversary Celebration: Michael Karas / via Imagn Images)
