Goodbye to Mike Ferraro at the age of 79.
Ferraro would only play in five games for the Pilots and only mentioned two times (I think) in Ball Four as part of a major league career that saw him bat five hundred times over four seasons with the Yankees, Pilots, and Brewers.
Ferraro would last under four months as the Cleveland Indians manager in 1983 and finished 1986 as the manager of the Kansas City Royals after Dick Howser's brain cancer forced him to resign.
Goodbye to Gordy Lund at the age of 83.
Lund, like Ferraro, was mentioned in Ball Four but wasn't a key person in the book, played two seasons in the majors with Cleveland in 1967 for three games and the Pilots in 1969 in twenty games.
Goodbye to Jim Umbarger at the age of 71.
Umbarger was a tremendous college pitcher at Arizona State and looked to be a coming star after finishing 10-12 for Texas in 1976 with an excellent 3.12 ERA with ten complete games but never won more than five games in a season again with Texas and Oakland.
Umbarger suffered from various injuries, including a sore elbow.
After his major league farewell in 1978, Umbarger bounced through the minors and in the famous longest game ever between Pawtucket and Rochester in 1981, Umbarger pitched ten shutout innings in relief for the Red Wings.
Goodbye to Doug Creek at the age of 55.
A well-traveled lefthanded bullpen specialist, who pitched for seven teams, Creek won seven games and earned one save over nine seasons in the bigs.
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