13 October 2023
Sixty years ago, Wally Bunker burst onto the baseball scene, an 18-year-old phenom who pitched for his high school team one day and for the Orioles the next. Or so it seemed. In June 1963 — two days after high school graduation — Bunker signed with Baltimore. Three months later, on Sept. 29, the kid from San Bruno, California, strode to the mound at Memorial Stadium to face the Detroit Tigers.
Bunker lost the game, 7-3. But he roared back in 1964 to go 19-5, with a winning percentage (.792) that tied him with Los Angeles Dodgers ace Sandy Koufax for best in the major leagues. That season, Bunker pitched two one-hitters and finished runner-up for American League Rookie of the Year honors behind Minnesota Twins outfielder (and Hall of Famer) Tony Oliva. Bunker also drew votes in balloting for the league’s Most Valuable Player, an award won in a landslide by the Orioles’ Brooks Robinson.
“He’s too young to pitch,” Harry Brecheen, Baltimore’s pitching coach, said of Bunker, who had a good fastball and an even better sinker. “He should be enjoying ice cream and hot dogs like the other kids.”
Agog, Bunker was not. The young right-hander took success in stride, winning his first six decisions and allowing two earned runs in his first 27 innings. He didn’t lose a home game until late August.
“He has no fear of anything or anybody,” Orioles super scout Jim Russo said. “[New York Yankees slugger Mickey] Mantle and a kid playing Class D ball look alike to him.”
In hindsight, Bunker said, a deep-seated confidence begat his poise on the mound.
“I’d always been the best, and I never thought I wasn’t,” said Bunker, now 78. “Luckily, the first game I pitched that year was a one-hitter [against the Washington Senators], so I thought, ‘OK, this game is fun.’ Then I won the next five and thought, ‘This is just what I did in high school.’ I figured I’d always been really good and that I’d keep on being good. If a player doesn’t think that, he might as well go work at a Boeing plant.”
That first victory, 2-1 over Washington, was hard-earned; the visitors rode him mercilessly from the bench.
“Moose Skowron, the first baseman, made a big deal of my being a rookie and tried hard to rattle me,” Bunker said. “Around the sixth inning, he stopped yelling and told one of our coaches, ‘Tell the kid he’s OK.’
Orioles fans rallied behind him. In June, before a home game, Baltimore Mayor Theodore McKeldin proclaimed the mound “Baltimore’s Bunker Hill” and, accompanied by a fife-and-drum corps wearing Revolutionary War garb, christened it with a bucket of dirt from the real site in Boston.
“That was kind of embarrassing,” Bunker recalled. That night, he defeated the Chicago White Sox, 6-1.
Bunker’s glory was short-lived. That September, he suffered a torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder and lost his zip. He won 10 games in each of the next two years, playing a pivotal role in the 1966 World Series by pitching a 1-0 complete-game victory over the Dodgers in Game 3 of a four-game sweep. He remains the third-youngest pitcher to hurl a shutout in World Series history (teammate Jim Palmer is No. 2, having done it two days before).
“That was the highlight of my baseball life,” said Bunker, whose shoulder was in constant pain. “Between innings, the trainer wrapped hot pads around my arm, which almost blistered; I didn’t care.”
Orioles catcher Andy Etchebarren called the performance “one of the most courageous acts I have seen in sports.”
Bunker hung on for five more years and retired in 1971 at age 26. Misfortune never gnawed at him.
“Whatever happens, happens,” he said from his home in Bluffton, South Carolina. “Who knows? If I hadn’t been hurt [pitching], I might have been in a car wreck and lost an arm or something.
“I got out of the game when I was still young enough to find a job and not be behind in the count.”
Life after baseball has been an eclectic mix of livelihoods. Married 59 years, Bunker and his wife, Kathy, have remodeled houses, made pottery, owned several hobby shops and manufactured refrigerator magnets. Bunker himself is an accomplished painter, author of children’s books and pianist.
Does he know “Take Me Out to the Ball Game?”
“I can knock that sucker off,” he said.
He holds no grudge against the game.
“Bitter? How can I be bitter that I played in the major leagues?” he said. “How spoiled can you be?”
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