In March 1957, this newspaper published a photograph of Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller giving instruction to UA freshman right-hander Dave Baldwin.
And so, unavoidably, to those in the Tucson baseball community Baldwin became the "next Bob Feller.''
Who could object? Baldwin had gone 12-0 the previous season, pitching Tucson High School to the state championship. By the time he pitched a two-hitter in the 1959 College World Series, leading the Arizona Wildcats to the championship game, his cumulative Tucson pitching record — high school, American Legion and three years as a UA starter — was 48-6.
Baldwin was legit; his numbers endure. After all these years, he remains No. 2 in the UA record books, averaging 12.05 strikeouts per nine innings.
Do you know what happened to Dave Baldwin?
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He earned a UA master's degree and became a geneticist. And then he earned a doctorate and became an engineer. And then an artist. And, most recently, in addition to learning to play the violin and speak Spanish, he has become an author.
A few days ago, I completed reading "Snake Jazz,'' the book about Baldwin's life. Snake Jazz? It is a 1960s euphemism for a junkball pitcher, a man without a fastball. It was a quick and entertaining read.
"At the urging of my wife, who told me I needed to tell my stories before I get too old, I started writing the book in 2004,'' Baldwin says now. "It took me two years. I could probably write a second book about my life after baseball.''
Dave Baldwin just turned 70. He lives on the coast in Yachats, Ore., with his wife, Burgundy, a former engineer, and he laughs when revealing he indeed is on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.
His painting on the cover of "Snake Jazz'' is his depiction of a game of pepper. It is titled "Fugue for the Pepper Player." You can see it on exhibit in Cooperstown.
"I went to the Hall of Fame two years ago and saw the painting,'' says Dick Griesser, a retired Tucson coach/teacher who was an All-America outfielder on Baldwin's 1958 UA team. "But I didn't put two and two together. I didn't learn it was Dave's painting until I got a copy of his book recently.''
Baldwin didn't become the next Bob Feller.
He did, however, pitch in 176 big-league games, fully qualify for a major-league pension and retain enough anecdotal baseball evidence, from Tucson to Washington D.C., to fill a 354-page book.
Not bad for a pitcher who blew out his arm 50 years ago last month, kept the news (and the pain) to himself, and somehow, creating a pain-free sidearm delivery and, reinventing himself as a pitcher without an overpowering fastball, pitch until he was 36.
He neither faded away nor was forgotten.
Last week, for example, in the intimate Oregon resort town, a friend of Baldwin's wife, a co-worker on the Yachats planning commission, mentioned that her father often took her to the Washington Senators games of the 1960s.
Could Burgundy's husband be the same Dave Baldwin who pitched for the Senators from 1966 to 1969?
"It's funny,'' he says, "I still get in the mail a lot of old baseball cards. People ask me to autograph them and send them back. I thought after all these years, they'd run out of the supply of Dave Baldwin baseball cards.''
Baldwin's book is available on Amazon.com and via most major bookstores and on his Web site (Snakejazz.com). He did not write it in attempt to get rich, although his monthly baseball pension is a modest $1,500 and the top salary of his 16-year career was the $18,000 paid by the Pacific Coast League Hawaii Islanders in 1972.
If you have been burned by the excess of money and greed in contemporary big-league baseball, Baldwin's book might serve as a happy reminder of a more friendly game. The White Sox in 1972, for example, added him to the big-league roster for exactly 37 days, which was the time he needed, to the day, to qualify for a pension.
Who does that any more?
The most poignant part of Baldwin's writing reflects on the 1959 College World Series title game. The Wildcats lost to Oklahoma State 5-3 that night when Baldwin failed to protect a 3-2 lead in the seventh inning.
"I felt like I let down (former UA coach) Frank Sancet, the team and the whole city of Tucson,'' he wrote. "But remorse should have an expiration date. Sports should teach us to bounce back after defeat.
"I hadn't given any thought to that loss until I wrote (the book). Looking back on my life now, though, if I could change just one game, that one would be it.''
"Snake Jazz." Highly recommended.
