Description:
Before he was Kentucky's Republican senator, Jim Bunning was a helluva hard-throwing righthander pitcher, primarily for the Tigers and the Phillies. He earned his rightful niche in Cooperstown by tossing no-hitters in each league (including the famed Father's Day perfecto against the Mets in 1964), striking out more than 1,000 hitters in each league, and, most significant of all, notching more than 100 victories in each league; only Cy Young had scored that trifecta before him. As conspicuous as Bunning's contributions were on the field, his real lasting legacy to the game has been off it. An early and respected authority in the Major League Players Association, Bunning helped bring Marvin Miller in to cohere the union, crack the back of the slavish reserve clause, and open the gate on free agency; his reward was to see the door slammed on his own dream of managing. Bunning then turned to politics; in six terms in the House, he has avidly opposed, to the dread and ire of baseball's establishment, the game's antiquated exemption from antitrust laws. Dolson, who covered much of Bunning's career as a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has written a solid and fair testament to a fascinatingly driven man. "There is no mystery to Jim Bunning," he observes, though there is plenty of complexity. "He is what you see--unfailingly direct, sometimes to the point of being abrasive.... He is a man who makes loyal friends and bitter enemies," great qualities for both pitchers and politicians. --Jeff Silverman
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