First Posted: 9/10/2014
ST. MARYS — Motorists who drive into this Auglaize County community cannot help but notice the green sign shaped like a diamond off state Route 66. There, beside another sign celebrating the St. Marys Memorial Roughriders state championship football teams of 1990, ’92 and ’93, is the sign that identifies the town as the home base of Galen Cisco, baseball pro.
Cisco remains St. Marys’ favorite son. He returned to his home town with Martha, his wife of 50-plus years, following his last season in a Major League dugout in 2000. But his pro baseball career is only half the story of the robust 78-year-old man, who still has every bit the look of a former great athlete.
First, there was a noteworthy high school career at Memorial, playing football for Jack Bickel and baseball for Tom Vincent. Since Bickel used the same system as his former football coach at Miami of Ohio, Woody Hayes, Cisco felt a bit ahead of the curve when Hayes recruited him to play football at Ohio State.
Recalls Cisco, “I was kind of a late bloomer in football and was actually still searching for my best position heading into my senior year after starting at defensive end as a junior. I really couldn’t have imagined heading into that last year that I would be offered a scholarship, but after being switched to fullback and linebacker, I began to get some looks, including from Woody, who knew where all his former players who became coaches were.”
Playing for Woody
Hayes, by Cisco’s freshman year in 1954, was entering his fourth year as the Buckeye coach, and was pretty adamant during the recruiting process that Cisco commit totally to football.
“When Woody was recruiting me, my dad was insistent I be able to play baseball in college too. When Woody said no, Dad said, ‘Well, Wisconsin has already told us Galen can play both.’ Well, Woody, with one condition, gave in and said as long as I was good enough to start in baseball, he’d allow it. I couldn’t help smiling to myself when I heard Dad say that. Hell, we’d never even been to Wisconsin!”
After Cisco’s freshmen year in a time when freshmen weren’t eligible to play varsity sports, a season in which Hayes would win his first national championship, the six-foot, 200-pound right-hander found himself buried on the football depth chart as a seventh-string fullback when pre-season practice opened in ’55.
Recalls Cisco, “I think Woody was kind of sending a message, as in, there was a price I had to pay for missing spring football practice, which was what Woody really hated about guys who wanted to play baseball and football.”
However, by the end of pre-season practice, Hayes couldn’t help but see Cisco’s abilities, and the former Roughrider had climbed all the way up to second string, backing up starting fullback Don Vicic. When Vicic was injured in the first half of the opening game against Nebraska, Cisco slid into the vacant slot and contributed in a 28-20 win and never relinquished his starting position. The Bucks finished a perfect 6-0 in the Big Ten and 7-2 overall, losing two non-league games to Stanford and Duke by a total of 12 points, but were denied a return to the Rose Bowl, since they had been there the previous year.
Cisco spent a lot of time blocking out of his fullback position for Heisman Trophy winner Howard ‘Hopalong’ Cassady. “I got my carries between the twenties, and Hop pretty much owned the other 40 yards,” Cisco says with a laugh.
In the spring of 1956, Cisco also asserted himself on the baseball team as a starter, going a perfect 6-0 for head coach Marty Karow, who would go on to his own 25-year coaching career, including Ohio State’s only NCAA national championship in 1966 on a team that featured Shawnee graduate Steve Arlin.
With Cassady now gone to the NFL as the third overall pick of the Lions, the Buckeyes of 1956 experienced, for them, a disappointing 6-3 season, which included a Michigan loss and no Rose Bowl. Cisco started every game and thrived, averaging 6.8 per rush on offense and starting at linebacker on defense when one-platoon football was still in vogue.
A 7-2 record as a junior pitcher for Karow got Cisco noticed by the Boston Red Sox. That Ohio State team also featured slugger Frank Howard, who achieved All-American honors in both basketball and baseball while in Columbus before a 16-year Major League career. Cisco ended up signing to play minor league baseball after his senior football season.
National championship
Heading into the fall of 1957, Cisco was named a co-captain by Hayes and played a big role in a truly memorable season. After losing the opener 18-14 to TCU, Hayes’ squad ran the table, including a Rose Bowl win over Oregon, a win that secured Hayes’ second national championship.
Many of Cisco’s blocks were now being thrown to spring slot back Dick LeBeau, who would go on to a brilliant NFL career as a defensive back and then establish himself as an elite defensive coordinator, a position the 76-year-old still holds today for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
When Hayes called Cisco’s number, he responded, scoring a pair of touchdowns and averaging five yards a carry on offense while also playing linebacker. Cisco’s performance earned him both All Big Ten and some All-American honors as well.
When asked about that national-championship clinching Rose Bowl, Cisco has as vivid a recollection about a life-changing moment for him prior to the trip out West as he does for the game itself.
“There were a few of us on the team who had long-time girlfriends. Well, when we found out that wives got to go to the game free, some of us decided to do what we figured we’d do eventually anyway, so Martha and I got married in December, and she got a free trip to the Rose Bowl!”
Baseball over football
Despite several inquiries from NFL teams to Woody about his three-year two-way performer, Cisco never pursued what could have been a promising career in the NFL. He remained what the next 40 years would validate — a baseball man.
Thus, in the spring of 1958 it was off to Corning, New York, of the Class D New York-Penn League. And, thanks to Hayes, Cisco also left with an off-season job offer. The iconic head coach wanted Cisco to come back after the baseball season as his freshman backfield coach.
Cisco recalls that was typical of Woody, who cared so much about his players.
“Woody was one of the most unwavering loyal men I’ve ever known. He knew I was two quarters shy of graduation, and I believe he offered me that job, just so I’d come back on campus and take classes to finish. And, from ’58 through 1961, I did return and got to work with some great backs like Paul Warfield and Matt Snell, who went on to have such great careers, and I also got my degree.”
Slow, hard journey
Cisco’s goal as a Red Sox farm hand was to one day toe the rubber in what is now baseball’s oldest park, Fenway, with its famed left-field wall, the Green Monster, off his right shoulder.
It didn’t come easy.
Over parts of the next four years, there would be stops in Corning, New York; Raleigh, North Carolina; Waterloo, Iowa; Allentown, Pennsylvania; and on to Minneapolis and Seattle before he finally got the call that all minor leaguers aspire to get.
Finally after long bus rides and midnight food at greasy-spoon diners, Cisco did indeed climb Fenway’s hill on June 11, 1961, against the robust hitting Twins and their future Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew.
Like all true baseball men, Cisco demonstrates an uncanny memory when it comes to recalling the numbers of the game: “It was a rude welcome — 2 1/3 innings, 5 hits, 5 runs. But, I stuck with the club and Pinky (manager Mike Higgins) gave me some starts. My first was against Washington. I gave up my first home run to Willie Tasby.
“What I remember most about the game is there was no meeting with the pitching coach Sal Maglie before the game to go over hitters. I really had no idea who these guys were as they came to the plate. I just listened to the PA announcer to see who was up next!”
On a team that featured a fellow rookie left fielder named Carl Yastrzemski, who had his own plate full trying to replace the legendary Ted Williams, who’d just retired the previous year and learning the nuances of the 37-foot high Green Monster, Cisco went 2-4 with a 6.71 ERA.
Said Cisco of the Monster, “I sort of got used to pitching with that wall only 315 away, but the later in the game it got, the closer that wall seemed to get!”
Miserable Mets
During spring training in ’62, Cisco was terrific, pitching 28 innings to a microscopic 0.86 ERA. However, after camp broke and despite his sense of optimism, he pitched poorly and was placed on waivers.
He was claimed by the Mets in their very first season, a team managed by Casey Stengel, once as dominant a manager as you’re likely to find in Major League Baseball. As the Yankee skipper in the late 1940’s and 1950’s, Stengel’s clubs won seven World Series. However, he was fired after the Yankees lost to the Pirates in 1960. The reason was that Yankee brass felt Stengel had simply grown too old, which prompted the eminently quotable manager to say, “I’ll never make the mistake of turning seventy again.”
The Mets of 1962 would go down in history as being one of the worst teams of all time, losing 120 games. Despite how bad the team was, Cisco still feels the Mets’ picking him up was the best thing that ever happened in his playing career. “Despite how bad we were, during my time with the Mets, I was on staffs with five guys who would one day become Major League pitching coaches — Roger Craig, Al Jackson, Don Rowe, Bob Miller and Larry Bearnarth. I would become the sixth. Surely none of us ever could have predicted that!”
Casey, according to Cisco, was the perfect choice to manage the first-year Mets. “I know a lot of people thought he’d lost it by then, but he still was a really good baseball man, and I learned from him. Also, he was so good talking to the press that he kept them from talking to us! And, when you’re as bad as we were, you really don’t need writers around!”
Cisco remembers one game in particular against the Cubs. “I started and won, pitching a complete game. I threw 162 pitches that day. Back then, managers and pitching coaches counted pitches but never paid a whole lot of attention to that. You came out either because you were getting [pinch] hit for or you were getting hit!”
Cisco as a Met also was voted the team’s player rep and recalls the young economist, Marvin Miller, who became the head of the players’ union and finally won some long-overdue rights and better salaries for players back in a time when the owners had all the power.
“The minimum salary at that time was $6,000 a year. Miller really helped us organize, and I doubt if you’ll find a player anywhere who doesn’t think he belongs in the Hall of Fame. That’s how great an impact on the game he had!”
By 1967, Cisco found himself back with the Red Sox, who won the American League pennant that year when the future Hall of Famer Yaz won the Triple Crown. However, he was left off the post-season roster despite pitching to a credible 3.63 ERA. Recalls Cisco, “I was voted a half World Series share, 2,200 dollars back then.”
The pitching coach
Cisco’s final year pitching was for yet another expansion team, the Kansas City Royals in 1969, and it proved to be his springboard to where he would achieve his greatest baseball success.
“At 32 years old, I really was pretty much done when the Royals offered me a job as pitching coach for their AAA team.”
And, the workmanlike right-hander — who logged seven years in The Bigs, made 78 starts and managed 25 wins- embarked on three -plus decades of sharing his knowledge with young pitchers looking for an “out” pitch and older pitchers searching for a new wrinkle after they’d lost the hop on their fastball.
And, teach he did, from the 1970’s, starting with his being named by Royals manager Bob Lemon in 1971 as the Major League team’s pitching coach and continuing for eight different managers (Lemon, Jack McKeon, Whitey Herzog, Dick Williams, Jim Fanning, Bill Virdon, Cito Gaston and Terry Francona) and five teams (Royals, Padres, Expos, Blue Jays and Phillies) all the way to the 2000 season. At the time of his retirement, Cisco was second only to Dave Duncan when it came to the longest tenured Major League pitching coach.
Along the way, he worked with some of the best pitchers of his era- from the Royals’ Dennis Leonard and Paul Splittorff to the Padres’ Randy Jones to the Expos’ Steve Rogers to the Blue Jays’ Jack Morris and Dave Stewart to the Phillies Curt Shilling — and watched some of the games greatest players — from Royal George Brett to Expo Andre Dawson to the three Hall of Fame Blue Jays, Roberto Alomar, Paul Molitor and Dave Winfield.
The summit was the back-to-back Blue Jay World Series-winning teams in 1992 and ’93. “Toronto was an amazing experience, a terrific team with every ingredient, from position players to starting pitching to the bullpen, and incredible fan support. We drew over four million fans in back-to-back years at home. And, the World Series crowns, of course, will always be memorable.”
Following 2000, there were a couple seasons scouting for the Blue Jays. Now time is spent traveling with Martha and also spent with his sons, both terrific athletes who both played minor league ball, Chip and Jeff, and their families. Cisco also keeps both eyes, the same ones which have watched Major League pitchers for over forty years, on Jeff’s son, Drew, who’s working his way back from elbow-ligament surgery in the Reds organization in Class A ball in Bakersfield, California.
As for any regrets, from Woody Hayes to Casey Stengel to the bright lights of the World Series and beyond, according to Galen Cisco, there’s not a one.
“Why would I change a thing? It’s been a truly wonderful life.”
