KEEGAN'S IN FOCUS NOW
Camera Worker Locates Plate With Breaking Stuff, Develops As White Sox Mound Surprise
"In the softness of a pleasant April evening at Boston's Fenway Park this spring, the multitudes had departed and only the clicking of typewriters and telegraph instruments aloft in the pressbox could be heard to break the stillness.
In a matter of a few moments the world would be reading the story of Bob Keegan's 5-0 shutout over the Red Sox. The tall, dark and handsome White Sox right-hander now had pitched 18 consecutive scoreless innings over the then-highly regarded Red Sox.
Across the greensward, where only a few minutes before had been the struggle for victory, there now appeared the lone figure of a man running in the outfield. It was this same Bob Keegan. He would run the length of the field, pause and then do it again.
'You'd think that pitching a shutout would be enough for one guy in a day,' remarked a baseball writer, as he peered over his typewriter. 'Isn't he violating the union rules? Most players would be knocking people down to get into the hotel dining room by now?'
But though Keegan works in the negative department of a camera factory during the off-season he has a positive approach to his baseball. This performance had been his third victory in as many starts in the 1954 season, but this had not been enough.
While interviewers waited on the sideline, the big pitcher ran for 15 minutes. At length he called it a day and was immediately surrounded by a committee from the pressbox.
'I know you guys think I'm nuts,' he began, as if sensing the question. 'But I weigh 207 pounds now and I'd like to get down under 200. I have a tendency to put on weight easily in the winter and that's my biggest problem.
'Then, too,' he went on, 'a fellow can never afford to let his legs get out of shape. I did a lot of running this spring, but I still need plenty more.'
'Is this your own idea?' an interviewer wanted to know.
'No, not exactly,' he smiled. 'Mr. Richards (White Sox Manager Paul Richards) thinks of everything. He suggested it. We didn't even have a set of scales in the clubhouse at spring training, but he knew I was a few pounds overweight. But it's not tough to run after you win.
'A year ago I was on the disabled list for a month and I was plenty worried about it. It was my arm. I usually have some trouble in the spring, but this year I haven't. Last year I didn't get going until late in the season and we're not taking any chances this time.'
Keegan thought the matter a moment.
'I've got to have a good season this year,' he said. 'I'm 32 years old, you know ... and I have a wife and two kids. I spent seven years in the minors before I came to this club. I don't want to go back.
'If I have a good season this year I'll get a better contract in 1955, and then I can give the wife and the kids some of the things we've always wanted.'
It was almost as if Keegan were making a prophecy of things to come. As the season wears on it is increasingly evident that the personable citizen of Rochester, N.Y., has earned a distinction as one of the finest pitchers in the majors.
By June 20 the big right-hander had won ten and lost two. He was the first American League pitcher to win ten games during the 1954 season. On the same date in 1953, he had won none and in fact, had made only three mound appearances. But now he had pitched two shutouts and completed ten of 13 starts. If you included his last three victories of 1953, he had won 13 of the last 15 decisions in which he was the pitcher of record.
With better luck, it could have been ten in a row for Keegan this spring. He held Washington to five hits in May but unfortunately bumped into Bob Porterfield's four-hitter and a 1-0 defeat.
In his first 110 innings of the current season, Keegan gave up only 36 walks. Therein, perhaps, is the secret of his success.
Discussing the phenomenal achievements of the new White Sox ace, Manager Al Lopez of the Cleveland Indians was moved to remark:
'I don't understand it. I watched him for three years in 1948, 1949 and 1950 when he was pitching for Kansas City and I was managing Indianapolis in the American Association. He was much faster then than he is now and he never won more than nine games and in that same season he lost 15.'
Apprised of Lopez' mystification, Manager Richards observed:
'There is probably one thing Lopez hasn't noticed about Keegan. He wasn't getting his breaking stuff over the plate then, but now he is. As a consequence, he is throwing more curves and making it really rough on hitters.
'Actually,' continued Richards, 'I doubt if he could throw a completely straight ball. Even his fast ball breaks a little.
'I watched Keegan closely last fall after he got going and it was monotonous the way he was mowing down the hitters.'
In his last three games of 1953, Keegan pitched two shutouts and won his other game, 7-2. In these same games he pitched two three-hitters and allowed only the meager total of 11 hits.
Keegan's own analysis of his abrupt rise in stature as a pitcher is modest, to say the least.
'It's probably a combination of many things,' he says. 'If I could point to any one thing more than the others, it would probably be the fact that I am holding the ball differently than I did in my earlier days as a pitcher.
'I was with the Yankees, though still the property of the Kansas City club, in the spring of 1951 when I heard Coach Jim Turner drop a remark that he had never had much success holding the ball with the front fingers placed across the seam of the ball.
'I decided to try holding the ball with the fingers parallel to the seams and found it made the ball sink. Don't ask me why. In 1950 I had won four and lost 12 with Kansas City, but now with Kansas City and Syracuse in 1951 I was able to win 14 and lose nine. It was the best year I had since 1947 when I won ten and lost five for Binghamton before I was moved up to the Newark club. But I got off to a bad start with Newark and won only one game while losing six.
'Another thing I think has helped me considerably is that I have gained some weight since 1951 when I scaled about 180. I suppose the added weight has made me a bit stronger and there's a bit more life on my fast ball.'
Manager Richards has a slightly enlarged theory about Keegan.
'I would say that his determination has been his strong point. Of course he's getting his breaking ball over the plate now, but what I have noticed most about him is that usually he manages to retire the hitter who is most apt to hurt him.
'He's a lot smarter now and I suppose that's the natural eventuality with a fellow of his intelligence after so many years in the business.
'Keegan is unlike a lot of young pitchers who are sensational in the minors but fail in the big leagues. They are fooling the weaker minor league hitters with speed and a fast-breaking curve, but the hitters are swinging at balls that are not over the plate. When they come to the majors the hitters just wait for them to get the ball in the strike zone. They don't get it there, so they're dead.'
Richards' handling of Keegan's sore arm also was a factor. He ordered him to cultivate the soreness in January instead of when the season started. 'I had him working out at the University of Rochester in the field house during the winter,' says Richards. 'Sure enough, the arm got sore, but by the end of spring training he had worked it out.'
Unwittingly, Keegan was the inspiration for a minor dispute between Richards and General Manager Frank Lane last September. After months of maneuvering in which the manager was cautiously attempting to prepare Bob for regular starting assignments, he had lost some of his enthusiasm for the right-hander. Keegan had not distinguished himself in several relief appearances and the White Sox were fighting to finish the season in third place.
Keegan had pitched only one complete game before mid-September, but Lane was of the opinion that he should be getting more starting assignments.
'If Keegan doesn't pitch more for us,' stormed Frantic Frankie, 'I'll have to send him back to the minors where he can get more work.'
Finally, on September 15, Richards found a spot and started Keegan against the Red Sox. The result was a three-hit shutout. There would be another shutout against the St. Louis Browns and a five-hitter against the same Browns and the season would end with Richards making plans to capitalize on Keegan's talents in 1954.
By the end of 1953, while Keegan had won only seven games and lost five, his earned run average was a respectable 2.73. This may have been a hint of what was to come.
Quite to the contrary, Keegan had given the astute Yankees small hint of a brilliant future when he was under their spreading wing. To be sure, what was the White Sox' gain was the Bombers' loss, because it was Paul Krichell, the discerning Yankee scout, who first discovered the youth.
Krichell saw Keegan play shortstop for John Marshall High School in Rochester when he first became interested. Bob was a skinny kid weighing 155 pounds then, but he was agile, had an unusually strong throwing arm and he could hit pretty good.
The Yankees offered Keegan a contract after his graduation from high school and he accepted, mainly because he wanted to pursue a baseball career, which was the fervent wish of his father who had played much baseball in his youth, and because the New York club was prepared to pay young Keegan's tuition to Bucknell University.
Bob went to Bucknell for two and a half years before he entered the 13th Air Corps and the study of navigation. He was in Service three years, nine months of which he spent in the Philippines as a navigator. And during his three years in Service there was small opportunity- at least for him- to play any baseball.
Out of the Air Corps, Keegan was sent to the Binghamton club, but not as a shortstop.
'I had gone from 155 pounds to 180 pounds in the Service,' he said, 'and I wasn't quite as agile. We ate well in the Air Corps. But I could still throw hard. I guess I wasn't much of a hitter by then, either, and they knew that.'
Keegan, however, could not always fire the ball.
'I had trouble with my arm every spring,' he said. 'I guess that and their wealth of material was what finally convinced the Yankees I'd never make it.'
In 1951, then, Keegan was sold by the Yankees' Kansas City club to Syracuse, where he won 13 and lost nine that first season. At the end of the 1952 season, when Keegan had won 20 and lost 11, the White Sox moved in and bought up his contract.
Keegan is a clean-cut, earnest young man who is smart enough to know the value of a successful baseball career, but he has no particular ambition to remain in the game after he is through playing.
'My plans may be changed,' he said, 'but I'd like to get established in the sales department of a camera manufacturer in Rochester when I'm through pitching. I work in the firm now in the winter, you know.'
Keegan married Lois Ruth Hansford, his grammar school and high school sweetheart on May 20, 1944, while Bob was still in the Air Corps. Their two children are Robert, seven, and Lynn, five.
The personable pitching star owns his own home, a Cape Cod residence, in Rochester. Last winter he built two rooms in the attic. This summer he's helping the White Sox built 'upstairs,' too."
-John C. Hoffman, Baseball Digest, August 1954
"Big and fast, Bob finished his rookie year in the majors in 1953 with three brilliant wins, two of them 3-hit shutouts and had the second best ERA on the White Sox staff. At Syracuse in 1952, he was the International League's ranking hurler with a 20-11 record, 111 strikeouts and a 2.64 ERA, pitching 27 complete games. Bob had a 13-9 mark at Syracuse in 1951.
Bob was signed by the Yankees as an infielder while in college. He had a very strong arm and the Yanks decided to make him a hurler. And Bob, who played third and short in college, is one of the league's top right-handers."
-1954 Topps No. 100
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