Elroy Face, Reliever

JUNE 24, 1963

As the best relief pitcher in baseball in the late 1950s Elroy Face rarely allowed hitters to get good wood on the ball. Off the field, however, he had more use for quality lumber. While growing up in Stephentown, N.Y., the longtime Pittsburgh Pirates righthander learned carpentry, the family trade, from his father and uncles, and woodworking became a lifelong passion. During his 16-year career in the majors he often supplemented his baseball salary with off-season work as a carpenter—he refinished a game room in teammate Bill Mazeroski's house a year after Maz famously won the 1960 World Series with a Game 7 home run—and when Face left the sport in 1970, hammers and hardwood became his full-time stock-in-trade.

Beginning in 1979 he was the carpentry foreman at Mayview State Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he remodeled patient rooms, made repairs and built a chapel before retiring in '90. "With carpentry you can sit back years later and see what you accomplished," says Face, who lives in the Pittsburgh suburb of North Versifies. "With baseball you read about it, but once it's over, you can't see it."

That may explain why Face, 75, hasn't gotten his due as one of the game's most influential players. Known as the Baron of the Bullpen, Face paved the way for today's millionaire relief specialists. When he broke into the big leagues, in 1953, relievers were usually failed starters, sacrificial lambs a manager waved in when his team was comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind.

With a deadly forkball and a notoriously quick pickoff move Face, who made only 27 career starts (all in his first four seasons), shattered that stereotype and helped establish the role of closer. In 1958 he led the National League with 20 saves, beginning a stretch in which he finished in the top three in that nascent statistical category seven times in nine years. The following season he went 18-1, setting a major league record for winning percentage in a season (.947) that still stands. The diminutive Face—he stood 5'8" and played at about 155 pounds—also set the major league mark for consecutive wins by a reliever, with 22 straight over two seasons. (He appeared in 98 games during the streak, which lasted from May 1958 to September '59.) Face was at his best in the 1960 World Series, when he saved three of the Pirates' four victories over the New York Yankees.

Despite his effectiveness Face was not elected to the Hall of Fame, and he's virtually unknown to young fans who can't imagine a time when dominating closers were a novelty. Since retiring as a full-time carpenter, he has spent much of his time camping and fishing with his wife of 24 years, Roberta, and his five children and nine grandchildren. He gets a kick out of watching current pitchers flourish in the role he helped invent. "I enjoyed the challenge," he says. "Plus I got to pitch more [than relievers do today]. In a tight game, from the seventh inning on, it was usually me."