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Moyer, 49, Oldest to Win in MLB History

DENVER

Baseball’s old man is still fend­ing off Father Time.

Jamie Moyer showed there remains a place for a vin­tage lefty in a young man’s game as the 49-year-old became the old­est pitcher to ever win a major league contest.

He threw seven strong innings and Dex­ter Fowler hit a two-run homer to help the Col­orado Rock­ies beat the San Diego Padres 5–3 on Tues­day night.

“It’s a great night for the Rock­ies, as far as win­ning a base­ball game. But it’s an his­toric night for one tremen­dous human being,” Rock­ies man­ager Jim Tracy said. “It couldn’t hap­pen to a bet­ter guy. A more pro­fes­sional per­son I don’t know I’ve been around.”

Moyer (1–2) was sharp all evening as he picked up his 268th career win, tying him with Hall of Famer Jim Palmer for 34th on the career list.

Rely­ing on a con­sis­tent cut­ter and mix­ing in a 78-mph fast­ball, the crafty pitcher gave up just six hits and two runs – both unearned – as he kept the Padres hit­ters at bay and off balance.

“Today, for me, just like it’s been my pre­vi­ous two starts – going out and try­ing to give my best effort,” Moyer said.

That’s been a win­ning recipe for Moyer over a career that’s stretched nearly a quar­ter cen­tury and included 689 games.

Anthony Bass, a pitcher half Moyer’s age, went five innings and gave up three runs. Bass (0–2) also had a career-high seven strikeouts.

Moyer earned that elu­sive win for the ages in his third start of the sea­son. His age is 49 years, 150 days old.

That’s impor­tant to note since before Moyer’s effort the old­est pitcher to win a game in the majors was Jack Quinn of the Brook­lyn Dodgers on Sept. 13, 1932, when he was 49 years, 70 days old.

Not that Moyer knows much about Quinn.

“I wish I was a base­ball his­to­rian,” Moyer said. “I’m a lit­tle embar­rassed to admit that. As play­ers, we should know more about the game, the his­tory of the game. You need to respect the game and the peo­ple that came before you.”

He’s def­i­nitely a part of baseball’s his­tory now.

How­ever, he doesn’t think this mark will stand the test of time.

“The way ath­letes are going in today’s game, I think it could be bro­ken,” he said.

This game got a lit­tle dicey at the end.

Rafael Betan­court sur­vived a rocky ninth as he sur­ren­dered a solo homer to Nick Hund­ley and put two more run­ners on before strik­ing out Yon­der Alonso to earn his third save in as many chances.

About the only blem­ish to the night were two more errors by smooth-fielding short­stop Troy Tulow­itzki, giv­ing him six already this sea­son. The Gold Glove win­ner had six all of last year.

His field­ing error in the sev­enth proved quite costly and nearly spoiled Moyer’s place in the record books. With two on and one out, Tulow­itzki had a rou­tine dou­ble play ball go right through his legs, lead­ing to a run. Jason Bartlett brought in another with a sac­ri­fice fly to right to cut the lead to 3–2.

Moyer ended the threat by get­ting pinch hit­ter Jeremy Her­mida to ground out to sec­ond on a 76-mph cutter.

The Rock­ies added two insur­ance runs in the eighth as Michael Cud­dyer dou­bled in a run off for­mer Rock­ies closer Hus­ton Street and Wilin Rosario added a sac­ri­fice fly.

Away from the mound, Moyer hardly looks like a kid any­more. He has gray streaks in his hair and fre­quently dons read­ing glasses that sit perched on the tip of his nose. This betrays his age too: He’s on the verge of receiv­ing his AARP card.

But once he steps on the mound that youth­ful exu­ber­ance returns.

He’s trans­formed into a kid again, sprint­ing out to the mound after each inning. He looked more like a spry rookie than a vet­eran near­ing retirement.

Moyer enticed the Padres to hit into three dou­ble plays, despite warn­ings before the game by Mark Kot­say – the one player who’s con­sis­tently hit Moyer – to remain patient. Then again, it’s dif­fi­cult to lay off a pitch that looks so juicy.

The aged won­der used his wealth of expe­ri­ence to his advan­tage against the young Padres, six of whom weren’t even born when Moyer made his major league debut in 1986. That included Bass, who has fond mem­o­ries of Coors Field after win­ning his debut in the hit­ter friendly sta­dium last June.

Kotsay’s first plate appear­ance of the sea­son was a sin­gle in the open­ing inning. Kot­say was acti­vated off the dis­abled list on Mon­day after miss­ing the first 10 games with a strained right calf muscle.

That his first hit should be against Moyer hardly comes as a sur­prise since the 36-year-old Kot­say has a .583 life­time aver­age against Moyer. They even exchanged friendly grins after each of Kotsay’s two singles.

“He wears me out. He knows it. I know it,” Moyer said. “We joke in the offseason.”

Kot­say also has a lot of respect for Moyer.

“It says some­thing about how much he loves to com­pete and his will­ing­ness to work, and at 49, to go out and throw the ball and have suc­cess,” said Kot­say, who faced the vet­eran for the first time since June 13, 2006, when Kot­say was with the Oak­land A’s and Moyer a mem­ber of the Seat­tle Mariners.

Before the game, Kot­say was giv­ing point­ers to his impres­sion­able team­mates on how to hit Moyer’s method­i­cal pitches.

“Be patiently aggres­sive,” Andy Par­rino recounted. “Make him come to us a lit­tle bit more. Oh, and make him stay in the strike zone.”

Moyer doesn’t have a blaz­ing fast­ball, but he does have this – pin­point precision.

Padres man­ager Bud Black cer­tainly appre­ci­ates the clev­er­ness of Moyer, mar­veling from the dugout at the vin­tage pitcher who went to spring train­ing with­out a guar­an­teed ros­ter spot and per­formed his way onto the team. He missed all of 2011 as he recov­ered from a sur­gi­cally repaired lig­a­ment in his elbow.

“It’s a great story,” Black said. “It’s won­der­ful that he’s con­tin­ued to get the results needed to stay in the major leagues. This is a performance-driven game and the last 15 years of his career have been outstanding.”

Notes: Padres RHP Tim Stauf­fer (strained elbow) threw Tues­day in San Diego. He’s sched­uled for a bullpen ses­sion this week­end. … OF Car­los Gon­za­lez (strep throat) returned the lineup, going 0 for 2 with two walks. … Moyer said he will donate some mem­o­ra­bilia to the Hall of Fame from the game.

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more MLB base­ball news see: Moyer, 49, old­est to win in MLB his­tory.

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