Life as a Complete Game

What we call history, Ken Holtzman called just another day at the office.

I am very sorry to send out a second post today. Earlier this morning the news came out that Ken Holtzman had passed away at the age of 78. 

Ken’s biography reads like a fever-dream of mid-century American baseball, the kind of narrative an overenthusiastic large-language model would cobble together. Ken was a touted rookie who lived up to all the expectations, becoming a co-ace of the ‘69 Cubs; an essential, perhaps final piece of the Oakland A’s three-peat dynasty of the mid-1970s; and one of the more well-behaved members of the Bronx Zoo Yankees. People that lived a third of what Ken did might think their cup overfloweth. 

Ken was drafted in baseball’s first-ever amateur draft in 1965 and quickly compared favorably to Sandy Koufax. Imagining having to be the Jewish pitcher tasked with carrying on Koufax’s legacy makes me want to go back to bed, but Ken had it even worse than that, because he had to live up to those expectations while also serving in the National Guard in the late 1960s, using weekend passes to return to Wrigley where he showed the hype was real. In 1966, Ken actually got to pitch against Koufax, and beat him, 2-0. His whole life was like this, one enormous flex after another. He threw two no-hitters as a Cub and one of them ended after he got Hank Aaron to become the final out. Can you imagine pitching 26 outs into a no-hitter at home and then in steps Hank Aaron? It’s a day-dream.

As a veteran player having done everything a player could possibly hope to do (except get PAID), Ken became a labor warrior. From being one of the first drafted, he became one of baseball’s first free agents, and worked with Marvin Miller and the MLB Players Association to ensure his contract (re-signing with the Yankees) helped set an early and higher bar for players in a new process. Ken helped fight for some of the rights and protections that generations of players have benefited from, accomplishments that meant more to him than any of the four championship rings that gave him pretty close to an Infinity Gauntlet of such hardware. I can say that last part because he told me so.

---

Ken was the first professional baseball player I ever talked to, and I got the chance to have a remarkable correspondence with him. He has appeared in the periphery of a few of our stories so far, including the one we posted just this morning.

Anyone trying to find any antics or hijinks in Ken’s biography will be disappointed (I know, because I tried), as he is one of the most relentlessly grown-up people I have ever encountered, in all scenes and seasons of his life. However, anyone looking for significance, fearlessness, and integrity in Ken’s story will find these qualities in extravagant abundance. 

I am so looking forward to telling you more about Ken down the road, but today I just wanted to note the passing of a giant of few words, as unassuming and generous as he was excellent and consequential.

This is the picture of Ken you get at baseball-reference, and I know this picture better than any other one of a player because I would check his page about fifteen times before I emailed him a question, to make sure I hadn’t screwed anything up. Ken was 78 years old and was a beloved partner, father, and grandfather (and remarkably internet-proficient) but whenever I think of him, he is 23 years old, a Chicago Cub covered in sweat on a broiling August afternoon at a delirious Wrigley Field, thoroughly unfazed by Hank Aaron, stepping into the box sixty feet away. Ken isn’t worried at all, because in his story, Hank Aaron is just the final out.

Thank you very much, Mr. Holtzman.