Don Mossi won 101 games in a 12-year career but is mostly remember for how he looked, not how he pitched. The former wasn’t flattering. Mossi died last month at age 90. Mossi’s notoriety was highlighted by Jim Bouton in Ball Four, and while the mention was brief, it was also enduring. Mossi was one of three players cited in the book’s March 16 entry for being among the ugliest players in baseball. Bouton called him “the big-eared relief ace on the all-ugly nine,” and said Mossi “looked like a cab going down the street with its doors open.” You can see by the picture above Bouton had a point, though perhaps Mossi was just ahead of his time. Having overextended ears didn’t seem to hurt the 44th president of the United States. (For the record, the other players nominated for the 1969 all-ugly team were outfielder Danny Napoleon — “he’d be ugly even if he was white,” Bouton wrote that Curt Flood said of Napoleon — and catcher Andy Etchebarren.) His own bio at sabr.org noted one fan said Mossi looked like, “Mount Rushmore on a rainy day.” But that was tame compared to Bill James’ characterization in The New Bill James Historical Abstract. James headlined Mossi as “the man who invented winning ugly.” James: “Don Mossi had two careers as a major league pitcher, one as a reliever and one as a starter, and he was pretty darned good both times. No one who saw him play much remembers that, because Mossi’s ears looked as if they had been borrowed from a much larger species, and reattached without proper supervision. His nose was crooked, his eyes were in the wrong place, and though he was skinny he had no neck to speak of, just a series of chins that melted into his chest. An Adam’s apple poked out of the third chin, and there was always a stubble of beard because you can’t shave a face like that. He looked like Gary Gaetti escaping from Devil’s Island.” If that sounds cold, those were James’ warmup words. The Gary Gaetti reference, in particular, has to have been cutting. More James: “Don Mossi was the complete five-tool ugly player. He could run ugly, hit ugly, throw ugly, field ugly and ugly for power. He was ugly to all fields. He could ugly behind the runner as well as anybody, and you talk about pressure … man, you never saw a player who was uglier in the clutch.” Not sure how being ugly compares for the lead graph of an obit to Bill Buckner and that ground ball, but it was unavoidable for Mossi. Like noticing his ears. “Ordinarily,” summarized James of Mossi, “sportswriters will seem not to notice a jagged tooth or a creative nostril, but Don was so ugly that people talked openly about it. He was kind of a public service, the ugly man’s hero.” Not sure how Mossi felt about that designation. But he was also pretty good at his craft. Mossi was a rookie on the 1954 AL champion Indians, who won 111 games and had a pitching staff so deep Hall of Famer Bob Feller was relegated to the role of fifth starter at a time teams only used four. Mossi was outstanding out of the bullpen, winning six games, saving seven and putting up a 1.94 ERA in 93 innings. The Indians stopped winning in the World Series — the Giants swept them — but that was no fault of Mossi’s. He threw four scoreless innings in three appearances. Mossi remained mostly in the bullpen the next two seasons — he saved nine games, had a 2.42 ERA and received an MVP vote in 1955 — before starting in 1957 and 1958. Average at first, Mossi starred after the Indians traded him after the 1958 season to the Tigers in a five-player trade that included Billy Martin going the other way. Mossi won 17 games in 1959 — beating the Yankees five times — and 15 more with a third-in-the-AL 2.96 ERA in 1961, when the Tigers won 101 games but still finished eight games behind the World Series-winning Yankees. (As Mossi’s bio at sabr.org said, he “could certainly win ugly,” noting the 1961 game in which Mossi gave up five home runs to his old team but beat the Indians, 15-7.) After 1961, a combination of injuries and inefficiency sent Mossi back to the bullpen and on to the White Sox and the Athletics. The ’64 season was his last good one — he saved seven games, won three and had a 2.93 ERA in 40 innings before his season was ended by injury. Mossi made his last appearance on Aug. 24, and the White Sox could have used him. They won 98 games but lost the pennant by one game to the Yankees. After a final season with the A’s in ’65, Mossi retired. Career numbers: 101-80, 50 saves, 55 complete games, 165 games started, 148 games finished, 3.43 ERA, eight shutouts, 1,548 innings, 1,493 hits, 385 walks, 932 strikeouts, 115 ERA+, 3.40 FIP, All-Star in 1957, 156 home runs given up (Steve Bilko, Bob Allison and Bill Skowron, four each), two home runs hit, 22.6 WAR.
once upon a .406 