THE ANOMALY

Author

Matthew Garringer
July 02, 2023

Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The baseball newsletter that shows up in your inbox every day - rain, shine, sleet, or snow.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about one of the most improbable career in MLB history.

The man we’ve all come to know as “Big Sexy” is a total enigma.

In his prime, Bartolo was almost 300 lbs and just as good at eating fast food as he was at playing baseball.

But his physique is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the biggest outlier in baseball history.

At a young age, it looked like Bartolo Colón was destined to be a farmer.

He dropped out of school in sixth grade to cut down trees for the government and work on his father’s farm; where they produced coffee beans and avocados.

He even had a pet donkey named Pancho.

The closest field to him was an hour away, and he had to sneak around to play baseball because his parents would rather have him working on the farm.

Colón didn’t play organized baseball until 14.

Bartolo’s dad says he built up his arm strength by turning the crank of the de-pulping machine, and honed his accuracy by throwing rocks at coconuts.

When he was 18 (actually 20, but lied about his age) the Indians signed Bartolo for $3k after denying him three times before that.

The fact that he made it to the league at all was an accomplishment, but Bartolo had a lot more juice in the tank.

In '97 he made his MLB debut with the Indians, and by '01 he had established himself as a dominant pitcher in the league; recording over 200 K's in back-to-back seasons.

After brief stints with the Expos and White Sox, he went to the Angels, where he won a Cy Young award in '05.

Age eventually crept up on him, and Bartolo's career seemed to be over.

The Red Sox signed Colón to a minor league deal in '08, but he continued to struggle with shoulder and elbow injuries.

Ultimately, this led him to get an experimental stem cell procedure in the Dominican Republic.

It appeared to work VERY well.

Bartolo came back like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

The surgery was scrutinized by the MLB, but ultimately they found no wrongdoing.

Then Bartolo got suspended for PED's.

Surprisingly, the A's resigned him to a one-year contract and he was an All-Star in '13.

The next year, he signed a two-year $20 million deal with the Mets at age 41.

They loved him in New York, especially when he did the impossible.

Even when it came out that he had a secret second family, they still loved him.

Bartolo stayed in the big leagues until he was 45 years old, and even afterwards, he continues to play wherever he can.

Last year, he pitched for the Acereros de Monclova, a professional team in the Mexican League.

Colón is 49 and says he's retiring now, but who really knows.

Either way, his entire career from start to finish makes no sense, but it's a helluva story.

There’s two things we KNOW that our readers love: baseball and free shit.

Tonight we’ve got the best of both worlds.

Our friends at Dugout Mugs created these awesome shot glasses that are made from bat knobs.

They’re on the house tonight.

Each Knob Shot comes with your favorite team’s logo engraved on it, and all you gotta cover is the shipping & handling.

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

Pinky was mostly a minor leaguer.

He got some playing time in the bigs during the 1903 season for the St. Louis Browns, but that was pretty much it.

In 1904, he got one AB and was sent back down to the minors, for the next 11 years.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

If you like this story, check out some of our past favorites:

That's it for today. Tomorrow we're back at it like a bad habit. See ya!

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