Frank Lary and Tommy
Nobis both died last week. I remember
them from when I was growing up.
Lary was a pretty good
right-handed starting pitcher with a career mark of 128-116 in a career that
spanned from 1954 to 1965. He went 28-13
against one team in particular, which led to his nickname as “The Yankee
Killer.” The White Sox acquired Lary
from the Mets in July of 1965, and he pitched in fourteen games for them. Ironically, the Sox lost those three games he
appeared in against the Yankees.
For some reason, I
remember a story in the paper from the end of the season about the status of
various Sox players. Lary said he wanted
to pitch another year. He didn’t. His career ended a year before Tommy Nobis’
began as an NFL middle linebacker.
Nobis was the Atlanta
Falcons’ first-ever player and played his entire 11-year career with Atlanta,
from 1966 to 1976. Many critics put him
on a level with Dick Butkus, but Nobis hardly appeared on Sunday games in
Chicago for me to make a comparison; if the networks were going to show a
crappy team, the Bears got dibs. Nobis
died at the age of 74. His wife said she
told him that the Falcons were in the Super Bowl this past February, but she
couldn’t be sure he understood what she was telling him.
The average MLB
salary in 2017 was $4.47 million versus $1.9 million in the NFL. Given the violent, debilitating nature of
football, it should be the other way around.
Judging by Frank Lary, baseball players would still come out ahead, by a
lot.
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