The Pecan Park Eagle

Ron Necciai of the Bristol Twins: The Man with 27 K's and a No-No on May 13, 1952.

All of the current ballyhoo over Washington Nationals rookie phenom pitcher Stephen Strasberg just stirs the memory of a kid who still stands for some of us as the guy who arrived in the bigs with the biggest hype of all time – and I’m not talking about David Clyde of the 1973 Texas Rangers.

I’m talking about Ron Necciai (pronounced Net-shy) of the 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates, who broke in to the majors with his first start on August 10, 1952 at the tender age of barely 20. To get there, all Ron had to do was perform a feat that no other pitcher in the history of baseball had pulled off until he squeezed the trigger in a 7-0 winning game no-hitter pitched for the Class D Appalachian League Bristol Twins over  the Welch Miners on May 13, 1952, when Necciai was still only age 19.

Necciai’s gem against the miners tallied 27 strikeouts over nine frames, including one batter who reached first base on a passed ball in the ninth inning. That miscue was covered by a fourth strikeout in the ninth to go along with the 23 other men he had fanned on the night. One earlier other out was recorded on a ground ball play to first in the second inning. One other Welch batter put the ball into play in the ninth, reaching first on an error before Necciai breezed one more guy to seal the shutout no-hitter. Two other Welch batters reached base during the game on a walk and hit batsman, but nobody got a hit or even came close. With blazing speed and a curve that broke like the proverbial pitch that falls off a table, the 6’5″, 185 pound Ron Necciai had pitched his way into the relatively media-quiet cobweb of sports reporting in 1952, Can you imagine what Necciai’s life could have been like had the world had Twitter, Facebook, and blogs back in 1952?

Ron Necciai’s roll didn’t stop with the sensational game against Welch. His very next time out saw him strike out 24 in a two-hitter win. By the time he got the call up to the talent-challenged Pirates during that same 1952 season, he had struck out 109 hitters in 43 innings with Bristol, and then posted a Class B Carolina Legaue-high 172 strikeouts in 126 innings at Burlington-Graham.

The trouble brewing for Necciai, however, was part health and part culture. Ron suffered from ulcers, even at that early age, and the tension and stress began to take its toll upon him. He was working on a torn rotator cuff with the way he threw those hard to hit fast ones in the minors and there was no one around in the Pirate system who was any different than the rest of the baseball system at that time. Back then, if you had a guy who could throw that hard and that effectively, most clubs just allowed the apparent genie in the bottle to keep on blowing smoke for as long as he was able.

True to the the tempo of that age, that’s just what the Pirates did.They allowed Ron Necciai to simply blow his arm away. By the time he was called up to make his major league debut on August 10, 1952, he was pretty much done before he had any fun. In the 54.2 Pirate innings that Ron Necciai worked between his call up date and his final major league appearance on September 28, 1952, he compiled what turned out be his career major league record of 1 win, 6 losses, a 7.08 earned run average, and only 31 strikeouts.

The army drafted Necciai after the 1952 season due to the Korean Conflict, but his bleeding ulcer condition made short work of his military career. By the time spring training rolled around again, the rotator cuff tear pretty much had ended any chance that Ron Necciai had for a comeback, although I’m not sure when or if the injury was ever actually accurately diagnosed during the time frame that Ron kept trying to play. We do know that Ron Necciai kept trying to make something work out until he finally gave up in 1955.

Ron Necciai went into the sporting goods business after his baseball future collapsed around him, but the man married, had a nice family, and an apparently happy and successful life from there, simply accepting his baseball injury as “just one of those things” that happened. Five days from now, on June 18, 2010, Ron Necciai and his family will be celebrating his 78th birthday at the old fireballer’s home in Gallatin, Pennsylvania.

Happy Birthday, Ron Necciai – and thanks for the wonderful memories of a guy who, had he played during a more enlightened medical era, might have made it all the way to the big Hall with a little different twist on the dial of destiny. It just wasn’t meant to be.