Elroy Face
1928 - 2026
"The Baron of the Bullpen"
Roy Face, a mainstay of the Pittsburgh Pirates bullpen for fifteen seasons through the 1950's and -60's, died this past week at the age of 97. He died eight days short of his 98th birthday.
Was Roy Face the first dominant "closer" in major league baseball? Since the role of the relief pitcher, the idea of a "closer", and the statistic of the Save, has evolved and changed over the years, it is hard to answer that question, but this I know. I attended my first Pirates game in 1959. That was the season that Face finished with an astonishing record of 18-1 (more on that later) so Roy Face was certainly the most dominant relief pitcher in the first seven or eight years of MY baseball fandom. As I said, the role of relief pitchers was different then than it is today. Face, nicknamed "The Baron of the Bullpen" by announcer Bob Prince, would often be called into a game in mid-inning, and not just in the ninth inning, with men on base. He would then often finish that game, pitching multiple innings.
About that "Save" statistic. Let me quote from an essay by John Thorn, MLB's official historian, that he wrote in 2024 about Chicago sportswriter Jerome Holtzman:
Holtzman recognized in 1959, when he was still with the Sun-Times, that something dramatic was happening on the field that was invisible in the box score and, by extension, at the bargaining table when relievers came to negotiate their salaries for the next season. As he told Darrell Horwitz in an interview in 2005: “Elroy Face was 18–1 with Pittsburgh in 1959. I was traveling with the Cubs. The Cubs had two relief pitchers: righthander Don Elston and lefthander Bill Henry. They were constantly protecting leads and no one even knew about it.” It burned him that Face was piling up wins by blowing victories and then having the Pirates rally for him; ten times Face had allowed the tying or lead run.
He came up with The Save. The Sporting News began listing league leaders during the 1960 season; by 1969 it was an official MLB stat. In 1974–1975 its definition came under further modification, but there is no denying the impact of Holtzman’s invention.
So while that 18-1 record in 1959 jumps out at you, perhaps it wasn't reflective at how good Face actually was that season. In any event, it did lead to Holtzman inventing this new statistic. It is a statistic that led to guys like Dennis Eckersley, Rich Gossage, Bruce Sutter, and Billy Wagner getting plaques in Cooperstown.
That aside, my own memories of Face include a feeling of supreme confidence whenever he came into pitch in the late innings with the game on the line. I was able to be in Face's company over the years at a couple of golf outings and at SABR meetings. Like many of his generation, he harbored some bitter feelings about "all the money these guys are making today". I also remember a game that Marilyn and I attended at Three Rivers Stadium once. While looking for a place to sit and eat some pre-game fare from the concession stand, who do we see sitting at a high top table all by himself but Elroy Face. I asked if we could join him, he said certainly, and we had a nice conversation with him for fifteen or so minutes. During the course of that conversation, he mentioned that the most he ever made in a season was $65,000. I just looked it up and $65,000 in 1963 would be worth about $688,000 in 2026, which is well below what the MLB minimum salary of $780,000 is today. Maybe he had a right to be bitter.
Roy Face was also, most importantly, a key member of the Pirates 1960 World Series Championship team. He saved three of the four Bucco victories in that Series. Now only three members of the team are still with us: Vernon Law who will turn 96 in March, Bob Skinner who will turn 95 in October, and Bill Mazeroski who will be 90 in September.
RIP Roy Face, The Baron of the Bullpen
A Sports Illustrated cover in 1963
Great stuff.
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