page_title: Sal Maglie
section_title: Coaching career
hierarchical_section_title: Sal Maglie / Coaching career
caption_attribution_description: English: Professional baseball coach Sal Maglie
context_page_description: Salvatore Anthony Maglie was an American Major League Baseball pitcher and later, a scout and a pitching coach. He played from 1945 to 1958 for the New York Giants, Cleveland Indians, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees, and St. Louis Cardinals. Maglie was known as "Sal the Barber", because he gave close shaves—that is, pitched inside to hitters. A gentle personality off the field went unnoticed during games, his foreboding physical appearance contributing to his menacing presence on a pitcher's mound. He was the last of 14 players to play for the Giants, Dodgers and Yankees at a time when all three teams were in New York City. During a 10-year major league baseball career, Maglie compiled 119 wins, 862 strikeouts, and a 3.15 earned run average.
  Born and raised in Niagara Falls, New York, Maglie had to play ball secretly growing up because his parents discouraged it. Signed by the Buffalo Bisons of the International League in 1938, he pitched in the minor leagues for five years, then took two years off during World War II to work at a Niagara Falls defense plant.
context_section_description: In September of 1958, the Associated Press wrote that Maglie was a candidate to be St. Louis's pitching coach in 1959. Instead, the Cardinals hired him to scout and serve as a minor league coach. Not enjoying the arrangement, Maglie did not renew his contract for the 1960 season.
  The Boston Red Sox hired Maglie to be their pitching coach before the 1960 season, and he served in that capacity for the next three years. Under his tutelage, Bill Monbouquette had 17 strikeouts in a game in 1961 and quoted Maglie after the feat. "Sal talked about stuff like ‘move this guy off the plate, move his feet, move his legs,’ and oh, he did preach: ‘throw that ball inside!’ And he didn’t mean pitch to get a strike on the inside corner. He meant you’ve got to set that hitter up with a pitch way inside!" When Monbouquette and Earl Wilson threw no-hitters in 1962, they credited Maglie with their improvement. "He taught me how to use the lower part of my body," Dick Radatz said, crediting the advice with adding four or five miles an hour to his pitches' velocity. "I think he was a fine pitching coach. What he taught me helped me for the rest of my career. Without that, I don’t think I’d have been the pitcher I was." When Johnny Pesky replaced Pinky Higgins as Boston's manager after the 1962 season, Pesky chose not to bring back Maglie for 1963, preferring instead to pick new coaches.
  Maglie did not initially pursue another coaching job because his wife, Kay, was diagnosed with cancer in 1963. He invested in local businesses around Niagara Falls, engaged in public speaking, and joined the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) in 1965. The NYSAC post forced him to turn down an offer to return to the Red Sox in 1965, but he signed a two-year contract to become their pitching coach again in 1966. He was the pitching coach for the "Impossible Dream" Red Sox that went all the way to the 1967 World Series before losing in seven games to the Cardinals. Jim Lonborg, the AL Cy Young Award winner that season, credited his effectiveness that year to Maglie's lessons on pitching inside. The Red Sox later fired Maglie after losing the 1967 World Series, and Maglie criticized manager Dick Williams in an interview a week later. "Dick Williams gave me the biggest disappointment I ever got in baseball," Maglie said.  "Williams never even had the courage or decency to tell me himself that I was fired...I don’t like being stepped on." Maglie also criticized Williams for his handling of Lonborg, who got the loss after Williams started him on two days' rest in Game 7 of the series. "It was obvious Lonborg didn't have it. Williams should have gotten him out sooner, and I told him so." Williams had wanted to choose his own pitching coach when he became Boston's manager in 1967, but he was unable to since Maglie was still under contract for one year.
  Maglie was not unemployed long, as he was hired as a scout for the expansion Seattle Pilots in 1968. The franchise began play in 1969, and Maglie was their first pitching coach. He was profiled unflatteringly in Jim Bouton's book Ball Four, despite the fact that he was Bouton's boyhood hero.  Bouton commented that Maglie rarely gave useful advice to the pitchers, and frequently second-guessed their choice of pitches, often contradicting his previous second guessing. In one such instance, Bouton related:
  The man I love [Maglie] had quite an adventure tonight. Darrell Brandon pitching, and with Rod Carew on third base he's using a full wind-up. At the last moment he decides to take a look over at Carew, who's taking a pretty good lead. So he backs off the rubber and Sal yells at him, "For crissakes, get the hitter. The runner isn't going anyplace."
  So Darrell winds up and lets fly. And Carew steals home.
  
  When Darrell comes into the dugout at the end of the inning, Maglie lets him have it. "Dammit", he says. "You know you've got to pitch from the stretch in that situation."
  Bouton and Maglie clashed over the knuckleball, which Bouton wanted to throw exclusively; Maglie preferred that he throw other pitches as well.
caption: Maglie as pitching coach for the Seattle Pilots
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