page_title: Dizzy Dean
section_title: Injury-shortened career
hierarchical_section_title: Dizzy Dean / Injury-shortened career
caption_attribution_description: English: 1933 Goudey baseball card of Jerome "Dizzy" Dean of the St. Louis Cardinals #223. PD-not-renewed.
context_page_description: Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean, also known as Jerome Herman Dean, was an American professional baseball pitcher. During his Major League Baseball career, he played for the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, and St. Louis Browns.
  A brash and colorful personality, Dean is the last National League pitcher to win 30 games in one season. After his playing career, “Ol’ Diz” became a popular television sports commentator. Dean was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1953. When the Cardinals reopened the team Hall of Fame in 2014, he was inducted in the inaugural class.
context_section_description: While pitching for the NL in the 1937 All-Star Game, Dean faced Earl Averill of the American League Cleveland Indians. Averill hit a line drive back at the mound, hitting Dean on the foot. Told that his big toe was fractured, Dean responded, "Fractured, hell, the damn thing's broken!" Coming back too soon from the injury, Dean changed his pitching motion to avoid landing as hard on his sore toe enough to affect his mechanics. As a result, he hurt his arm, losing his great fastball. At the time Dean was injured he sported a 12–7 record. He finished the season 13–10. 
  By 1938, Dean's arm was largely gone. Nonetheless, Chicago Cubs scout Clarence "Pants" Rowland was given the unenviable job of obeying owner P. K. Wrigley's order to buy the washed-up Dizzy Dean's contract at any cost. Rowland signed the ragged righty for $185,000, one of the most expensive loss-leader contracts in baseball history. Dean helped the Cubs win the 1938 National League pennant. The Cubs had been in third place, six games behind the first place Pittsburgh Pirates. By September 27, with one week left in the season, the Cubs had battled back to within a game and a half of the Pirates in the National League standings as the two teams met for a crucial three-game series.
  Dean pitched the opening game of the series and with an ailing arm, relied more on his experience and grit to defeat the Pirates by a score of 2–1. Dean would later call it the greatest outing of his career. The victory cut the Pirates' lead to a half game and, set the stage for one of baseball's most memorable moments when in the next game of the series, Cubs player-manager, Gabby Hartnett, hit his famous "Homer in the Gloamin'" to put the Cubs into first place. The Cubs clinched the pennant three days later. Dean pitched gamely in Game 2 of the 1938 World Series before losing to the New York Yankees in what became known as "Ol' Diz's Last Stand".
  Dean made a one-game comeback on September 28, 1947. After retiring as a player, the still-popular Dean was hired as a broadcaster by the perennially cash-poor Browns to drum up some badly needed publicity. After broadcasting several poor pitching performances in a row, he grew frustrated, saying on the air, "Doggone it, I can pitch better than nine out of the ten guys on this staff!" The wives of the Browns pitchers complained, and management, needing to sell tickets somehow, took him up on his offer and had him pitch the last game of the season versus the Chicago White Sox. At age 37, Dean pitched four innings, allowing no runs, and rapped a single in his only at-bat. Rounding first base, he pulled his hamstring. Returning to the broadcast booth at the end of the game, he said, "I said I can pitch better than nine of the ten guys on the staff, and I can. But I'm done. Talking's my game now, and I'm just glad that muscle I pulled wasn't in my throat."
  In the 1950s, he appeared in guest roles on Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town on CBS and on The Guy Mitchell Show on ABC.
caption: Dizzy Dean 1933 Goudey baseball card.
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