Virgil Trucks has died. Not only did he have one of the great baseball names, but he pitched two -- yes, two -- no-hitters one season.
From the NY Times obit:
Virgil Trucks, a flame-throwing right-hander who tossed two no-hitters for the 1952 Detroit Tigers, a team that finished in last place, died on Saturday in Alabaster, Ala. He was 95.
His stepdaughter Barbara Sloan confirmed the death.
Trucks, whose nickname was Fire, had a fastball that was sometimes compared to Bob Feller’s and that he claimed was once measured by military radar at 105 miles per hour. He pitched for five major league teams but spent most of his career with the Tigers, helping them to a World Series victory over the Chicago Cubs in 1945 and leading the American League in strikeouts in 1949, which was perhaps his best big-league season. Of his 19 wins that year, six were shutouts, tied for the major league lead with Ellis Kinder of the Boston Red Sox. He was also the winning pitcher in the All-Star Game. His career record was 177-135, with a 3.39 earned run average.
In 1952, Trucks had one of the oddest statistical seasons in baseball history. Not only was the Tigers’ record dreadful — the team was 50-104 — but Trucks’s was as well. The woeful offense scored two runs or fewer in 15 of his starts, and he went 5-19. But remarkably, two of the five wins were no-hitters. The first, on May 15, was against the Washington Senators; the second, on Aug. 25, was against the mighty Yankees at Yankee Stadium. No one since then has pitched a complete-game no-hitter against the Yankees in New York.
Trucks became just the third pitcher to throw two no-hitters in a season, following Johnny Vander Meer of the Cincinnati Reds in 1938 (who did it in consecutive starts) and Allie Reynolds of the Yankees in 1951. Only two others have accomplished the feat since then: Nolan Ryan of the California Angels in 1973 and Roy Halladay of the Phillies in 2010, his second coming in a playoff game.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/sports/baseball/virgil-trucks-dies-at-95-had-2-no-hitters-in-1952.html?_r=0
