ElRoy Face, a durable right-handed pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates who befuddled batters with his off-speed forkball and became one of baseball’s most prominent relief specialists, died on Thursday in North Versailles, Pa. He was 97.
His daughter Valerie Cortazzo confirmed the death, at a senior living facility.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Face was a standout among relievers who were transforming bullpens from a habitat for pitchers who weren’t good enough to be starters. At 5-foot-8 and 150 pounds or so, he did not have the blazing fastball of modern-day pitchers, but he relied on a sneaky fastball and was among the first pitchers to develop the forkball as an effective weapon.
In the first half of the 20th century, some pitchers thrived as relievers, but specialists were relatively sparse. In the early 1950s, Face broke in when an increasing number of pitchers, like Hoyt Wilhelm of the New York Giants, Jim Konstanty of the Philadelphia Phillies and Joe Black of the Brooklyn Dodgers, were mastering the “closer” role.
Having become a bullpen ace in his own right, Face helped take the Pirates to a stunning defeat of the Yankees in a thrilling seven-game World Series in 1960, when he saved three of the team’s four victories.
Pitching with the Pirates for 15 seasons, Face posted 191 saves, a statistic first tallied formally in 1969 but compiled retroactively.
He led the National League in saves three times and twice in games pitched, with 68 appearances each time, and he was an All-Star in 1959, 1960 and 1961. He was on the disabled list only once, after knee surgery in 1965.
Face compiled an 18-1 mark in 1959, achieving a winning percentage of .947, which for a long time was a major league record.
Face was a mainstay of the Pirates’ pitching staff, along with the starters Bob Friend and Vern Law, while Pittsburgh struggled through a rebuilding period that ultimately brought the team its 1960 championship. He led the N.L. in appearances for a second time that season.
Face finished with a league and career-high of 28 saves and posted a 1.88 earned run average in 1962. The Pirates sold him to the Detroit Tigers late in the 1968 season, and he concluded his major league career with the Montreal Expos in 1969.
ElRoy Leon Face was born on Feb. 20, 1928, in Stephentown, N.Y., east of Albany, second of four children of Joseph A. Face Sr. and Bessie (Williams) Face. His father was a carpenter, and his mother managed the home.
Face excelled in baseball in high school but joined the Army in 1946 before graduating. After military service, he proved a strikeout whiz for a semipro team and was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies organization in 1949.
Following two seasons in the low minors, Face was selected in a minor-draft draft by the Brooklyn Dodgers. After two years in the Dodgers system, he was picked up by Pittsburgh and made his major league debut in April 1953. Pitching mostly as a reliever, he relied on a fastball and curve that season but was hit hard.
At the Pirates’ 1954 spring training camp, Face watched teammate Joe Page experiment with a forkball. Page, an outstanding reliever with the Yankees in the late 1940s, was seeking a comeback with Pittsburgh. Face developed his own forkball while pitching with the Pirates’ New Orleans farm team that season.
“You hold the ball between your first and second fingers and let it slide through,” Face told Danny Peary in the oral history “We Played the Game” (1994). “I had long fingers and just wrapped them around the ball. You wouldn’t get the rotation you had on a fastball.”
He continued, “Usually it would sink, but sometimes it would move in and out, and sometimes it would shoot upward. I threw it the same way every time, aiming it for the middle of the plate, and let it take care of itself.”
Face used his forkball up to 80 percent of the time when it was working well, but he also threw a fastball, curve and slider.
“He threw it with the exact same motion as his fastball,” Dick Groat, the Pirates’ All-Star shortstop, told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1999. “His fastball wasn’t overpowering, but it was quick. Hitters were so frightened by that forkball and got so caught up looking for it that he could throw the fastball right by them.”
Face pitched in 848 games in his 16 major league seasons, only 27 of them as a starter. He had a 104-95 record with a 3.48 earned run average.
After baseball, he worked as a carpentry foreman for Mayview State Hospital, a psychiatric facility near Pittsburgh.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two other children, Michelle Battocchi and ElRoy Face, from his first marriage, to Jean Kuran, which ended in divorce; a sister, Jacqueline; seven grandchildren; and many great-grandchildren. His second wife, Roberta (Williams) Face, known as Bo, died in 2012 after 33 years of marriage.
On the mound, Face viewed himself as impervious to pressure.
“I had eight guys to help me,” he told Bob Cairns in his oral history “Pen Men” (1992). “The batter had nobody. He had the pressure.”
Adam Bernstein contributed reporting.
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