Our Guest Speaker James Alvin “Jim” Palmer (born October 15, 1945) is a retired American right-handed pitcher who played all of his 19 years in Major League Baseball (MLB) with the Baltimore Orioles (1965–1967, 1969–1984) and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990. Palmer was the winning pitcher in 186 games in the 1970s, the most wins in that decade by any MLB pitcher. He also won at least twenty games in each of eight seasons and received three Cy Young Awards and four Gold Gloves during the decade. His 268 career victories are currently an Orioles record. A six-time American League (AL) All-Star, he was also one of the rare pitchers who never allowed a grand slam in any major league contest.
Palmer appeared in the postseason eight times and was a vital member of three World Series Champions, six AL pennant winners and seven Eastern Division titleholders. He is the only pitcher in the history of the Fall Classic with a win in each of three decades. He was also the youngest to pitch a shutout in a World Series at age 20 in 1966. He was one of the starters on the last rotation to feature four 20-game winners in a single season in 1971.
Since his retirement as an active player in 1984, Palmer has worked as a color commentator on telecasts of MLB games for ABC and ESPN and for the Orioles on Home Team Sports (HTS), Comcast SportsNet (CSN) Mid-Atlantic and the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN). He has also been a popular spokesman, most famously for Jockey International for almost twenty years. He was nicknamed Cakes in the 1960s because of his habit of eating pancakes for breakfast on the days he pitched.
Early years
Palmer was born in New York City; shortly after his birth, Palmer was adopted by Moe Wiesen, a garment industry executive, and his wife Polly from Harrison, New York. After his adoptive father died in 1955, the 9-year-old Jim, his mother and his sister moved to California, where he began playing in youth-league baseball. In 1956, his mother married actor Max Palmer, from whom Palmer took his last name. Showing talent at the amateur level, upon graduating from Arizona’s Scottsdale High School in 1963, Palmer signed a minor-league contract at the age of 18.
Playing career
Palmer has been considered one of the best pitchers in Orioles – and major-league – history. He was a mainstay in the rotation during Baltimore’s six pennant-winning teams in the 1960s (1966 & 1969), 1970s (1970, 1971 & 1979) and 1980s (1983). Also, he is the only pitcher in big-league history to win World Series games in three decades (1966, 1970–71, 1983). One of his most amazing feats is that during his 19-year major league career of 575 games (including 17 postseason games), he never surrendered a grand slam. He was sometimes sidelined by arm, shoulder and back problems, but still won 20 games in 8 different seasons (1970–1973 & 1975–1978) and in 4 other seasons went 15–10 (1966), 16–4 (1969), 16–10 (1980) and 15–5 (1982). He was one of four 20-game winners in the Orioles starting rotation in 1971, only the second rotation in major league history to include four 20-game winners. With the death of Mike Cuellar in April 2010, Palmer is the last surviving member of that group, which also included Pat Dobson and Dave McNally. Palmer won spots on 6 all-star teams, 4 gold gloves, 3 Cy Young Awards, and 2 ERA titles. He led the American League in victories three times. Palmer retired in 1984 as a member of the defending World Champions. He is a member of major league baseball’s Hall of Fame.
