Luis Tiant, the flamboyant Cuban right-hander who spent more than 50 years as a Red Sox fan favorite, has died at age 83.
The news, confirmed Tuesday by Major League Baseball, comes as a gut punch to an organization that embraced "El Tiante" as an ambassador and link to the colorful 1970s clubs that captured the region's imagination without ever quite winning a championship.
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Tiant served as the staff ace for most of the '70s, winning 122 games over eight seasons in Boston while posting a 3.36 ERA. Overall, he won 229 games with a 3.30 lifetime ERA and is one of the best players not enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame.
He retired in 1982 and spent the next two decades coaching in various minor league systems and managing the Div. III Savannah College of Art and Design before rejoining the Red Sox in 2002 as the pitching coach at short-season Lowell.
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He spent the remainder of his career in the organization, and was a constant sight riding a golf cart at spring training in Fort Myers. He was also a frequent clubhouse visitor in Boston, where he had a locker and became a personal favorite of ace Pedro Martinez.
With his Fu Manchu moustache, love of Cuban cigars (Sports Illustrated once famously photographed him smoking one in the shower), and unpredictable corkscrew movements on the mound, the iconoclastic Tiant married a keen sense of showmanship with a killer instinct.
He was one of the best big-game pitchers of his or any generation. He never lost a playoff start, beating the Reds twice in the classic 1975 World Series. When the Red Sox needed a win against Toronto on the final day of the 1978 season to force a one-game playoff with the Yankees, they knew where to turn.
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"If we lose today, it will be over my dead body," Tiant said. "They'll have to leave me face down on the mound."
He threw a two-hit shutout, and Red Sox fans will always be left to wonder how the Bucky Dent game against New York might've turned out had Tiant been able to start instead of Mike Torrez.
Tiant's resume included four 20-win seasons, two ERA titles and three All-Star appearances. His 1.60 ERA with Cleveland in 1968 remains the lowest among qualified American League starters in over 100 years.
He had hoped to finish his career with the Red Sox, but they only offered him a one-year deal in the winter of 1978 and he joined the Yankees in free agency. Tiant's departure was the first in a string of embarrassing exits for ownership, which would include Fred Lynn and Carlton Fisk, and the club needed nearly a decade to recover.
"When they let Luis Tiant go to New York they tore out our heart and soul," Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski told The Boston Globe.
The two sides eventually made amends, and over the final two decades of his life, Tiant was a constant presence around Fort Myers and Fenway Park.
"Proud to call New England home," his Twitter bio reads, and the love was returned. When Tiant visited the Legends Suite, he invariably received raucous ovations.
