Promise Unfulfilled…But Why?

Some seamheads check the TRANSACTIONS web sites on a regular basis. Me, I check Baseball Almanac, not for transactions, but for obituaries. When a Hall of Famer (e.g, Rickey Henderson) dies, it makes the news. Lesser players receive less airtime or column space. Sometimes much less. Yet Baseball Almanac dutifully records the death of anyone who ever played big league ball, even if his cup of coffee was a demitasse.

In scanning the list of former players who have been permanently designated for assignment, one often finds the name of a player one hasn’t thought of in years, perhaps decades. Such a player was Ron Locke (1942-2024). When I happened upon his name early this year (he died on December 13, 2024) it rang a bell, but it was more of a tinkle than a peal. Who was this guy?

No need to wrack my brain because the mystery can be cleared up with a few clicks on the internet. As it turned out, he played but one season, and that was 60 years ago. Hence my failure to recall. I’ve forgotten players who played longer than that more recently than that.

Ron Locke was a left-handed rookie pitcher (5’11”, 168 pounds) on the 1964 New York Mets. As you may recall, this was the year Shea Stadium opened adjacent to the New York World’s Fair. After six decades, I vividly remember a day trip from Philadelphia to Queens to visit the fair and see a Mets game.

I might have kept score that day but I don’t have a scorecard to prove it, so I can’t say I saw Ron Locke pitch that day. If I could recall the date, I could look it up. It was a day game and I think it was early summer but that doesn’t help much. Of course, I might have seen Locke pitch at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia or on a televised contest between the Phillies and the Mets. I do recall his baseball card, faithfully reproduced on his page on the Baseball Almanac web site.

For no explicable reason, I wanted to learn more about Ron Locke. Oddly enough, the more I learned the more mysterious he appeared.

Ronald Thomas Locke was born on April 4, 1942 in Wakefield, Rhode Island. An All-State (granted, Rhode Island is a small state) pitcher in his junior and senior years, he graduated from South Kingston High School in Wakefield. Though he pitched well in HS, he was not drafted by any major league team and he did not go to college. Instead, he went to work for the General Dynamics Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut.

GDEB fielded a team in the semipro Morgan League of New London, Connecticut. Locke played for them in 1961 and 1962. In his “rookie” year he acquitted himself well, with a 6-0 record and a 0.99 ERA, but he really turned heads the following season when he posted an 11-0 record with an 0.25 ERA. Since building submarines was the company’s specialty, one wonders…did Locke throw a sinker?  Or a wet one?  Did he have a submarine style delivery?

No matter what the level of competition, Locke’s semipro stats (as an added attraction, he batted .464 – 26 for 52 – in his two seasons) were outstanding. A co-worker persuaded him to attend an August tryout with the Auburn Mets, who were on their way to the 1962 championship of the New York Penn League. They liked what they saw and Locke was inked for 1963 season.

The decision proved sound as Locke finished with a record of 18-8, a 2.94 ERA and 19 complete games in 26 starts. His 249 strikeouts (in 217 innings) was just one shy of the league leader, George Angel of the Geneva Senators.

Clearly, the big league Mets were impressed. Locke spent nine days with the big club (but did not pitch) in the waning days of 1963 as they closed down the Polo Grounds. He opened the 1964 season with the big club, making his MLB debut on April 23^rd against the Cubs at Shea, pitching two scoreless innings in a 5-1 loss. Later he was sent down to the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons to get some work in (51 innings), but he returned to the big club to finish the season.

At the big league level in 1964, Locke appeared in 25 games (3 as a starter), pitching 41.1 innings. He won 1 game and lost 2. His ERA was 3.48, well below the team ERA of 4.25. He had more walks (22) than strikeouts (17), however, and his WHIP was 1.645, but given the Mets pitching staff that year, it was not exactly egregious. He was bested – rather, I should say worsted – by Darrell (brother of Gary) Sutherland (1.650), Jerry Hinsley (1.826), Craig Anderson (1.846), Ed Bauta and Steve Dillon (2.000), and Jay Hook (2.483).

For good measure, Locke topped off 1964 with a post-season stint (55 innings) at the Florida Instructional League, where coaches helped him with his pickoff move.

All in all, it would seem to be a promising rookie season for Locke. His career was off to a promising start in a new ballpark in the biggest city in the big leagues. He was a little wild, but left-handers were always in demand and he was only 22 years old.

Given the Mets’ incompetence in those days, showing up at the ballpark probably was a bit of a grind, particularly towards the end of the season, but the Mets had a say in the pennant race. At the beginning of the final weekend of the season, four NL teams were still pennant contenders. Thanks to the Phillies’ infamous collapse, the Reds, Giants, and Cardinals were still in the hunt. After the Giants were eliminated, the other three teams were still in contention on the last day of the season.

In St. Louis, the Mets had been playing the spoiler roll, defeating the Cardinals in the first two games, 1-0 and 15-5. Thanks to a rare relief appearance by Bob Gibson, the Cards righted the ship just in time, winning 11-5 before a full house at Busch Stadium (f/k/a Sportsman’s Park) on the last day of the season. Doing mop-up work, Locke threw the last pitch of the season for the Mets in the bottom of the 8^th. It was also the final pitch of his major league career.

One might think that the Mets, who finished 53-109 that season, would have invited Locke back for 1965. It didn’t happen. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is injury. No Tommy John surgery in those days, so perhaps he had some debilitating elbow problem.

Clearly, he expected to be with the Mets. In an interview with the New London Day newspaper, he said he was looking forward to learning from Warren Spahn and Yogi Berra, who had been signed as coaches in the off-season. Besides, the Mets wouldn’t have sent him to the Florida Instructional League if they didn’t believe he had a future at the big league level. The Mets should have had plenty of opportunities for young pitchers in 1965, as they finished at 50-112. So why was Locke not invited back?

Locke split the ’65 season between the Bisons and the Double-A Williamsport Mets of the Eastern League. The composite season was so-so, a 10-9 record and a 3.76 ERA. He hurled 176 innings, which would indicate he was not injured.

He began the 1966 season with the Jacksonville Suns (the Mets new Triple-A affiliation) but soon found himself back in Buffalo, which was now an affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds, who had swapped Gerry Arrigo to the Mets for Locke. Curiously, there str no stats for Locke pitching for either of these teams. The record shows he pitched 52 innings for the Macon Peaches, the Phillies affiliate in the Double-A Southern League. He was 6-3 with a 2.25 ERA in 52 IP. It might seem his career was going backwards, but he was still just 24 years old. As it turned out, the Mets, who fashioned a 66-95 record in 1966, were still in need of pitching and still interested in Locke (they had sold Arrigo back to the Reds after three months), so they re-acquired Locke.

In 1967 Tom Seaver had an auspicious debut (16-13) with the Mets, yet they were still in need of pitchers, as the team had a 61-101 record. No help was forthcoming from Locke, as he was back in Jacksonville and Williamsport in 1967. His composite record was 9-7 with a 2.73 ERA, but at the Triple-A level he had a 1.80 ERA in 40 IP. Yet the Mets chose not to promote Locke.

In 1968 he split the season between Jacksonville and the Double-A Memphis Blues of the Texas League. He was effective at both stops, logging ERAs of 2.20 and 2.25, respectively. Yet the Mets seemed to have forgotten about him. Indeed, they had turned the corner. In retrospect, 1968 has been deemed the Year of the Pitcher, and the Mets were no exception.

The Mets moved out of the cellar to 9^th place and finished 73-89 in 1968. For most teams this would have been a disappointing season, but this was a new franchise record for victories (eclipsing 66 in 1966). More importantly, Tom Seaver had been joined by Jerry Koosman and Nolan Ryan, among others. The team ERA dropped more than a full run from 3.73 in 1967 to 2.72 in 1968. In 1967 the team ERA was 8^th in the NL; in 1968, they were actually better than the league average of 2.99. This was unfamiliar territory for the Mets. Clearly, they were on the way up, but no one could have predicted what they would achieve in 1969.

So it appears that Locke had been surpassed on the depth chart. Though still just 26 years old in 1968, he had no future.

I don’t know what Locke thought in 1969 as he saw the Mets win the NL East, the NL pennant and the World Series. On one hand, he was probably glad to see some of his former minor league teammates basking in the glory of a big league championship – and a highly unlikely one at that. At the same time, he must have felt some resentment at how the Mets had handled him. If he was discouraged, who could blame him?  At age 27 he had his worst season by far, splitting the 1969 season between Memphis and the Mets’ newest Triple-A affiliate, the Tidewater Tides, he had a 5.14 ERA in 77 innings.

In 1970 he logged 45 innings with the Jacksonville Suns, who were now a Double-A team in the Southern League. They were affiliated with the Brewers, who were in their inaugural season in Milwaukee. He logged a 3-3 record with a 2.00 ERA in 45 innings. The Brewers would go on to a 65-97 season. The team ERA of 4.21 was next to last (the Chisox were in the cellar at 4.54) in the AL, so they too were in need of pitching help. It would not come from Ron Locke, however. He retired at age 28 after the 1970 season with but one major league victory, a 7-inning starting effort in a 4-2 victory on August 2, 1964 over the Houston Colt .45s in the second game of a Sunday double-header at Shea.

Of course, what Locke did from 1970 to 2024 is not recorded in baseball records, but one might assume he went back to Connecticut and worked for the GDEB Company. In fact, he might have worked for them in the off-season, as he was not earning big bucks during his playing career. After 1970, did he play for the company team?  They had a team in the Morgan League through 1982.

According to Wikipedia, Locke was a resident of Fort Myers, Florida for 25 years and died in Richmond, Rhode Island at age 85. There are a lot of unanswered questions about Locke’s career, but you could say the same for thousands of former major leaguers. For some of them, a look at the statistics reveals why things didn’t work out for them. For others, such as Locke, the reasons remain a mystery.

Casey Stengel, his manager with the Mets, once said of a former player, “He is dead at the present time.”  I guess that’s all we can add to the Ron Locke story.