Short, Sweet Career : Injury Puts End to Busby’s Promise

Well on the way to his second successive 20-victory season, Steve Busby was only mildly concerned in the summer of 1975 when his right shoulder began to rebel against the stress it absorbed each time he pitched.

“I was 12-4, 12-5, something like that at the All-Star break and I had pitched right around 180 innings,” said Busby, who won 16 games for the Kansas City Royals in 1973 and 22 games in 1974, including a no-hitter in each season.

“I started a game at Anaheim and pitched 12 innings and threw around 200 pitches and mechanically, it was a struggle for me. I came back on my normal four days’ rest against Texas and it was a real struggle.

“The type of injury that happened to me would not have happened today. They would have suspected something. It was a severe tear of the rotator cuff, but at that time, shoulder pain was shoulder pain. There was little differentiation between tendinitis and anything else. . . . It was called a frozen shoulder. Because I lost my range of motion, I couldn’t raise my arm above shoulder level. I didn’t have that 360-degree range of motion.”

Busby, a three-sport star at Fullerton High School and winner of the game that gave USC the 1971 College World Series title, pitched through the pain to an 18-12 record. Sustained by cortisone and courage, he continued until the following July, when he could go no longer.

“It got to the point, after a game in New York, where I physically could not lift my arm. Whitey Herzog, who was our manager by then, said, ‘Let’s get it looked at,’ ” Busby recalled. “Dr. Frank Jobe said I had two choices: to get a new profession or to try surgery and then get a new profession. They had never tried surgery on an active pitcher before. It was best guesses as to what would happen.

“They did the surgery on July 19, 1976, and my arm came back fairly well, better than Dr. Jobe said it would. It took 18 months. In ‘77, I pitched a little in (class) A ball but it never got strong enough to do much.

“The next year, it wasn’t strong enough to start with, but by the end of the season it was much better. I was able to strengthen the muscle fibers, which had regenerated. By ‘79, it was not too bad, but I began to have problems with my knee and back and my body said, ‘That’s it.’ ”

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Busby, 43, is one of four athletes elected to the Orange County Hall of Fame this year. He will be inducted next Tuesday at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, with Santa Ana College and USC running back Al Carmichael; Angel third baseman Doug DeCinces and Ram quarterback Vince Ferragamo. The quartet will bring the Hall’s membership to 61.

Now a television commentator for the Texas Rangers and voice of CBS radio’s Saturday baseball broadcasts, Busby has few regrets about having to retire in 1980, at age 31.

“I’ve had opportunities very few people even get. I certainly would have liked to prolong my career, not only from a success standpoint but from what could have happened with the Royals.

“We had a very solid organization and we were on the brink of a lot of success,” said Busby, who still lives in the Kansas City area. “I don’t know what would have happened, but it would have been fun to be able to find out how good it could have been.”

Originally drafted out of Fullerton High School by the Giants, Busby lost a huge signing bonus when he injured his knee playing football in the second game of his senior year.

“I had pretty well decided to go to Southern Cal and play football but with the knee injury and the way knee injuries were then, the doctors said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ ” Busby said. “I had a great liking for football and my dad (Marv, still a Fullerton resident) played football at SC in the ‘30s and was all-Coast. Football ran in our blood and I would have liked to have found out what could have happened with that.”

Instead, he pitched for USC, where he learned to throw a slider after surgery to realign a nerve in his right elbow stripped his fastball of its velocity. After a 10-1 season, he signed with the Royals in June, 1971, and was assigned to their San Jose farm team.

“His potential was unlimited for what he could have done with the longevity of a Bert Blyleven or a Nolan Ryan, but he couldn’t get past those injuries,” said Angel coach John Wathan, who caught Busby in the minor leagues and with the Royals.

“He was a tremendous athlete. He falls into the category of one of those guys who you say it’s a shame he wasn’t healthy. He had a bunch of zippers (surgical scars) on his knees and shoulders and elbow.”

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In 1973, his first full season in the majors, Busby was 16-15 with a 4.24 earned-run average and was named the AL’s rookie pitcher of the year. The highlight was a no-hitter against the Tigers at Detroit on April 27, when he walked six and struck out four. He topped that in 1974 with a 22-14 record, 3.39 ERA and another no-hitter--this time coming within one strike of a perfect game.

“That was probably one of the better games I pitched as far as pitching, but there were some awfully good defensive plays behind me,” Busby said of his June 19 gem against the Milwaukee Brewers. “George Brett made a great play at third behind the bag, Al Cowens made a great play. Cookie Rojas ended the eighth with a diving play on the edge of the outfield grass.

“No-hitters, for a guy like me, are 90% luck, compared with somebody like Nolan Ryan, who takes ‘A’ ability out there and has a chance of pitching a no-hitter every time he goes out there.

“The one walk was to George Scott, and Boomer and I eventually played together. It was a 3-and-2 pitch, one he probably would have swung at it nine times out of 10. He told me it was my fault because it was too good a pitch to swing at. I told him if I’d known I was going to retire the next 24, I wouldn’t have made such a good pitch.”

His shoulder kept him from winning 20 again in 1975 and limited him to 13 starts in 1976, when he was 3-3. He was still recovering from shoulder surgery in 1976 when the Royals made the playoffs for the first time, and he missed the 1977 regular season and playoffs. He was 1-0 in seven games in 1978 and was eligible for postseason play but wasn’t called upon. “In my condition, I wouldn’t have helped the ballclub,” he said.

Although his injury cut short his pitching career, Busby gained a new career during his recovery. Asked to do TV commentary for the Royals after his surgery, he tried it as a way to pass the time until he could pitch again. He soon became absorbed in the broadcasting business and took the initiative of working as a news reporter at a TV station to learn more. Following a stint as a weekend anchor and sports reporter, he applied for TV jobs in Boston and Texas for the 1982 season and has been with the Rangers ever since.

“It’s not as easy as it would appear. Many parts of the business have nothing to do with the baseball business, the other end of the mike, as I call it,” said Busby, who considers Merle Harmon his broadcasting mentor.

Being a former athlete, he said, isn’t enough to succeed.

“If you’re trying, say, to do a live interview at the end of the ballgame with somebody who’s tired or cranky, I don’t care if he’s your best friend, he’s not going to be a good interview,” he said. “And no matter how hard you believe it, you’re not a player anymore. (As a former athlete) you may have an entree some don’t, but that isn’t the whole job. Guys may say, ‘Hi,’ but it’s up to you to take it beyond that. What little experience I had was good, but it was still a matter of learning the business.”

Broadcasting also enables him to keep in contact with his former teammates, and he enjoyed watching George Brett collect his 3,000th hit last Wednesday. “The Royals signed Jamie Quirk (in 1972), the year after they signed George and they thought Jamie would be the next superstar from Southern California. He was ahead of George in the organization rankings,” Busby said, laughing. “It’s funny how things like that turn out.”

Things have turned out well for Busby, too.

“The one thing I think about is that it would have been nice to be part of a winning ballclub in Kansas City,” he said. “The toughest one was ‘76, when it came down to the last game (of a five-game playoff series won by the Yankees on a Chris Chambliss home run). It was the situation everybody dreams of, for all the marbles, and I couldn’t get in there. But it was a great opportunity to be associated with a pretty good bunch of guys who learned how to play together.”

Hall of Fame Banquet

Facts and Figures

What: 12th Orange County Sports Hall of Fame Banquet.

Where: Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim.

When: Tuesday, Oct. 27 (cocktails at 6 p.m., dinner at 7).

Highlights: Tickets at $100 each, or $1,000 for a table of 10, can be purchased by calling (714) 935-0199. The event will include the induction of Steve Busby, Al Carmichael, Doug DeCinces and Vince Ferragamo.