Bo Knew Stardom

Bo Belinsky, the flamboyant pitcher who gave the then-Los Angeles Angels some wild times and headlines on and off the field, has died. He was 64.

Belinsky, who had been battling bladder cancer in recent years, was found dead Friday in his Las Vegas home. An official of the Clark County coroner’s office declined comment on the cause of death.

Before Sandy Koufax, before Nolan Ryan, Belinsky was the first pitcher on a major league team in Los Angeles to throw a no-hitter. It thrust him into the spotlight, and Belinsky loved the glare.

With his movie star looks, sharp clothes, flashy jewelry and expensive shades, Belinsky became a darling of the news media in a city not used to colorful ballplayers. Along with teammate Dean Chance, Belinsky etched himself into baseball lore with his playboy image.

He made the rounds in Hollywood, dating Ann-Margret, Tina Louise, Juliet Prowse and Connie Stevens, among others.

He had a much-publicized engagement with Mamie Van Doren, then broke it off. He married Jo Collins, Playboy’s playmate of the year, in 1966. That marriage ended in divorce and Belinsky later married and divorced Weyerhaeuser paper heiress Janie Weyerhaeuser.

But the fast lifestyle took its toll on his once-promising career. In eight major league seasons, Belinsky won only 28 games.

Belinsky had trouble with alcohol and drugs, a binge that ended, he said, in 1976 after he woke up under a railroad bridge with an empty bottle of sake.

His later years were spent at peace in Las Vegas working for the Findlay Management Group, which operates a chain of car dealerships. Belinsky also worked with kids at a dealership’s batting cage and became a born-again Christian, joining the Pentacostal church in 1998.

Robert (Bo) Belinsky was born in 1936 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to Polish Catholic-Russian Jewish parents. His father was a day laborer who late in life opened a TV repair shop in Trenton, N.J.

Baseball was not Bo’s first passion. He hustled pool and hustled it well.

“There was this guy who used to come to the ballpark all the time in 1961 and he loved to gamble,” Belinsky said. “One night I met him and he had a friend who was carrying the money. I made an impossible bank shot to win, almost $4,000, and I heard a bump. I turned around and the guy with the money is on the ground turning blue. His partner started going through his pockets. Instead of giving him mouth-to-mouth, he’s taking the money. I’m fighting the guy to get his hand out of his pocket.

“The owner of the place comes over and said, ‘You just hit this guy, didn’t you?’ I called an ambulance and took off. Fortunately, the guy didn’t die then. He died a couple months later. This is how problems start.”

Belinsky always attracted attention. A hard-throwing left-hander, Belinsky caught the eye of scouts when he was playing for a minor league team in Pensacola, Fla., in the late 1950s.

“I broke records. Baltimore saw me and purchased me,” Belinsky said. “Even then it was a constant battle for me. I had grown up on the streets in New York and New Jersey, and I was living and playing baseball in the Deep South. You’d take your life in your own hands with a New Jersey accent. They were still a bunch of good old boys and yahoos down there. If you started mixing it up, you’d better be ready to move over the state line quick or you’d be down there painting white lines on the highway.”

The Angels purchased his contract from Baltimore in 1962 and friction started immediately. Even before he had pitched in a major league game, Belinsky held out.

The Angels offered $6,500 for the year and he was demanding $8,500.

Belinsky told Angel General Manager Fred Haney: “I can make $6,500 shooting pool.”

When Belinsky arrived at the Angels’ training camp in Palm Springs, he called a news conference, and writers were more than happy to listen.

“They were tired of writing about Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale winning ballgames, now they got a character here,” Belinsky said.

What Belinsky gave the Angels, briefly, was a drawing card to battle the Dodgers. In 1962, the Angels literally played in the Dodgers’ shadow, using Dodger Stadium for their home games.

Belinsky gave them a leg up on May 2, 1962. After spending the night with a woman he met in a Sunset Strip bar, Belinsky woke up at the crack of noon and went to Dodger Stadium, where he proceeded to no-hit the Orioles.

Said former Angel relief pitcher Tom Morgan, “I’ve seen six or seven no-hitters, but this was the only one where not one ball was hit hard. Not one.”

It was a good thing for the Angels, as well as Belinsky.

“In those days, all you heard about was the Dodgers,” Chance said. “What the hell did the Angels have? Then Bo comes in and starts making headlines. It gave the Angels a lot of publicity. They knew they had a good thing.”

Syndicated columnist Walter Winchell knew a good thing too. He was at the game and took a liking to Belinsky and Chance. He began introducing them around town and the two were off and running.

“‘Dean and I were a marriage made in heaven, or hell,” Belinsky later said. “I saw him in spring training in ‘62, with wife and kid. Some guys belong with a wife and kid. Dean and me just didn’t belong with a wife and a kid, especially in Hollywood.”

The two were seen around town in Belinsky’s candy-apple-red Cadillac, a gift from a dealership after he threw the no-hitter. “That no-hitter was all the kid needed right there,” Belinsky said. “I packed my clothes in the motel and in two weeks I was up in Hollywood in a penthouse.”

Belinsky’s career as a pitcher basically ended there. He won his next start to go 5-0. He finished 10-11 in 1962. The following season, he went 2-9 and was demoted after an incident in which Belinsky, then 25, punched and knocked cold Times sports reporter Braven Dyer, then 64.

Over the next few years, Belinsky spent time with the Philadelphia Phillies, Houston Astros, Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds, before his career ended abruptly in 1970.

Said Bud Furillo, a writer who covered the Angels in the Belinsky years:

“Buzzie Bavasi once told me Bo had a million-dollar arm and a 10-cent head. He said if Bo could get his head where his arm was, he’d be on his way to the Hall of Fame. He had every pitch, he just never really worked at being a great pitcher.”

Belinsky’s reputation extended beyond the major leagues. After he was sent to the minor leagues, the Roman Catholic diocese that included his hometown of Trenton issued a statement saying it hoped that he, like his pitching, would “fade into obscurity.”

And while his career sputtered out in 1970, notoriety did not.

“Not a week goes by that someone doesn’t ask me what Bo is doing,” Chance said in 1991. “Any time you mention his name, people smile.”

Yet, he will always be remembered as the sometime pitcher and full-time playboy, who made the most of some good looks, a lot of nerve and one no-hitter.

“I was with Steve Carlton at a benefit and these two kids come up and ask for an autograph,” Belinsky said in a 1991 interview. “Steve reaches out, and one of the kids says, ‘No, my dad said to get Mr. Belinsky’s autograph.’

“I told Steve that he did it the easy way, by winning 300 games. You just try to get all this notoriety on 28 victories. Now that takes a lot of work.”

Belinsky played that role his entire life, through his marriages, drug and alcohol problems, a hip replacement two years ago and his cancer. He could even add some color to his religious conversion.

“Can you imagine?” he said in an interview a year ago. “I had to come to Las Vegas to discover Jesus Christ.”

Information on the funeral was not immediately available.