Dave Righetti

July 4, 1983. The Stadium sat in 94-degree heat, 41,077 fans packed into the seats, and Dave Righetti stood on the mound with two outs in the ninth inning and a no-hitter working against the Boston Red Sox. Wade Boggs, the best contact hitter in the American League, dug in at the plate. Righetti threw a slider. Boggs swung through it, strike three, and the Stadium hadn't seen a no-hitter since Don Larsen's perfect game in 1956. Dave Righetti pitched for the New York Yankees in 1979 and again from 1981 through 1990, first as a starter who won American League Rookie of the Year, then as a closer who set the single-season saves record. Few pitchers in franchise history did both jobs. Righetti did both at an elite level.

Path to the Bronx

Righetti arrived in a trade most people remember for who left, not who came. On November 10, 1978, the Yankees sent Sparky Lyle -- the reigning AL Cy Young winner -- to the Texas Rangers in a ten-player deal. New York got outfielder Juan Beniquez, pitchers Mike Griffin and Paul Mirabella, and a 19-year-old left-hander scouts considered the best pitching prospect in the minors. Teammate Graig Nettles had a line for it: Lyle went from Cy Young to sayonara.

Righetti debuted on September 16, 1979, against Detroit, allowing three earned runs over five innings in a Yankees loss. He spent most of 1980 working out his control problems at Triple-A Columbus (101 walks in 142 innings will get a pitcher sent down to sort himself out). By 1981, he was ready.

Yankees Career

The 1981 season was chaos -- a 50-day players' strike split the schedule in half -- but Righetti's rookie year cut through the noise. He went 8-4 with a 2.05 ERA in 15 starts, and his .196 opponent batting average led the American League, not just AL rookies. He won two games in the ALDS against Milwaukee and started Game 3 of the World Series against the Dodgers. The Yankees lost that Series in six games, but the 22-year-old from San Jose had already locked up the AL Rookie of the Year award.

Two years later, on July 4, 1983 -- also George Steinbrenner's birthday -- Righetti threw the no-hitter that opened this story: 132 pitches, nine strikeouts, four walks, a 4-0 win over Boston. It was the first Yankees no-hitter since Larsen's 1956 perfect game, a gap of 27 years, and the first by a Yankees left-hander since George Mogridge in 1917. Manager Billy Martin, not a man known for public sentiment, admitted afterward that he'd prayed through the ninth.

Then came the twist nobody saw coming. Rich "Goose" Gossage left for San Diego as a free agent after the 1983 season, and the Yankees needed someone to close games. They looked at their 25-year-old, Rookie of the Year-winning, no-hit-throwing starter and moved him to the bullpen. Righetti didn't fight it. He saved 31 games in 1984 and 29 in 1985, and by 1986 he was the best closer in the American League.

He entered September with 39 saves that year, and on October 4 -- the last day of the season -- he saved both ends of a doubleheader at Fenway Park. Save number 46 broke the record of 45 shared by Dan Quisenberry and Bruce Sutter. The mark stood for four years, until Bobby Thigpen saved 57 for the White Sox in 1990.

Key Moments

Starter, Then Closer

Righetti's conversion remains one of the great "what if" questions in Yankees history. As a starter, he'd won Rookie of the Year, thrown a no-hitter, and posted the league's stingiest opponent batting average. The Yankees never got to find out what a full career of Righetti starts might have produced, because the bullpen needed him more. What he built instead was still remarkable: a franchise record for saves that stood until Mariano Rivera passed it years later, and a reputation as one of the sport's first true modern closers, back when the ninth-inning specialist was still a new idea.

He left the Yankees with career totals of 74-61, a 3.11 ERA, and 224 saves across 522 appearances -- both franchise records at the time. His postseason work as a Yankee was just as sharp: a 3-0 record and a 2.12 ERA in four games, spread across the 1981 ALDS and World Series.

FAQ

Righetti threw his last pitch as a Yankee in 1990, signed with the Giants that December, and went on to pitch five more seasons elsewhere. But the Yankees career stands on its own: a Rookie of the Year trophy, a no-hitter on Steinbrenner's birthday, and a saves record that took four years to finally break.