Dennis Eckersley is a man with a big personality, a lively fastball, and his own language. (I really did enjoy listening to him this past summer.) He played baseball for twenty-four seasons and in that time he threw a lot of strikes as both a starter and a closer.
Eck came to the Sox from Cleveland in 1978. He won twenty games that year and threw sixteen complete games. In 1979 he won seventeen games and threw seventeen complete games; in fact, he threw seven complete games in a row from July 11 to August 9. He was less effective after that and in May of 1984 he was traded to the Cubs for Bill Buckner.
Alcohol proved to be a problem for him and his performance in Chicago suffered for it. He got himself clean after the 1985 season but was still ineffective. He then found himself traded to Oakland in 1987, where he was cast as a reliever. Injury forced him into the closer's role and he excelled. He saved forty-five games in 1988 and fifty-one games in 1992.
He came back to Boston in 1998 for a last hurrah. He went 4-1, mainly as a middle-reliever. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2004.
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