Johnny Sain, 89, star pitcher in rhyme about '48 Braves

In September 1948, Boston Post sportswriter Gerald Hern published a poem that became part of the city's sports lore, one that Boston Braves fans remember to this day.

"First we'll use Spahn, then we'll use Sain. Then an off day followed by rain. Back will come Spahn followed by Sain. And followed we hope by two days of rain."

The poem, which referred to the two great pitching stars of the National League pennant-winning Braves -- lefthander Warren Spahn and righthander Johnny Sain -- was quickly shortened to its more popular and enduring version "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain."

Mr. Sain, who died Tuesday at Rest Haven West Nursing Center in Downers Grove, Ill., after an illness, was an outstanding Major League pitcher who won 139 games and outdueled Cleveland ace Bob Feller in the opening game of the 1948 World Series at Braves Field.

Mr. Sain was 89 and had suffered a stroke in 2002.

"Boston was his first team and his first love," his wife, Mary Ann, said yesterday.

Mr. Sain, who pitched for the Braves for seven seasons -- 1942 and 1946-51 -- told the Globe nine years ago: "I wouldn't change a moment of my days in Boston. I came from a town of 500 people [Havana, Ark.], and heck, I didn't even know what seafood was until I came to Boston."

Mr. Sain also played on three World Series-winning New York Yankees teams at the tail-end of his career in the early 1950s and was a highly successful pitching coach who helped develop 20-game winners Jim Kaat and Mudcat Grant in Minnesota, Belmont's Wilbur Wood with the Chicago White Sox, Mickey Lolich and Denny McLain in Detroit and Whitey Ford with the Yankees.

"He got pitchers to believe in themselves," said former big league pitcher Jim Bouton in a Sept. 25 interview with 108 Magazine, in which he supported Mr. Sain's election to the Hall of Fame. "He always believed in a man's dreams about himself."

Perhaps that was because Mr. Sain -- a four-time 20-game winner and three-time All Star -- languished in the minor leagues for six seasons before getting his chance with the Braves, then had his career interrupted while serving for three years as a Navy test pilot during World War II.

One of Mr. Sain's former teammates, Ray Martin, who was signed by the Braves out of Norwood High School and still lives in Norwood, said yesterday that "Johnny paid his dues."

"He spent four years in the D leagues in the minors, but he developed the best curveball I ever saw. He'd waste his fastball just to set up his curveball," said Martin, a pitcher who played parts of four seasons with the Braves, including 1948. "He was a quiet guy who worked very hard to get to the majors."

An ironman who completed 140 of the 245 games he started, Mr. Sain was known for that curveball, a phenomenon that prompted Time magazine to headline him as "Jug Handle Johnny." Mr. Sain won 24 games and pitched 314 innings in 1948, when manager Billy Southworth's Braves won the pennant by 6 1/2 games. Mr. Sain was runner-up to Stan Musial for Most Valuable Player honors in the National League.

Mr. Sain, after winning the first game, 1-0, lost Game 4 in Cleveland, 2-1. The Indians defeated the Braves in six games.

Mr. Sain went the distance in 64 consecutive games that he won; he just didn't want to leave the mound.

"Well, it was a struggle for me coming up," he said in the Globe interview. "My minor league manager said I wouldn't make it as a pitcher, but I got my chance with the Braves [in 1942] when Casey Stengel was my manager."

Mr. Sain paid the price for his yeoman work in '48, however: He came down with a sore arm the next year, and despite a 20-win season in 1950, he was traded to the Yankees for Lew Burdette. In New York, Stengel used him as a starter and reliever, and Mr. Sain led the American League with 22 saves in 1954. Mr. Sain was in four World Series as a player and five as a pitching coach; he was on the winning side six times.

Mr. Sain, a better-than-average hitter for his position (.245 lifetime with 28 doubles), was also an eyewitness to baseball history.

On April 15, 1947, he faced the Dodgers' Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play in the majors in the modern era, when Robinson made his debut. Brooklyn won, 5-3, but Mr. Sain held Robinson hitless in three at-bats. And on June 15, 1948, Mr. Sain beat the Cubs, 6-3, in the first baseball game televised in the Boston area.

During that memorable '48 season, Mr. Sain was part of a live radio broadcast in Boston from the bedside of a 12-year-old cancer patient from Maine identified as "Jimmy."

The boy -- Carl Einar Gustafson -- received a surprise visit from several members of the Braves, including Mr. Sain, Spahn, Alvin Dark, Eddie Stanky, Earl Torgeson, and manager Southworth. The boy was given a baseball and a Braves uniform, and sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" with the team.

The announcer, Ralph Edwards, asked listeners to send money to Children's Hospital under the name "Jimmy," and thus the Jimmy Fund was born. It was promoted extensively by the Braves until 1953, when the team moved to Milwaukee and the cause was adopted by Ted Williams and the Red Sox.

Mr. Sain, Gustafson, and Feller attended the 50th anniversary of the broadcast and World Series as part of the annual Boston Braves Historical Association reunion.

"He coached sixteen 20-game winners, and we don't understand why he isn't in the Hall of Fame because of that," said George Altison of Marlborough, business manager of the association, who said the group will continue to lobby the Hall's Veteran s Committee on behalf of the Sain family. Altison, who grew up in Allston, saw the classic Feller-Sain matchup because he worked in concessions at Braves Field, which is now the site of Boston University's Nickerson Field.

"He was a generous and quiet man who always wanted to be in the Hall of Fame as a pitching coach and as a player," said his wife. "Everyone says he should be, but he isn't."

In addition to his wife, Mary Ann (Zaremba) of Oak Brook, Ill., Mr. Sain leaves two sons, John of Treynor, Iowa, and Randy of Walnut Ridge, Ark.; two daughters, Sharyl of Mesa, Ariz., and Ronda (Ball) of Blytheville, Ark.; a stepson, Richard Zaremba of Frankfort, Ill.; and 11 grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held at noon Wednesday in the Western Yell County Church of Christ in Havana, Ark. Burial will be in Walker Cemetery in Havana.