From MLB Coffee to Hollywood to N.A.
The odyssey of (literally) a one-time MLB pitcher.
IBWAA members love to write about baseball. So much so, we've decided to create our own newsletter about it! Subscribe to Here's the Pitch to expand your love of baseball, discover new voices, and support independent writing. Original content six days a week, straight to your inbox and straight from the hearts of baseball fans.
Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . Cy Malis was one of 724 pitchers to have a single major league pitching appearance.
. . . Malis was also one of 1,519 batters to have single major league games and 879 batters to have single major league plate appearances.
Leading Off
Cy Malis, Beyond His Cup of Coffee
Pitcher, actor, sailor, Narcotics Anonymous co-founder
By Russ Walsh
This winter, my countdown to spring training reading list has included The Cup of Coffee Club, by Jacob Kornhauser (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023). The book chronicles the lives of eleven of baseball’s 150 or so members of a club everybody dreams of being in and nobody wants to remain in, i.e., those players who played exactly one game in the major leagues.
The most famous member of the clu, perhaps, is Moonlight Graham, whose story was popularized in the movie Field of Dreams. But Kornhauser focuses on players like Charlie Lindstrom, a catcher and son of longtime New York Giants outfielder Freddie Lindstrom, who finally got his shot with the Chicago White Sox on the last day of the 1958 season. Lindstrom walked and tripled and never played again, leaving behind a 1.000 lifetime batting average.
There was Gary Martz, a lifetime minor leaguer called up to the Kansas City Royals when center field star Amos Otis got injured. Martz languished on the bench during a blowout game when teammate John Mayberry suggested to manager Jack McKeon that he let Martz bat for him. Martz grounded into a force out in his only major league at-bat, one that would not have happened except for the generosity of a teammate.
One cup of coffee player who does not get a mention in Kornhauser’s book is Cy Malis.
A right-handed pitcher, Malis appeared in one game for the Philadelphia Phillies on August 17, 1934. He entered in the fifth inning of a game against the St. Louis Cardinals with his team already trailing by eight runs. He pitched creditably enough, hurling three-and-two-thirds innings and giving up four hits and two runs. He walked two and struck out one. In his only at-bat, he was hit by a pitch.
That was it for Malis’s major league career. He was released by the Phillies two weeks later. But these sparse major league statistics are but a small part of the story of Malis’ life.
Cyrus Sol Malis was born in 1907 in Philadelphia, to Frank and Anna, who were descendants of Russian Jews. He was a star three sport athlete at Brown Preparatory School in Philly. As a sophomore he posted a 15-4 record for the baseball team and once struck out 22 batters in a game.
After high school, Malis pitched for one of the city’s best semi-pro teams, the SPHAS (South Philadelphia Hebrew Association). His work with the SPHAS led to a professional contract and Malis began his pro career in 1924 with the Northampton Red Sox in the Eastern Shore League. Released by Northampton, Malis caught on with the Cambridge team in the same league, but his minor league career ended after one mediocre season.
Malis returned to Philadelphia where he became a notable arm for hire, pitching for teams in Philadelphia, Trenton, and the Jersey shore. His exploits got him notice in the local newspapers and the Phillies, an awful team with atrocious attendance, signed him to a contract looking to capitalize on his local popularity.
After his cup of coffee with the Phillies, Malis was recruited by the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League, and his move to the west coast paid off for him in unexpected ways. Released after an extended tryout with the Angels, Cy took a job pitching for the 20th Century Fox team, playing in a league made up of employees of the various movie studios. Playing for a film studio opened the way for his second career: acting.
Malis first appeared in the boxing movie The Crowd Roars as an uncredited extra. In It Happened in Flatbush, a baseball picture, he served as a technical consultant as well as bit player. Malis went on to appear in dozens of films and television shows, usually in small parts. By 1940, he was listing his occupation on census documents as “actor.”
With World War II raging in 1942, Malis was now 35 years old and enlisted in the Navy. During artillery training, he was struck by a heavy gun turret, breaking his neck and back. His recovery was long and painful. Doctors prescribed morphine. Cy came out of the hospital healed in body, but, like many soldiers wounded in that war, with a serious morphine addiction. There was little understanding and almost no programs for returning soldiers suffering from drug addiction, but Malis managed to wean himself from the drug.
Like others before him, he eased the constant pain of withdrawal with alcohol, which he realized was just substituting one crutch for another. Eventually, Cy kicked his alcoholism, too, and after his discharge from the Navy in 1943, returned to film work where he appeared alongside such stars as Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball and Richard Widmark.
Malis was not content, however, to live out his life as a bit player in the movies. The plight of others like him who had suffered injury in the military only to come out of the service with a drug habit played on his mind. He wanted to do something about it.
In 1953, Cy appeared in a Three Stooges comedy (Mummy’s Dummies) but, more important, he was among a handful of people who met in Los Angeles to form an organization patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous but designed specifically for drug addicts.
The new organization was dubbed Narcotics Anonymous. For his part, Malis, who assumed leadership of the group in 1954, extended the work of Narcotics Anonymous to the many addicts who were incarcerated. His work was so effective that the assistant warden of San Quentin Penitentiary said that the drug situation had “vastly improved since Mr. Malis started his program.” An inmate called Cy, “The best friend we dope fiends have.”
After some internal grousing in the group about his leadership style, Malis resigned as chair in 1959. The current Narcotics Anonymous is a different, somewhat reorganized institution. He continued his work in movies and television until a kick by a horse on a movie set effectively ended his career. Cy’s health deteriorated from there, and he died on January 12, 1971, at the age of 63.
As baseball fans, we can get a little myopic. We see that a player had only a cup of coffee in the majors, and we let that little tidbit of information tell us all we need to know about a man’s success. Cy Malis’ life reminds us that baseball players good, bad, and indifferent, have lives outside of the sport we love.
Malis probably cherished that one day on a Major League baseball mound. But after that day, he built a second successful career and a lasting legacy of service to his fellow man.
Russ Walsh is a retired teacher, baseball coach, and writer living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He is a lifelong and long-suffering Philadelphia Phillies fan. He writes for the Society for American Baseball Research and for his blog The Faith of a Phillies Fan. You can contact him through X (formerly known as Twitter) at @faithofaphilli1
Cleaning Up
Five Pension-less MLB Short-Termers Who Died in 2024
They were among a reported 500+ ex-major leaguers frozen out of the 1980 pension re-alignment
By Jeff Kallman
When baseball’s pension plan was re-aligned in 1980, it meant players with a minimum 43 verified days on major league rosters would be awarded pensions. It also meant health benefits to those with only one verified major league roster day.
The kicker (more like a kick in the pants): those whose verified days occurred before 1980 received squat. Those whose short careers occurred or ended after 1980 received the goodies just like those with longer careers.
As Douglas J. Gladstone—the author of A Bitter Cup of Coffee, his book examining many of the frozen-out players and their 1980 pension freeze-out—wrote a few years ago, “[The Major League Baseball Players Association] failed to insist on retroactivity for all those players who played prior to 1980 who had more than 43 game days of service but less than four years.”
Five of those who went from our world to the Elysian Fields in 2024 include:
Tom Qualters (pitcher, 88; died February 15)—One of the 1950s bonus babies whom teams were forced to keep on their major league rosters if their bonuses were above $4,000. Qualters’s $40,000 bonus from the Phillies earned him the nickname Money Bags. His 1953 major league debut was only too memorable: a 162.00 ERA thanks to surrendering six earned runs but retiring only one batter.
That was his only appearance during his bonus period. He went to the International League from there, returned to pitch in six games in 1957 and one in 1958 before the Phillies sold him to the White Sox. Respectable pitching for the White Sox didn’t translate to decisions; he left baseball after 34 total appearances without being awarded a win or charged with a loss.
Qualters went from there to become a longtime law enforcement officer for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.
Gordy Lund (infielder, 83; died April 10)—A member of the Seattle Pilots expansion team memorialised by the late Jim Bouton in Ball Four. Lund became a Pilot in a trade from the Orioles that also sent the Pilots pitcher Gene Brabender. He played too briefly for the Indians and the Orioles before going to Seattle; his six errors in 61 chances at shortstop overall belied his minor league reputation for solid defense.
Lund fared better as a minor league manager when he led the Appleton Foxes to the Midwest League (Single A) championship in 1978. He left baseball to work for the Chicago-area Laborers Welfare and Pension Fund, but he was known to enjoy taking his family on road trips to see baseball games all around the United States.
Danny Fife (pitcher, 74; died May 30)—Fife seemed to have promise despite a few hard outings in late 1973 and early 1974, but shoulder trouble (from an offseason injury) ended his baseball career prematurely.
Fife was a three-sport player (baseball, football, basketball) in high school, and eventually went into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame as a basketball coach at his alma mater, Clarkston High School. He coached them to 29 league titles, 30 district titles, two regional titles, and one state championship.
When he retired in 2018, Fife was Michigan’s third-winningest high school basketball coach, with a statewide reputation for being more than just a coach to his players—including his own three sons, who all went on to play college hoops. He was renowned for encouraging, not discouraging his players to play other sports; according to several published articled, Fife believed playing more than one sport made you better at your most chosen sport.
John Baumgartner (3B, 93; died September 25)—Baumgartner went north with the 1953 Tigers out of spring training, played in their first seven games of the season . . . and went back to the minors to stay. Future major league manager Charlie Metro, who managed him at the Tigers’ Montgomery (Alabama) farm team, would remember Baumgartner in his memoir (Safe By a Mile):
He was a fine physical specimen. But he was like some ballplayers who had a quirk, and I never knew how to overcome it. They just couldn’t meet the big league challenge, but he was a big league prospect.
Baumgartner stayed in the Tigers’ minor league system until the end of the 1955 season. He returned to his native Alabama and worked in sales in the paint industry before going to work for Baggett Transportation.
Ron Locke (pitcher, 85; died December 13)—A 1964 Mets pitcher, Locke’s shining moment was a start against the Astros (then the Colt .45s) and seven innings with five hits and only two earned runs surrendered. He was credited with the win with Willard Hunter awarded the retroactive save in the 4-2 Mets win.
Locke pitched 41.3 innings for the 1964 Mets, surrendering 46 hits, 22 walks, and landing 17 strikeouts. Back to the minors, spending time in the Reds and Phillies systems before returning to the Mets system, he left baseball after 1970.
“I thought Casey was a great man,” Locke once told a correspondent about his 1964 Mets manager, Casey Stengel. “He liked young kids coming up from the minors. He liked talking to young ballplayers to see what they knew about the game. But as far as a manager . . . he liked to drink booze and staying up late at night.”
Those plus 25 other such short-career, pre-1980 players, died without receiving major league pensions. The closest they came was a deal between then-commissioner Bud Selig and then-MLBPA leader Michael Weiner getting them $625 per quarter for every 43 days worth of MLB time, up to four years.
That stipend was hiked 15 percent as part of the 2022-23 lockout settlement. According to Max Effgen, an investor and Society for American Baseball Research contributor who tracks this issue closely, their stipend is now $718.75 annually for every 43 days on an active roster, with the maximum they can receive around $11,500 per year.
“This,” Effgen has said, “is roughly 15% of the current MLBPA pension.” It’s also one percent of the annual minimum major league player’s salary.
For Qualters, Lund, Fife, Baumgartner, and Locke, it’s too late. For their remaining 500+ brethren, who paid MLBPA dues during their major league days and even joined MLBPA actions in the pre-Messersmith, reserve-era days, it’s far from sufficient.
Jeff Kallman edits Here’s the Pitch for Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Extra Innings
* In addition to the film work Russ described, Cy Malis also appeared on television between 1959 and 1962—on shows such as The Alamo; Alcoa Premiere; Checkmate; Going My Way; Have Gun, Will Travel; Laramie; The Lawless Years; and, Perry Mason.
* Malis’s Perry Mason appearance was as a garage attendant in the 1958 episode, “The Case of the Gilded Lily”—in which Mason’s client was the owner of his office building, charged with murdering a blackmailer.
* It Happened in Flatbush—in which Malis had a minor and uncredited role—is a 1942 baseball film inspired by the Brooklyn Dodgers’s 1941 pennant. The plot: A former Dodgers player (Lloyd Nolan), long reviled for an error costing the Bums a pennant, is brought back . . . to manage them, while falling for the lady (Carole Landis) who now owns them . . . stirring player resentment until he gives them a rousing speech.