Seeing Dave McNally airbrushed into an Expos uniform makes me think one thing: Boy, did the Expos screw up.
Sure, in his time with the Orioles, McNally won at least 20 games in 4 straight seasons, was a 3-time All-Star, once shared an A.L. record with 17 consecutive wins, and finished a pretty close second to Jim Perry in the 1970 Cy Young voting.
After the 1974 season he and Rich Coggins were traded from the Orioles to the Expos for Mike Torrez and Ken Singleton. McNally would go 3-6, 5.24 before retiring during the 1975 season.
Meanwhile, Mike Torrez would win 20 games for the O’s before becoming a free agent, and Kenny Singleton would play 10 years with the Orioles, be named to 3 All-Star teams and ultimately be named to the Orioles Hall Of Fame.
Whoopsie.
Some other fun Dave McNally facts:
He hit a grand slam in game 3 of the 1970 World Series against the Reds, the only pitcher to do that in World Series history.
McNally is the first of 4 Orioles to be born in Montana. The others were John Lowenstein, Jeff Ballard and Kam Mickolio.
Always knew McNally was good… but didn’t realize he was THAT good. Four 20 win seasons in a row is pretty awesome. The grand slam is icing on the cake.
It’s not really fair to view it this way, but I think the lack of hardware (i.e. Cy Young) works against him. He was clearly one of the dominant pitchers of the early 70′s, but I guess the sportswriters never saw him as THE dominant pitcher.