General
Rudy May, a Stingy Master of the Curveball, Dies at 80
He overcame a dip in velocity to find pitching success with four teams, including the Yankees and Orioles, and had a dominant season in 1980.
Rudy May, a crafty and well-traveled left-handed pitcher whose 16-year major league career included two stretches with the Yankees — one in the mid-1970s, when he found success despite a strained relationship with the volcanic manager Billy Martin, and the other starting in 1980, the year he led the American League in earned run average — died on Oct. 19. He was 80.
The Yankees announced his death on social media but did not specify the cause or say where he died. A death notice was posted online from the coastal town of Hertford, N.C.
When May made his major league debut with the Los Angeles Angels (who would change their name to the California Angels during his tenure with the team) in 1965, he had an impressive fastball. But after tearing ligaments in his left shoulder early in his career, he refined his approach and eventually learned to dominate with pinpoint control and a nasty curveball, which he honed with help from the Yankee Hall of Fame pitcher Whitey Ford.
“I learned that it’s better to throw an 85-mile-an-hour fastball on the outside corner than it is to throw a 95-mile-an-hour fastball down the middle,” he said in a 1981 interview with Phil Pepe of The Daily News of New York. That happened, he added, “when I couldn’t throw a 95-mile-an-hour fastball anymore.”
Over a career that also included stretches with the pitching-rich Baltimore Orioles and Montreal Expos of the 1970s, May notched 152 wins with a 3.46 E.R.A. and 1,760 strikeouts.
He came into his own in New York, going 8-4 with a 2.28 E.R.A. after the Yankees acquired him during the 1974 season. The next year he compiled a 14-12 record with a 3.06 E.R.A. while serving up a paltry nine home runs in 212 innings, the lowest rate in the American League.
