John Franklin Sain (born September 25, 1917, in Havana, Arkansas) was an American Major League Baseball player who later become one of the top pitching coaches in the majors.

The righthander pitched for 11 years, winning 136 and losing 116 games in his career, and compiled an earned-run average of 3.49. His best years were those immediately after World War II, when he won 100 games for the Boston Braves before being traded to the New York Yankees during the 1951 season for Lew Burdette and cash.

In 1948, Sain won 24 games, lost only 15, and finished second in the voting for that year's MVP Award. He and teammate Warren Spahn achieved joint immortality that year when their feats were the subject of a poem in the Boston Post which was eventually shortened to the epigram, "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain." That year, Boston won its second and last National League pennant of the post-1901 era, but fell in six games to the Cleveland Indians in the 1948 World Series. Sain won the first game of the Series, a 1-0 shutout at Braves Field that included the famous play in which Boston catcher Phil Masi was called safe after an apparent pickoff at second base. Masi scored the Braves' only run - and the only tally in that contest.

With the Yankees, Sain became a relief pitcher and enjoyed late-career success, leading the American League in saves with 22 in 1954. He finished his career in 1956 with the Kansas City Athletics.

After retiring as a player, Sain spent many years as a well-regarded but outspoken pitching coach for the Athletics, Yankees, Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, Chicago White Sox, and Atlanta Braves. During the 1960s, Sain coached the pitchers of five of the AL's ten pennant-winning teams. An independent thinker among coaches, Sain tended to be admired by his pitchers, but he battled with at least two of his managers (Sam Mele of the Twins and Mayo Smith of the Tigers) when he disagreed with them. In each case, Sain was fired, but the manager soon followed when his pitching staff suffered from Sain's absence. Sain did not make friends among owners and general managers either when he would advise pitchers to never fear "climbing those golden stairs" to their teams' front offices to demand more money in salary talks.

External link

Johnny Sain's career statistics at Baseball-Reference.com

1947 National League All-Stars | 1948 National League All-Stars | 1953 American League All-Stars | Boston Braves players | New York Yankees players | Kansas City Athletics players | Major league pitchers | 1917 births | Living people