Storm Davis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Earl "Storm" Davis (born December 26, 1961 in Dallas, Texas), is a former professional baseball player who pitched in the Major Leagues from 1982-1994.

[edit] World Series experience

Davis was the winning pitcher for the Orioles in Game 4 of the 1983 World Series versus the Philadelphia Phillies. He was the losing pitcher for the A's in Games' 2 and 5 of the 1988 World Series versus the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In 1989, he won a career-high 19 games for the A's during a season when the A's won 99 games, more than any other team in Major League Baseball. After Davis (and reliever Rick Honeycutt) pitched in the one AL Championship Series game that the A's lost that year, Davis was originally scheduled to be the A's starting pitcher for Game 4 of the 1989 World Series.^[1]. When the Loma Prieta earthquake caused Game 3 to be delayed by ten days, Tony La Russa decided to re-use the winners of Games 1 and 2, Dave Stewart and Mike Moore, as the starting pitchers of Games 3 and 4; La Russa also penciled in Davis as the starting pitcher for Game 6, if necessary.^[1] La Russa's strategy worked: both Stewart and Moore won their games, and Davis, publicly angry at La Russa for the change^[1], became a free agent at the end of the season.^[2]

Years later, Dave Stewart described Davis as the "best fifth starter [Stewart] had ever saw....He pitched 165-170 innings (169), won 19 games (19-7) and spent some time doing a pretty good job out of the bullpen, too. Storm was the perfect fifth starter."^[3] Stewart's high opinion of Davis' 1989 season is not shared by Sabermetrician Bill James, who cites Davis' 19-7 winning percentage as a canonical example of how a pitcher's won-lost record can be misleading.^[4]

[edit] Personal life

According to Davis' 1987 Topps baseball card, his nickname was derived from a character in a book his mother was reading while pregnant.

Davis' parents are also the adoptive parents of Glenn Davis^{[citation needed]}, also a former Major League baseball player.

Davis' son Zachary plays football for the Liberty University Flames.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Davis Is Still Angered by Switch, an October 22, 1989 article from The New York Times
2. ^ Storm Davis from baseball-reference.com
3. ^ Storm Davis Stats from baseball-almanac.com
4. ^ Bill James Answers All Your Baseball Questions, an April 2008 blog entry from the Freakonomics blog

This biographical article relating to a 1980s baseball pitcher is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.