Ron Taylor, a two-time World Series champion pitcher who went to medical school following his playing career, earning the nickname “Dr. Baseball,” passed away on Monday in Toronto after a lengthy illness. He was 87.
A 6-foot-1 right-hander, Taylor won World Series titles with the 1964 Cardinals and 1969 Miracle Mets. In six games across those two postseasons, he pitched 10 1/3 innings without allowing a run. He yielded only three hits and two walks and struck out nine, with a record of 3-0 with three saves.
“Ron was the only guy on our staff with postseason experience,” Mets teammate Art Shamsky said in a statement put out by the team. “He had won a championship with the Cardinals in 1964 and brought a winning mentality. We don’t win the title without Ron Taylor.”
Ronald Wesley Taylor was born on Dec. 13, 1937, in Toronto, the younger of two children to Wesley and Maude (Evans) Taylor. A natural lefty, Taylor learned to throw with his right arm because his mother was afraid he might develop cardiovascular issues if he threw with his left arm. “Insist?” Taylor said in an interview for his SABR biography. “She tied my left hand behind my back!”
Signed by Cleveland at the age of 18, Taylor won a career-high (for any professional level) 17 games with Class D Daytona Beach in 1956. He spent six seasons climbing the Minor League ladder before making his debut on April 11, 1962, appearing in eight games that season, starting four. The rest of that season was spent with Triple-A Jacksonville, where he went 12-4 with a 2.62 ERA. Across seven Minor League seasons, Taylor went 79-60 with a 3.38 ERA in 183 games, 153 of them starts.
Traded to the Cardinals in December 1962, Taylor left the bush leagues behind. From 1963-64, he made just 11 starts but came out of the bullpen 101 times, posting a record of 17-11 with a 3.61 ERA and 19 saves.
With the Cardinals down, two games to one, in the 1964 World Series against the Yankees, Taylor was called upon in the sixth inning with St. Louis leading, 4-3, at Yankee Stadium. He pitched four no-hit innings, allowing only an eighth-inning walk to Mickey Mantle, to even the Series and ensure a return to St. Louis. The teams split the next two games, and Bob Gibson pitched the Cardinals to the title in Game 7.
“We shut down that powerful Yankee club,” Cardinals teammate and future broadcaster Mike Shannon said in Bob Elliott’s 2005 book, The Northern Game: Baseball The Canadian Way. “If we don’t win that game, I don’t even know if we’re going back to St. Louis.”
Taylor and the Cardinals slid back in 1965, and the right-hander was traded to the Astros at the June 15 Trade Deadline, where his struggles continued: a 6.40 ERA in 57 2/3 innings, and a 5.71 ERA with Houston in ’66.
Outrighted to Oklahoma City, Taylor found a lifeline in New York, which purchased Taylor’s contract in February 1967. He made the Major League roster out of Spring Training and posted a career-best 2.34 ERA with a team-leading eight saves in 50 relief appearances for a last-place club that went 61-101.
But things began to change in 1968. Gil Hodges was hired as manager of the Mets, improving them by 12 games (73-89) and getting them out of the cellar with a ninth-place finish. Taylor saved 14 games in 58 appearances with a 2.70 ERA.
The next year, of course, the Mets took the leap. They surprised the National League with a 100-62 record, winning the NL East. Taylor went 9-4 in 59 games with 13 saves and a 2.72 ERA. In the inaugural NL Championship Series against the Braves, he saved Game 1 with two scoreless innings and won Game 2 with 1 1/3 scoreless frames as the Mets swept the series in three games.
In the World Series against the Orioles, Taylor finished the Mets’ Game 1 loss with two more scoreless innings, then relieved starter Jerry Koosman in Game 2 with two outs in the ninth, runners on first and second and the Mets clinging to a 2-1 lead. Taylor got Brooks Robinson to ground out to third base to save it and send the Series to New York even at a game apiece. The Mets took the next three without needing Taylor for their first championship.
Taylor pitched two more season in New York but was not quite as effective as his first three seasons with the club. His ERA rose to 3.93 in 1970 and improved only slightly to 3.65 in ’71, and after that season his contract was sold to the Montreal Expos. He never got to pitch for MLB’s first Canadian team; the club released him five days into the 1972 season, and he signed with the San Diego Padres.
After allowing five home runs in just four outings with the Padres, Taylor decided to retire at 34. The last pitch he threw happened to be in Montreal.
Taylor then quickly pivoted to his second career. He got into the University of Toronto’s medical school despite long odds. “We rarely accept people over 30,” an associate dean told him, according to his SABR bio. “We don’t want people changing careers.” Taylor was told to enroll in an honors course, and if his grades in the pre-med curriculum were up to par, he’d be accepted. He moved back home – “I was single at the time and didn’t have any responsibilities,” he told his SABR biographer – and got the grades to be accepted. He graduated in 1977.
Two years later, his hometown Blue Jays hired him as their team physician – who also pitched batting practice on the side. Taylor opened a practice in the city and performed operations at the S.C. Cooper Sports Medicine Clinic at Mount Sinai Hospital. In 1981, he married Rona Douglas, a nurse at Mount Sinai, and they had two sons, Drew and Matthew.
Taylor retired in 2014 at 76, having won two more World Series rings when the Blue Jays won it all in 1992 and ’93. He was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985, Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in ’93 and the Order of Ontario for his work in the medical field in 2006. In 2016, his sons produced a documentary about his life, calling it – what else? – “Dr. Baseball.”