During his National League pitching career, Ken MacKenzie produced one hit. It resulted in his only RBI _ a game-winning single against the Cardinals.
Doing the unexpected came naturally to MacKenzie. A hockey player from a small town on a Canadian island, he went to Yale, graduated and became a big-league pitcher.
A left-handed reliever, MacKenzie was the only pitcher on the original 1962 New York Mets to finish the season with a winning record. In an encore, he also was the only pitcher with a winning record on the 1963 Mets.
Bespectacled and unassuming, MacKenzie was called Mr. Peepers by his Mets teammates, according to Newsday’s George Vecsey.
The Cardinals acquired him for a possible pennant run. After his playing career, MacKenzie coached baseball and hockey at Yale. He was 89 when he died on Dec. 14, 2023.
Out of the wilderness
MacKenzie was from Gore Bay, a town on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada, at the north end of Lake Huron. His father, John, who ran a hardware store, lost an eye serving in Europe with the Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment of Canada during World War II, according to the Hartford Courant.
Like his father, Ken MacKenzie excelled at hockey. Years later, he recalled to the Atlanta Constitution, “I never played baseball until I was 15 … I started pitching for the town team.”
MacKenzie was so inexperienced at pitching, “I didn’t even know how to wind up until I was 16,” he said to The Sporting News.
He went to Yale for an education (majoring in industrial administration) and to play hockey. After playing for Yale’s freshman hockey team, he made the varsity as a defenseman his sophomore year.
Though he hadn’t played freshman baseball, MacKenzie tried out for the varsity as a sophomore and earned a spot on the pitching staff. He became “one of the best college pitchers I’ve seen,” Hartford Courant columnist Bill Newell observed.
Relying on pinpoint control, MacKenzie was 19-6 with a 1.77 ERA in three varsity baseball seasons. He was 6-0 versus Harvard and 5-1 against Princeton.
(MacKenzie also played three varsity hockey seasons at Yale and was the team’s leading scorer as a junior.)
Beating the odds
Though he was successful in the Ivy League, conventional wisdom was MacKenzie didn’t throw hard enough to pitch in the pros. “Ken, even in his wildest dreams, never pictured himself being a major-league player,” the Hartford Courant noted.
After he graduated in 1956, MacKenzie received one baseball offer _ from the Milwaukee Braves. He signed with them in September 1956 and reported to their Class AA Atlanta Crackers farm club at spring training in 1957.
According to the Atlanta Constitution, MacKenzie “kept his bags packed” because he was uncertain he’d make the team. “Every time I heard a rumor someone was going, I figured it would be me,” he told the Atlanta newspaper.
Instead, he made the team and became a prominent starter, pitching a one-hitter against Mobile and finishing the 1957 season with a 14-6 record.
Progressing through the farm system, MacKenzie got called up to the Braves to fill a relief role in May 1960. His first decision, a loss to the Reds, came when he gave up a walkoff grand slam to Ed Bailey. Boxscore
In October 1961, the Braves sold MacKenzie’s contract to the Mets.
New York, New York
The 1962 Mets (40-120) were a bad team but had some smart pitchers. In addition to MacKenzie (Yale), the college graduates on the staff included Craig Anderson (Lehigh) and Jay Hook (Northwestern). Their manager was the Ol’ Perfessor, Casey Stengel, 72.
In recalling the 1962 Mets, MacKenzie told Dick Young of the New York Daily News, “Grounders went through all the time, and the ones they got to they didn’t pick up. All singles were doubles. I had an earned run average of 5, and maybe half of it was mine. We had to get five and six outs an innings. One day, Frenchy Daviault was pitching and it was brutal. The Old Man (Stengel) came out and said, ‘What’s the matter?’ Frenchy said, ‘What do you expect me to do?’ The Old Man said, ‘Strike somebody out. You know they can’t catch grounders.’ “
According to the New York Times, when MacKenzie came into a game one time in a crucial situation, Stengel handed him the ball and said, “Make like those guys are the Harvards.”
MacKenzie and his wife, Gretchen, a Vassar College graduate, lived in a Greenwich Village apartment during their time with the Mets. “We’d walk around and see all the art shows, drop in the coffee shops, or just watch the people,” MacKenzie told Newsday. “We liked the people down there. Everybody was open-minded. That’s the way we like to operate.”
Timely hitting
On July 28, 1962, at St. Louis, MacKenzie relieved Jay Hook in the fifth inning of a game against the Cardinals. With the Mets ahead, 8-6, in the ninth, MacKenzie, hitless as a big-leaguer, stroked a single against Don Ferrarese, scoring Joe Christopher and increasing the lead to 9-6.
(It was MacKenzie’s only hit and only RBI in 36 at-bats in the majors. MacKenzie told the Hartford Courant that Mets hitting coach Rogers Hornsby said to him, “You know, MacKenzie, you’re not a bad hitter. You put the bat on the ball.”)
The run was important because, in the bottom half of the inning, MacKenzie walked Bill White and gave up a home run to Curt Flood, pulling the Cardinals to within one at 9-8. (Flood hit .700 _ 7 for 10 _ against MacKenzie in his career.) After Willard Hunter relieved and walked Stan Musial, Craig Anderson came in and rescued the Mets, retiring the next three batters and securing the win for MacKenzie. Boxscore
MacKenzie was 5-4 with a save for the 1962 Mets, becoming the first pitcher to complete a season with a winning record for them. His ERA was 4.95. According to the Hartford Courant, when MacKenzie told Casey Stengel that at $10,000 per year he was the lowest paid member of Yale’s class of 1956, Stengel replied, “But you had the highest ERA.”
Cardinals calling
With the 1963 Mets, MacKenzie had a torrid start to the season (2-0, one save, 0.00 ERA in six appearances in April) but hit the skids hard in May. In one stretch of three games, he gave a walkoff home run to the Dodgers’ Frank Howard, a shattering home run to the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson and a game-winning home run to another Cardinal, Charlie James. (For his career, James hit .800 _ 4 for 5 _ versus MacKenzie.) Boxscore, Boxscore, Boxscore
Nonetheless, three months later, on Aug. 5, 1963, the Cardinals traded pitcher Ed Bauta to the Mets for MacKenzie. With a 3-1 record and three saves for the 1963 Mets, MacKenzie again was their only pitcher with a winning record.
(Regarding MacKenzie’s combined record of 8-5 for the 1962-63 Mets, Dick Young wrote, “If they ever decide to hand out medals, Ken MacKenzie belongs in the front line.”)
Manager Johnny Keane, whose Cardinals were five games behind the first-place Dodgers at the time of the trade, said to The Sporting News, “We got MacKenzie to help Bobby Shantz with the left-handed job in the bullpen.”
Though he told Newsday he was pleased to join a pennant contender, MacKenzie also had regrets about leaving the Mets. “I felt I was one of the originals on the club, and that meant something,” he said.
MacKenzie made eight appearances totaling nine innings for the 1963 Cardinals, who finished in second place. After the season, they traded him to the Giants for catcher Jim Coker.
Back to school
After brief stints with the 1964 Giants and 1965 Astros, MacKenzie was done as a player. In October 1965, he was named coach of the freshman baseball and hockey teams at Yale.
Three years later, in June 1968, MacKenzie became head coach of the Yale varsity baseball team, replacing Ethan Allen, who retired.
Among the players on the first varsity team MacKenzie coached were first baseman Steve Greenberg (son of Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg) and center fielder Brian Dowling (who also was the quarterback on Yale’s football team). Steve Greenberg became deputy commissioner of Major League Baseball, and the character of B.D. in the Doonesbury comic strip was based on Brian Dowling, a classmate of cartoonist Garry Trudeau.
In 1969, MacKenzie made a surprise return to the majors. Montreal Expos general manager John McHale, who had been in the Braves’ front office when MacKenzie first came to the big leagues, put MacKenzie on the Expos’ roster on Sept. 1, 1969, as a favor to add the necessary 26 days for the minimum five years needed for a pension, the Montreal Gazette reported. A grateful MacKenzie spent the month pitching batting practice and didn’t get into a game.
After that adventure, he resumed his coaching duties at Yale. MacKenzie coached varsity baseball for 10 seasons and then worked in the school’s alumni office until he retired.