Playboy
I do feel sorry for those guys who never heard the music.
Bygone baseball by C. Philip Francis
I had not seen the name or thought of Bo Belinsky for years, but suddenly there it was. This time it was not in the paper’s sports section nor the gossip section, this time Bo had made the full circle – baseball fame to Hollywood escapades to marriage with a Playboy beauty to the obituary section.
In a sport where colorful players and even eccentrics are abundantly found, Bo was still one of a kind. He probably received the most publicity for the least accomplishments on the diamond in the history of the game, but that, of course, does not include pool hustling and his additional post-game entertainment. Bo was a dark-haired, extremely handsome half-Jewish (the other half was Polish) 6’2” left-handed pitcher from Trenton, New Jersey. Robert Belinsky, no middle name, was born on December 7, 1936, and grew up with the attitude of “I don’t give a ….” that was envied by men and loved by women – many, many women.
In 1958 major league baseball moved west when Walter O’Malley, the president of the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers, took his team to Los Angeles looking for gold in the untapped west coast major league market. He soon found it. In 1961 the American League voted to add two teams with one going to Los Angeles where they would become the Angels, a traditional name first used in 1903, headed by singing cowboy, Gene Autry. (Note: They later became the California Angels.)
During their first year of existence the Angels played in city owned Wrigley Field with the usual first year problems, and then moved to O’Malley’s newly opened Dodger Stadium in 1962 as tenants. The Dodgers came west as an established ball club, and for several years was the only baseball around with such celebrated names as Hodges, Koufax, Snider, and Drysdale. They were World Champions in 1959, and now the new kids had to develop an identity with all-star quality in their lineup. If the Angels prayed for a miracle, they got more than they even hoped for.
Belinsky had been taken from the Baltimore organization in the expansion draft, and exploded on the Los Angeles scene including the Hollywood starlet population when he won five straight games including the first ever no-hitter thrown in Los Angeles. In his fourth big league game on May 5, 1962 the rookie sensation made headlines when he gave no hits as he beat the Orioles and pitcher Steve Barber 2-0. Bo fired his gem against a powerful lineup that included Brooks Robinson, Jim Gentile, Dave Nicholson, and Gus Triandos.
There were two outs in the ninth when Nicholson popped up sending the crowd into a frenzy. As Bo and his catcher Buck Rodgers walked off, the new tinseltown hero looked into the stands and said, “Look at that blond up there...” Incidentally, don’t ever bet your paycheck that the first no-no thrown in LA by a Jewish left-hander was Sandy Koufax; he wasn’t. The Dodger Hall of Famer threw his first of two no-hitters on June 30 almost two months after Bo’s.
Bo slumped to a 10 and 11 record at the season’s end although his post-game reputation was just getting started. He became friends of gossip writer Walter Winchell who filled his columns with quotes and great copy from Bo and his dates such as actresses Tina Louise, Connie Stevens, Ann-Margaret, Paulette Goddard, and Iran’s queen Soraya. Bo made the rounds of the Hollywood parties, and appeared on such television shows as 77 Sunset Strip and Surfside Six. He became engaged with blond bombshell Mamie Van Doren and did marry Jo Collins, Playboy’s 1965 Playmate of the Year.
The following year Bo won two games while losing nine. Angels manager Bill Rigney had enough of his player’s midnight rambling, and almost completed a trade with Kansas City. Bo fought it and remained with the Angels. With a record of 1-7 Rigney wanted to send his antagonist back to the minors. No, it was not East Overshoe, Nebraska nor West Wetblanket, North Dakota, LA’s main farm team was in of all places – Hawaii. And as one said, “What kind of discipline was that – sending a fellow loaded with galloping hormones to a paradise like Hawaii? It was like sending an unruly boy to the candy store for redemption.” To no one’s surprise, Bo did not object and even refused a recall back to the mainland. He was having too much fun.
In his undistinguished eight-year career Bo had only one winning season when he went 9 and 8 in 1964, but from then on it was all down hill. Following a fight with Los Angeles
Now dealing with arm and drinking problems, Bo drifted to Houston, 3-9; Pittsburgh, 0-3; Cincinnati, 0-0; and retired in 1970. Baseball’s greatest womanizer of all time was gone, and as one said of Bo’s baseball career, “He had a million-dollar arm, and a ten-cent head.” Robert Belinsky always claimed that he had no regrets, “I was there. I saw it and did it all. I heard music nobody else ever heard.”
Epilogue: Dodger Stadium held a memorial service for Bo almost 40 years after the LA idol last wore a Dodger uniform. Over 100 mourners were in attendance, but the ratio of men to women was not noted.