August 24, 2021

“Go up and hit what you see. If you don’t see anything, come on back.” – Washington Senators manager Bucky Harris, to hitters facing Chicago White Sox Bob Feller’s fastball.

By Patrick Kennedy

Ball players of yesteryear experienced that same uncertainty — and in some cases fear — whenever they stepped into the batter’s box to face Kingston native Doug McIlroy, a fireballing left-hander.

No pitcher on local diamonds threw harder than “Flame” McIlroy. If you pooled area geezers of my vintage and older and asked, Who threw the fastest?” one name would dominate the straw poll — McIlroy. The vote might even be unanimous.

“No one from Kingston threw harder,” said Bob Elliott, the celebrated big-league baseball writer from Kingston, whose father, also named Bob, coached McIlroy.

“It’s not even close — McIlroy,” echoed Tom Carty, who caught the port-sider.

“McIlroy,” Clyde Harris, another old teammate, confirmed in a flash.

When “Mac” had his “A” game going, a foul ball was a moral triumph.

McIlroy’s pitching exploits in top shelf Kingston Baseball Association minor ball — a slew of no-hitters, including four in one season — gave rise to a sparkling though injury-shortened career with Kingston senior clubs.

“I loved the people and teammates I met through baseball,” McIlroy, 78, said during a recent chat in the Calvin Park neighbourhood where the divorced father of five lives a quiet life. “As a youngster, most of the players my age came from good homes and had good support. Without that support, though, it can be a tough go ... and I was from the other side of the tracks.”

The story of Doug McIlroy is one of wonderment and waste: the former referring to his pitching and countless strikeouts, the latter to natural talent that wasn’t fully utilized. Yellowed scrapbook clippings reveal jaw-dropping strikeout totals: 17 here, a dozen there, 16 Ks in a 1-0 loss, and so on. Not revealed in the newspaper accounts are the what-ifs and if-onlys: What if, for instance, he had committed to honing his skill? If only he’d cared more, some lamented. To what heights could that magical left arm have taken him?

“I never knew beforehand if scouts were at the park,” McIlroy pointed out. “And to be honest, I never cared.”

At age 18, versus a top-rated Toronto team at a year-end junior tournament in St. Catharines, the teenager twirled a three-hitter, fanned nine and was saddled with a tough-luck 1-0 loss. Afterwards, a New York Mets scout sought him out. “Doug was interviewed while downing a cold one and smoking a Camel,” remembers Bob Gilmour, a teammate from that day.

Ironically, his mound success was due, in part, to wildness. McIlroy was often as erratic as he was fast, which at times acted as a psychological weapon en route to all those Strike 3s. When an errant McIlroy fastball buzzed a batter’s jersey close enough to leave powder burns, the batter’s confidence was suddenly battling insecurity. In eight seasons of senior ball, McIlroy pitched 414 innings and issued almost as many walks (395). He also set down 650 batters on strikes, for an astonishing average of 14.1 strikeouts per nine innings.

Ex-senior teammate Harris recalled the first time he caught McIlroy.

“I was called up as a teenager to play for Wolfe Island Bridge Boosters in the old KBA senior league,“ the retired schoolteacher recalled over the phone from Orillia. “The manager said, ‘I hear you catch a bit. Do you mind warming up McIlroy?’ An old timer sitting nearby suggested I wear a mask. I said I didn’t need one because I was just warming him up. Well, the very first pitch Lefty threw sailed right by my ear. I never even got leather on it. Then the old timer says: ‘Change your mind about that mask, son?’

“Lefty’s fastball was a different bit of business altogether,” added Harris, who played senior baseball until age 45. “Doug threw harder than any amateur pitcher I ever saw.”

McIlroy, one of eight children raised by Lillian and Hubert McIlroy on Hubert’s boilermaker salary from Canadian Dredge and Dock, grew up in a cramped frame house in the north end of Kingston near the corner of Montreal and John streets. The house had four small bedrooms, two for the quartet of McIlroy girls, two for Doug and his three brothers.

“I don’t remember mom and dad sleeping anywhere other than on the living room pull-out couch,” McIlroy says of a hardscrabble life. “There were lots of cold nights when I slept in my winter coat, because the heat from the old pot belly stove didn’t reach upstairs.”

But winter was also when he got the jump on other wannabe Spahns or Maglies. Young McIlroy threw snowballs until his hands were ice cold. Slowly but surely, that pitching arm was developing.

Curiously, beginning in his early teens, the boy’s rising pitching speed also posed a small problem.

“As I got older, none of the kids in the neighbourhood would catch me,” McIlroy recalled.” I threw to (older brother) Bud in the laneway, and when Bud moved away, I’d sometimes go the whole week without touching a ball, then go out a pitch a game.”

That didn’t affect his performance.

“I can still see Flame climbing out of a cab five minutes before a game, throwing some warm ups, then going out and striking out 15,” ex-teammate Ron Earl once said.

In 1964, a Detroit Tigers scout approached losing pitcher McIlroy as he and Bob Elliott strolled to the clubhouse following a disputed 1-0 loss in a tournament semifinal.

“(Screw) off!” the pitcher snapped. “Did you not see how we lost?”

Poor timing? Perhaps. But maybe the pitcher had reason to snarl. Earlier that same season, after a masterful 16-strikeout performance, McIlroy had listened as another major-league scout dashed what baseball dreams he may ever have had.

“The scout said I was too old,” McIlroy recalls. “I was 20.”

McIlroy was a member of the 1967 provincial senior A champion Lakeview Indians. The team posted a 22-5 regular-season mark, then won 10 of 12 playoff tilts to take the Ontario crown. McIlroy, who was 24 that summer, compiled a stingy 1.62 ERA, and saved his best for last. He posted a memorable save in the title-clinching game after relieving Kingston ace Art Leeman with two out in the bottom of the seventh and Kingston nursing the slimmest of leads. With the bases full and the Orillia cleanup man grinding his teeth at bat, Flame McIlroy whistled three straight fastballs past the overmatched slugger. He then fanned five more over the next two frames to lock up Kingston’s first all-Ontario crown in 32 years.

Doug McIlroy’s fastball could be heard as well as seen, the latter only slightly better. Moreover, his heater seldom travelled a straight line on its 60-and-a-half-foot flight, more like a wavelength with a tiny jump at the end.

“Because Doug had that little wrist-snap right before he released the pitch, his fastball hopped a little,” explained Carty, a battery mate from scores of years earlier. “When you combine that kind of movement with such great velocity, it was an awfully difficult pitch to hit.”

The pitch became easier to hit after McIlroy injured his shoulder in a 1968 broom ball game. He eventually returned to the mound with moderate success, getting by largely on sharp-bending breaking balls. The blazing fastball, however, was a thing of the past.

How fast was the seed-throwing southpaw? Gilmour figures somewhere in the mid-90s (m.p.h.). Sadly, we’ll never know. Personally, I like this observation made in the late ‘60s by Anne Carty, wife of Tom, at her first Montreal Expos game at Parc Jarry.

As she watched a pair of big-league pitchers warm up nearby, she turned to her husband and remarked, “Gee, Tom, these guys don’t throw as hard as McIlroy.”

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Kingston Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com.