“Who’s Dave Stieb?” you might be asking. Well, this is a guy who had never stepped on a pitcher’s mound in his life until age 20. Just four years later, he was the best pitcher in the American League. This is the beginning of the almost unbelievable story of the man who put the Toronto Blue Jays on the map.
Dave Stieb wrote an autobiography in his late twenties, which is unheard of, but it’s tough to blame him. He’d already done and seen so much. Maybe he thought that at this point, he’d seen it all. HE HAD NOT. Welcome to Captain Ahab: The Story of Dave Stieb, part two of a four-part series.
Dave Stieb had just experienced a level of heartbreak that only the sport of baseball can deliver. His relationship with the game had always been a complicated one. But the two were not yet finished with each other.
The end of Dave Stieb’s career was as poetic, fascinating, and shocking as the rest of it. To this day, we debate what it all meant, and where his legacy belongs. But long before he hung up his cleats, he told us how this would go. He would not go quietly. It would be loud.