Writers are always looking for someone who has a story to tell and with Chance you got a fabled athlete whose tale was colorful and quirky and wondrously improbable when you considered the rural origins and where he ended up at the height of his popularity.
Chance was a Wayne County clodhopper who turned into something of a baseball bon vivant.
Arguably the best high school pitcher in Ohio history, Chance went on to an 11-year major-league career with the Los Angeles Angels, Minnesota, Cleveland, New York Mets and Detroit, started two All-Star Games, won the 1964 Cy Young Award and, soon after, joined the New York Yankees Whitey Ford as the highest-paid pitchers in the big leagues.
Combining what he called his “snake ball” and his “double snake ball” pitches with his night owl prowls through the Hollywood celebrity scene with his fellow Los Angeles Angels pitcher Bo Belinsky, a city slicker known for his suede shoes, personalized pool cue and womanizing eye, Chance made a name for himself in the 1960s as one of the true wild cards in baseball history.
“My greatest days were out there in L.A. It’s just a great town.,” Chance told me as we tromped around the feed lot of his farm that day. “We had all kinds of friends: Angie Dickinson, Connie Stevens, Chuck Connors, Chita Rivera, Ann Margaret, Trini Lopez, Mame Van Doren, Johnny Rivers. And Walter Winchell got us comped everywhere.
“I remember hanging out at places like the Village Capri and the Whisky A Go-Go, just watching them dance.”
After baseball Chance became a carnival barker. He had a whole midway troupe working for him. They ran some 40 games each year at the Ohio State Fair and he’d also travel he national circuit. That’s where I first met him, in the early 1980s, when I was working in Miami and he was running a game of chance at a carnival down there.
He also became involved in the fight game. For a while he managed Earnie Shavers, the hard-punching heavyweight contender from Ohio. Later, he ran the International Boxing Association and promoted a fight at the Ohio State Fair where Northmont High School product Rocky Gannon headlined a light-heavyweight title bout.
It was that connection that brought the photographer and me to the cattle farm several years past and over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about that trip.
Dean Chance died Sunday at his farm. He was 74. His son said he had a heart attack.
A Yankee killer
Playing for Northwestern High School in West Salem, Chance led the basketball team to a 29-0 record and the state title in 1958. A year later he led the baseball team to a state crown as well and he finished his prep pitching career with a 52-1 record and 17 shutouts
He was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles in 1959, and two years later after an expansion draft pick-up and a trade, he made his major-league debut with the Angels.
A lanky right-hander with an unorthodox delivery (long before former Reds pitcher Johnny Cueto, he was turning his back to the hitter before releasing the ball), he had a glorious 1964 season after starting the year slowly because of a blister on a finger of his throwing hand.
He went 15-4 after the break, finished 20-9, led the league in complete games and innings and had a 1.65 earned-run average.
He was especially problematic for the Yankees. He threw 50 innings against them that season and had a .018 era.
The Yanks lost 63 games that year and four were to Chance. Three times he shut them out. Another time he threw 14 scoreless innings against them, only to have a reliever lose the game in the 15th.
Over his career he beat the Yankees 18 times. And that prompted New York legend Mickey Mantle to tell sportswriter Maury Allen:
“Every time I see his name in a lineup card, I feel like throwing up.”
A winner in life
Chance knew such dominance paid dividends for him and that day at the farm he tried to draw a parallel for Rocky Gannon to follow:
“I learned long ago if you win in life, you can go anywhere. It opens doors and takes you places you never expected.”
As we left the barnyard and headed into the house, first shedding our shoes in a mudroom, he opened the door on his life far beyond the farm.
His Cy Young Award hung on the dining room wall. In the living room were photos of him with everybody from J Edgar Hoover to Bob Hope. On the fireplace hearth, surrounded by white candles, was a portrait of Bo Belinsky.
As he led the way to the basement door — and passage to what he puckishly called the “underground headquarters of the IBA” — he lamented that he hadn’t had time to straighten things up first.
Once he’d tromped down the stairs, he headed over to a Barcalounger that sat next to a lamp with a ripped shade and a telephone and sat down.
On the nearby wall a flamenco dancer done in DayGlo was painted on black velvet — a left-over prize from his carnival days.
A clothesline overhead held drying flowers his mom had picked from the yard. Some of her ceramic trinkets shared a cabinet in the corner with some of his high school trophies.
Propped against the wall was an overblown photo of Chance flanked by Los Angeles Dodgers greats Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. They had won the two previous Cy Youngs.
The photo had been taken in 1965, the same year the Saturday Evening Post had written a big story about Chance.
In his obit, The New York Times’ Bruce Weber mentioned a conversation the Ohio farm boy, his talents and tongue unfettered after his Cy Young season, had had with a writer.
“Fifty thousand seen me at the All-Star Game last year … and I was the best damned pitcher out there,” he quipped. “You could call this story ‘Rags to Riches.’ ”
And with Dean Chance there were always so many riches.
10-cent tour?
Never.
With him, it was always a pot of gold.
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