Donald Ray Elston (April 6, 1929 – January 2, 1995) was an American
relief pitcher
In baseball and softball, a relief pitcher or reliever is a pitcher who pitches in the game after the starting pitcher or another relief pitcher has been removed from the game due to fatigue (medical), fatigue, injury, ineffectiveness, ejection ...
who appeared in 450 games in
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...
, all but one of them as a member of the
Chicago Cubs (1953, 1957–1964). Elston batted and threw right-handed, stood tall and weighed . He was born in
Campbellstown, Ohio, and attended
Camden High School. His 18-season
professional baseball career began in the Cub
farm system in 1948.
A hard thrower, Elston played for perennially weak Cubs teams over the course of his nine-year major league tenure. After a brief late-season trial with the 1953 Cubs, when he was treated rudely by the
Philadelphia Phillies and
St. Louis Cardinals, he was sent back to the
minor leagues for the next two campaigns. Chicago included him in a December 1955 trade with the defending
world champion Brooklyn Dodgers that was headlined by veterans
Randy Jackson,
Don Hoak,
Russ Meyer and
Walt Moryn, but Elston remained in the minors for all of 1956. He made the Dodgers' 1957 early-season roster and worked in one game. throwing one
inning of shutout relief on May 5 against the
Milwaukee Braves. He was traded back to the Cubs 18 days later for pitchers
Jackie Collum and
Vito Valentinetti.
The Cubs first used him as a swingman: in 1957, after his re-acquisition, he began as a reliever, then, beginning June 30, he made 14 appearances as a
starter through September 13. But on September 18, he moved back to the
bullpen, where he would spend the rest of his career. Elston became one of the best relief pitchers in the
National League. He led the league with 69
games pitched in 1958, setting a club mark. Then, in 1959, he tied teammate
Bill Henry for the league lead in appearances, with 65. That season, Elston won a career-high ten games and was selected to the
1959 National League All-Star team. He came on in the ninth inning of the
first of 1959's two All-Star tilts and earned a
save to preserve a 5–4 victory over the
American League
The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the American League (AL), is the younger of two sports leagues, leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western L ...
at
Forbes Field,
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
, on July 7.
Information
at Baseball Reference His 14 saves in 1959, third in the league, also was a career high. He was one of the Senior Circuit's top five relief pitchers for five straight years in saves (1957–1961) and games pitched (1958–1962). He posted sub-3.00 earned run averages in 1958, 1962 and 1963.
In 450 career MLB games, Elston compiled a 49–54 won–lost record with a 3.69 ERA and 64 saves. In 755 innings pitched, he allowed 702 hits and 327 bases on balls. He struck out 519. During his brief career as a starting pitcher, he registered two complete games.
In 1995, Elston died in Arlington Heights, Illinois, at the age of 65.
References
External links
1959 All-Star Game play-by-play
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elston, Don
1929 births
1995 deaths
Baseball players from Ohio
Brooklyn Dodgers players
Chicago Cubs players
Des Moines Bruins players
Elizabethton Betsy Cubs players
Janesville Cubs players
Leones del Caracas players
American expatriate baseball players in Venezuela
Los Angeles Angels (minor league) players
Major League Baseball pitchers
Minor league baseball managers
National League All-Stars
People from Preble County, Ohio
St. Paul Saints (AA) players
Salt Lake City Bees players
Sioux Falls Canaries players
Springfield Cubs (Illinois) players
Springfield Cubs (Massachusetts) players
20th-century American sportsmen