Orel Hershiser

Lore & Background

After playing baseball in high school at Cherry Hill High School East and at Bowling Green State University, Hershiser was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1979. After several years in the minor leagues, he made his major league debut with the Dodgers in 1983. During his tenure with the team, Hershiser was a three-time All-Star, finishing in the top five in Cy Young voting four times in his first six full seasons. Hershiser's most successful season came in 1988, when he set a major league record by pitching 59 consecutive innings without allowing a run. He helped lead the Dodgers to a championship in the 1988 World Series, and was named the National League (NL) Championship Series Most Valuable Player (MVP) and the World Series MVP. That season, he won the NL Cy Young Award and an NL Gold Glove Award. He later pitched in two more World Series and earned the American League Championship Series MVP Award. After 12 seasons with the Dodgers, Hershiser spent time with the Cleveland Indians, San Francisco Giants, and New York Mets before returning to Los Angeles for his final season. After retirement as a player, he briefly worked as a coach and team executive for the Texas Rangers before serving as a color analyst for ESPN and then the Dodgers. Known for his slight frame and fierce competitive spirit, Hershiser was nicknamed 'Bulldog' by former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who managed Hershiser during his time with the Dodgers.

In Their Own Story

The air at Dodger Stadium was thick with humidity and anticipation on a September evening in 1988. The scoreboard flickered, displaying a number that seemed impossible: 57 scoreless innings. Orel Hershiser stood on the rubber, his cap pulled low, eyes scanning the batter's box with a cold, calculated intensity. He didn't need to shout; the silence radiating from him was louder than any crowd roar. With a subtle shift of his grip, he fired a splitter that seemed to vanish into the strike zone before dropping off the table. The batter swung at air. Three strikes, and the silence of Dodger Stadium shattered into a roar.

Reader's Guide

Hershiser was born in Buffalo, New York, to Orel Leonard III and Mildred Hershiser. The family moved to Detroit, Michigan, when he was six and to Toronto, Ontario, when he was 12. At age eight, Hershiser was the third-place finisher in a national hit, run, and throw competition. Hershiser played in Little League Baseball until he was 12. His father was a coach and league administrator and his mother ran the snack bar. During his family's time in Canada, he participated in ice hockey with the Don Mills Flyers in the Greater Toronto Hockey League. His family moved again and he attended Cherry Hill High School East in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He did not make the varsity team until his junior year as he spent his first year on the freshman team and his second year on the junior varsity. He set the single-game strikeout record for his high school in 1976 when he retired 15 batters in a game against Deptford, a record that stood for 21 years. He also remains on the school's leaderboards in career winning percentage, strikeouts and earned run average (ERA). He was an all-conference selection his senior year. Hershiser received only a partial scholarship from Bowling Green State University. As a freshman he played little baseball and was academically ineligible as a sophomore. He left school and hitchhiked home, where his parents convinced him to return to school. He enrolled in summer school to bring his grades up and worked at his father's paper company during the summer. He grew and gained 15 pounds (6.8 kg) that summer, which added 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h) to his fastball and got him more playing time. He made the all-Mid-American Conference All-Star team his junior year, during which he pitched a no-hitter against Kent State on May 4, 1979. He won that game 2–0 despite only striking out two batters. In his only full-time season with the baseball team, in 1979, he was 6–2 with a 2.26 ERA. Hershiser was also a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. One of his fraternity brothers played a joke on him on draft day, pretending to be a scout from the San Diego Padres calling to tell him he was drafted in the first round. After getting excited and starting to call his friends, he realized it was a hoax. The Los Angeles Dodgers selected Hershiser in the 17th round of the 1979 Major League Baseball draft. The original scouting report on him for the draft said th

Did You Know?

• Hershiser set a major league record by pitching 59 consecutive scoreless innings in 1988.
• He was nicknamed 'Bulldog' by manager Tommy Lasorda.
• He was a three-time All-Star and won both the NLCS MVP and World Series MVP in 1988.
• He also earned the American League Championship Series MVP Award later in his career.