Twenty-two-year-old Tim Kurkjian had a chance to bat against 61-year-old Bob Feller back in the summer of 1979. Kurkjian, now a popular baseball analyst with ESPN, was then a cub reporter covering the Alexandria Dukes for the Washington Star.
On that fateful night 36 years ago, media members were invited to hit against Feller, an aging Hall of Famer who was forever making a buck barnstroming across the USA.
“It was amazing,’’ recalls Kurkjian. “Bob Feller was my dad’s hero. He was one of the greatest pitchers who ever lived. And there I was, standing in the batter’s box, hitting against him in this pregame exhibition.
“He wasn’t throwing very hard. He was 61 years old! So I got a couple of hits.
“When it was over, they gave me a certificate with my name on it, which had some large print at the bottom. It said something like, ‘The aforementioned slugger acknowledges that if he had faced Bob Feller in his prime, the results might have been different.’ No kidding! I’m sure I would have lit him up when he was throwing 101 miles an hour in 1940!’’
All of which brings us to Jim Lonborg, a 73-year-old South Shore dentist who will be toeing the rubber for charity at St. Peter’s Field in Cambridge on Thursday at 7 p.m.
Lonborg won the Cy Young Award in the Red Sox Impossible Dream 1967 season, going 22-9 and winning two World Series games against the St. Louis Cardinals. He has not pitched in the big leagues since he was released by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1979. He won 157 games in 15 big league seasons.
When he ices down after his comeback performance Thursday, Gentleman Jim will not require young batters to admit “the results might have been different” if they faced him when he fanned 246 hitters in 1967.
Don’t be late if you want to see Lonborg pitch.
“I’m on a pitch count,’’ says the former ace. “Fifteen pitches and I’m done.’’
Hub sports fans have been blessed with a number of professional athletes who enjoyed great success with Boston teams, then stayed in our region, raised families, and donated the currency of their fame to local charities. Bobby Orr always comes to mind. Ditto for the legendary likes of Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, Cam Neely, Ray Bourque, Dwight Evans, Luis Tiant, Steve Grogan, and Troy Brown.
Lonborg is at the top of the list. A native Californian, he became famous as the first Cy Young winner in the history of the Sox franchise, and retired to the South Shore after his playing days.
As a grounded “regular guy,’’ Lonborg forever will be a Boston sports superstar on a par with Orr. Lonborg was the best pitcher in baseball in 1967. He pitched a one-hit shutout in his first World Series game against a great St. Louis Cardinals team.
An infamous ski tumble blew out his knee and derailed his career, and he was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers in 1971 after seven seasons with the Red Sox. After tours in Milwaukee and Philadelphia, Lonborg returned to Boston, got a degree from Tufts dental school, and opened his own dental practice in Hanover in 1985. He plans to retire from dentistry in two years.
His is a life unimaginable when measured against today’s sports stars. Can any of us picture Roger Clemens going to dental school after hanging up his cleats in 2007? Interviewing Nomar Garciaparra was a virtual root canal. Can we envision Nomar hovering over us with a dentist’s drill? Manny Ramirez? Kevin Millar? Curt Schilling?
Lonborg grew up in California. The Sox drafted him after his junior year at Stanford. After a year of professional baseball, he went back to Palo Alto and got his bachelor of arts in biology in 1965. When Lonborg retired from the big leagues, his wife Rosie (mother of six, swimming instructor, breeder of golden retrievers, and longtime volunteer at the Jimmy Fund clinic) said, “Why don’t you become a dentist? You like health care. You’ve always looked good in a uniform.’’
Lonborg called Bill Lenkaitis, a former Patriot offensive lineman who became a dentist after retiring from the NFL. Lonborg , the ever-handsome 6-foot-5-inch righthander, went to UMass-Boston “to learn how to study again,” then was accepted at Tufts.
Lonborg graduated in 1983, worked in Boston for a couple of years, then opened his South Shore practice. Meanwhile, his family grew. Five of the six Lonborg children are now married. Jim and Rosie have eight grandchildren.
He hasn’t thrown a ball off a mound in 15 years, but Thursday he’s slated to start in the 22d annual Oldtime Baseball Game, a marvelous exhibition dreamed up by Boston Herald sports columnist Steve Buckley during the baseball strike of 1994.
It’s a night for wood bats, old-time uniforms, and pass-the-hat charity. This year’s cause is the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and Lonborg is scheduled to face Skip Flanagan, a Rochester Institute of Technology baseball captain who previously played at Bishop Feehan High School.
Flanagan is deaf. He spent this summer playing for the Old Orchard Beach Surge of the wooden-bat North Country Baseball League.
Lonborg is ready to face the young people.
“I’ve been playing catch in my driveway with my son John,’’ says the former Sox ace. “We started throwing at 40 feet, then 50 feet, now we’re up to 60 feet, 6 inches.
“I think I’ll be ready by Thursday. It’s critical that I go right from warm-ups to the mound. If I wait, all those ligaments will shrivel up.
“I’m not sure how hard I’m throwing. We haven’t been able to find a radar gun that goes that low. I think I can hit 50 m.p.h. on the gun. It’s all about ball movement.’’
It’s more than that. It’s about charity. And generosity. And class.
Gentleman Jim. On the mound. One last time.
Get there early. He’s on a pitch count.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at dshaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Dan_Shaughnessy.