Photo courtesy of San Francisco Giants yearbook, 1981
Lynnfield native Bob Tufts spent parts of three seasons in the majors with the Giants and Royals.
By TOM JOYCE
Back in 1984, Bob Tufts was angry.
The Lynnfield native was told by a Kansas City Royals team worker that he had been blackballed out of Major League Baseball because the Royals had heavy cocaine use in their clubhouse. Tufts was not a user, but he pitched for the Royals during the previous season, and the association did not help his case when looking for a contract, in the minors or majors, for the 1984 season.
Tufts pitched in the big leagues for three seasons (1981-1983) and as a rookie, pitched for the San Francisco Giants. But before the 1982 season, he was dealt to the Royals alongside Vida Blue, who spent three months in prison for cocaine possession following the 1983 MLB season.
In the parts of those three seasons he spent at the major league level, Tufts posted a 4.71 ERA. While he did not throw particularly hard, pitching to contact, he was a steady left-handed reliever – something that teams covet.
Later on, in 1999, Tufts discovered that he had a torn rotator cuff in his left shoulder. He pitched in the big leagues for only three seasons, but his arm may have started to deteriorate even before he made it that far.
In the minors, he recalls throwing far too many complete games and being overworked as a reliever. In 1978, 15 of his 19 starts were complete games. Specifically, he remembered a minor league doubleheader in 1982 where he logged 5 1/3 innings in relief during the first game – just about the length of an average start for most MLB pitchers today. Then, later in the day, he ended up throwing another two innings.
“Pitch counts and inning limits were not in vogue,” he said. “And as a non-bonus baby player, I had to go out and fight for the chance to advance despite the risks.”
Tufts said that the highlight of his Major League career was earning his first big league save against the Seattle Mariners on Sep. 14, 1982. Tufts finished the game and went 3 2/3 innings. He allowed one walk and a hit while striking out three men.
What made the game so special for him is that it was the first time his parents saw him pitch in his pro career.
“I will never forget the smile on my father’s face when he came down towards the dugout after I had completed an interview,” he said.
Over 30 years later though, life has moved on for the now-adjunct-professor at New York University and Yeshiva University. This upcoming fall, Tufts, a myeloma survivor, will be a full-time professor at Yeshiva’s Sy Syms School of Business in the management department.
Even though he is teaching anywhere from seven to ten classes a week now, pursuing teaching was not his original plan back in his MLB playing days.
“I assumed that I would eventually use my Economics degree from Princeton and work for the rest of my life in the money and banking sector,” he said. “Little did I know that I would use my academic background (the undergraduate degree at Princeton and a MBA in finance at Columbia) to be a college professor teaching finance courses.”
Tufts’ unfortunate association with the likes of Blue, Willie Aikens, Jerry Martin and Willie Wilson helped push him out of pro baseball at just 27 years old. But it, in turn, pushed him to receive his MBA from an Ivy League school.
It also sent him to Wall Street where he worked in finances for roughly two decades.
“Working on Wall Street was an interesting experience,” he said. “Financially, it was rewarding but intellectually, it was vapid. Every day you did the same thing. I began to look for avenues to satisfy my creative desires after a few years and began to write. This probably did lead indirectly to my teaching career.”
