Jim Mecir

James Jason Mecir (born May 16, 1970) is an American former baseball player. He played for five teams in an 11-year career, and retired from the Florida Marlins in 2005. He was a right-handed pitcher.

Jim Mecir
Pitcher
Born: (1970-05-16) May 16, 1970
Queens, New York
Batted: Switch Threw: Right
MLB debut
September 4, 1995, for the Seattle Mariners
Last MLB appearance
September 28, 2005, for the Florida Marlins
MLB statistics
Win–loss record29–35
Earned run average3.77
Strikeouts450
Teams

Mecir is notable for having overcome a birth defect (namely club feet) to become an effective Major League pitcher as well as for regularly throwing a screwball. He spent 4½ years as a member of the Oakland Athletics and is prominently mentioned in Michael Lewis's bestselling book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.

Career

Mecir attended Eckerd College, and in 1990 he played collegiate summer baseball with the Falmouth Commodores of the Cape Cod Baseball League.[1] He was selected by the Seattle Mariners in the third round of the 1991 amateur draft. He played for Seattle in 1995, the New York Yankees in 1996[2] and 1997, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays from 1998 to 2000, the Oakland Athletics from 2001 to 2004, before spending the last year of his career with the Marlins. He announced his retirement on October 2, 2005, following the Marlins' last game of the season.

Mecir was inducted into the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame on Long Island, New York, in the Baseball Category with the Class of 2011.

Adversity

In 2003, Mecir received the Tony Conigliaro Award, given annually to the player who most effectively overcomes adversity to succeed in baseball. Mecir was born with two club feet; despite several childhood surgeries that enabled him to walk, he was left with a right leg that was one inch shorter than his left leg and a right calf that was only half the size of his left calf.

Mecir was inadvertently the subject of attention which began on May 15, 2005. On that Sunday, Mecir pitched poorly in a game against the Padres, and ESPN analyst John Kruk cited Mecir's limp (not knowing about his birth defect) when Mecir walked to the mound. Kruk presented this as evidence that the Marlins were negligent for asking Mecir to pitch (while Mecir appeared to be injured). Kruk came under heavy public criticism for being insensitive, even though Kruk was unaware. However, Mecir did not take offense when informed of the remark.

References
  1. "Major League Baseball Players From the Cape Cod League" (PDF). capecodbaseball.org. Retrieved September 25, 2019.
  2. Rieber, Anthony (18 July 1996). "Up-and-down Mecir hardly down and out about role". Daily News. Retrieved 30 May 2010.
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