Paul Splittorff has passed away, and I should take a minute here to remember him. I knew Paul, of course; I didn’t know him real well.
Paul was a pitching stoic. He didn’t have a whole lot of fast-twitch muscles. On the mound he was big, strong, slow, deliberate, but very graceful and very much under control. He had a wide array of serviceable pitches—a fastball that probably topped out at 90, a curve that broke a little too wide, making it difficult to hit but easy to recognize. A high leg kick, a smooth delivery, ordinary stuff. His bread and butter was a two-seam fastball, a sinking fastball that was his foundation pitch when he wasn’t in trouble and his go-to pitch when he was.
Three hundred Royals’ pitchers have had better pitches to work with, but Splittorff won 166 games for the Royals, and nobody else has. It’s a lot of wins, one more win than Koufax. He never over-reached. He never reached back for a little bit extra with the game on the line; he just tried to execute his stuff. He never had a melt-down on the mound—or off. If he got beat he got beat. He was always ready to make his next start either way.
As a broadcaster he was kind of the same—conservative in the best sense of the word, but extremely conservative. His points were good ones, but delivered with such reserve that it was in some sense like he was trying to constantly reassure the audience that he wasn’t trying to move up to a network job. Off the air he was hilarious. On the air he was very bright but absolutely, totally devoid of humor or, now that you mention it, personality.
Off the air he was borderline vulgar, original, and made connections that you’d never think of. It’s hard to describe another man’s humor; it was referential and unexpected, but not cultural. I remember we were talking about some right-handed hitter who was always a little bit slow to the ball and couldn’t get to anything down and in; Paul said "he kind of hits like his strap doesn’t fit right." You knew exactly what he meant. One time we were talking about a manager who was very clever but never exactly in control of his team, and he said "he’s got a team of 25 ex-wives", which was funny because he did have multiple ex-wives, and he did kind of deal with everybody as if everybody was an ex-wife.
On the air he was as dry as the bottom row of the wood pile. I was always astonished that a man could change so much on the air, let alone that he would. It was as if he clipped on the microphone like a priest’s collar; once it was on, he was no longer the funny, earthy, occasionally sarcastic human he had been ten minutes earlier: he was a professional. First, do no harm. On the mound his first concern was not to lose the game; on the air, not to offend anyone. He understood the game on a deep level, and he could communicate to you why a young pitcher’s repertoire wouldn’t work the second time through the order, or why a young hitter was vulnerable to an offspeed pitch away from him, really specific stuff that educated even those of us who have been watching major league baseball games since Warren Spahn was pitching. He didn’t use clichés; he didn’t generalize the game or moralize it or trivialize it. He could and occasionally would tactfully convey his disgust at unprofessional conduct on the field, but 98% of the time he operated out of an exceptionally narrow band of commentary. This is what the pitcher was trying to do with that pitch; this is why it didn’t work. His shoulder flew open too early; his arm was late, he was off-balance at the point of release and the pitch was high. He was great with swing paths. He always thought that when you had established what the hitter’s swing path was, you knew how to get him out.
His emotions on the air ranged from L to M, occasionally maybe to O. I always thought he was a better basketball announcer than he was on baseball. He had played college basketball, and his love of the game was more evident than it was on the diamond. We will miss him. We will miss him because he was considerate and professional and steady and reliable, and we will miss him because he was a link to a wonderful time, when the Royals were bright and new, and shone like the morning sun rising over a field of green wheat.