[Merkle923]

You're 15-8 at the All-Star break and you don't make the All-Star team? Well, they didn't have 13 pitchers per team in 1973 and few guys begged off and if you'd been on it the year before, somebody else got a chance, and nobody made it after five games, Heck, Nolan Ryan had to wait five seasons (and only made the team in year six; he didn't even pitch)

Joe Coleman, Jr (though that wasn't his legs; name) died on July 9. Rick Monday was the first choice of the first draft and unfortunately the Mets made Les Rohr the second but Coleman was the third and after some superb but futile years in Washington he went to the Tigers in one of the worst trades of all time. Detroit got him, Aurelio Rodríguez, and Ed Brinkman for a burnt out Denny McLain (and Elliott Maddox). Coleman reeled off three years with at least 280 innings and at least 202 strikeouts and win totals of 19, 20, and 23, when they still were paramount.

But Coleman, son of an equally under appreciated righty of the '40s and '50s, himself burned out and in June was waived to the Cubs. The next March he went to the A's in a trade. A year after that he was sold to Toronto. The Giants signed him as a free agent in April 1979 (and released him after three weeks) and the Pirates brought him aboard for 10 games. He spent the rest of 1979 through 1982 in the PCL, the last three seasons as a pitcher-coach. After the Tigers waived him he started just 16 times in three-and-a-half years.

Oddly, in the Brace collection there was no shot of Coleman with the Cubs (and I've never seen him). We've seen a black and white of him with the Giants, apparently in Spring Training. But Brace got him in three stops on his blacked-out cap tour.

His son Casey pitched for the Cubs. He was the first member of the three-generation family to not make an All-Star team - and get MVP votes.