Mike McCormick, first Giants pitcher to win Cy Young, dies at 81

Mike McCormick, the first San Francisco Giants pitcher to win the Cy Young Award, died peacefully on Saturday, the Giants announced on social media.

According to the Giants, McCormick, 81, died at his home in North Carolina after waging a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of Mike McCormick, a true gentleman and forever Giant,” Giants president and CEO Larry Baer said. “Like many Giants fans, I have many fond childhood memories of watching Mike pitch at Candlestick Park and then was blessed to call him my friend these past 30 years. As a member of the inaugural San Francisco Giants team in 1958, Mike helped establish baseball on the West Coast and then went on to play a major role in the legendary Giants teams of the 1960s, becoming San Francisco’s first pitcher to win a Cy Young Award.”

Mike McCormick was born in Pasadena. His father Kenneth, a semi-pro pitcher, set about teaching his son the craft of pitching when Mike was 7. By the time the lefthanded prodigy reached high school, he was a terror on the mound.

As a senior McCormick threw two no-hitters, and added three more in American Legion play — one in which he struck out 26 of the 27 hitters he faced. He was 17 when the New York Giants offered him a $50,000 bonus. McCormick, who had designs on attending USC, changed his mind in a hurry.

“I realized that $50,000 will buy me a lot of education,” he told Mike Mandel, author of “S.F. Giants: An Oral History.”

Baseball rules at that time mandated that bonus players had to remain on the major league roster for two years. McCormick was used sparingly during the Giants' final two seasons in New York. He was 19 when the Giants arrived in San Francisco. Inserted into the starting rotation, he won in double figures for four consecutive seasons.