Craig Lefferts

American baseball player (born 1957)

Craig Lindsay Lefferts (born September 29, 1957) is a German American former relief pitcher who played in Major League Baseball for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, Baltimore Orioles, Texas Rangers and California Angels between 1983 and 1994.

Lefferts was born in West Germany, one of five children of Ed, a United States Air Force officer, and Bobbie Lefferts. Lefferts moved to Sacramento, Japan, Topeka, Cape Cod and San Diego before the family settled in the Tampa Bay area. As a child, Lefferts suffered from asthma, was prone to attacks and his parents did not let him play baseball until he was 12 years old. After going 1–3 with a 4.09 earned run average (ERA) with the Orioles, he elected to become a free agent on November 2, 1992. In 12 seasons he had a win–loss record of 58–72, 45 games started, 1 complete game, 286 games finished, 101 saves, 1,145 innings, 1,108 hits allowed, 490 runs allowed, 436 earned runs allowed, 120 home runs allowed, 322 walks allowed, 719 strikeouts, 31 wild pitches, 4,754 batters faced, 55 intentional walks, 10 balks and a 3.43 ERA. , Lefferts is the most recent pitcher to hit a walk off home run, doing so on April 25, 1986, in the bottom of the 12th inning against the San Francisco Giants' Greg Minton. He will likely be the last pitcher to do so, as the MLB has implemented a universal DH for the 2022 season and beyond. He was the first pitcher to hit a walk off home run since Moe Drabowsky in 1969. A few years after retiring as a player, Lefferts became a coach in the Toronto Blue Jays system before joining the Oakland Athletics system in 2001 and, in 2015, became the team's pitching rehab coordinator. Lefferts underwent two failed eye surgeries in retirement which damaged his vision even further.