A Winner Never Quits: One-Armed Baseball Player Pete Gray

Thirty years ago, we saw the premiere of a TV movie dramatizing the life of Pete Gray.  A Winner Never Quits starred Keith Carradine as the one-armed baseball player -- also showing how his one year of fame on the baseball diamond in 1945 led to depression and alcoholism afterwards.  Interesting fact: his real name was Peter Wyshner -- a son of Lithuanian immigrants -- and he changed it to Gray to avoid ethnic prejudice while playing semi-pro baseball.

Gray died in 2002.

Mare Winningham, who played Pete Gray's wife in A Winner Never Quits, retweeted this blog.

Let's go to the videotape!

Warner Wolf's Plays of the Week
April 11, 1986

• 0:32 There must have been an errant VCR button press to erase Warner's 1986 Major League Baseball picks, but... SPOILER ALERT... here's how he did:
  --In the AL West, Warner picked the defending World Series champion Kansas City Royals.  They finished third (76-86) to the California Angels.
  --In the AL East, Warner picked the Toronto Blue Jays.  They did better (86-76), but finished fourth to the Boston Red Sox.
  --In the NL West, Warner picked the Cincinnati Reds, who also finished 86-76 -- good enough for second place to the Houston Astros.
  --In the NL East, Warner picked the New York Mets -- who won the World Series.  By his end-of-the-season recap, he claimed 1-out-of-4 was a pretty good percentage. However, his co-host Faith Daniels quipped back, "my grandmother could have picked the Mets!"
• 0:47 Rex Hudler only played in Baltimore for one of his 14 seasons in professional baseball.  Today, people either know him as the voice of the video game MLB: The Show, or as play-by-play announcer for the World Series champion Kansas City Royals.
• 1:05 According to DropYourGloves.com, Kevin Hatcher scored a "clear win" in this fight against Bobby Bourne.
• 1:11 Billy Smith was known for having a fiery temper; but he was also the first NHL goalie ever to be credited with scoring a goal.
• 1:19 Neither Chris Meakem nor George Ross made much noise in the boxing world -- in fact, half of their bouts were against each other!
• 1:31 Pervis Ellison became known as "Never Nervous Pervis," for his cool demeanor as a freshman on the title-winning 1986 Louisville Cardinals.  Unfortunately, despite a lengthy NBA career, multiple injuries kept him from greatness (teammate Danny Ainge jokingly called him "Out of Service Pervis.")  Pervis did pass his game onto his kids; his son plays for St. John's, and his daughter dunks (!) at Maryland.
• 1:38 The Celtics' home win streak did indeed set records in 1986.  But ten years later in 1996, two teams surpassed their record (the Orlando Magic and Chicago Bulls).  And then thirty years later in 2016, two more teams have broken *that* record -- the San Antonio Spurs and the Golden State Warriors (the Warriors' streak just ended at 54).