George Bernard "Dave" Koslo (né ''Koslowski'', March 31, 1920 – December 1, 1975) was a professional baseball left-handed

pitcher In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw ...

over parts of twelve seasons (1941–1942, 1946–1955) with the New York Giants,

Baltimore Orioles The Baltimore Orioles are an American professional baseball team based in Baltimore. The Orioles compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. As one of the American League's eight charter ...

and Milwaukee Braves.

Professional career

On April 18, 1947, Koslo gave up Jackie Robinson's first major league home run, hit in the third inning. Koslo was the

National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team ...

ERA An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth. Comp ...

champion in 1949 with New York. For his career, he compiled a 92–107 record in 348 appearances, with a 3.68 ERA and 606 strikeouts. Koslo was the winning pitcher in the opening game of the

1951 World Series The 1951 World Series matched the two-time defending champion New York Yankees against the New York Giants, who had won the National League pennant in a thrilling three-game playoff with the Brooklyn Dodgers on the legendary home run by Bobby Th ...

and the losing pitcher of its final game.

Personal life

Koslo served in World War II as a member of the 13th Airborne Division of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

from 1943 to 1945. In 1952, Koslo's wife gave birth to a son. It was his second child after a daughter. After recovering from a stroke in 1957, he worked in sales. He was born in

Menasha, Wisconsin Menasha () is a city in Calumet and Winnebago counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 18,268 at the 2020 census. Of this, 15,144 were in Winnebago County, and 2,209 were in Calumet County. The city is located mostly in Win ...

, and later died there at the age of 55.Dave Koslo Is Dead at 55; Former Pitcher on Giants
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References

External links

1920 births 1975 deaths Major League Baseball pitchers Baseball players from Wisconsin New York Giants (NL) players Baltimore Orioles players Milwaukee Braves players National League ERA champions People from Menasha, Wisconsin American people of Polish descent United States Army personnel of World War II {{US-baseball-pitcher-1920s-stub

Professional career

Personal life

See also

References

External links