Steve Carlton

Pro team(s)

St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, San Francisco Giants, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Minnesota Twins

Hall of Fame

⭐ National Baseball Hall of Fame

Steven Norman Carlton was born on December 22, 1944, in Miami, Florida, and grew up in the Miami area before signing with the St. Louis Cardinals organization as a teenager. Over a 24-year major league career he became one of the most dominant left-handed pitchers in the history of baseball. Nicknamed "Lefty," Carlton won four Cy Young Awards (1972, 1977, 1980, 1982) — second only to Roger Clemens on the all-time list — and finished his career with 329 wins and 4,136 strikeouts, the latter a record when he retired in 1988. His greatest season came in 1972 with the Philadelphia Phillies, when he went 27-10 — accounting for 45.8% of his team's wins on a club that finished 59-97 — in a performance widely regarded as one of the five or six greatest individual pitching seasons in the history of the game. His signature pitch, a devastating slider thrown with exceptional arm strength and command, was considered the single best slider in the history of baseball by many evaluators. He was a 10-time All-Star and was the key pitcher on the 1980 Philadelphia Phillies team that won the franchise's only World Series championship. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994 in his first year of eligibility. Born in Miami, Florida.