Lemaster Fooled Hitters, Now Ducks : Former Braves Left-Hander Carves Decorative Decoys

It has become a time-honored baseball tradition, as predictable as the national anthem. Cash, as plentiful as peanuts, is shoveled by owners to untested prospects in the form of signing bonuses.

The bonus bonanza began in the late 1950s, before there was an amateur draft. Ballplayers simply signed with the highest bidder.

And in 1958 the Milwaukee Braves weren’t outbid for the services of a lethal-armed left-hander from Oxnard High named Denver Clayton Lemaster. He threw hard and possessed control--of his pitches and of his life.

Lemaster, known as Denny, bucked the stereotype of a wild southpaw who wore his hat crooked and needed to get his head straight.

“He was never a flaky left-hander, he was very normal, very together,” said Bob Uecker, the broadcaster and television personality who was Lemaster’s teammate in the minor leagues and with the Braves.

“Denny should have been right-handed.”

After Lemaster allowed a grand total of one earned run his senior year at Oxnard, the Braves handed him the unimaginable sum of $90,000 to forgo his father’s footsteps. All their careers had in common, it turned out, was leather on their palms: Syrus Lemaster spent his life milking cows by hand for a dairy.

“Baseball was my ticket out of that life,” Lemaster said.

Lemaster and three other teen-agers named Denis Menke, Tony Cloninger and Larry Maxie were Milwaukee’s first “bonus babies,” and they set off together to cut their teeth in a Brave new world.

Menke, a slick-fielding Iowa farm boy, received a $125,000 bonus. Cloninger, a hard-throwing North Carolina farm boy, got $100,000. Maxie, a pitcher from Chaffey High who defeated Lemaster and Oxnard in the 1958 Southern Section semifinal, got $50,000.

Despite high expectations and the resentment of major league veterans whose jobs were on the line, three of the four made the Braves by 1962 and enjoyed lengthy careers. Only Maxie, who had a short stay with the Braves in 1969, was a disappointment.

“We were too young to worry about the money,” Menke said. “We enjoyed what we were doing.”

They still do. Menke is the Philadelphia Phillies’ batting coach and Cloninger is the New York Yankees’ pitching coach.

Lemaster? He’s been out of baseball since retiring in 1972 with a 3.58 earned-run average over 11 seasons, but like a pitcher with a vast repertoire, he has a variety of interests to sustain him through the middle innings of life.

He is a contractor who builds custom homes, two of which have been featured in Better Homes & Gardens. He lives near Atlanta with his wife, Bunny, and his mother, Mildred. His four children and nine grandchildren reside in the area.

An avid outdoorsman, Lemaster raises Doberman pinschers and serves as a fishing guide, leading anglers to the hot spots on the dozen or so lakes surrounding Atlanta.

And although he hasn’t thrown a baseball competitively in more than 20 years, he’s still carving ‘em up. In place of batters, Lemaster carves decorative duck decoys, works of art that he enters into international competition and sells for up to $1,500. His decoys took two second places and a third in world competition last year.

“I won’t brag on ‘em but they look real,” said Lemaster, 54. “I carve them, then do the feather patterns and painting. I never thought I could paint but I’m getting good.”

Lemaster’s artistic ability doesn’t rival that of a pair of left-handers named Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, but they couldn’t paint the corners as well as Lemaster could with a baseball.

During his major league career, Lemaster (6-foot-1, 182 pounds) had more than twice as many strikeouts as walks, and he allowed less than a hit per inning. His won-lost record was 90-105, but he suffered 44 losses in three years after being traded in 1968 from Atlanta to the lowly Houston Astros.

“Denny had great control,” Uecker said. “And he had good stuff.”

Lemaster learned the game growing up in a small Camarillo neighborhood of modest homes built to house employees of the Adohr Dairy. Denny’s father milked the cows and Jimmy Isom’s father, Ed, mixed the grain for the cows.

When work was done, the fathers taught their sons baseball fundamentals on a crude field with a mesh-wire backstop.

“My dad took an interest in Denny because it was obvious at an early age that he had talent,” said Jim Isom, now director of Ventura County social services. “His curve scared me to death. It always broke, I just didn’t know when.”

By the time he reached high school, Lemaster had command of his pitches and confidence in his ability, having played on an American Legion team at age 14. He tried out for first base on the Oxnard varsity as a freshman, and on the first day of practice Coach Bert Killingsworth told him he was with the wrong group, that freshmen didn’t play varsity. “I do,” Lemaster replied.

Lemaster, a blond All-American boy, assumed a high profile on campus.

“He was the style setter, even without trying,” Isom said. “First it was a T-shirt with a sweater vest, blue jeans and wingtip shoes. When he changed, everyone else did, too.”

By his senior season Lemaster was Southern Section co-player of the year. Oxnard, the class of a league that also included Ventura, Santa Paula, Fillmore, Antelope Valley and Hart, boasted outstanding talent, including sophomore outfielder Ken McMullen, who had a 16-year major league career.

“When Denny pitched, he was like Sandy Koufax, almost effortless,” McMullen said. “He had a real nice follow through, low to ground. Several times the inside of his pitching arm was bruised the day after he pitched because it would bang on his knee.

“He was phenomenal. Shutout, shutout, shutout.”

Now that the closest he gets to a ball field is watching his 13-year-old grandson play Little League, Lemaster enjoys reminiscing about being king of a mound surrounded by the flat Oxnard plains.

“I had a bunch of no-hit ballgames,” Lemaster said in a drawl he’s acquired from living in Georgia since 1967. “One time against Santa Paula I struck out every batter. One guy hit a foul tip. Our center fielder sat on his glove the last two innings. Against Santa Maria, I pitched a no-hitter and lost, 1-0.”

An embellishment?

Not if the Southern Section record book is an indication. Lemaster’s 1958 ERA of 0.11 is fourth all-time. He allowed one earned run in 63 innings. “That run must have come against Antelope Valley,” Lemaster said.

Certainly, it did not come against archrival Ventura.

“Our kids couldn’t hit him,” said Fred Lloyd, Ventura’s coach at the time. “He struck out 16-17 a game. The second time we faced him I figured, ‘Hell, we’ll bunt the ball,’ but that didn’t work either.

“He had a tailing fastball and a fantastic curveball that dropped off the table. And he was just a very smart high school pitcher. He mixed his pitches and moved the ball around.”

Lemaster made some other moves, much to the distress of some Ventura students. The pitcher and an Oxnard pal, Donny Chase, son of the owner of Chase Brothers Dairy, had girlfriends who attended Ventura.

“We came so close to getting whipped over there so many times,” Lemaster said. “My girl was president of the sophomore class. I’ll tell you what, those boys over there didn’t like me, period.”

Other fellows were chasing Lemaster as well, and on grad night he returned from dinner with his mother and girlfriend only to find 11 of them sitting on his driveway. They were major league scouts and they all carried blank checks.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” said Lemaster, who felt most comfortable with Braves scout Johnny Moore. “Johnny set up the meetings. I graduated Friday, and by Sunday afternoon I’d signed.”

Within days, Lemaster met two players in instructional league who had signed for more than the $90,000 he had received: Menke and Cloninger. The trio quickly became friends.

Pitching for Class-A Jacksonville (Fla.) in 1959, Lemaster was told to walk a hitter intentionally. “Before the manager reached the dugout, the next pitch was hit off the right-field fence,” said Uecker, the catcher. “Denny explained that he’d never walked anybody intentionally before. He didn’t know how.”

Cloninger reached Milwaukee in 1961, and Lemaster and Menke joined him a year later. Their teammates included legendary veterans Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, Joe Adcock and Eddie Mathews.

Lemaster, for his part, didn’t say much.

“Back then, when young players were brought up, the veterans knew somebody was losing a job,” he said. “The old cliche was true, ‘Speak when spoken to, answer when called, otherwise keep your mouth shut.’ ”

Lemaster allowed only 75 hits and struck out 69 in 86 2/3 innings as a rookie. The next year he was 11-14, giving up 199 hits in 237 innings while striking out 190.

Lemaster’s best won-lost record came a year later when he was 17-11 despite posting a 4.15 ERA. After three more solid years with the Braves, Lemaster was traded at the end of the 1967 season along with Menke to Houston, an expansion team yet to turn the corner.

Lemaster was traded to Montreal after the 1971 season and he asked for his release in June, 1972, after being relegated to mop-up duty.

The transition to life without baseball was smooth. He quickly parlayed a longtime interest in carpentry into a lucrative business, remodeling gas stations into mini-markets with self-serve gas pumps.

“Denny always had many things he enjoyed doing,” Menke said. “That’s why he’s successful now. He had more than baseball.”