Gus Triandos a former All-Star catcher for the Baltimore Orioles has died at the age of 82 of heart failure. Triandos was a 4 time All-Star catcher. He is best remembered for his years with the Baltimore Orioles. He had started his career with the New York Yankees in 1953 but they had a guy named Lawrence “Yogi” Berra behind the plate. He played with the Orioles from 1955-62 before finishing his career up with the Detroit Tigers 1963, Philadelphia Phillies 1964-65 and the Houston Astros 1965. Triandos was a power hitting catcher who was slow a foot. He is also remembered for having problems catching the knuckleball of Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm. The general manager of the Orioles decided Triandos needed help and designed an especially large catchers mitt for Triandos to use. The mitt was so large it prompted a 1965 rule limiting the sige of catchers’ mitts. Triandos would later say that he thought that having to catch Wilhelm’s knuckleball ruined his career. Triandos hit 167 home runs, knocked in 608 runs and had a .244 career average during his career. How slow a runner was he? He stole only one base in his career which spanned 1206 games.

Gus Triandos caught 2 no-hitters in his career. The first was Hoyt Wilhelms in 1958 and then in 1964 he caught Jim Bunning’s “Father’s Day” perfect game while with the Phillies.