Bert Blyleven, Dutch-American baseball player and sportscaster
Bert Blyleven (born Rik Aalbert Blijleven, April 6, 1951) is a Dutch-American former professional baseball pitcher who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1970 to 1992, primarily with the Minnesota Twins. Blyleven recorded 3,701 career strikeouts, the fifth-most in MLB history. He won 287 games, 27th-most all-time and pitched 4,970 innings, 14th-most all-time. A renowned curveball pitcher, Blyleven was also a two-time All-Star and World Series champion. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2011 in his second-to-last year of eligibility after struggling in the early years of his campaign.
Blyleven made his major league debut at age 19 for the Twins. In the middle of the 1976 season, he was traded to the Texas Rangers, where he threw a no-hitter in his final start for the team. He won his first World Series with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979. Upon being traded to the Cleveland Indians, he struggled with injuries but had a late-career resurgence in his second stint with the Twins, becoming the tenth member of the 3,000-strikeout club in 1986 and carrying Minnesota to a World Series title in 1987. He played three seasons for the California Angels before retiring.
Blyleven became the first Dutch-born player to earn induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He served as the pitching coach for the Netherlands national baseball team in the 2009, 2013 and 2017 World Baseball Classic. From 1996 to 2020, he was a color analyst for Minnesota Twins television broadcasts.