Red Adams, longtime Dodgers pitching coach, dies at 95

Longtime Dodgers pitching coach Red Adams passed away at age 95 on Thursday, the Dodgers announced.

Adams was the major league pitching coach from 1969-1980 and prior to that was in the organization in some capacity for 11 years. His 12-year tenure as pitching coach is surpassed in franchise history only by his successor Ron Perranoski, who held the position from 1981-1994.

Rick Honeycutt will enter his 12th season as Dodgers pitching coach in 2017.

Both the 1977 and 1978 Dodgers media guides use the same quotes from Adams, describing some of his philosophy as pitching coach.

“I want my pitchers to have a good, sound mechanical delivery — one that would get the most out of his body without risking injury to his arm,” Adams said.

“A pitcher is a little bit like a fighter,” Adams added. “He’s working his tail of on every play. He’s got to be in great physical condition.”

Adams’ major league career consisted of eight games pitched in 1946 with the Cubs, allowing 12 runs on 18 hits in 12 innings.

He also pitched for 19 minor league seasons from 1939-1958, including 14 years in the Pacific Coast League. That included parts of nine different seasons (1942, 1944-1949, 1956-1957) in Los Angeles with the Angels.

His first two minor league seasons (1939-1940) were with the Bisbee Bears in Arizona, and Adams was scheduled to be one of three former Bisbee players honored in April at Warren Ballpark in Bisbee, near the U.S. border and roughly three hours south of Phoenix.

"Red Adams is a standard by which every pitching coach should be measured,” said Hall of Famer Don Sutton, who pitched for the Dodgers from 1966-1980, including all of Adam’s tenure. “No person ever meant more to me in my career than Red Adams, and without him I wouldn't be standing in Cooperstown today."