Bob Lacey, the left-handed relief pitcher who became one of the most reliable arms in the Oakland Athletics bullpen during one of the more unusual chapters in baseball history, died on June 4, 2026. He was 72.
Born Robert Joseph Lacey Jr. on August 25, 1953 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Lacey was a 10th-round draft pick of the Oakland A’s in 1972 and went 13-2 in his first minor league season, a beginning that suggested good things were coming. They were, though the path there was characteristically colourful. In just his fourth Major League appearance, he struck out future Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson twice in a crucial situation, enraging Jackson and the Yankees in the process. Shortly after, he got into a brawl with the Kansas City Royals’ Darrell Porter, who called Lacey “a crazy, immature, punk.” He was settling in nicely.
His best years came in 1978, when he emerged as Oakland’s most reliable relief pitcher and led the American League in appearances. No other pitcher in league history inherited more baserunners than Lacey did that season — 104 — and despite that extraordinary burden he won eight games, posted a 3.01 ERA, and saved five. It was the kind of performance that gets quietly appreciated by people who understand bullpen work and largely ignored by everyone else, which is more or less the story of every great relief pitcher’s career.
The 1980 season produced one of the more striking statistical footnotes in modern baseball. Lacey appeared in a team-high 47 games and finished 31 of them, but earned only six saves. The reason was the Oakland starting rotation, which completed an astonishing 94 games that year, a number that will almost certainly never be matched in the modern era. When your starters finish 94 games, there is simply not much left for the closer. This created friction with manager Billy Martin over how Lacey was being used, a conflict that Billy Martin was probably not losing sleep over. Martin did give Lacey a starting assignment on the next-to-last day of that season, and he responded by shutting out the Milwaukee Brewers on a complete game. Of course it was a complete game.
The rest of his career took him through the San Diego Padres — for exactly three days before they traded him — the Cleveland Indians, the Texas Rangers, the California Angels, and the San Francisco Giants, before he retired after the 1984 season. He bounced through the minors in 1985, resurfaced in the late 1980s to manage the Greensville Bluesmen, and could not resist appearing in eight games of relief himself across 1988 and 1989, four games each year, because some people are simply not done with the game even when the game thinks it’s done with them.
Over seven Major League seasons he posted a 20-29 record with a 3.67 ERA and 251 strikeouts. The record understates the value. Relief pitching in the late 1970s was a different and considerably more demanding job than it is today, and Lacey did it well when it counted.