19 Facts About Dan Quisenberry

Daniel Raymond "Quiz" Quisenberry was an American right-handed relief pitcher in Major League Baseball who played primarily for the Kansas City Royals.

Dan Quisenberry's name is not the name of a fruit, but the English mutation of the German surname Questenberg, a village in Saxony-Anhalt.

Dan Quisenberry's parents divorced when he was 7 years old and his mother remarried Art Meola, a Rockwell International engineer who encouraged him and his older brother to play baseball.

Dan Quisenberry was then recruited by the University of La Verne, a Church of the Brethren college, where he met his future wife, Janie Howard, while attending a class in square dancing.

Dan Quisenberry signed with the Royals as an amateur free agent in 1975 for a Class A team in Waterloo, Iowa and pitched a complete game in his first start.

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From 1980 to 1985, Dan Quisenberry was the American League's dominant closer leading the American League in saves all six season.

Dan Quisenberry finished in the top five in voting for the Cy Young Award during this span.

Unlike many of his peer closers, Dan Quisenberry did not possess a hard fastball, and thus had to rely on pinpoint control, guile, and deception, which was augmented by the submarine delivery he first used in 1980.

Dan Quisenberry's primary pitch was a sinking fastball, which causes hitters to hit the ball on the ground rather than in the air.

Dan Quisenberry threw a curveball, a changeup he developed in 1984, and an occasional knuckleball.

Dan Quisenberry's 45 saves in 1983 set a single-season record, and set a team record that was matched in 1993 by Jeff Montgomery and surpassed in 2013 by Greg Holland.

Dan Quisenberry was the first pitcher in major league history to save more than 40 games in a season twice in his career.

Dan Quisenberry won a World Series with the Royals in 1985 and was the winning pitcher of Game 6, notorious for Don Denkinger's blown call at first base.

Dan Quisenberry tore his rotator cuff just five appearances into the 1990 season; this was the first serious injury of his career.

Dan Quisenberry retired from baseball in 1990 with 244 saves, then the fifth-highest total in major league history.

Originally considered a hothead, Dan Quisenberry credited his wife as well as Christianity for calming him down.

In January 1998, Dan Quisenberry cut short a snowboarding vacation in Colorado because of headaches, dizzy spells, and blurred vision.

Dan Quisenberry was diagnosed with grade IV astrocytoma, a highly malignant form of brain cancer.

Dan Quisenberry died at age 45 in September 1998 in Leawood, Kansas.