Jim Palmer

Jim's mother relocated from New York to California following the death of Jim's adoptive father. Jim was nine years old. His mother subsequently remarried and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where Jim attended high school. He excelled in football, baseball, and basketball. Though offered a basketball scholarship at UCLA, he signed with the Baltimore Orioles at age 18 and received a $50,000 signing bonus. During his pitching career for the Orioles (1965-1984) he won 268 games and became the only pitcher to win a World Series game in each of three different decades. He was voted the Cy Young Award three times. In 1990 he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Despite all this, Jim's greatest fame may have come when, beginning in the late 1970s, he appeared in a series of ads for Jockey Underwear modeling various styles of briefs, including the "bikini" variety. At the time, these ads were considered "daring" because of their blatant display of "male beefcake." They certainly added a new meaning to the term "pitcher's mound" and they helped to turn Jim into an overnight sex symbol.