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John Joseph Montefusco Jr. (born May 25, 1950), nicknamed " the Count", is an American former professional baseball player and coach. He played as a right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball from 1974 to 1986, most notably as a member of the San Francisco Giants with whom he won the National League Rookie of the Year Award and pitched a no-hitter. He also played for the Atlanta Braves, San Diego Padres, and the New York Yankees.
On September 3, 1974, Montefusco entered his first major league game as a relief pitcher. Not only was he the winning pitcher that day, he also hit a home run in his first major-league at-bat. He is one of only a handful of pitchers to do so, and is one of two players to both hit a home run in his first at bat and win the Rookie of the Year Award. The other is Wally Moon.
Before a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers on July 4, 1975, Montefusco guaranteed he would win the game. He proceeded to throw a shutout as the Giants defeated the Dodgers 1–0.
On September 29, 1976, Montefusco threw a no-hitter for the Giants in a 9-0 victory versus the Atlanta Braves. It was the last no-hitter to be thrown by a Giant until Jonathan Sánchez threw one on July 10, 2009.
In June 1980, Montefusco got into a fight with Giants manager Dave Bristol after defeating the rival Los Angeles Dodgers. Montefusco was angry at Bristol for removing him from the game too early.
After the 1983 season, Montefusco signed a three-year, $2.3 million contract to remain with the Yankees. He started the 1986 season in the team's bullpen but pitched in only four games before hip pain became too severe to pitch through. On September 28, he retired.
Montefusco was released on bail in November 1999 after serving more than two years behind bars, and in February 2000, he was acquitted of the most serious charges and found guilty of criminal trespass and simple assault and sentenced to three years of probation.
During a March 19, 2000, broadcast on ESPN's SportsCenter 2000, Doris Montefusco likened her ex-husband to O. J. Simpson, who was acquitted in 1995 of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. An ESPN announcer during the broadcast had paraphrased Montefusco's ex-wife as saying "the only difference between this and the O.J. Simpson case is that she's alive to talk about it. Nicole Simpson is not." Montefusco filed a lawsuit against ESPN. In 2001, Anne Elise Thompson, a U.S. district judge in Trenton, New Jersey, dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that being compared to Simpson is not defamation.
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