The Decade’s Best: No. 26 Dallas Buck

Dallas Buck
Falmouth 2004 & 2005
Pitcher
Oregon State

In his first two years at Oregon State, Dallas Buck played football and baseball. He eventually settled on baseball, and his time on the Cape may have had a lot to do with that decision.

Buck’s first season in Corvallis was nothing to write home about. He went 3-6 and had an ERA over five.

But that summer, it was a completely different story. Buck came to Falmouth and dominated.

He went 4-1 and led the league with a 0.77 ERA. He struck out 65 — second in the league — and walked 20. In 58.1 innings, he allowed just 26 hits. At the start of the summer, he went 15 innings without allowing a run, and he only allowed five earned runs the whole year.

Buck’s showing in ’04 vaulted him into the national consciousness, and he really planted his feet there the next spring when he went 12-1 for the Beavers with a 2.09 ERA and 118 strikeouts. He was a consensus first-team All-American.

In the summer of 2005, Buck was back in Falmouth and he got lost in the shuffle a little bit. He arrived late after the College World Series, and in a year that featured a huge crop of pitching stars, Buck’s 3.86 ERA in 32.2 innings didn’t stand out.

But taken as a whole, Buck’s Cape League career was pretty special.

After the Cape

Buck won a College World Series with Oregon State in 2006 and was drafted in the third round by Arizona. He had Tommy John surgery in 2007 and was traded to the Reds in 2008 as part of the Adam Dunn deal. In 2009, Buck pitched in Double A and had a 4.82 ERA in 37.1 innings.

RELATED POSTS