John Andrew Smoltz is an American former baseball player who was born on May 15, 1967, in Warren, Michigan. He is a pitcher who has played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball and is one of the celebrated trios of starting pitchers. He is one of the prominent pitchers in playoff history to post a record of 15-4 with a 2.67 earned run average (ERA) in 41 career postseason games, and entitled as the most valuable player of the 1992 NL Championship Series. He is the son of Mary Smoltz (his mother) and John Adam Smoltz (his father). He has a brother whose name is Michael Smoltz and a sister whose name is Bernadette Smoltz.
Smoltz was an All-State baseball and football player at Waverly High School which is located in Lansing, Michigan. After then, he was selected in the 22nd round of the 1985 amateur draft by the Detroit Tigers and was the 574th selection in the draft. He made his major league debut on July 23, 1988, but posted poor statistics in a dozen starts. He improved his performance in 1989 where he recorded 12-11 record and 2.94 ERA in 29 starts while pitching 208 innings was titled to the NL All-Star team. He threw a four-seam fastball that was clocked as high as 98 miles per hour, which was a strong, effective slider and used a strikeout pitch of 88-91 mph split-finger fastball. He also used a curveball and change-up techniques and started experimenting with both a knuckleball and a screwball techniques.
He started the 1991 season with a record of 2-11 and started watching a sports psychologist after he closed out the season on a 12-2 pace. His winning ways started to continue in the 1991 National League Championship Series. The 1996 season was the best season of Smoltz's career where he went 24-8 with a 2.94 ERA and 276 strikeouts, which also includes a winning franchise record of fourteen straight decisions from April 9 to June 19. He won the NL Cy Young Award with 26 of the 28 first-place votes and also won a Silver Slugger Award for his batting. He was picked up in an $8 million contract option for the 2007 season by the Braves on September 21, 2006. He agreed to contract extension with the Braves which include a $14 million salary for the 2008 season and $12 million vesting option for 2009 depending upon his ability to pitch 200 innings in 2008.
He became the 16th pitcher in the history of the major league to reach 3,000 career strikeouts and the fourth pitcher to strike out 3,000 batters for one team. He then signed a one-year contract for a reported base salary of $5.5 million with the red sox which includes roster time incentives and miscellaneous award incentives which could net as much as $10 million. the Atlanta Braves announced that they would retire Smoltz's no 29 on April 16, 2012, and the ceremony took place before the game against the Toronto Blue Jays, including speeches by former broadcaster Pete van Wieren, former teammate Matt Diaz and former manager Bobby Cox.
He is the player with the multiple talents. He is not just a baseball player, but also a footballer during his early years. This handsome, talented and professional baseball player has a marital status. The name of his first wife is Dyan Struble. He met Dyan for the first time at the Omni hotel which is located in the downtown Atlanta. The couple finally got married after having an affair for several of years. They have four kids altogether, they were John Andrew Jr., Rachel Elizabeth, Carly Maria, and Kelly Christina. Unfortunately, the couple divorced after having the relationships for over 15 years. The reason behind the divorce was that he found himself in a circumstance he deeply regretted and one that he honestly never thought that he would contribute to the staggering statistics of divorce in professional sports. He then met Kathryn Darden and got married to her on May 16, 2009.
He stands 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighs 220 pounds. He earns a salary of over $ 10 million from his playing career which adds up to his recent net worth of over $55 million.
