 Wilhelm , who did not enter the major leagues until his late twenties , pitched until he was nearly 50 years old . Wilhelm retired with one of the lowest career earned run averages in baseball history . After retiring as a player in the early 1970s , he held coaching roles with the New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves for many years . He was a longtime resident of Sarasota , Florida , where he died in a nursing home of heart failure in 2002 . 
