Former New York Yankees pitcher Sam McDowell, the hard-throwing left-hander known as Sudden Sam, died Monday at his home in The Villages, Florida. He was 84.

The Cleveland Guardians announced his death on Tuesday.

For most of baseball, McDowell will be remembered as the strikeout king of the old Indians — six All-Star selections, five American League strikeout titles, a 2.18 ERA in 1965, and a 20-win season in 1970. For the Yankees, he was a briefer, later chapter: the arm the club bought in June 1973, hoping the old fastball still had something left.

San Francisco sold him to New York on June 7, 1973, in a straight cash deal. Manager Ralph Houk put him back in the rotation, and for a few weeks the Bronx got a glimpse of the pitcher Cleveland had once feared.

McDowell won five of his first six starts. Then the wins stopped. He finished that season 5-8 with a 3.95 ERA, still capable of missing bats, still walking too many hitters.

In 1974, a slipped disc cost him two months. He appeared in 13 games, went 1-6 with a 4.69 ERA, left the club on September 13, and was released after the season. In pinstripes he was 6-14 with a 4.07 ERA in 30 games.

It was not the Yankees of the late-1970s renaissance. The club was still climbing out of the lean years, and McDowell arrived already worn down by the drinking that had shadowed his prime.

He later described himself, without softening it, as the biggest and most violent drunk in baseball. The stuff that had made him Sudden Sam — a fastball that seemed to arrive all at once — was still there in flashes. The command, and the life around the fastball, were not.

His career line tells the larger story: 141-134, a 3.17 ERA, 2,453 strikeouts, 103 complete games and 23 shutouts over 15 seasons, most of them in Cleveland.

At his best he struck out more than a batter an inning in an era when almost nobody did. The Yankees never had that version. They had the last of it.

What came after the game is the part of the story that outlasted the pinstripes. McDowell got sober, trained as a counselor, and spent years working with athletes dealing with addiction and depression.

His career and recovery helped inspire Sam Malone, the bartender on Cheers. He paid off debts that had run past $190,000. Cleveland put him in its Hall of Fame in 2006 and kept him close as an alumni ambassador.

The Yankees’ share of Sudden Sam was short and uneven, two seasons at the end of a famous arm.

The fastball that once led the American League had already done its loudest work somewhere else. What remained, in the Bronx and after it, was the harder second act.