Carroll Sembera

Carroll William Sembera

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 0", Weight 155 lb.
• School Trinity University
• High School Shiner High School
• Debut September 28, 1965
• Final Game April 26, 1970
• Born July 26, 1941 in Shiner, TX USA
• Died June 15, 2005 in Shiner, TX USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Carroll Sembera had a long career in professional baseball, including 99 games as a pitcher over 5 major league seasons and many years as a scout. He notched the first save in Montreal Expos history in 1969.

Born in Shiner, TX (he also died in Shiner, TX), he was a strikeout artist at Shiner High School, once getting 24 strikeouts in 7 innings.

Beginning with the Houston Colt .45's, he was the same age as Jimmy Wynn and two years old than Joe Morgan and Rusty Staub. In 1966, his 3.00 ERA was one of the lowest on the squad. The same was true in 1969, the inaugural year of the Montreal Expos, when he had a 3.55 ERA on a team that had an overall ERA of 4.33.

One of his teammates on the 1969 Expos was pitcher Dick Radatz, who also died in 2005.

After his playing career ended, Carroll Sembera was a scout for the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau from 1982 to 1993 and then for the Seattle Mariners for 11 years, serving as Mariners Midwest Scouting Coordinator and National Cross Checker.

He went to Round Rock, TX to watch a ball game on the day he died.

He appears as a minor character in Jean-Simon DesRocher's 2009 novel La canicule des pauvres. In a scene taking place in the 1968-69 offseason, one of the novel's protagonists meets him at a rocket launch in Florida, and moves to Montreal, QC shortly afterwards in pursuit of Sembera's fictional wife, settling there for good. The main plot of the novel takes place in Montreal three and a half decades later.