Joseph Gregory Erardi (born May 31, 1954 in Syracuse, NY) is a former Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher who played for the Seattle Mariners in 1977. His minor league career ran from 1972 to 1977. He was a starter in 1972 and then converted to a reliever.

Greg attended Liverpool High School in Liverpool, New York and Christian Brothers Academy in DeWitt, New York, and was selected by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 24th round of the 1972 Major League Baseball Draft. The Brewers traded Erardi to the Pittsburgh Pirates in September 1973 for pitcher Lafayette Currence, who wound up pitching for the 1975 Milwaukee Brewers. He was released by the Pirates organization in June, 1975 and was re-signed by the Brewers organization. In November 1976, the Seattle Mariners made Erardi the 60th pick in the 1976 expansion draft.

Greg would make his Major League Baseball debut with the Seattle Mariners during the Mariners' inaugural season on September 6, 1977, retiring all three Kansas City Royals he faced to end a game lost by the Mariners 10-0. He pitched in a total of five games, all in relief. The Mariners released him after he spent the 1978 season in AAA. Erardi took classes at New York University in his baseball off-seasons and finished his undergraduate degree before retiring from baseball. He finished an MBA degree from the Wharton School of Business and went on to become Managing Director of Salomon Brothers.

From the Dome & Bedlam Blog, here's a poem called "The Graduation of Greg Erardi"
BY PATRICK DUBUQUE ON JULY 15, 2020
Eighteen days of work: a sort of inverse
vacation. Years of bus rides, ice packs
small towns with empty streets and bars
all for this: Three airports, two plane rides

to scenic Kansas City and Milwaukee,
powder blue pullover business suits,
flat warm beer. A September call-up
on a team made of September call-ups.

Less than three weeks’ life, and
a legacy like a junk drawer as deep
as the internet: photographs for
baseball cards never earned, index

cards with ballpoint autographs, box
scores in triplicate. The man forgotten, the
deeds enshrined in cuneiform. Never quite
a ballplayer, forever a Seattle Mariner.

He walked away in October, headed
home, finished the degree he’d knitted
together over the winters. He understood
the eighties before the eighties did.

Soon he was wearing real suits, boarding
flights to real cities, shouted numbers
into phones, and did it well. We
assume. They did not save statistics.

Except for one. Working together at
Salomon Brothers, Michael Lewis
tossed his name into a book: Another
colleague bragged about a vacation

so he stole the man’s suitcase, emptied it
and filled it with wet paper towels.
The man found out in Puerto Rico that
night. At last Greg Erardi was a ballplayer.

(excerpted from Baseball Almanac, BR Bullpen & Wikipedia)