Al Holland wanted one thing carved on his tombstone: give him the ball. Holland, the left-handed closer who anchored the Philadelphia Phillies' 1983 National League pennant run and became the first North Carolina A&T alumnus to reach the major leagues, died July 4, 2026, in Fort Mill, South Carolina. He was 73.

"I've always said that when I die, I want to have engraved on my tombstone the words: 'Give me the ball.' That's the way I've always felt about my job," he told the Society for American Baseball Research. He meant it literally. Teammates remembered him walking in from the bullpen at his own unhurried pace, never running, then taking his time smoothing the dirt on the mound before he faced a hitter.

It was during his career year with the Phillies that fellow reliever Ed Farmer took one look at Holland's gold chains and said, "Here comes Mr. T." The nickname stuck, and Holland embraced it. "I haven't seen Mr. T on television much, but I know he don't take no stuff off nobody," he said. He pitched the same way, trusting one pitch over any trick. "If I'm going to run the football, I don't trick anyone. I try to run over him. That's the way I pitch," he explained.

That directness was forged at North Carolina A&T, where Holland enrolled in 1971 after growing up the oldest of four sons in Roanoke, Virginia, and starring in football, basketball and baseball at the segregation-era Lucy Addison High School. As a freshman in 1972 he led the nation in strikeouts and posted the country's second-best ERA, highlighted by a no-hitter against North Carolina Central in which he struck out 25 batters. He threw a no-hitter in each of his four seasons for the Aggies and never posted a season ERA above 1.03, earning two NAIA All-American selections. Drafted twice before he finished school, he chose to stay and graduate with a degree in recreation before signing with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1975.

Holland debuted in the majors on September 5, 1977, at Three Rivers Stadium, then worked through two more minor league seasons before Pittsburgh traded him to the San Francisco Giants. He was the only rookie to make the Giants' Opening Day roster in 1980, and his eagerness to pitch became a running line among his coaches. "Every time I stepped out of the dugout and looked down at the bullpen, Holland would pop up," manager Frank Robinson said.

The Phillies acquired Holland in December 1982, and 1983 became the season that defined him. He went 8-4 with 25 saves, won the National League's Rolaids Relief Man of the Year Award and The Sporting News Fireman of the Year Award, and finished among the top ten in both Cy Young and MVP voting. He closed out Game 4 of the NLCS to send Philadelphia to the World Series, where he also saved Game 1. The next year he set a Phillies single-season saves record with 29 on his way to the only All-Star selection of his career, according to PhillyVoice, though he did not appear in the game.

He pitched three more seasons, moving from the Phillies back to Pittsburgh and briefly to the California Angels before George Steinbrenner signed him to the New York Yankees in 1986. His career ended on August 9, 1987, on a Triple-A mound against Detroit's Kirk Gibson, when his pitching elbow gave out. "Muscles torn, ligaments torn, bone chips, a bone spur, a ruptured nerve... The pain was so great that I almost fainted," he said afterward. He never pitched professionally again.

He stayed in the game anyway. Holland pitched a season in the short-lived Senior Professional Baseball Association, then returned to Roanoke to coach football and baseball at William Fleming High School before working as a minor league pitching coach in the St. Louis Cardinals system. North Carolina A&T inducted him into its Sports Hall of Fame in 1994, a year after the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference did the same, and in 2015 the College Baseball Hall of Fame enshrined him among its honorees. On February 8, 2020, the university retired his No. 17, one of only a handful of numbers it has retired across its athletic history.

"I was so fortunate to become close with him and his wife, Mary, and their whole family when we went through the process of retiring his No. 17 jersey. His no-hitters were legendary, and his fastball was all the pitches he needed," said A&T head baseball coach Ben Hall, according to North Carolina A&T Athletics. Holland is survived by his wife, Mary, whom he married in 1975, their two daughters and their son, Al Holland Jr., who also played football and baseball at A&T. The Phillies called him "an integral part of the team's winning the National League pennant in 1983," extending condolences to his family, friends and former teammates, according to The Big Lead. A&T Chancellor James R. Martin II said Holland "was a big-league star, both on and off the field," and that his trademark phrase "personified the Aggie spirit of toughness, competitiveness and excellence."

There is nothing abstract about what Holland left. A number is retired in Greensboro. A save still shows up on the reel of Philadelphia's 1983 pennant chase. A strikeout record belongs to a segregation-era high school ballplayer who became the first Aggie to reach the majors, then made sure his university had a hall of fame plaque and a jersey number to go with it. He asked for one phrase carved on his tombstone. By every account of how he took the mound for a decade, it was true before anyone thought to carve it.