Kevin DeWayne Blankenship (born January 26, 1963) is a former right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball for the Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves.

He rose to prominence during his senior year in 1981, setting school records in wins, ERA, and strikeouts while leading the team to the CIF 3A championship.

His performance in the Single-A won the young pitcher an invitation to join the Greenville Braves, where he bounced between starting and relieving for the next two seasons.

[1] Now a regular starter, he finished the season earning a spot on the 1988 Southern League All-Star team and a call up to the majors by Atlanta in late 1988.

Taking the loss on both September 20 and 25, before Atlanta traded him and Kevin Coffman to the Cubs in an extraordinarily late-in-the-season deal for catcher Jody Davis.

He started the Cubs' final game of the season and got his first major league win, going five-plus innings and allowing four runs, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates' Randy Kramer.

Blankenship spent most of 1989 pitching for the Cubs' AAA team in Iowa, but was called up when rosters expanded in September and made two relief appearances for Chicago in the final month of their divisional championship season, allowing one run in 51⁄3 innings of work.

On September 20, 1989, the Cubs pitching coach Dick Pole awakened Blankenship in his hotel room at 11 a.m., 30 minutes after he was to be in uniform.

"I overlooked (the first infraction)", Zimmer told The Chicago Tribune, "I'm thinking to myself, 'How the hell could somebody oversleep a day game and show up at a quarter to 12?'"