TOM SEAVER : He’s Been Tom Terrific, Tom Terrible and Tom Expendable; Now, at 40, He’s Mr. Consistency on Way to Win No. 300

Dan Evans, the man in charge of floppy discs and data banks for the high-tech Chicago White Sox, is perched high above the Arlington Stadium diamond, hacking away on his computer keyboard, charting every windup and follow-through orchestrated by Tom Seaver.

Fastball for a strike. Clack, clack, clack. Outside for a ball. Clack, clack, clack. Strike 3. Clear the screen. Next batter.

What Evans plugs into the system will be printed out and eventually transcribed into a loose-leaf notebook so big, you’d have to guess that Evans is into either reading or heavy lifting. You want a number or a statistic on a White Sox player, you come to Evans.

The notebook tells it all about Seaver. Opponents’ batting average against him, 1985: .204. Home runs allowed: eight, seven of them solo. Relief appearances made: two this year, the seventh and eighth of his career. Offensive support: two runs in Seaver’s first three losses.

Evans is a numbers guy. And the number that really rattles his decimals and uploads his emotions is the one that Seaver is homing in on at the moment: 300.

Three-hundred major league victories. Seaver is only six wins away.

“All year long, we’ve been thinking about it--Seaver’s 300th win,” Evans says as he watches Seaver confront another Texas Ranger hitter. “I hope we see it at home. From a longevity aspect, it’s the ultimate for a pitcher.”

Seaver is getting down now, getting dirty, his right knee scraping the mound as he strides into the pitch. For 19 years, that’s been the telltale sign when all is right with Tom Terrific.

“A lot of guys get their 300th win when they’re struggling. Early Wynn had to hang on for four years,” Evans continues. “But in Seaver’s case, he’s not struggling, he’s tough. Just ask the Kansas City Royals. He’s 3-1 against them. Allowed them four earned runs in 33 innings.”

Seaver has more trouble with the Rangers. Four unearned runs in the first have him behind in this one, 4-2, but he’s keeping the ball out of the hands of his fielders this inning. Seaver throws another third strike for the second out.

“It’s hard to keep in perspective sometimes,” Evans says. “He’s a 40-year-old man. Most pitchers, when they get to be 33, 34, become junkers. They throw a lot of breaking balls. Seaver, he still has good stuff.”

Another fastball. Another strikeout.

“He just struck out the side,” Evans says, smiling as he punches another key. “It’s such a treat to watch him pitch. I’m 25, but he brings out the little kid in me. You think about all the potential Hall of Famers currently playing and two immediately come to mind. (Steve) Carlton and Seaver. Seaver just might be the best right-handed pitcher ever.”

Evans pauses. “I still can’t believe that he’s pitching for the White Sox,” he says, shaking his head.

Sometimes, neither can Tom Seaver.

In this, the 117th year of major league baseball, peculiarity and oddity abound. The summer of weirdness is upon us:

--The Dodger farm system has run dry.

--The Angel farm system has put the team atop the American League West standings.

--Hitters have forgotten how to hit in the National League, producing a league average of .243--the lowest since the dead-ball year of 1968.

--Billy Martin is managing the Yankees . . . again.

--And the game, not having learned a thing from the fallout of ‘81, is bracing itself for another players’ strike.

Strange days indeed.

Yet, some things in baseball remain sacred. Or should.

Some things such as records.

Pete Rose, running the final lap of his race to tie--and pass--Cobb, is once again a Cincinnati Red. Hank Aaron delivered home run No. 715 as a Brave. Yaz got his 3,000th hit in Fenway. Nolan Ryan keeps setting and re-setting the all-time strikeout record down home in Texas with the Houston Astros.

And Seaver?

Well, the man who really is Mr. Met--forget that little cartoon guy with the baseball head--and who strong-armed the Amazin’ Mets to history in 1969 and who spent 12 years in Shea Stadium is going to win his 300th game in a Chicago White Sox uniform, wearing that red, white and navy atrocity you wouldn’t wish on your daughter’s softball team.

Not a blue pinstripe or a script letter in sight.

It wasn’t supposed to have worked out this way. It really wasn’t.

Seaver was a New York Met in 1983, brought back from 5 1/2 years of foreign service in Cincinnati amid much trumpeting and many tabloid headlines. Those were the pre-Gooden Mets, going nowhere except last, so it figured to be good business sense to bring back the legend for his twilight years and milk those coming milestones for all they were worth.

Seaver had just endured his worst season, a strained shoulder tendon having left him with a 5-13 record and a 5.50 earned-run average. He applauded the decision. Even helped it along a bit.

“I let it be known that I was interested in going back home,” Seaver said. “I was a 10-5 man (10-year veteran, five with the same team) and could ask to be traded. That year, I had a sore arm, I really didn’t pitch the last half of the year. I felt I could still pitch, but if I was not in Cincinnati’s plans, I would’ve preferred to go back to New York.”

The Reds accommodated him, shipping Seaver to the Big Apple for three players--Charlie Puleo, Lloyd McClendon and Jason Felice. At 38, with his family already living in Greenwich, Conn., Seaver was planning to entrench himself. He expected this to be the final move of his baseball career.

“I didn’t ask for a no-trade clause with the Mets,” Seaver said. “I figured that if I pitched well enough, they’d be sharp enough to protect me.

“I was proved wrong.”

In 1983, Seaver recovered from his injury to put together a could-have-been season--he was 9-14, but could-have-been the reverse. He led the team in innings pitched, 231, earned-run average, 3.55, and strikeouts, 135. In 13 of Seaver’s 14 losses, the Mets scored three runs or fewer.

But when the Mets were asked to produce their protected list for that winter’s free-agent compensation draft, the name Tom Seaver was not included among the team’s select 26.

The White Sox, who had just lost pitcher Dennis Lamp to free agency and the Toronto Blue Jays, were eligible to dip into that pool, in accordance with the Basic Agreement of 1981. The exclusion of Seaver’s name from the master-protected list had an interesting effect on White Sox executives.

“I jumped out of my chair,” General Manager Roland Hemond said. “I was going down the list alphabetically and I get to ‘S’ and I didn’t see Seaver. I ran over to Dave Dombrowski (the assistant general manager) and said, ‘Tom Seaver’s not protected. My gosh, he could just be the guy.’ His name jumps out right at you.”

Hemond, knowing the trouble that would follow the decision to grab Seaver, snatched him up. The ramifications included:

--Embarrassing the Mets, who had gambled that pitching-rich Chicago wouldn’t opt for a pitcher and thus protected a barrel-load of their young prospects.

--Overloading an already-deep White Sox starting rotation, which included Cy Young Award winner LaMarr Hoyt, 22-game winner Richard Dotson, 16-game winner Floyd Bannister and Britt Burns.

--Turning the White Sox into black hats, the bad guys who infuriated Met fans by stealing away Tom Terrific.

--And angering Seaver to the verge of retirement. Seaver admits that he came close.

“Was retirement a serious option? Sure it was,” Seaver said emphatically. “I thought seriously that if it couldn’t be worked out contractually, I was going to quit.”

Seaver didn’t want to be wrenched away from his family for another summer. Initially, he was upset at the White Sox for picking him. He remains upset at the Mets for not protecting him.

“I had some idea before the draft that I wasn’t going to be protected,” he said. “Bill Murray of the Daily News in New York told me I was not on the protected list. I was in disbelief at that point.

“I had pitched the whole year, had not missed a start. I was 9-14, but it easily could’ve been the reverse.

“I was in Chicago, doing some business for Spalding sporting goods, when I got the call. Frank Cashen (the Mets’ general manager) was pretty upset. He said he got some bad advice from some people in the organization. Who? I don’t know. Who decided I wasn’t worth protecting, considering the franchise standpoint and the pitching standpoint?”

Seaver, who once was The Franchise in New York and who still was the headmaster of the Met pitching staff, raises his voice. “Especially looking at the people they protected,” he said.

Reportedly, among the names the Mets protected were Ron Darling, Floyd Youmans, Dave Cochrane, Stanley Jefferson and Herman Winningham. Minor leaguers, all, but when last place was the present tense for the Mets, they couldn’t afford to ignore the future.

Actually, the Mets did have a strategy. Their farm system runs deep--the Mets were voted organization of the year in 1983--and they had only 26 protected spots to work with. So they went with potential and took the risk with Seaver, hoping that the White Sox would draft according to their needs. A middle infielder or a relief pitcher, for instance.

When Hemond crossed them up, all Cashen could say was: “We took a calculated and a regrettable gamble.”

Hemond defended the Mets’ game plan.

“Nobody’s smart enough to protect the right 26 players out of an organization of 125, 150 players,” Hemond said. “It’s a difficult task. The Mets did a great deal of study.”

And, besides, the White Sox were knee-deep in pitching. So, why ruin Cashen’s day and pick a pitcher named Seaver?

Hemond gives three reasons.

Can’t Get Enough of a Good Thing: “The cliche that you can never have enough pitching is not really a cliche but a fact. The deeper you can be there, the better chance you have. We’re in a contending spot now because of Seaver. And, if we didn’t have Seaver, we could not have traded Hoyt (to San Diego) to get Ozzie Guillen, who is now our starting shortstop. That was a major transaction for us. The decision (to draft Seaver) had a domino effect.”

Keeping Up With the Joneses: “If we didn’t select Seaver, we were afraid that the A’s would. (Oakland had also lost a Type-A free agent, pitcher Tom Underwood, and was eligible for the compensation draft.) They were a contending club, in our own division, and Seaver is a local boy--born and raised in Fresno. It was clear-cut--we had to take him.”

And, That Name: “I don’t see how you can pass up a Tom Seaver.”

So, the White Sox went and selected Seaver--and let the Mets’

feelings be damned.

Or, as Chicago Manager Tony LaRussa puts it: “You don’t want to embarrass the Mets, but you gotta weigh everything against whether it helps your club. If it helps you but it makes someone else look bad, who gives a bleep?”

At that point, the White Sox had to worry about other feelings to soothe--Seaver’s.

Playing for Chicago wasn’t the problem. Any pitcher closing in on 300 victories would want to play for a contender, and the White Sox, who had won the AL West in 1983, were just that.

Playing in Chicago was the hitch. Or, rather, playing anywhere outside of New York.

If Seaver was going to have to make another move, he was going to make sure it would be his last.

“The first thing I asked the White Sox for was a no-trade contract,” Seaver said. “I didn’t want them to make another off-season move and send me 3,000 miles away to Seattle--and I never play an inning in a White Sox uniform. It was a possibility. The White Sox were deep in pitchers to start with, and with starting pitching being a premium, somebody would’ve come asking.”

The White Sox appeased Seaver and are 21 victories richer for it. Seaver won 15 games for Chicago in 1984 and is off to a 6-4 start this summer. The White Sox are obviously happy. Seaver says that he, too, is happy.

“Chicago is fine. It’s an outstanding city,” he said. “I enjoy the team, the players I’m playing with. We have a great chance to win a division pennant--as good as anybody in baseball.”

Still, there’s no denying that “Tom Terrific Goes Home To Get 300” had that certain marquee appeal. When Seaver thinks about it, he decides it’s better not to think about it.

“I don’t really like to live in the past,” he said. “The whole episode left a bad taste in my mouth.”

So, it is here where Seaver soon figures to become the 17th man to win 300 major league games--with the White Sox and their funny uniforms, in the American League, complete with its funny designated-hitter rule.

For the record, Seaver says the DH stinks. “I don’t miss hitting at all but strictly from a purist standpoint, I don’t like it or the role it plays,” he said. “It started as a gimmick. I’d much rather enjoy the mental game--the manager’s involvement--which is an integral part of the game.”

Seaver is about as keen on the DH as he is on discussing the countdown to 300. But, realizing that such discussions come with the territory, he simply sighs and addresses the subject.

“Well, for about the 400th time, I never think about winning 300 games . . . there’s a comma after that . . . until somebody in the press asks me about it. Which is every day.

“I’ve never been numerically oriented. If you do well consistently, the numbers will take care of themselves. I’m not slighting it--to a pitcher, it’s very important. But my philosophy, and it may be trite, is: You can’t do a thing about 300 until you win 294.”

Seaver, who has reached 294 since that statement, has nearly four months left on the schedule to get to 300. Time is on his side. Seaver should get there perhaps in August.

That’s the projection, anyway. Seaver looks warily at projections. You don’t count on anything in this game, he says, until it can be counted, in black and white.

Probably something he picked up from his years with the capricious Mets of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“You just can’t take it for granted, that seven games in the big leagues is a cakewalk. It’s not,” Seaver said before getting win No. 294. “I proved that in 1982 with five wins. I have too much respect for the game and for the competition.

“This feeling, it also stems from the way I pitch--an inning at a time, an out at a time. There’s a little subtlety in that. . . . You don’t sit at 293 and think about 300.”

Well, Seaver could get an argument on that. When Reggie Jackson was stalking his 500th home run last year, he wondered aloud where he might drop the big one. New York would be fitting. Then, again, he decided, Anaheim, in front of Mr. Autry, would be nice.

Reggie eventually delivered in Anaheim.

Then, there’s Rose. Mr. Baseball Records. Somewhere, stashed way back in the recesses of his locker, there has to be an envelope containing a prediction of the hour, minute and up-to-date Dow Jones averages on the day he finally connects for base hit No. 4,192.

Different strokes for different folks, Seaver said.

“I’m not like Pete Rose or Reggie,” he said. “I’m not knocking that approach. Different motivating factors for different players.

“To put it in perspective, where Pete Rose might go back and say, ‘Look at that 4,000th hit,’ I’ll go back, look at Pete Rose’s record, and I’ll see the outstanding consistency. That’s what I look at.

“If I get 300 wins, 305 wins, 3,000 strikeouts, what I’m most proud of is my consistency. That’s what I’ll look back at.”

Looking back. At 40, nearing the end of his second decade in the majors, Seaver occasionally allows himself a minute or two to look back.

It’s better than looking ahead. More stable. This stuff is history, already in the books.

Sometimes he gets the years mixed up. In an interview, he often confuses 1982, the season he was Tom Terrible, with 1983, the season he became Tom Expendable. “It’s the first sign of senility,” he says with a grin.

But when Seaver gets down to game situations and particulars, the sharp mind that knocks off the New York Times crossword puzzle every day comes into quick view.

He can, for instance, remember every pitch he threw to Jimmy Qualls on that day in 1969, when another piece of history barely eluded him: a perfect game.

Jimmy Qualls. That’s a name that can wipe the smile off the face of any Met fan. Qualls, a journeyman outfielder with the dreaded Chicago Cubs, was the guy who singled off Seaver with one out in the ninth inning--after Seaver had retired the first 25 Cubs in order.

“He hit me hard all three times that day,” Seaver recalled. “The first time up, he hit a fastball to the warning track in right field. The second time, he hit a slider sharply to the first baseman.

“In the ninth inning, I tried to run a slider down and away from him--but I didn’t get it down. He hit a clean single into the left-center field alley.”

Seaver’s most lasting impression of that day was the gloom in the Mets’ clubhouse, the winning clubhouse.

“My wife was crying, (shortstop) Bud Harrelson was in tears,” Seaver said. “I had just thrown a one-hit shutout, struck out 10 in the middle of the pennant race, and everybody was unhappy.”

Then, there was the 1967 All-Star Game, the first of eight for Seaver.

“I was a rookie. A year and a half before that, I was pitching for USC,” Seaver said. “I looked so young. I remember, Lou Brock thought I was the clubhouse boy. He told me to get him a Coke.”

Fifteen innings later, National League Manager Walt Alston told Seaver to go out and protect a 2-1 lead for Don Drysdale.

“I walked out there and felt so out of place . . . until I got to the mound,” Seaver said. “I looked around and saw Pete (Rose) at second, McCarver at catcher, Mays, Clemente and Aaron in the outfield. The talent was staggering. If I can’t get em out here. . . . “

Seaver got them out, striking out Ken Berry on three pitches for the final out.

Said Drysdale, who now chronicles Seaver’s every start as a White Sox broadcaster: “I couldn’t think of any better bleep to save a game. He was just a baby, a whippersnapper, but he could get it up there. You could see it then.”

Another game, another memory. Kind of an obscure one.

“It was in Atlanta, the ninth inning. One of the nights I was throwing real well,” Seaver said. “They got an error, a hit and an out. Runners on second and third, one out.

“We were one run ahead. I was already thinking about what I was going to do with the last two hitters. Bob Tillman--I’d do this, this and strike him out with an inside pitch. Felix Millan--I’d get him to fly to right.

“Sure enough, I get two strikes on Tillman and I run a fastball inside for a called strike 3. Only (catcher Jerry) Grote had called for a slider outside and had his glove out over the plate. The ball went past him and the tying run came in from third.

“In my mind, I thought we had the out. I was so into it, so programmed, that I stepped off the mound and Grote threw the ball right by my ear. The run on second scores, and we had turned a win into a loss.

“People are walking off the field, and I’m going, ‘Wait a minute.’ I was the last one left on the field. I couldn’t believe what was happening.”

Maybe that is how Seaver got this notion about not taking anything for granted.

Other things worth contemplating as Tom Seaver approaches No. 300:

-- What If He Had Had Some Offense: The mind’s eye has forever frozen this image of Seaver for us--pitching for the Mets with a 1-0 lead, never again being sure when a lineup consisting of Bud Harrelson, Al Weis, Ken Boswell, J.C. Martin and Art Shamsky would ever cross the plate again.

With a little more help along the way, maybe this story would have dealt with Seaver’s quest for victory No. 350.

“I never looked at it that way,” Seaver said. “I think it raised our level of play. It was much like the Koufax-Drysdale Dodger years. You knew you were going to have to win by a run. Every ground ball, the importance of every at-bat was magnified. It heightened our execution.”

Said Drysdale, who knows the feeling: “I think it made him a better pitcher quicker. He had to bear down on every pitch. He knew he was not going to get away with a lot of mistakes. He had to take it pitch by pitch, hitter by hitter. He got to know the art of pitching.”

Don’t get Seaver wrong, however. He never met a six-run lead he didn’t like.

“I’d have loved to pitch for the ‘75-’76 Reds,” he said. “I got there one year too late. I got there in ‘77--and turned the franchise right around. My first game, I shut out Montreal to put us five games back. Two weeks later, we were 12 behind.”

--What If The Players Strike Again This Summer: It’s a distinct possibility. And if a strike takes a 50-day chunk out of the season, as it did in 1981, Seaver’s bid for 300 could be put on hold indefinitely.

“If they strike, who knows if he could come back and win 300,” Drysdale said. “A layoff like that could mean infinity for a 40-year-old pitcher. What could happen, I don’t know. It’d be a damn crime if a strike got in his way.”

Hemond is more optimistic.

“There’s always that dreaded thought of a strike,” Hemond said. “But knowing Tom and the competitor he is, he’d stay in shape and get it done next year.”

Seaver doesn’t know if he’ll pitch after 1985--”I’ll decide that after the season”--but imagines he could crank it up for a 20th season if need be. And a 21st.

“Physically, the way things are going, I could keep pitching long enough that there’d be a good chance I’d wind up in divorce court,” Seaver said.

The ideal scenario, of course, would be a contract agreement between owners and players, and the resumption of the schedule as planned. That could send Tom Seaver and 300 on a collision course ending in, of all places, New York. The White Sox play the Yankees there, Aug. 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Wouldn’t that be something, sports fans?

Evans, the computer kid, digs out the White Sox schedule and nods.

“With our luck, it’ll happen in the middle of the pennant race, against the Yankees, on a getaway day,” Evans says.

The terminal in front of Evans whirs and the user laughs.

“That would be one plane that I won’t mind being late for,” he says.