Seaver, Back in New York, Gets His 300th Win, 4-1

On a terrific day for baseball, in a stadium of great happenings and heroes, Tom Seaver put the finishing touch to his own monument. Pitching as well as any 40-year-old has a right to expect, he joined a very select group of major leaguers credited with 300 or more victories. And, fittingly, he achieved the milestone in New York, where he had won his first game for the Mets 18 years, 3 months and 2 weeks ago.

Seaver pitched his current employers, the Chicago White Sox, to a 4-1 victory before 54,032 at Yankee Stadium Sunday, beating not only the Yankees but a strike deadline in the process. Consider that score for a moment: 4-1 for number 41. “Is the lottery office still open?” he said when the coincidence (or act of fate) was duly noted.

After the game, the Yankees sent Phil Niekro--294 lifetime victories--onto the field to present Seaver with a silver bowl in honor of the occasion. A gift from one George (Steinbrenner) to another (George Thomas Seaver).

“It was a nice touch,” Seaver said, hoisting the commemorative container and reading the inscription. “George is smart. He didn’t put the date on it. I guess I’ll have to put it on myself.”

Certainly, it was not the Yankees’ plan to provide Seaver a willing victim. Only the previous day, Manager Billy Martin decided Seaver would have to get No. 300 somewhere else.

But if the spectators--who included Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and former President Richard Nixon--felt that way, it was not evident in their behavior. Seaver received warm applause even before the game. And his first appearance on the mound was cause for a standing ovation. And once the White Sox erased a 1-0 Yankee lead with a four-run outburst in the sixth inning, the crowd swayed with every pitch.

In the eighth and ninth innings, when Seaver squeezed out of perilous situations, the chant in the air was “Sea-vuh, Sea-vuh.” It was perhaps the first time a Yankee Stadium congregation rooted so fervently against the home team since a pinch-hitter named Harry Bright walked to home plate with two out in the ninth inning of the first game of the 1963 World Series. What the people wanted to see that day was a record 15th strikeout by Sandy Koufax. He and Bright obliged.

That particular moment seemed inevitable. This one was a good deal more nerve-wracking. First, Seaver had to strike out Dave Winfield, on a 3-and-2 changeup, no less, with two runners on and two out in the eighth. Then he had to face Don Baylor, again with two on and two out, in the ninth. Baylor swung at the first pitch and hit a fly ball to medium left field.

While shortstop Ozzie Guillen jumped up and down in celebration and Seaver’s wife, Nancy, cried in the box alongside the visitors’ dugout, the man crouched between the pitcher’s mound and the first-base line, watching intently as Reid Nichols moved in a couple of steps, then drifted back the same distance and clamped his glove around the ball. With that, Seaver looked at Carlton Fisk, let out a shout and jumped into his catcher’s arms.

After accepting congratulations from his teammates, he jogged over to kiss his wife and daughters, Sarah and Anne. He was about a minute behind Guillen, who had gotten the game-winning hit with an RBI single, and decided to collect his reward from the prettier members of the family.

“I said congratulations,” recalled the Venezuelan-born shortstop, “because a family is part of your life. They felt real ‘wow.’ I’m real excited. Everyone on this team can be excited for a teammate and a good guy.”

Seaver always has prided himself on his poise and professionalism. But Sunday, he said, it was a struggle to control his emotions. “It was like my first game in the big leagues,” he said. “I felt lousy. I was sick to my stomach. I had a headache.”

Usually, he said, the nerves dissipated during the warmup period or after he made the first pitch. But not on the day he would win No. 300. The excitement of the crowd--a New York crowd--and the moment bubbled inside him in the latter stages of the game until it seemed he was five feet off the ground.

“One of the few times I ever felt like that was against the Cubs in ’69 when I almost had the perfect game,” Seaver said. “I felt like I was levitating on the mound. I remember my father was there (Shea Stadium). He had come east on a business trip and Nancy picked him up at the airport. And I couldn’t feel the ball come off my hand like I usually did.”

His father, Charles, was there again Sunday, along with Nancy’s father. And the sense of the crowd and the occasion were so very similar that when pitching coach Dave Duncan walked to the mound in the ninth after Seaver’s two-out walk to Mike Pagliarulo and asked Seaver what he had left, Seaver couldn’t honestly answer.

“It was a very emotional day,” Seaver said. “I really couldn’t tell what I had. So I asked Pudge (Fisk) and he said, ‘You’re throwing the ball good.’ I said, ‘OK, let’s get him.’ Actually, Dunc didn’t want to take me out. And Pudge didn’t want me out.”

Nor did Tony LaRussa, the manager who was lurking in the runway behind the dugout after being ejected by umpire Derryl Cousins for vehemently protesting an out call at home plate in the sixth-inning rally. “The rule says you’re supposed to be in the clubhouse,” LaRussa said, “but I wasn’t going to miss Seaver’s 300th victory. They can only fine me once, right?”