DON SUTTON GOES FOR NO. 300 : Angel Pitcher, 41, Wants Big Win Today for Both Father’s Day, Father Time
The president of Suttcor, a Laguna Hills firm specializing in real estate development and portfolio planning, was at his desk by 10 Friday morning.
There were phone calls, meetings and a luncheon appointment with Jim Sundberg, a former Milwaukee associate now employed in Kansas City.
It was business as usual for Don Sutton, whose dedication to the work ethic has characterized a 21-year pitching career in which the goal-oriented right-hander is about to reach his milestone of milestones.
Sutton will attempt to become the 19th pitcher in baseball history to win 300 games and only the sixth to register both 300 wins and 3,000 strikeouts when he faces Sundberg and the rest of the Kansas City Royals at Anaheim Stadium today.
It will be his 12th start of a season in which he will probably make more than 30 appearances, but he has reasons for wanting to get it done and behind him.
“I’m generally not very emotional, but it would be special to do it this weekend, with Sunday being Father’s Day,” he said. “My dad spent a lot of cold mornings on the farm and hot afternoons pouring cement to keep me in food, gloves and shoes. This would be a nice way to pay some of it back.”
Howard Sutton is 59. He will be watching the NBC telecast in Molino, Fla. A proud son said that his father has never missed a day in 32 years as both farmer and construction worker.
This is the ethic to which the younger Sutton has adhered.
He is third on baseball’s list in games started, at 683; 11th in innings pitched, at 4,857; 32nd in total appearances, at 700; ninth in shutouts, at 58, and sixth in strikeouts, at 3,354.
He won 12 or more games in 16 of the previous 20 seasons, failed to reach double figures in wins only once and set a major league record last year by making it 20 straight seasons in which he has registered 100 or more strikeouts.
If all of that has failed to bring Sutton some of the same acclaim that has gone to pitchers who have accomplished less, he has learned to live with the overall picture, taking satisfaction in remaining healthy and productive after more than two decades.
In his own words, he is the mechanic, always on time, always there. Nothing spectacular, nothing sensational. None of the explosions that a Dwight Gooden or a Nolan Ryan tends to generate.
Even now, on the verge of 300 wins, the mechanic said he can’t be sure of what it means, other than “the Good Housekeeping seal of approval” on a distinguished career. He has been trying to contain his emotions, unwilling, perhaps, to believe that his opportunity is finally here after several recent summers when it seemed out of reach.
He has been thinking about this since May 20, 1979, when he pitched the Dodgers to a 6-4 victory in Cincinnati. It was his 210th win, which broke Don Drysdale’s club record. Sutton then hung out the carrot that is 300, viewing it as the next logical goal.
Now, with eight seats reserved behind the Angel dugout today for his immediate family, Sutton said: “It’s impossible for me to know what this will really mean until it’s all over, until I’ve had time to digest it.”
The four most recent pitchers to do it--Tom Seaver, Phil Niekro, Steve Carlton and Gaylord Perry--are contemporaries whom he has both pitched against and played with in All-Star games, and that adds a special dimension.
He said the fact that only 18 others have won 300 games is one thing, but the companion fact that only five of those have struck out 3,000 or more batters “cuts it to an even smaller group,” increasing the significance for someone “who has always been a numbers person.”
Sutton also believes that he may be one of the last to do it.
“You have to average 15 wins for 20 years or 20 wins for 15 years,” he said. “Either way it’s a long time.
“I mean, there are a large number of talented young pitchers who have the potential, but in these times they’re so economically set so early in their careers.
“To pitch 20 years requires sacrifice, discipline and stubbornness. A person has to be goal-oriented and not money-oriented. Guys like Bret Saberhagen, Fernando Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser have more ability than I have, but once they’re set economically, will they be motivated?
“Will a 35-year-old pitcher who wins 10 or 12 games decide it’s not worth it anymore? Or will the team say, ‘Heck, we can get a kid for $65,000 to do that.’?”
Sutton, 41, came back from an 8-13 season with Milwaukee in 1983 to go 14-12 in 1984 and a combined 15-10 with Oakland and the Angels last year. This season, he is 4-5 with a 5.40 earned-run average but has pitched well in four of his last five starts, particularly the last two. He allowed only six hits in eight innings of a 4-2 victory over New York, then turned in a two-hit, 3-0 shutout of Chicago, a performance he considers one of his best.
In fact, when asked about his biggest moments to date, he listed the Chicago shutout, along with his 3,000th strikeout in 1983; his last regular-season game in ‘82, when he clinched an Eastern Division title for Milwaukee; that 210th victory in Cincinnati, and the Florida state high school championship game in 1962, when he pitched 13 innings for the victory.
Today, of course, could be his biggest yet. He refuses to believe that 300 wins represent an automatic ticket to Cooperstown, but he is hopeful it might help earn him a reservation on even “a small closet in that little Upstate New York city.”
The Hall of Fame, of course, is his ultimate goal, the highest reward for more than two decades of dedication and accomplishment, and a chance to stand there on a summer afternoon “and pay tribute to some people who bought in for the whole ride.”
On that inevitable day, Sutton will pay tribute to Red Adams, his pitching coach with the Dodgers; Walt Alston, his manager during 11 of 15 seasons with the Dodgers, and Henry Roper, the junior high teacher who taught him to pitch.
Both Roper and Alston died recently. Adams may be there today when Sutton attempts to wrap up an early Father’s Day gift for one of the others who bought in for the whole ride.
