Today’s Pitcher Longs for the Roaring 20s

It might be the Year of the Rat or some such in China, but it’s the Year of the Home Run in the good old U.S. of A., right?

Balls are flying out of parks like popping corn. Six American League teams have hit 200 or more home runs, whereas only 15 teams in league history hit that many. Up until 1947, no team in baseball did, and it was 1961 before an American League team did. Fourteen players have hit 40 or more home runs. For the first time in 35 years, the likelihood is, two players will hit 50. The carnage is total.

Which is all the more reason they should have called for the ball and bronzed it when Atlanta pitcher John Smoltz won his 20th game a couple of weeks ago.

That was the first time in three seasons anyone in either league had won 20. There were no 20-game winners in baseball in either league in 1994 and 1995, the strike-shortened seasons.

They should not only have bronzed the ball for Smoltz, they should have ushered him immediately into the Cy Young Award ceremony.

In the American League, the Yankees’ Andy Pettitte ended that loop’s drought with his 20th a week later.

No one knows quite when 20 games became the yardstick for success for a pitcher. Lord knows it was not that extraordinary early in the century, when the great pitchers were posting not only 20-game seasons but 30--even 40. Christy Mathewson of the Giants won 37 one year, 33 another. But, that’s nothing. Ed Walsh won 40 for the White Sox one year. The great Cy Young, on his way to 511, used to win 33 and 32 with some regularity. Grover Cleveland Alexander won 30 or more games three years in a row. Walter Johnson had 36 one year and 32 another.

The last pitcher to win 30 was Denny McLain in 1968--and that was the first time it had been done in the American League since Lefty Grove did it in 1931.

The last guy in the National League to win 30 was--who else?--Dizzy Dean. In 1934.

We used to have six, seven, eight or more guys posting 20-win seasons. The American League had 12 as late as 1973. The National League had nine in 1969 when the Tom Seavers, Bob Gibsons, Juan Marichals and Fergie Jenkinses were abroad in the land.

Greg Maddux won two Cy Young awards in a row without winning 20 games. In the American League, David Cone and Randy Johnson won the Cy Young but not 20 games (Cone’s record was 16-5).

You can almost spot the years the Lords of Baseball were tinkering with the ball. And 1930 comes immediately to mind. Twenty-game winners all but disappeared as the National League that year had 1--a .400 hitter, the league’s last (Bill Terry); 2--a .393 hitter (Babe Herman); 3--a .386 hitter (Chuck Klein) and a .383 hitter (Lefty O’Doul); and 4--a guy who hit 56 home runs, still the league record (Hack Wilson). They had only two 20-game winners. The next year, they had none. The league batting average was .303. All but two teams batted over .300. (To pick a year at random, 1955, the league batting average was .259 and no team batted over .271. In 1916, the league batting average was .247.)

Is pitching a dying art? Well, its throat is beginning to rattle. There were 4,816 home runs hit as of midweek. For the first time in history, each league has more than 2,000 home runs, and the American League has more than 2,500.

Another clue to the fact we might be running out of Cy Youngs and Walter Johnsons--to say nothing of Sandy Koufaxes and Bob Gibsons--can be found in the decline of the complete game. Cy Young had 751 complete games (out of 818 started). Walter Johnson had 531. Know how many complete games the perennial Cy Young Award winner Greg Maddux has? Just over 70. A pitcher pitches seven innings today and he’s looking to call 911.

The old-time pitcher had his edge--the dead ball. But the modern pitcher has his weapons: The gloves are infinitely better, out-sized mitts; they can catch a ball almost by themselves. There are new pitches, presumably. The “slider” came into being in the ‘30s, an invention--half-curve, half-fastball--usually credited to George Blaeholder. There are “cut” fastballs, split-fingered fastballs, sinkers, screwballs, and a whole raft of new nomenclature.

I’m not too sure how new they are. After all, we had the drop. It’s called the sinker nowadays, but it looks like the drop to me. We had the inshoot and the outshoot. One of them was the slider, I am sure. They have the screwball, but we had it too. Only we called it the fadeaway. We prized control (Satchel Paige could spot the ball over a gum wrapper). But they call it location today. The first time I heard a pitcher say, “I had good ‘location’ today,” I thought he meant his parking spot.

And we did have a whole bunch of 20-game winners. What we didn’t have were a whole bunch of guys named Albert or Junior hitting 50 home runs.

And we had pitchers who finished what they started. They have so many relievers today that when Whitey Ford got in the Hall of Fame, someone suggested they should bring Luis Arroyo in to take over every seventh year.

What with the designated hitter and the multiple relief specialists, the starting pitcher is as endangered a species as the spotted owl. He’s a “temp,” a part-time worker. You have to worry that, unless they change the rules requiring a starting pitcher to go at least five innings to get a win, we may have a year in here where we not only don’t get any 20-game winners, we don’t get any game winners, period.