Sutton Gave It His Hall

There are 20 pitchers in baseball history who won 300 or more games.

All but three of them are in the Hall of Fame.

And one of those three is Nolan Ryan, who is not eligible yet. As soon as he is, he will go in on the first ballot. Overwhelmingly. Maybe unanimously. So that leaves two.

Yet, the immortal Mickey Welch--surely you remember Mickey Welch--is in there. So is John Clarkson, whoever he was.

But, it’s who isn’t in that intrigues me. Don Sutton isn’t. Neither is Phil Niekro.

Don Sutton won 324 games. He and Ryan are tied for 11th on the all-time list. Ahead of him are Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Grover Cleveland Alexander--the registered legends of the game. But Sutton, right on their heels, keeps getting the door slammed in his face.

Why? What do they want him to do--heal the sick, raise the dead?

The only “modern” pitchers--i.e., those who threw the live ball of today and not that relative bean-bag of yesteryear--with more wins are Warren Spahn and Steve Carlton.

Let’s see what “unqualifies” our man Sutton. Well, some say, “He only won 20 games in a season once.”

Hey! Henry Aaron never hit 50 home runs in a season. Rabbit Maranville never batted .300. But they’re in the Hall of Fame.

If you can put a guy with a .258 lifetime average in the Hall, you ought to put Sutton in there by acclamation.

Let me tell you what Don Sutton did. First of all, he pitched 5,281 2/3 innings. That’s seventh on the all-time list. Next, he threw 58 shutouts. That only tied him with Big Ed Walsh, of whom you may have heard, for 10th place. Then, he pitched in 774 games, 756 of them as a starter. He struck out 3,574 batters. Only four pitchers struck out more.

He had 178 complete games, pretty respectable in this day and age when relief pitchers come in foursomes--long relief, middle relief, setup man and closer. Today, they yank you if you give up a long foul.

Any yardstick you apply, Sutton meets it. He never pitched a no-hitter but he pitched five one-hitters. A bounce here or there, any of them could have been a no-hitter.

There is some notion afoot that Sutton is less deserving because he pitched in 162-game seasons, compared to the 154-game seasons most Hall of Famers performed in. Hey, that’s eight games more a season. A pitcher cannot reasonably be expected to pitch in more than two of those.

Sure, Don lasted 23 years--seventh all-time. But, that’s a plus. He was always ready. You didn’t have to coax him out of the whirlpool to suit up. He was a workhorse. He never cited any imaginary ills or mystery back pains on the nights Aaron was in the visiting lineup, or Willie Mays, or any of the bats other pitchers preferred to avoid, waiting till the light-hitting Padres or Mets were going to show up before they miraculously recovered.

Don was a professional. He wanted the ball.

He came from a line of Alabama sharecroppers who expected to work, no strangers to the 18-hour day, the hoe or the plow.

He didn’t drink, smoke, chew or swear when he came up to the Dodgers. He packed a Bible, not an address book, on the road. The Dodgers took to ribbing him for his faith. They called him “Elmer” (as in Gantry) or “Oral” (as in Roberts). Don didn’t care. He praised the Lord anyway.

He had a curveball, though, that most batters would tell you was made in hell. He relied on it. He threw it in every situation. One night as he whipped it past Pittsburgh’s Willie Stargell on a 3-and-2 count with the tying run on third, Stargell was indignant.

“Don’t they teach these kids respect anymore?” he demanded. “How can he throw a curveball in that situation?”

Sutton made all the team flights and was always in the locker room well before “The Star Spangled Banner.” He busted up the occasional locker room when a handle hit to the opposite field beat him but he didn’t mind being a role model in a day when most players would want extra pay for it.

You have to think he was a victim of his environment. After all, when Sutton first came up, a callow, country kid of 20, the Dodgers had a pretty fair pair of country pitchers of their own--Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. In fact, Sutton wouldn’t have come up so soon if it weren’t for those two holding out that spring.

Still, who was going to notice a rookie curveballer from Clio, Ala., with those two around? Who was going to notice the kid pitching a six-hit shutout when Koufax was throwing no-hitters and Drysdale was setting a scoreless-inning record?

It might have scarred his whole career. He was always the “other” pitcher. When Fernando Valenzuela came along, the Dodgers let him slip away to Houston as a free agent. Don spent his whole career underappreciated.

This doesn’t mean it should extend to the Hall of Fame. On this year’s ballot, not a single batsman had a .300 lifetime average and one pitcher in there has a 68-71 record (although fairness dictates you also note that Bruce Sutter has 300 saves).

This is Sutton’s fourth year on the ballot. He will get 11 more chances if he doesn’t make it this time around, but history shows a candidate loses momentum year by year in the voting. To do something only 20 people have done in the long history of baseball is credential enough. You wonder what else he has to do--sing “Melancholy Baby?”