How I Spelled Relief As A Young Cub Fan

At long last one time Cub closer Bruce Sutter has been elected to the Hall of Fame and let me be the first to say that it is about time. This makes three consecutive years an ex-Cub has been elected. In 2003 it was Dennis Eckersly, last year it was Sandberg and now Sutter. Relief pitching is sorely lacking within the Hall of Fame and trust me when I say this, for a time in the late 70’s and early 80’s there was no one in baseball doing it any better then Bruce Sutter.

He was in a word, automatic. He played on some garbage Cub teams in the late 70’s. Those teams had Rick Reuschel and four ragged armed pitchers in their rotation. The offense was anchored by Buckner and Kingman and a whole lot of punch and Judy hitters. Yet somehow the 77-79 Cubs would win 81, 79, and 80 games respectively. That may not sound like much but trust me those teams overachieved. One of the main reasons for this was Sutter.

In 1977 Sutter went 7-3 with 31 saves, with an ERA of 1.34 in 107 innings. Just an incredible season. The Cubs as a team won 81 and Sutter either won or saved 38 of those games. That is almost half of them. Then in 79, his CY young year he went 6-6 with 37 saves, with an ERA of 2.22 in 103 innings. The most amazing stat from that season is that while pitching in Wrigley for the year he gave up a total of three home runs. That season he either won or saved 43 of the Cubs 80 wins that year.

Sadly this was an era of the Cubs were they simply refused to pay players. So, before the 1981 season they shipped Sutter off to the hated Cardinal’s. In return we got Leon Durham, Ken Reitz and Ty Waller. Durham had a couple of decent years before blowing an easy groundball costing us the 84 pennant, Reitz lasted one whole year with the Cubs and hit .215 and Waller played 63 career games and hit a robust .236. This was just another in a long line of bad money dumping Cub trades. Sutter went to even greater heights with St. Louis as the anchor of a World Series winning bullpen in 1982. He eventually went on to Atlanta before his arm finally gave out. Still in his twelve-year career he was an All-Star six times and he finished in the top ten of MVP voting five times. For a reliever those are incredible numbers.

On top of all of his accomplishments Sutter changed baseball forever as the man who first threw the split-finger fastball. It was that pitch that revolutionized pitching and the game itself. Sutter learned that pitch in Cubs minor league system and used it like no one ever has since. The fact that it took Sutter eleven tries to finally gain enshrinement proves how insane the voting process can be.

With that said, if I had a ballot I would have only cast two votes. One for Sutter and the other for Gossage. No one else seemed worthy. Andre Dawson is a borderline case. I see both sides of the argument and much of his career was robbed by the concrete turf of Olympic stadium in Montreal. Still, Dawson while always being a very good player who had a couple of great seasons was never dominant. Still he was better then Tony Perez and Gary Carter so if they are in I guess he should be as well. However, he falls short in my personal book as does Jim Rice, Bert Blyleven, Tommy John and Lee Smith.

So, I say congratulations to Bruce Sutter. Sure, I want him to wear a Cub hat into Cooperstown but since he won a World Series in St. Louis my bet is he goes in as a Cardinal. I can’t really blame him after the way the Wrigley family treated him. Still, I will always remember being a young boy and running home to catch the end of the Cubs games. This was when Sutter would do his magic and most times he would dominate.