Mariano Rivera may very well be the best relief pitcher in history, but his workload makes him a pampered pitcher compared with his Hall of Fame predecessor with the Yankees.
Rich (Goose) Gossage is being inducted into the Hall of Fame Sunday, where Rivera will be some day, but to appreciate the difference in the two standout closers it is necessary to consider what was and is asked of them.
Take Gossage’s first season with the Yankees for example. In his 63 appearances Gossage pitched more than one inning 38 times (60 percent). In Rivera’s 749 games (through July 25) in 12 seasons as the Yankees closer, he has pitched more than one inning 161 times (21 percent).
But what is more than one inning? According to Elias Sports Bureau, of the 161 times Rivera pitched more than one inning, he worked between 1 and 2 innings 112 times and exactly 2 innings 47 times. In other words he has pitched more than 2 innings only twice.
Gossage, in 1978 alone, pitched more than 2 innings 25 times and 2 innings 10 times. He had only three games in which he pitched between 1 and 2 innings.
Delve even deeper into Gossage’s record, and it becomes even more astounding by today’s measurements. Twice in that season he pitched seven innings, once against Toronto in a 13-inning game, once against Boston in a 17-inning game. In five other games he worked 4 innings or more.
The one-inning save developed later, with Tony La Russa adopting that strategy with Dennis Eckersley. In the first season (1988) in which he only relieved, Eckersley, also a Hall of Famer, pitched a total of 72 2/3 innings in 60 games. Ten years earlier Gossage worked 134 1/3 innings in 63 relief appearances.
Gossage earned 27 saves that first season with the Yankees. Rivera exceeded that total in each of his first 11 seasons as the team’s closer and gained his 26th save this season in the 1-0 victory over the Red Sox Friday night. Gossage, however, worked far harder for his saves than Rivera has for his. What that means basically is the productivity of the two relievers cannot be compared fairly.
Billy Martin, the Yankees manager when Gossage joined the team, wasted no time in piling on Gossage’s work load. Gossage pitched 3 or 3 2/3 innings in three of his first four appearances. He was the losing pitcher in two of the games. In fact, he was the losing pitcher in three of his first four games. He didn’t get a save until May 3 in the Yankees’ 22nd game. By that time he had a 1-3 won-lost record.
“I remember it as two months; I don’t know if it was that long,” Gossage said recently. “There was a lot that goes with putting on the pinstripes. It took me a while to adjust to that. I got booed and I got pelted with everything.”
He recalled that at that time relievers were transported from the bullpen to the mound in a car.
“We drove by and they pelted that little pinstriped car,” he said. “I‘d get to the mound and Thurman would say ‘how are you going to lose this one?’ I’d say ‘I don’t know you little …. Get your ass back there and we’ll find out, okay?’”
LOVING THE ONE LOVE GAMES
In today’s sports-watching society fans want to see runs and touchdowns and baskets and goals scored. Soccer has never made it professionally in this country because few goals are scored. But is there anything better than a 1-0 baseball game? I love a 1-0 baseball game.
The Yankees and the Red Sox produced the 26th 1-0 game of the season in the opener of their weekend series. Theirs was the third in the majors in six days.
The San Francisco Giants know about 1-0 games. They have played five this season, winning four. The Red Sox loss to the Yankees was their fourth 1-0 game of the season; they have won two and lost two. Toronto also has won two and lost two. Philadelphia and Washington have played a pair of 1-0 games against each other, each winning one.
The most interesting 1-0 development has been the games the Angels and the Dodgers played on consecutive nights in June. The Dodgers won the first one even though they didn’t get a hit, then lost the second one despite getting three hits.
NO BROOKLYN VOTES FOR O’MALLEY
When Commissioner Bud Selig was in New York for the All-Star game, an older man stopped him at his hotel and said he was an old Dodgers fan. “Man,” the gentleman said to Selig, “I hate that O’Malley.”
“You’re going to have to get over it,” Selig replied, meaning it has been 50 years since the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn for Los Angeles.
“Not until the day I die,” the man said.
O’Malley goes into the Hall of Fame this weekend, probably for the same reason that man still hates him: the Dodgers move to Los Angeles. While it stunned and infuriated and devastated Brooklyn fans, the move drastically altered the baseball map, opening the entire country to the major leagues.
That was a significant step, one that benefited baseball and set the stage for it to become the truly national sport it is today.
Not that it will console old Dodgers fans who are still around, but Brooklyn’s sacrifice served the greater good.
RABBIT REDUX
As far as executives go, O’Malley should be in the Hall of Fame. But what possible excuse could the same committee that elected O’Malley have had for electing Bowie Kuhn? I would say that Kuhn is the Rabbit Maranville of baseball executives with his induction, but that would demean Maranville, a .258 hitting shortstop, who would never have been elected today.
Kuhn, however, was elected today, and it’s not just the fault of the members of the committee who gave him the necessary votes for election. They were doing the job the Hall of Fame expected them to do.
When they changed the voting system – again — and the makeup of the committees doing the voting, Hall officials knew what they were doing. They were stacking the deck in favor of former officials, like Kuhn, and against the one candidate they apparently wanted to keep out of the Hall, Marvin Miller.
I will not belabor the case for Miller’s election, which I have made before. I have been among the many writers – neutral observers – who have long advocated Miller’s entry into the Hall. After he received only three votes – the votes of three writers –from the 12-man committee in his latest election loss last December, Miller asked to be omitted from future ballots.
In the matter of Kuhn, on the other hand, his induction lessens the stature of the Hall, but Hall officials are getting what they wanted when they revised the voting format and assigned Kuhn to a can’t-miss committee especially when the committee at the same time could rebuff Miller.
By not voting for Miller, the management members of the committee gained their revenge for what he did for their players as head of the union, but they went one step beyond by electing Kuhn.
Kuhn was all negativity, a reactionary force in baseball. He did nothing positive in his 16 years as commissioner. He fought the progress that came in spite of him and has led to the successful state of the game it is today. If left to Kuhn, the majors would not be on the verge of 80 million in attendance and $6.5 billion in revenue.
When Kuhn died last year, some obituaries noted that free agency began during his tenure, as if he deserved credit for it.. Given his choice, though, free agency would have been created over his dead body. Instead of embracing free agency, Kuhn fought it and predicted the end of the game as we knew it. He was all doom and gloom. Fortunately he lived long enough to see how wrong he had been.
When he was elected commissioner in 1969, many people thought he was bright because he was a lawyer. He proved, however, that not all lawyers are bright. And when he finished being commissioner in 1984, he continued to demonstrate that fact by being part of a law firm that quickly collapsed.
Only then did he make a smart move, that is, for himself. He hurriedly moved to Florida, selling his house in Ridgewood, N.J., staying one step ahead of the sheriff. His collapsed law firm owed lots of money, and in Florida a debtor’s property cannot be seized for payment.
IS I IS OR IS I AIN’T
Among the e-mail this site has received in its brief existence have been two messages asking the same question: Who really is writing this site?
“My name is Alejandro and I write for a baseball blog, umpbump.com,” said the first e-mail. “Sorry to bother you but there’s great talk in the blogosphere about the authenticity of murraychass.com; mainly, is the man really behind it.
“We all know Mr. Chass isn’t too fond of blogs in general, but this makes for great fodder. But I personally think it would be great for Mr. Chass to be proactive in sharing his great work with the world. With all the speculation and mixed opinions, though, I’m just not sure if the site is for real or not….
“So, I’m curious, is Mr. Chass really behind all this? Could you share some details?”
This e-mail actually was written to someone connected technically to the site, and it was forwarded to the site’s project manager.
The second e-mail was also from someone at umpbump.com. Do the folks at umpbump not have anything better to do but wonder about the author of this site?
“To whom it may concern,
“There’s been some debate about whether or not former New York Times sports writer Murray Chass is actually writing the content for murraychass.com….
“Can you tell me who is writing the content for murraychass.com?
“Regards, Coley Ward Umpbump.com
Perhaps by now the umpbump guys have figured it out for themselves; they should be able to figure it out. If they haven‘t, though, they will have to wonder for a while longer.