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PITCHERS WHO GO ALL THE WAY
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There is None So Rare As
A Complete-Game Pitcher
By STAN ISAACS
ofTheColumnists.com
Something tells me that somewhere up there Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain are turning over in their graves these days.
It is because of an aspect of modern baseball highlighted by New York Mets’ failures in which starting pitchers rarely pitched complete games. The St. Louis Cardinals went into the final week of the season with 27 blown saves by relief pitchers, the Mets were second with 18.
It seemed worse for the Mets because they
were in the thick of a pennant race. And during the crucial last
month they tied with two others for most blown saves with six.
The Mets were paying Johan Santana more than $20 million per
season, having brought him in this year to be a savior. But time
and time again he was taken out of games because he had reached
the dreaded vicinity of 100 pitches-plus. Almost time and time
again the raggedy-armed Mets relief pitchers blew games.
Finally, Santana had enough. On the next-to-last day of the season when the Mets had to win, he insisted on pitching though he had only three days of rest (not the usual four) and had thrown a season-high total of 125 pitches the previous game. He won a shutout to keep the Mets alive--and his arm didn’t fall off.
But on the final day of the season, two relief pitchers dissipated a 2-2 tie and the Mets lost, 4-2 to the Florida Marlins. The bullpen in its deadly fashion prevailed for the last time.
Spahn and Sain are famous because of the ditty they inspired when they led the Boston Braves to the 1948 National League pennant. It was “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.”
In 1948 the Braves swept a Labor Day doubleheader, with Spahn throwing a complete 14-inning game in the opener, and Sain pitching a shutout in the second game. Following two days off, it rained. Spahn won the next day and Sain the day after that. Three days later Spahn won again. Sain won the next day. After one more off day, the two pitchers were brought back, and won another doubleheader. They went 8-0 in 12 days of time.
This prompted Boston Post sports editor Gerald Hern to pen this epic:
First we’ll use Spahn
Then we’ll use Sain
Then an off day
Followed by rain
Back will come Spahn
Followed by Sain
And followed we hope
By two days of rain.
This was condensed to, “Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain.”
Sain, at 30, pitched in 314 innings that season. He won 24 games. Spahn pitched in 257, won 15. Santana went into his final start with 225 innings. The high water mark of innings this season was at 250, by Roy Halladay and C.C. Sabathia.
Fans can wail about blown saves to a faretheewell. Managers seemingly are mesmerized--blown games or not--to stick to the knees-shaking number of 100 pitches for their tender-armed, exceedingly well-paid heroes.
It would be unfair at this point to note that in 1903 the Giants’ Iron Man McGinnity pitched 434 innings.
Why Newspapers Fold
The Philadelphia Inquirer runs a full page of college football schedules just before the season starts. It is as interesting for the schools it includes as those that are left out.
Of the schools in the Philadelphia area, Penn, Villanova and Delaware are included. No other locals make it. Penn is in the Ivy League. Its rivals are the seven Ivy schools, but none of them make the Inquirer page, either. Not even Princeton which, less than 40 miles away, could be considered in the Inquirer circulation area.
Such omissions surely must tickle all the Cornell, Harvard, Yale and other Ivy grads in the Philadelphia area.
Consider some of the schools that are included by the Inquirer. Among the 124 are Alabama-Birmingham, Central Florida, Middle Tennessee and Colorado State. These are obviously hot items of interest among the Philadelphia college football cognoscenti.
Lehigh, a solid institution with a long football history going back to the 1800s, and which is less than 50 miles from downtown Philadelphia, is not included. Nor is its nearby longtime rival, Lafayette. But, so help us, there’s Louisiana-Lafayette, some 2500 miles away as the football flies. It is listed just above celebrated Louisiana-Monroe.
It could be argued that the paper is locked into including only Division One schools, the cream of the football crop. But Penn is not a Division One school. So much for that argument.
There are also in the Inquirer’s domain, several small college schools, Rowan, Ursinus and Cheyney among them. They, of course, don’t’ have the panache of Florida Atlantic.
And I trust that the Inquirer sports editors will be all agog on Nov. 28 for the epic clash between Eastern Michigan and Central Michigan.
The True Olympic Scorecard
In case you weren’t paying close attention last month, you might have missed the fact that, by my reckoning, neither China nor the United States won the Olympics.
The United States won the most medals,
110, but China, which won 100, could trumpet its achievement
of the most gold medals, beating the U.S. 51 to 36.
The way I look at it-number of medals won to total population--little
Jamaica was the clear winner.
These are the figures: China won one medal for every six million-plus people in the country. The U.S. won a medal for every 127,385 of its persons. And Jamaica, with 11 medals, won--fanfare please--one medal for every 104,384 of its citizens.
You could look it up.
What’s in a Name, Indeed
I don’t think enough attention was given to the strategy of a Thailand woman weightlifter at the Olympics.
Chanpim Kantatian took a fortune teller’s advice to change her name if she wanted to do well in the Olympics. She proceeded to choose Prapawaadee Jaroenrattanatarakoon. And, before you could get that name out of your mouth, she won the gold medal in the 53 kilogram division. That’s about 116.8 pounds.
Jumping Jills
A wonderful innovation in the New York City schools system was the introduction of jump rope as a varsity sport in the high schools. It was a creative way to increase girl’s participation in athletics.
Double Dutch, anyone?
©2008 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo of Johan Santana is courtesy of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. This column first posted Sept. 29, 2008.
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