Sixty feet, six inches from home plate is where it all starts. First, there’s a stare, then a unique wind-up, and then the pitch. It appears almost routine-like in nature, similar to the continual motion of a well oiled mechanism. Yet from that raised bed of dirt is woven the fabric of that nine inning contest commonly called a baseball game. The pitcher is the one person who influences the outcome of a ball game more than any of the other eight position players that back him up.
Over the 137-year documented history of professional baseball we have seen hundreds of men stand on that mound. Some were successful, others were not so lucky. Most of those hopeful throwers of the past never realized that journey that satisfies their vision, but for some of us who were lucky enough to see them, there were several that stood unhittable on that raised plot of earth as if they were gods that ruled from their perch. This article is about five of those god-like men who were artists that painted a picture of greatness from their perch in the center of that diamond.
#5 Sandy Koufax (1955-66)
Some might question my inclusion of Koufax on this list, but most people would probably raise pure Hell were I to omit him. Of all the modern day (1950-present day) pitchers that I ever had the pleasure to see, none captivated my attention more than this man. Though Koufax’s career was a brief 12 years, his impact on the game should never be forgotten. He averaged 14 wins per season at a 2.76 ERA and struck out 200 batters (on average) every year that he pitched. His 165 wins compared to only 87 losses would equate to a .655 winning percentage.
His career began in Brooklyn and ended in Los Angeles, all with “dem bums”, the Dodgers. To his credit are 4 career no-hitters (second to Nolan Ryan) and 3 Cy Young Awards in 1963 and 1965-66. The latter two Cy Youngs came in his last two seasons as he pitched while constantly being racked with the pain of arthritis. For Koufax, 1965 would be his career best season.
In 1965, he would win his second pitcher’s Triple Crown when he won 26 games, had a 2.04 ERA, and struck out 382 batters, a record that would stand until 1973 when Nolan Ryan would whiff 383. He also became one of 17 pitchers in baseball history to throw a perfect game. But his greatest stage of his greatest year would be two of his three starts in the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins.
Koufax had been scheduled to start Game 1 but due to his religious convictions, he declined the opening day role as it fell on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. He started Game 2, gave up two runs in six innings and the Dodgers lost 2-0. Despite the pain in his pitching elbow, he would start Game 5 and pitch a brilliant complete game shutout, winning 7-0. After only two days of rest, Koufax again took the mound in Game 7 with the series deadlocked at three games apiece. Thoroughly fatigued and pitching with intense pain, he threw another shutout allowing only three Minnesota hits as the Dodgers won the series and Koufax won the Series MVP Award.
Other notable accomplishments of his career include holding the single season shutout record of 11 games which broke Babe Ruth’s record of nine held since 1916. He led the NL in ERA five years in a row, was a 4-time all star, and held a 0.95 ERA in four World Series appearances. Sadly though, his fight with Arthritis would be lost and would spell the end of his career. To this day, I still speculate how great this man could have been were it not for that malady and had he been able to attain a 20 year career.
#4 Lefty Grove (1925-41)
Robert Moses Grove made his major league debut on April 14th, 1925 for the Philadelphia Athletics to kick off his 17 big league seasons. He pitched nine seasons for the A’s until 1933, and then from 1934-41 he would be on the mound for the Boston Red Sox. Jack Dunn was responsible for discovering “Lefty” and as some will remember, he was the man who discovered Babe Ruth. Dunn held onto him as a minor leaguer with the Orioles from 1920-24 when he would sell Grove to the A’s for a record $100,500 — the highest price ever paid for a ballplayer to date.
Grove would have numerous bouts with injuries in his rookie season of 1925, posting a 10-13 record that failed to impress many Philadelphia fans at the time. But 1926 would be the first of nine seasons in his career that he would win the ERA award finishing that season with a 2.51 ERA. In 1927 he would win 20 games and in 1928, he won 24. He also recorded two perfect innings in the 1928 season when he struck out the side with nine strikes and no balls. From 1929-31, Lefty would see the A’s in the World Series, winning the first two years but losing in 1931.
Between the 1933 and 1934 seasons, Connie Mack sold Grove to the Boston Red Sox who at that time were borderline terrible. An arm injury didn’t help the cause and Grove would finish with an 8-8 record. But 1935 would see him do a “180” in performance as he went 20-12 with a league leading 2.70 ERA. It is known that Boston management protected Grove’s arm more while pitching there, hence his better Won-Lost record in Philly. But he did post a 14-4 and a 15-4 season in 1938 and 1939 respectively.
When Grove called it quits after the 1941 season, he had seen his last victory that year become his 300th of his career against only 141 losses. This equated to a .680 career winning percentage, and despite being the eighth all time in this category, it should be noted that none of the seven pitchers ahead of him in this statistic notched more than 236 wins.
Groves list of achievements in his 17 seasons are nothing less than spectacular. He won the AL Triple Crown for pitchers in 1930-31 and was the AL MVP in 1931. He was the AL strikeout champ for seven straight seasons (1925-31) as well as leading the league in wins four times (1928, 1930-31, and 1933). Finally, Grove had nine seasons with 20 or more victories and in 1931 he touted an incredible 31-4 W-L record and a phenomenal 2.06 ERA.
#3 Christy Mathewson (1900-16)
Mathewson along with the ensuing two pitchers would lay claim to being one of the greatest of three to take the mound during the Dead Ball Era (1900-1919). A 373-188 record with a .665 winning percentage and a 2.13 lifetime ERA was more than enough to qualify him (along with Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner) as an inaugural inductee to the Hall of Fame in 1936. Laughably, the Giants had originally purchased Mathewson’s contract from Norfolk of the Virginia-North Carolina League for a mere $1,500 and considered him more of an experiment than a possible career pitcher.
Between July and December, Mathewson started six games and logged a paltry 0-3 record, confirming the Giants suspicions, so he was sent back down to Norfolk, were he was immediately drafted by the Reds in the Rule 5 Draft. On December 15th, the Reds traded him back to the Giants (for Amos Rusie) where he would remain for the next 16 seasons and become one of the most legendary pitchers in all of baseball history.
When Mathewson was put in the rotation in 1901, current manager Horace Fogel still was skeptical of Mathewson’s abilities as a starting pitcher, and would routinely subject him to workouts at first base, shortstop, and in the outfield. Luckily for Mathewson, John McGraw would arrive to take over the Giants in the middle of the 1902 season, and would quickly put an end to Fogel’s ridiculous experiments. Now being able to focus completely on his pitching, Mathewson was out to prove his skeptics wrong, and he did so with a vengeance.
With the exception of the 1902 season when he went 14-17, Mathewson would run off a string of 12 straight seasons with 22 or more victories. The first three seasons, from 1903-05, would see him win 30, 33, and 31 games respectively to start that 12 year run. For all practical purposes, despite two less wins than in 1904, I look at 1905 as his career season when he posted a 31-9 record with an unheard of 1.14 ERA and a .775 winning percentage. From a Won-Lost standpoint, his best season was 1908 when he went 37-11 for a .771 percentage (only .004 points lower than 1905) and an incredible 1.43 ERA.
In his 17 year career, Mathewson would accomplish 20 or more victories in 13 seasons (four with 30 or more), and five seasons with a winning percentage of .733 or better. In 1909, he was 25-6 with 1.14 ERA and a .806 winning percentage. He would post 11 of his career 79 shutouts (third all time) out of his 37 wins in the 1908 season. He won the Pitcher’s Triple Crown in 1905 and 1908, was the ERA champ five times (1905, 1908-09, 1911, and 1913), and was the strikeout champ five times (1903-05, 1907, and 1908). He would go to the World Series four times (1905 and 1911-13) but would see only one championship out of those four trips to the Fall Classic. Not for an “experiment”, huh?
Mathewson enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1918 and was ranked as a Captain in the Chemical Service overseas along with Ty Cobb. While on a training mission in France, Mathewson was accidentally gassed and developed tuberculosis as a result of the misfortune. He coached for the Giants in 1919-20, and in 1923 served as part-time president of the Boston Braves. Two years later, Mathewson died from his war caused illness. He was only 45 years old.
#2 Walter Johnson (1907-27)
Johnson is the other person on this list of great pitchers that was part of that inaugural “5 pack” into the Hall of Fame in 1936. And well he should have been with the career credentials that he earned. Ty Cobb was once quoted as saying that his most embarrassing moment at the plate came at the hands of “The Big Train”, as the 6’1″ Johnson was so appropriately named. Although Cobb often said how he hated to face Johnson, he still recorded a .335 career average in 67 games against him. Johnson would also lose six of the eight matches he had with Babe Ruth (as a Boston pitcher).
Despite the lack of electronic speed guns, Johnson was considered by many to have thrown the fastest and wickedest ball in the game during his day, considering that his first 13 seasons took place during the well known Dead Ball Era. To quote Johnson’s biography in Baseball Library, “Contemporaries recalled his pitches as nearly invisible, arriving with a ‘swoosh’ and smashing into the catcher’s mitt like a thunderclap” and Yankees outfielder, Birdie Cree stated that the only way to time Johnson’s fastball in order to hit it was, “…..when you see the arm start forward, swing.”
Of his 21 seasons that he spent with the Senators, 10 of which found the team finishing in the second division of the league, Johnson still managed to record 417 victories in his career against only 279 losses equating to a .599 winning percentage. He saw the Senators win the World Series in 1924 and then lose it the next year for his only two trips to the Fall Classic. The legendary Cy Young was the only other pitcher to win more ball games than Johnson, and only Cy Young and Pud Galvin lost more.
Additionally, Johnson’s career marks of 110 career shutouts and 38 career 1-0 victories are both all-time records that most likely will not be broken. Also, on September 4th, 5th, and 7th, 1908 Johnson recorded three straight shutouts against the Yankees. He won the Triple Crown three times (1913, 1918, and 1924) and won the AL MVP Award twice (1913 and 1924).
Johnson’s first three seasons saw a combined 42-48 record and were by no means an indication of this man’s pending greatness. After a 13-25 mark in 1909, Johnson would go on a rampage for the next 10 consecutive seasons seeing him win 20 or more games in each one. In 1914, when Johnson compiled a 28-18 mark, he led AL pitchers in seven categories — games, starts, wins, complete games, innings pitched, shutouts, and strikeouts — clearly one of the best seasons of his entire career.
A quote out of Johnson’s biography in Baseball Library describes the respect that he commanded as a pitcher as follows — an unnamed player for the Tigers said, “…..The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup. And then something went flyin’ past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. We couldn’t touch him that day; every one of us knew we’d met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park.”
#1 Cy Young (1890-1911)
Denton True Young was born in a small Ohio farming town only two years after the Civil War had ended and called the sixth grade the extent of his formal education. But what the man lacked in book learning, he more than made up for when you put a baseball in his hands. When Young began his professional career with Canton in the Tri-State League in 1889, a catcher who was warming him up claimed that his fastball moved like a cyclone. After that, he was forever known as “Cy.”
That same year, the Cleveland Spiders had moved from the American Association to the National League, and in 1890 they bought Young from Canton for a measly $500, though in those days I’m sure that an amount like that was considered anything but. Young took the mound for his very first major league August 6th, 1890 and proceeded to win by throwing a three hit shutout, serving as a harbinger of the future for all the other major league franchises.
Frank Robison, the Spiders’ owner, purchased the struggling St. Louis Browns prior to the 1899 season, making him a two team owner. He renamed the Browns the Perfectos, and injected life into a dying team by transferring Cleveland talent to his new franchise. Cy Young was one of the “transferees” and saw the Perfectos, despite all the new talent, finish no better than fifth place in 1899 and again in 1900.
In 1901, when the American League proclaimed major league status, its teams began raiding the NL and Young’s subsequent departure to Boston was the result. Young’s impact on the Boston club was immediate when he posted a 33-10 record with a .767 winning percentage and a 1.62 ERA. He also became the first AL pitcher to ever throw a perfect game that year.
In 1903, Young achieved another milestone when he threw the first pitch ever in World Series history as Boston squared off against Pittsburgh. Though he recorded a loss in Game 1, he would pitch better in his next two starts winning those games and posting a 1.85 ERA in four series appearances. In 1904, Young became only the third pitcher ever to record a perfect game and the first pitcher to do so since Lee Richmond and John Ward did it 24 years earlier in 1880.
Young remained with Boston through 1908, the year they changed their name from the Americans to the Red Sox. Prior to the beginning of his 20th season, Young was traded back to Cleveland in 1909 where his career began. Despite nearing the end of his career, he posted a 19-15 record with a 2.26 ERA, more than acceptable numbers by today’s standards. Young only managed a 7-10 record the following year but he did manage a 2.53 ERA despite more losses than wins.
Midway through the 1911 season, Young was traded from the Naps to the Boston Rustlers (now Atlanta Braves), with a combined record of 7-9 and an ERA that had inflated to 3.80. On September 22nd, 1911 Young shut out the Pirates 1-0 for his 511th career win. Sadly though, two weeks later when he pitched his 906th and final game of his career, the last eight batters he would ever face combined to hit a triple, three doubles, and four singles.
Young’s most notable accomplishments besides the most career wins and losses by a pitcher, include winning the Triple Crown in 1901 and being first all-time in innings pitched, games started, and complete games. In 22 seasons, Young won over 30 games five times (1892-83, 1895, and 1901-02). He also posted 20 or more wins in ten seasons (1891, 1894, 1896-99, 1903-04, and 1907-08).
It is also rumored that due to the velocity of his pitches, when he was only in his third professional season with the Spiders in 1892, the pitcher’s mound was moved from 50 feet from home plate to the current distance of 60 feet six inches where it remains to this day. Today, the most coveted award that a pitcher can receive bears his name, the Cy Young Award, and has been an annual occurrence since 1956.
