Injustice Corrected

One of baseball’s most ludicrous injustices was corrected last week when Don Sutton was voted into the Hall of Fame after spending five years waiting on the doorstep of Cooperstown despite his 324 wins.

Since the introduction of the lively ball in 1920, no right-handed pitcher has won more games than Sutton. Only one righty has had as many: Nolan Ryan. But Ryan lost 36 more games than Sutton.

Ironically, one of Sutton’s best qualities as a person might have kept him out of the Hall for a couple of extra years. He’s about as dead honest as they make ‘em. For years, it cost him prestige and votes.

“Comparing me to Sandy Koufax is like comparing Earl Scheib to Michelangelo,” he once said after breaking a record of Koufax’s. Asked about his manager with the Dodgers, Tommy Lasorda, Sutton said, “I’m leery of Tommy. I believe in God, not the Big Dodger in the Sky.”

As he bounced from the Dodgers to the Astros, Brewers, A’s and Angels, before ending back with the Dodgers, Sutton said, “I’m the most loyal player money can buy.” Why, he came as close as any pitcher ever does to admitting publicly that he cheated on the mound.

Late in his career, when hitters claimed his best pitches were the scuffball, the cut ball and the sandpaper ball, Sutton would stuff dirty notes in his pockets for umpires to find when they frisked him.

“That’s the only fun I have,” he lamented. “At least I ought to get a Black & Decker commercial out of it.”

In those defiant declining years, when he would do anything to win 300 games and kick down the door of the Hall, Sutton took rule-breaking--or the appearance of it--to gloriously infantile heights. Between pitches, he’d grind on the ball as though trying to tear off its cover. Asked what he’d do if disciplined by umpires or the league, he vowed he’d sue everybody and take his case to the Supreme Court.

“Sutton has set such a fine example of defiance that someday I expect to see a pitcher walk out to the mound with a utility belt on--you know, file, chisel, screwdriver, glue,” said Ray Miller, then the Orioles’ pitching coach, now their manager. “Sutton will throw a ball to the plate with bolts attached to it.”

When Sutton finally won that 300th game, a bitter hitter groused Sutton had defaced so many balls (thrown out of play by umps) that “they could stock every CYO team in America.”

Sutton didn’t care. On the outside, he was smooth and well-spoken. On the inside, he knew exactly who he was--a tough, ambitious, wisecracking stand-up guy. Asked to explain himself, he’d tell you, “I was born in a tar-paper shack in Clio, Alabama--a sharecropper’s son.”

For 23 years, Sutton would sandpaper a ball while you glared at him or beat you when he had nothing. Nobody picked more brains, studied more techniques, had more slick variations on his multiple pitches or stood in the late-inning fire with more moxie.

“If you want to show up on time, work your butt off, don’t miss starts and grind it out--even if you’re not as spectacular as Nolan Ryan or as glamorous as Tom Seaver or as overpowering as Steve Carlton--there’s still a spot there (in Cooperstown),” said Sutton last week on national TV.

Then he said Tony Perez should have made the Hall this year, too. That’s Sutton. He can’t resist candor. The writers who finally elected him? They don’t get too many thanks. Why should they? Sutton didn’t even have champagne on ice last week.

“In years past, I thought I was going to get in,” said Sutton of the oversights that some would consider snubs. “(The long wait) diminished the anticipation. It didn’t diminish the thrill. . . . I had tears and goose bumps when I found out.”

The first time I ever met Don Sutton, perhaps 20 years ago, I found out about his tendency toward bluntness. I asked him about Reggie Smith, his Dodgers teammate. “Reggie is the leader of this team, not Steve Garvey,” said Sutton.

The next day, Garvey walked up to Sutton in the Dodgers’ locker room with my story and said, “Did you say this?”

Then they punched each other’s lights out.

There was more clubhouse friction behind that fight than just Sutton’s quotes. But his words certainly pulled the grenade pin.

That night, Sutton and Garvey appeared on national TV with black eyes and battered faces. At that time, Garvey might have been the most popular player in baseball--comparable in image to Cal Ripken now.

Howard Cosell got Sutton on camera and asked him, “Did you really say these things about Steve Garvey?”

I was fresh from the high school beat. I’d met Sutton for 10 minutes in my life. My career passed in front of me.

“Sutton will say I misquoted him. It’s the easy way out for everybody,” I thought. I felt like a fool, a rube. I was out of my depth. I was dead.

Sutton looked into the camera. “I said it,” he said.

After that, I watched Don Sutton pretty carefully. And one Sutton game can stand for them all.

On the last day of the regular season in 1982, the Orioles played the Brewers for the American League East title. It was only the third winner-take-all game on the last day of the season in 113 years.

On top of that, the two teams had the best records in baseball. The winner would be the World Series favorite. The Orioles had beaten the Brewers four times in a row in the previous 48 hours. In short, Milwaukee was on the verge of the worst last-week collapse in history.

The Orioles sent Jim Palmer, on a 13-1 streak, to the mound. The Brewers sent Sutton. “It feels like it must happen,” said then-Orioles owner Edward Bennett Williams of a Baltimore victory. “Does that mean it’s going to happen?”

Perhaps he didn’t know Sutton too well. The Brewers won, 10-2, then went on to play the Cardinals in the World Series.

“They bought the gold goose and today he gave them the golden egg,” the Orioles’ John Lowenstein said of Sutton.

That tinge of bitterness often surrounded Sutton’s career. He had a bit too much tang and tartness, too much edge for some. But, definitely, not for others.