The Chicago White Sox have only managed to win two American League championships since 1920. That makes them the successful franchise, by Chicago standards. The Cubs haven’t won anything in the National League since (in the words of immortal folk singer Steve Goodman) “the year we dropped the bomb on Japan.”
For those who wonder how two organizations can combine for such ineptitude, all I have to do is think back to 1976. That year explains everything.
The Bicentennial year saw both teams finish in last place in their respective divisions. It also was the one season the Chicago baseball scene included two of the greatest relief pitchers ever to play Major League Baseball.
Bruce Sutter was a rookie that season with the Cubs, and he quickly established himself as having an incredible pitch (the split-finger fastball) that made him un-hittable for an inning or two at a time. That pitch led him through a major league career that resulted in him being inducted last year into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
The Hall of Fame is going to announce a new crop of inductees on Tuesday. Observers say there’s a very good chance that Rich Gossage will be among the honored ballplayers.
Gossage was a White Sox discovery, as the Sox signed him out of high school, brought him up through their minor league system, then got five seasons out of him at the major league level – running through 1976.
If Gossage actually gets inducted into the Hall of Fame someday (and in my opinion, that honor is long overdue), then my gut reaction is going to be to wonder, “What if?”
What if two of the top-ranking relief pitchers of their era and all time had stuck out the bulk of their careers in Chicago? Could there be a championship flag or two flying over a Chicago ballpark (other than the White Sox of 2005) that doesn’t date back to the nineteen-aughts or teens?
What if Gossage and Sutter had been dueling competitors for the Sox and the Cubs? Just imagine how much fun it could have been arguing about which team has the top closer (It was Gossage, although Sutter was not that far behind him in being un-hittable in the clutch). It would have been as much fun as 1950’s era fans arguing best shortstop, Luis Aparicio or Ernie Banks, or best hitter of the 1990s, Frank Thomas or Sammy Sosa.
Before one argues that Gossage and Sutter are evidence of the greed of the modern day ballplayer, keep in mind that both men were traded away by their respective Chicago ball clubs.
Gossage was sent to the Pittsburgh Pirates for the 1977 season in exchange for slugging outfielder Richie Zisk, who paired up with Oscar Gamble to slug the Sox into contention for a division title for that one year.
The Cubs sent Sutter away to the St. Louis Cardinals after 1980 in exchange for Ken Reitz and Leon Durham, who wound up making what turned out to be the game-losing error that cost the Cubs a National League pennant in 1984.
What makes it so sad is that this isn’t a case like when the Cubs traded future Hall of Fame outfielder Lou Brock to the Cardinals. One can argue that Brock showed nothing of his future promise playing in Chicago, and probably needed to get away from the Cubs in order to become the star ballplayer he was capable of being.
It was obvious to baseball fans back then that the Chicago teams had something special in the forms of Gossage and Sutter.
During the early-to-mid-1970s, the White Sox were actually respected for having two top arms to pitch in relief. It is ironic that, at the time, Terry Forster was actually thought of as No. 1 (with Gossage as a close 1A). The Sox used to ration out relief appearances to give both men equal innings, which prevented either from becoming tired out during the course of a 162-game season.
The reason Gossage had such an awful final season in Chicago (9 wins, 17 losses, a 3.94 earned run average and 135 strikeouts in 224 innings pitched) was because that was the year the Sox tried to convert him into a starting pitcher. The shortsighted theory was that he had the best pitching arm on an awful ball club, and could be of more use throwing every four games rather than pitching out of jams every game or two.
Sutter quickly showed he was a star. With his unique pitch (which is really a variation on the forkball thrown by pitchers for decades), he became un-hittable. He brought a touch of prestige to Cubs teams of the late 1970s that struggled to avoid losing 100 games a season by making the National League All Star team four times and winning the Cy Young Award as the league’s best pitcher in 1979.
But after an arbitrator forced the Cubs to pay Sutter a top salary worthy of being arguably the best relief pitcher in baseball, he was traded away. The Wrigley family who then owned the Cubs was infuriated at the “gall” of Sutter to challenge what they wanted to pay him, which admittedly would still have been a respectable amount of money for that era.
Sutter went on to become the greatest relief pitcher in the history of the St. Louis Cardinals, and was an integral part of the Cardinals team that beat the Milwaukee Brewers in the 1982 World Series.
Likewise, Gossage left the Pirates after one season, becoming a free agent and signing his own big-money contract with the New York Yankees – where for the next six years he challenged Sutter for the title of baseball’s best relief pitcher.
It is appropriate to anyone who remembers the early-to-mid-1980s that when Sutter was inducted into the Hall of Fame, his bronze image at the Cooperstown museum depicts him as a Cardinal.
In the same way, any future bronze image of Gossage will show him as a Yankee.
And in Chicago, all we can do is curse out our teams’ inability to keep the star players they develop, while dreaming of what could have been – Sutter’s Hall of Fame plaque showing a capital “C” and the Gossage plaque depicting the old-English script logo spelling out “Sox.”
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