Barry Bonds hit number 755. Alex Rodriguez hit number 500. Hideki Matsui hit number 100. Somewhere in there, some guy won number 300, proving once again that even the most monumental pitching feats of the modern era don't stack up to home run prowess, because fans dig the long ball (many of whom, I'm told, are chicks). Of those who did laud Tom Glavine, though, there were many who made the same curious pronouncement, one that rankles my sensibilities. Here to expound upon the phenomenon is another young man who found his sensibilities sufficiently rankled: friend of Sportszilla and resident New Yorker, Jay Cowit.
--DA

Hysteria. Mass Hysteria. The end of the greatest baseball generation as we know it. Tom Glavine compiles the last 300th victory in the annals of the game. No longer will a pitcher, ever so dominant as the clever lefty, claim heed to compiling more than 299 wins over the course of a career. Yet another huge black stone monolith for a certain elite to walk over; the same kind who believe that the crackerjacks tasted better, the organs sounded sweeter, and that players before 1990 had to hit homeruns uphill, in the snow, with a broom handle.

“Lets consciously make note with our various media circle satellites, that because no pitcher at this moment in time has close to 300 wins before they retire or get fat or lose interest in playing baseball in Minnesota, Mr. Glavine will therefore become The Last Starfighter, and we can once again spit on the current baseball generation while literally fluffing the dead porn stars of the sports past.”

While the last paragraph assuredly paraphrases the actual conversation that must’ve taken place between The Smoking Man and George Bodenheimer, the facts in no way add up to the epic proportions insinuated by most of the mass sports media this past week, in relation to Glavine’s 300th victory. If Tom had another win for each time a reporter has said “The game has changed!” in the past week, he’d be threatening Cy Young, who of course did actually play when the game was different. Cy Young started 40 plus games 11 times in 20 years, and of course, without specialized relief, received a decision in most of those games, leading to the most losses in Major League history, along with his wins record. In fact, 11 out of 23 members of the 300 win club played at the turn of the century. Dead ball, none of the good drugs, spit balls, less talented groupies massaging hitter’s hands…any of these reasons can account for the relative deluge of 300 game winners during this error, and of course the drop off that occurs in the 60 years following 1920, where only 3 men were able to amass 300 victories. By many accounts, most people believed the 300 win plateau would never be reached again following the 1920’s, and the introduction of the new fangled, legitimately interesting games. Indeed, within the years of 1930-1980, only Warren Spahn was able to blow by the 300 mark (361), while Lefty Grove and Early Wynn ended their totals exactly at 300.

But as always, the 1980s hit history like a slow pitch softball homerun, registering 5 300 win dudes, with 1 more in the 90’s and now 3 in the new Aughts. That’s nearly 40 percent of all 300 game winners, coming in the last 20 years. Sure, Carlton, Ryan, and Niekro, pitched their share of games in the 60’s, where yes, at times they would start 40 times in a season (although not once for Tom Seaver and only once for Don Sutton). So let’s eliminate these children of the revolution just for a moment, and count the remaining. The answer is of course, 3: Clemens, Maddux, and Glavine, which still accounts for 13 percent of all 300 game winners. The amount of times that these three, combined, have started 40 games in one season? Zero. Number of times any of these pitchers pitched 300 innings in one season? Zero. Were these gentlemen just pure phenoms who defied the world for their whole career? Well, Glavine started his career by going 9-21. So who knows. In marked contrast to the 300 game winners before them, the three combined have only 7 total seasons where one of them pitched more than 10 complete games, and Glavine has none of those. So pointing to that aspect seems suspect. Indeed, while of course pitchers don’t factor in as many decisions as in the past, you could argue that specialized pitchers have gotten better at what they do, thus ensuring fewer lost victories than in past years. Save totals would justify that. What we can ascertain from these stats is that the game is not really very different now than how it was when all three of these gentlemen started playing, in the late 80’s and early 90’s. In fact, it’s probably more pitcher friendly.

Oh wait…um..that’s right…No more steroids! Homeruns are significantly DOWN in 2007 then they were in 1997, when all three pitchers were arguably in their prime. So are runs per game. So wouldn’t one have to argue that the atmosphere around baseball is possibly better for a pitching revolution? Couldn’t it just be, as it exactly was from 1920-1961, that there is actually a good amount of dominant pitching within baseball, but it just so happens that the Koufax’s (Pedro Martinez?), the Bob Gibson’s (Randy Johnson?), the Juan Marichal’s (Johan Santana?) experience injury problems and find themselves at a loss for 4-5 important years in their career? By the end of each of those contemporary examples’ careers, it’ll be hard to argue that each was a better pitcher than Tom Glavine, just as it is widely accepted that Mark McGwire wasn’t the player Lou Gehrig was, despite their homerun totals. Mark McGwire was able to compile his homeruns despite early seasons in his career where he played significantly fewer games due to injury. Gehrig obviously had zero injury issues for his entire career, until the end, where his disease stopped him in his tracks, leaving him short of 500 home runs. See the correlation to 300 wins?

The point is, 300 wins is about two things: health and compilation, and as Clemens exemplifies with his 6 different trips to the DL over his career, it’s not even that much about health. Why is it crazy that some pitcher that hasn’t even stepped inside a major league ballpark could possibly be as good as any of these three pitchers we’re talking about, and, at least match their durability? Glavine is a Hall of Fame pitcher, without question, but so are a lot of pitchers pitching right now. Is it simply impossible to believe that someone down the line will combine both the skill, and luck in not getting injured to pitch until his mid-40’s? As I mentioned above, Glavine didn’t even seem to have that skill until his 3rd season, and in reality, having only gone 58-54 in his last 6 seasons, he only had it for half of his career.

Doing the math, if you win 15 games per year for 20 seasons, you’ll have 300 wins on the nose. See? Don’t you feel a little bit silly about saying it can’t happen ever again? You don’t even need to have a tremendous winning percentage to do that, as exemplified by the 8 times Phil Niekro finished at or under .500.

Just because there’s nobody close right now doesn’t mean we should all have a sexy party by busting out the words “never again.” The frequency of 300 game winners in the past 50 years has increased dramatically, and even if say, there’s no winner for the next 25 years (roughly the amount of time necessary from tommorow’s date for some kid out of anywhere to get noticed, get drafted, get some minor league time in, come up and start turning heads, and win consistently for 20 seasons), you’d still be at a better pace than we were in 1930, where’d there was a 30 year period with only one 300th victory.

All the old guard can probably start saying it’s the last 300th victory they’ll ever see. But you’d have to catch ‘em while they’re switching out volumes of Ken Burns's Baseball on their laserdisc machine and in between masturbating to Buddy Holly records and Micky Mantle posters.