Blyleven earned overdue call to Hall
It was a pleasure to watch some of the television highlights put together to honor Bert Blyleven’s long-overdue entry into baseball’s Hall of Fame. It brought back some stirring memories of just how exceptional Blyleven was when he pitched for the Twins in two stretches, covering half of his 22-year Major League career.
Most of the highlights showed Blyleven’s mesmerizing curveball. The righthander would throw that pitch at considerable speed. If the batter was right-handed, he obviously had no interest in swinging at a pitch coming in just behind his shoulder blade. About the time the batter was deciding whether to hit the deck or simply bail out, the ball would start curving, and it would keep curving until it almost looked radar-controlled as it veered across the plate. Usually it would be a called strike, but in some cases a batter would stay with it, and venture a swing. And miss.
If the batter was left-handed, the highlights would show Blyleven firing the pitch in the same place, and the batter would understandably give up on a pitch that was a foot outside. But, sure enough, that amazing trajectory would guide the ball to curve in, invariably catching the outside corner, or maybe more, of the plate.
Everybody knows, or knew, that Blyleven had a deadly curve ball. Years before him, Camilo Pascual had the same sort of curve for the Twins when they first arrived in Minnesota. But the full sweep of Blyleven’s curve, and the greater velocity it carried, made it practically unhitable.
The part of the highlight show I enjoyed the most, however, was when it showed Blyleven throwing his fast ball. He had tremendous velocity on his fast ball, and as it approached the plate, it would sail, up and away to the right. Blyleven was interviewed while those pitches were being shown, and he said that while everybody talks about his curve ball, it was his fast ball that was his best pitch, because not only was it fast enough to blow past some of the best hitters in Major League ball at the time, but it meant those hitters had to be ready for it, and thus would be hopelessly overmatched by the curve.
Blyleven, who does a good job as color commentator on Twins Fox Sports North broadcasts, has been known for his outspoken hostility at the baseball writers who voted and prevented him from making the hall for 14 years. Now that he’s finally made it, he was extremely gracious and cordial in his remarks. However, he was absolutely correct in his first assessment — the writers were wrong, year after year, for not voting Blyleven in long ago.
True, he lost 250 games, while winning 287, but he was on some pretty poor teams during many of his 22 years. With the Twins from 1970-76, and then again after various trades brought him back in 1985, had a 149-138 record during those 11 years. But here are the most meaningful statistics that should have put Blyleven into the Hall years ago: He started 685 games and completed 242 of them; he is ninth among all pitchers in history with 60 shutouts; his 3,701 strikeouts rank him fifth among all pitchers in history.
In this era of pitch-count and specialization, how many of the current Twins pitchers will throw 242 complete games? If you guessed “None,†you’d be right on. How many current Twins pitchers will ever throw 60 shutouts? None, again. Realistically, then, nobody would argue if the top 10 pitchers in shutouts, or the top 10 in strikeouts, all were voted into the Hall of Fame. Blyleven qualifies on both counts, and has been sitting there ninth and fifth for all 14 years he had to wait before getting the call.
Speaking of the Twins, don’t you just love to listen to all the media experts who alternate between pulling hamstrings trying to leap onto the bandwagon, and getting flat feet when jumping off it? Time after time, this season. The Twins made a fantastic run up from the worst record in the Major Leagues to get within striking distance of the Central Division lead. Then they lost twice to Cleveland last week at home, and virtually everybody wrote them off all over again. So they won the next two, to split the four-game series, and everybody was back on the bandwagon. Next, Detroit came to Minneapolis and whipped the Twins twice, and while the Twins came back to win the third game, they lost the fourth, and again the naysayers threw in the towel.
Then it was off to Texas, where the Twins got humiliated 20-6 in a game that, hard to believe, wasn’t as close as the score indicated. Nick Blackburn gave up three in the first, three in the second, and three in the third. They turned the ball over to Jose Mijares, and he escaped the third but gave up five in the fourth. The classic was that Michael Cuddyer, who has moved in from the outfield to play infield when necessary, actually came in to save the beleaguered bullpen and threw a shutout inning — better than any Twins actual pitcher on Monday night.
That 20-6 blowout, of course, signaled the ultimate doomsaying throughout the radio and newspaper cynics in the Twin Cities. Game 2 of the series came around and the Twins, after blowing a 3-0 lead, fell behind 7-3, then improbably rallied dramatically to win 9-8. In the top of the ninth, the Twins caught fire on a pinch-hit double by Jim Thome and a crucial infield-chop single by much-maligned Japanese rookie Tsuyoshi Nishioka, which caught the Twins up at 8-8, setting the stage forJoe Mauer to come off the bench for a 3-2 line drive double to left center to win the game. Joe Nathan closed it with a strong last of the ninth.
The point is, losing a couple games and then winning a couple games was impressive, and coming back from a 20-6 rout for a thrilling 9-8 victory — followed by another victory and then a loss for a four-game split in Texas — has to confuse the bandwagon jumpers. Perhaps the Twins dug themselves too deep a hole to win the pennant, but they have made a fantastic bid to get back into it, and in a 162-game season, it’s absurd for even self-appointed experts to read the scope of the whole season into a bad game or two, or 10. True, the Twins didn’t match up too well against Cleveland and Detroit, and Texas, but those three are among the best teams in the American League this season, and the Twins were 5-7 in the 12-game killer drill against them. Had they pulled out one move victory, they’d have been 6-6. And if they get on a roll, they indeed could catch up.
And if they don’t? Well, we can all just tune out the “experts” and enjoy the quite remarkable entertainment value each game contains. And remember, the Twins already have a better winning percentage than all the naysayers and bandwagon jumpers combined.
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About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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