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Saturday, May 9, 2015

We Need More Baseball Players Like Tony Gwynn, Tom Seaver, Robin Yount and Harold Baines

Today would have been Tony Gwynn's 55th birthday.  The eight-time batting champion died of cancer last year.  Though I spent lots of time at Wrigley Field, I never saw him much from my usual left-field seats since he roamed right-field and center-field for most of his career.

When players got injured at Wrigley Field they were taken the the emergency room where my wife worked.  When Gwynn had an issue during a game, he was dropped off and could barely stand.  The guy checking him in asks his name and hears Tony say "Anthony Gwynn".  My wife quickly realizes who he is, but the other worker needs to see him before realizing that it's Tony.

Gwynn started too late to get a Kellogg's card.  It would have been great to have Gwynn, Ripken, Sandberg, Boggs and Mattingly on Kellogg's cards.

I always liked Tom Seaver even though he never played for the Cubs.  I tried to get my brother to get us to New York to see him attempt (and win) his 300th game, but that fell through.



On this day in 1984 Tom Seaver pitched 8 1/3 innings to get the win against Milwaukee.  He threw  pitches including his last one that ended up as a homer by Robin Yount.




Just another game for Seaver unless you know what happened a few hours before that.  On May 8th, the White Sox and Brewers played for 18 innings until the game was suspended due to time.  Innings 19 through 25 were played the next day before the regularly scheduled game.

Seaver pitched the top of the 25th inning getting Yount to ground into a double play.  He got the win when Harold Baines homered to end the game.  Yount's stats for the game were 3 for 10 with 3 steals while grounding into 3 double plays.




The box score is a great read.  One of my favorite announcers, Tom Paciorek, had five hits in nine at-bats.  White Sox pitchers Ron Reed and Floyd Bannister batted and Seaver was in the lineup but his turn at bat didn't happen thanks to Baines.  Don Sutton started for Milwaukee and Rollie Fingers blew a save, not for Sutton who left the game in a 1-1 tie.

I remember watching these games.  I guess I'll need to see what other starting pitchers won two games on one day.  Old-school pitchers and knuckle ball pitchers are probably going to show up on that list.

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