1980 Kellogg's Baseball Card Backs - #49 Tom Seaver

Do lots of people still play Bridge?  I never learned how to play it.  

Kellogg's wasn't impressed with his 16-6 record and 187 strikeouts.  The card does mention that he did enough to continue a path toward the Hall of Fame.

Not on the card - he did finish fourth in the Cy Young voting, trailing Bruce Sutter, Joe Niekro and J.R. Richard.  Sutter (10 first place votes), Niekro (9), Richard (4) and Kent Tekulve (1) got first place votes. 

Seaver got Cy Young votes in ten of 13 years (1969 - 1981).  He won three times, finished second twice and third once.  

He ended his career with 61 shutouts, which is now seventh all-time.  That won't change much since no one pitches shutouts in today's game.  They don't even pitch complete games.  Yes, I know that the game is different today in many ways.

Here is the active list of pitchers with the most shutouts - Kershaw (15).  I'm not going to list anyone else because did you notice I put that in correctly as 15?  Another reason to not list anyone else - CC Sabathia is the active leader in complete games with 38 and he's only had 10 in the last 10 years.

Active pitchers throw so few complete games today that Cy Young has more than all of the active pitchers in MLB combined.  Look it up.  Yes, Young's game was different than the game Tom Seaver played and today's game has changed a lot since Seaver played. 

Since strikeouts are happening at a record pace in today's game, Seaver's rank in whiffs will change.  He was fifth all-time after 1979 and now he's sixth.  There are a handful of current pitchers who could surpass him in the future.

Back to my paper route.  His trade in 1977 was another one of the stories that I stopped to read before delivering the paper.