TOMMY JOHN AND HOW A FIGHT COST HIM A SHOT AT 300
Here are the list of 300 game winners - excluding the guys who pitched almost exclusively pre-1901. First thing that jumps out is just how good the early Philadelphia Athletics were. Look at the win-loss totals for Rube Waddell, Eddie Plank and Chief Bender. I will write more about them in the future but right now let's look at the bottom of the list and poor Tommy John finishes with 299 career victories.
Code:
Cy Young 1890-1911 456-268
Randy Johson 1988-2009 364-204
Rube Waddell 1898-1913 359-129
Roger Clemens 1984-2007 356-207
Steve Carlton 1965-1987 351-227
Bert Blyleven 1970-1991 345-207
Dutch Leonard 1913-1934 330-230
Eddie Plank 1901-1914 320-136
Bob Feller 1936-1955 310-178
Phil Niekro 1964-1986 309-250
Don Sutton 1966-1987 306-194
Nolan Ryan 1966-1989 304-183
Lefty Grove 1925-1942 301-183
Chief Bender 1903-1919 300-95
Tommy John 1963-1989 299-190
So I looked at Tommy John's player page to see when he retired and why didn't he stick around for a shot at 300. He was 46 years old in his final season and looking at his last couple of seasons he clearly was out of gas and just hanging around for a shot at 300. The 1986-89 New York Yankees were bad, going 71-91, 69-93, 60-102 and 69-93 so they really had no real need to get rid of John. Funny thing is in 1990, the year after John retired, the Yankees won 96 games made the playoffs for the first time since 1982.
But back to the topic at hand. I know John won 5 games in 1989, to finish one shy of the 300 career mark. I am not sure when he won them as I did not create yearly almanac pages but he was on the Yankees roster as late as August 27th because I saw this entry:
08/27/1989 Suspended 9 games after ejection following a brawl.
So he missed one, possibly two starts, plus may have been in line for a win in the game he was ejected from. So the brawl quite conceivably cost him a shot at 300 victories. He retired that October with a 299-190 record, a little better than the 288-231 real life career mark he posted.
He had a great career, winning two World Series rings with Boston in 1975 and 1978 (no curse of the Bambino in this universe) but 300 wins just sounds so much better than 299. The fight itself may have been a factor but injuries played a bigger role. He missed almost the entire 1975 season with shoulder troubles (Tommy John surgery perhaps?) but did return for the playoffs that year. He won at least 20 games five times in his career and was a key piece in the Red Sox glory years of the 1970s. Boston traded 4 players - Syd O'Brien, Billy Conigliaro, Tony Muser and Luis Alvarado - to acquire John from Cleveland in the winter of 1968-69. Surprisingly, he only made the All-Star team twice in his career. I suppose that is a testament to the large number of great starting pitchers in this era. John was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995 joining a stellar class that included Mike Schmidt, Nolan Ryan and a pair of his teammates from the Boston World Series winners in Jim Rice and Fred Lynn.