Why Glavine's 300th is More Impressive Than Most...
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by Ssj3alucard
When Tom Glavine threw the final pitch of win number 299 on Wednesday, the countdown officially began.
He had to start thinking about who he would invite to his next start. He had to start thinking about how he was going to get them all there. However, he is still insistent that he doesn’t yet belong in the company of the greats that have achieved the accomplishment he is about to attain.
“I’m proud of the company that I’m getting into and the company I’m being discussed with.” Glavine said. “They are great players in the game. By no means, do I think that I’m there. There is still work to do and beyond that I’m interested in getting on a roll and getting on it at the right time.”
While win number 300 clearly means a lot to Glavine, he seems remarkably unconcerned about the whole situation. He seems more worried about winning games for the logo on the front of his jersey than he does for the name on the back. It seems like any pressure he is putting on himself is more about helping the Mets right the ship and put away the Phillies and Braves, two division rivals who they have let hang around too long.
However, there is no doubt as to what the next win will do for Glavine’s legacy. The soft-tossing lefty is about to enter one of baseball’s most elite fraternities. Only 22 men have ever won 300 games in their career and most of them come from a bygone era. A time when pitchers threw 150 pitches a game and pitched on two or three days rest. They had many more opportunities to pick up victories than Glavine has had. In the modern game, with five man rotations and three inning bullpens, it’s even more impressive that Glavine has had a career like the one his is currently finishing up.
Glavine is the most “human” of all the legends on the list of 300 game winners. He is not Nolan Ryan; he does not throw 100 miles an hour and intimidate hitters before they step in the box. He is not Roger Clemens and did not ride his strikeout rate to a place in Cooperstown. Instead, he fought out victories and pitched his way out of jams his whole career. This milestone will be a testament to courage and consistency more than anything else.
“Durability and consistency are the biggest things,” Glavine said. “But there are times where you have to struggle and have to pitch games when you don’t have your good stuff so it’s not necessarily the most talented guy or there would be a lot more of them. I think it’s a level of consistency that we all strive for, and it’s not easy to get.”
Consistency has been key for Glavine as he averaged 15 wins a season over his much celebrated career. However, the most impressive part has been his ability to reinvent himself as he aged.
In Atlanta, he had always relied on extending the outside corner of the plate, getting umpires to give him calls on close pitches. However, with his move to New York and the advent of the QuesTec umpire evaluation system, he got fewer of those calls and struggled in his first few seasons in Queens.
Glavine would have to reinvent himself in order to survive. Now, he has become adept at using both sides of the plate to get hitters out. Through extensive work with pitching coach Rick Peterson, the complete change of Glavine’s style has extended his career and allowed him the reach the cusp of history and a place where all pitchers dream of eventually being.
However, the aforementioned modern era doesn’t lend itself to 20 game winners and long careers. Will we ever see another pitcher throw the final pitch of his 300 th win?
“I don’t know,” Glavine said when asked about the potential of anyone else reaching the 300 win plateau. “I’ve always felt like Randy [Johnson] would do it. It’s hard for me to believe that a 300 game winner will never happen again. Twenty years ago, no one looked at me and thought I would do it.”
He’s right. All they saw was a soft-throwing lefty. All they saw was a kid who was nothing more than human.
