I Can't Make 1979 Make No Sense

[stevejrogers]

Couple of tragic baseball happenings of course with the death of Thurman Munson, and tragic in lesser terms, but still in terms of how his life would turn out in the immediate aftermath of, last full season for J.R. Richard.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Who the fuck is Keith Hernandez and who the hell is he to hit .344?

[Edgy MD]

There was certainly that.

J.R. Richard declared Tom Seaver to be "old" early in the season. His time was done and the new breed that Richard had personified would be taking over.

Seaver's second half not only gave him a better season than Richard, but as Rogers noted, Richard was through before his time. Nolan Ryan was, somehow, just getting started.

I guess that's one MORE thing that's strange about 1979 --- the lost generation of starters. So many absolute greats were coming around the final turn --- Seaver, Sutton, Palmer, Niekro, Carlton and such --- but despite Richard's braggadocio, there was almost nobody to take their place. And some of these guys managed to hang on well past their sell-by dates as the likes of Morris, Steib, Rogers, Lea, Caldwell, Richard, and all those young O's tried to pass themselves off as somebodies. As aces! No wonder folks think Morris was good. The context was lousy. A buncha Candelerias.

It wasn't until Gooden and Clemens that people again got a sniff of what an ace really looked like.

A lost generation. And I blame cocaine.

[stevejrogers]

So many absolute greats were coming around the final turn --- Seaver, Sutton, Palmer, Niekro, Carlton and such

Speaking of Knucksie, at 21-20, the last guy to win and lose 20 in the same year!

You know, it is kind of a shame that prior to Mike Maroth, the last 20 game loser was pretty much an obscure Brian Kingman. Had it been HOFer Phil Niekro, or even a guy like Jerry Koosman who had a solid big league career (I've seen people place his overall career over Glavine's) maybe the stigma of a 20 game loser would not have been so great.

Speaking of the A's, and going back to your point. 1979 starts Vida Blue's career tailspin as well. Also, Dock Ellis' big league career ends in 1979 (but not before donning Metly pinstripes), to pick another star that burned bright in the early 1970s but crashed and burned by decade's end.

[Frayed Knot]

Note that most of those great pitchers coming up on the finish line were NL guys most or all of their career. Couple them with the half-generation older and again mostly NL ones who had already petered out (Koufax, Marichal, Gibson, etc.) and I think you can tab 1979 as the rough end of the nearly two-decade long era of the NL as the stronger league.

Part of that supremacy was the quicker/earlier embrace of black players and the more aggressive speed game (Halberstam: October 1964). But the bigger share IMO was that - for whatever reason - NL ace pitchers were simply better and/or better better for longer than their AL counterparts.

Koufax, Gibson, Seaver, Carlton, Marichal, Sutton, Drysdale = much > than Guidry, Kaat, Chance, Tiant, Palmer, Hunter, McDowell

[Edgy MD]

Yup. A few other very-good-for-a-short-time AL-types in there include Lolich, McLain, and Blue.

Among the guys who failed to pick up the baton at the end of the seventies, count Eckersley.

Co. Caine.

[stevejrogers]

Just to further illustrate the point about the downfall of pitching post 1970s. 13 of the decade's CY award winners were future HOFers.

Granted that includes 2 each for Seaver, Carlton and Perry, and 3 for Palmer. But it still shows of the quality of pitching in that era.

In the 1980s, Carlton would rack up two more Cy Youngs, Rollie Fingers gets an oddball AL one in 1981, and you have Roger Clemens' back-to-back in 86-87. Questions about Clemens' HOF status aside, that is still not an impressive tally of HOFers, or potential HOFers.

You can talk nice MLB careers out of Fernando Valenzuela, Rick Sutcliffe, Dwight Gooden, Orel Hersisher, Frank Viola and Bret Saberhagen, but for the most part the CYs of the 1980s pale in comparison to earlier decades, and later decades.

[Edgy MD]

And why didn't guys like Dwight Gooden, Steve Howe, Joaquin Andujar, Oil Can Boyd, and Lary Sorenson fashion Hall of Fame careers? Say it with me.

[stevejrogers]

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[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

themetfairy wrote: I met D-Dad in 1979, and that's the year he became a Mets fan. Everything else pales in comparison to that.

Did you convert him? Or did he pledge allegiance to the Mets prior to meeting you?

[Guest themetfairy]

metsguyinmichigan wrote: themetfairy wrote: I met D-Dad in 1979, and that's the year he became a Mets fan. Everything else pales in comparison to that. Did you convert him? Or did he pledge allegiance to the Mets prior to meeting you?

The former. He met me and then decided to adopt my team (which was relatively easy for him, not having grown up with one of his own).

[Guest cooby]

Pirates TV theme song a year or so later was "Born to be Wild".