Today on the blog, we take a look at my 1989 "Career-Capper" for
Hall of Fame pitcher Don Sutton, from my recent custom set released a
couple months back:
Everything Sutton did led him to Cooperstown,
where he can proudly display his 324 wins, 58 shutouts and 3574
strikeouts over 774 games, 756 of which were starts.
Over his 23 years as a Major League pitcher, he was a part of six
Pennant winners, and a minor part of a World Championship team during
his final year in 1988 with the team he spent most of his career with,
the Los Angeles Dodgers.
There are those that say Sutton, like a few other players who
racked up big numbers, was a product of "tenure over domination", that
is, that the numbers he garnered in the bigs was more about the amount
of years he played over a bunch of dominating seasons.
I don't find that as a problem actually.
Being that there are just as few guys who played a long time while
staying very productive as those legends who dominated for a somewhat
brief time during their careers, I like to see the Don Suttons, Phil
Niekros, Eddie Murrays and Tony Perez' get their
due.
Almost a quarter-century of productivity on a Major League mound,
leading to numbers like Sutton put up are definitely worth a plaque in
Cooperstown, no?
Hope you all agree…