Thursday, April 20, 2017

April 20th

Baseball pitching great Tom Seaver of The New York Mets earns his first major league victory over The Chicago Cubs, 6-1.  Seaver will later pitch for the crosstown Chicago White Sox.


Seaver had an amazing Major League Career, posting 311 victories and 205 defeats over 20 seasons, the first ten of which were with The New York Mets.  (Yep ... he was with them when The Miracle Mets won the National League Pennant in 1969 ... all the more fitting since his first major league victory was over The Chicago Cubs!)

In 1977 he moved to The Cincinnati Reds (where he stayed through 1982) ... and then he was back with The Mets for a season in 1983 before joining our Chicago White Sox for three seasons (1984 - 1986) for his first of three million dollar-plus salary seasons.

He's a four-time 20-game winner (including 25 wins in that 1969 pennant-winning season) and struck out an incredible 3640 hitters in 4783 innings.  (In 1970, he struck out ten straight batters, which is STILL a Major League Record to this day.)

He's also a twelve-time All Star and, without question, one of the most highly respected pitchers in Major League History.

In 1992 he was inducted into The Baseball Hall Of Fame, earning votes on 425 of the 430 ballots cast.  (What the hell were these other five guys thinking ... or drinking ... that day?!?!)

*****

We did a big salute to 1969 on the website back in 2014 ... not quite as elaborate as our 1967 Series ... but we still covered a lot of ground.

For the lowdown on the collapse of The Chicago Cubs ... and the guys who took advantage, here are two articles we ran way back when on The Miracle Mets:
Scroll around that general area and you'll some of our other 1969 features, too!