Oh What A Relief He Was

The years between the Cubs' prolonged winning if ultimately not winning it all days in the late 60s and early 70s and the Tribune Company's takeover in 1983 brought a decade of leanness -- from Whitey Lockman to George Mitterwald, Herman Franks to Dave Kingman. Sure, there were individual highlights along the way, batting titles and such, but the Cubs of that period -- my formative years as a fan -- were frustrating because for every move forward, they seemed to take two steps backward.

One thing those Cubs did seem to find in abundance was talented relief pitchers, and the best of all, Bruce Sutter, just made it into the Hall of Fame. Sutter came up through the Cub system and, with instruction from Cub coaches (there's a concept!!) perfected an almost unhittable pitch. His split-fingered fastball, or "splitter'' would dive abruptly into the dirt as it approached the hitting zone. Many of his pitches ended up not being strikes, caught by the catcher near the dirt around the plate, but hitters couldn't resist swinging and missing at them. Surprisingly, walks weren't a big problem, when it looked like all hitters had to do was layoff his trick pitch. When he came into a game, earlier than today's "closer''' specialists, it was almost an automatic "W." The Cubs and other teams rode this one-trick pony long and hard.

I can still see manager "Ballpark'' Franks (so dubbed by the Tribune's clever Bob Verdi) summoning Sutter in without fail whenever his starting pitcher began to falter. I'm not sure he had "setup'' men in defined roles as they do now. It might be the seventh inning, Sutter got the call and usually finished the job (consult your favorite sabermaticians for the actual numbers). Wrigley wasn't yet the "in'' place to be for newbies and yuppies, so Sutter never acquired cult status like later relief pitchers, when their appearance in a save situation is enough to lift everyone out of their seats. But there was an acknowledgement among the knowing, appreciation, applause and appropriate ovations, whenever he got up and came in, simply because we felt so good about our chances. Relief pitchers can really ride a fine line between success and failure, being adored and run out of town, but I don't recall Sutter ever betting booed in a Cub uniform. It may have happened, but never regularly. He was too good, too dependable, too much a "savior'' in the strict sense of the word. They don't call it relief without a reason. More recent relievers like Joe Borowski and Ryan Dempster make me nervous, because I don't quite trust their stuff or control in tight situations, but Sutter just seemed to have the hitters so confounded, there was no need for such anxiety. In today's game they might "catch up'' to him sooner, but they didn't while he was a Cub.

In the summer of 1977 the Cubs and Sutter made an early dash toward the N. L. East crown, overtaking the favorites from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. With players like Jerry Morales, Manny Trillo and Bill Buckner leading the way, they had the Wrigley faithful excited again; I think I was there the day they beat the Pirates to take over first place. But Sutter got hurt and had to be disabled in mid-season and that was a death knell. The Cubs acquired Dave Giusti, another reliever with a specialty pitch, the forkball, who had been a big part of Pittsburgh's pennant winners. Giusti didn't have it anymore and the Cubs fell apart, as was so often the case after promising starts in that era (this was where the theories about "day baseball'' hurting the team came into prominence).

Philadelphia won over 100 games and those 1977 Cubs were only .500 at the end, 81-81, but Sutter recovered to win the Cy Young two years later, and appeared to be a mainstay. Why the Cubs ever traded him to archrival St. Louis remains a mystery, just as the dumping of Lee Smith was, in retrospect, a colossal blunder. (Smith was the scapegoat for the wrenching 1984 NLCS loss to San Diego, an admission made by then-manager Jim Frey.) Making matters worse, of course, is that the Cubs extracted s o little in return for these players. But relief pitching was not quite the chrished commodity it is now. These days, if you have a fireproof closer you don't get rid of him unless there are severe financial considerations, and that wasn't the case back 25 years or more. The Cubs let these two go along with Willie Hernandez, a lefty who went to Detroit and won a Cy Young award for himself.

Sutter was not a beloved Cub because he didn't stay long enough, and never played for a postseason team until he got to St. Louis. But he was the Cubs first great closer of the modern era (Durocher mismanaged his bullpen or simply didn't use it enough) and deserves a tip of the cap for some of the excitement and excellence he helped bring back to a franchise that was a habitual loser in the late '70s. I'm not surprised to learn he's going to be donning the Cardinal cap in Cooperstown. He went on to get a fat contract with Atlanta at end of his career. While he didn't compile astonishing numbers with a long career like Lee Smith's, he gets in the Hall on the basis of being the very best, dominating player at his position for a short period of time. It's a borderline call to induct him ahead of such fireballing relievers as Smith and Goose Gossage (who also pitched briefly for the Cubs at the end of his stellar career), but Cub fans who saw Sutter in his prime will take any little piece of greatness and cherish it.