300: To Victory

Quite a weekend for baseball, no?

For those of you who live under a rock, baseball – the American sport which most relies on its past for its current sense of status – experienced quite a historic weekend. Within the span of two days, San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds hit his 755th home run (which tied Hank Aaron for the most career round-trippers), New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez hit his 500th home run (setting the record for the youngest in baseball history to such a milestone), and New York Mets pitcher Tom Glavine won his 300th game.

I’m going to set aside the home run-based achievements for the time being, and focus on Glavine winning number 300. Glavine’s win against the Cubs last night marked the 23rd time in baseball history a pitcher has reached this milestone, and only the 5th time in the history of the game that a left-handed starter has made it to 300. It’s a tremendous achievement, one that should absolutely be applauded – after all, it’s a triumph based in both longevity, team strength, and personal dominance. Glavine’s been a healthy, front-line starter who produces time and time again, and for that alone, he warrants every breath of praise that he’ll receive.

Yet, I turned off the television last night with a bad taste in my mouth. Why? If I could trace my feeling of disgust to one thing, it would be the constant speculation, by both the broadcasting team responsible for the game as well as the analysts on SportsCenter, that Glavine was “the last 300 game winner.” I found this speculation terribly irresponsible, and I think it unnecessarily overshadowed what should have been a moment of unadulterated triumph for Glavine.

I understand that the current statistics point to no pitchers achieving this milestone any time soon. The next closest to 300 wins is Arizona Diamondbacks starter Randy Johnson, who may be perpetually mired at 283 wins due to chronic back injuries. More than half of the current starters with 200 wins are forty-plus years old and, as such, unlikely to make it through another 100 starts, let alone 100 wins.

However, and especially in the sport of baseball, saying the words “never again” is an act of myopic foolishness. And those were the words that were thrown about over and over again by ESPN analysts Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. (I’m not surprised about Morgan’s arrogance about this – I could go on and on about his commentary, which tends to veer into the land of insane rambling on a regular basis.)

300 wins might seem undoable right now, but you know what? The first pitcher to reach this milestone did so in 1888. This means that the achievement has only been done 23 times in 119 years – and we’ve seen 3 pitchers get there over the last 4 years (Roger Clemens, now of the Yankees, and Greg Maddux, now of the Padres, are the other two). Here’s another fun stat – did you know that there were no 300 game winners between the years of 1963 (Early Wynn) and 1982 (Gaylord Perry)? That’s a span of 19 years that bridged the Kennedy and Reagan administrations! At the end of the 1963 season, Gaylord Perry had precisely 4 career wins.
Look, perhaps Tom Glavine’s win is the end of an era of achievement for starting pitching. Yes, relief pitching is a more dominant force than it was, say, ten years ago, and pitching has become a more specialized art form. However, unless they’re eliminating the statistic of the win altogether, nobody should ever be counted out. Just as records are made to be broken, milestones are made to be met.