Tom Seaver Passes Away

[TexasRedsFan]

I watched him the last couple years he was with the Reds, but never in person. He was a good commentator too during the Yankees/Dodgers series (77 or 78, or maybe both).

Haven't been many pitchers with the combo of power and smarts like he had. Trying to think of comps today......maybe Scherzer or Cole.

I hope in his last few moments he was surrounded by loved ones. RIP, Tom Terrific.

[SteelSD]

I own exactly one signed baseball, because after I received it I didn't feel that I really needed another baseball player's autograph. For me, I already had the grail so chasing anything else seemed to be...just less.

That's how I felt, and feel, about Tom Seaver.

[Mutaman]

I’m not quite old enough to remember him, but I know this much: people who were watching when he was in his prime usually say he’s the best they ever saw. That’s really all I need to know about how good he was. RIP.

No reasonable person who ever saw Koufax says that another pitcher is the best they ever saw.

[kaldaniels]

No reasonable person who ever saw Koufax says that another pitcher is the best they ever saw.

1999 Pedro says that is an outdated take.

[foster15]

Just an interesting tidbit I realized, then double checked. George Hendrick made the final out to give Seaver the No-Hitter. The next time the Reds came that close to a no-hitter was 6 years later when Mario Soto lost his no-hitter with 2 outs in the ninth to a George Hendrick homer. Guess experience in certain situations makes you better in them.

[foster15]

Thanks for posting that video. I had forgotten that Don Werner, not Johnny Bench, was behind the plate for Seaver's no-hitter. Truth be told, I had forgotten about Don Werner, period.
Watching the video, especially the ninth inning, I noticed how quickly Seaver pitched. It seemed as if after each pitch it took him ten seconds or less after he received the ball back from the catcher before he released another pitch.
Great game call by Marty in the ninth as well.

Another tidbit. During Johnny Bench's years as a starting catcher with the Reds, there were 3 no-hitters for the good guys. Bench only caught one of them. Corrales caught George Culver's. Bench caught Maloney's against the Astros(Don Wilson turned around and pitched one against Reds the very next game) and Werner caught Seaver's.

[RedsBaron]

There was a great article written by Pat Jordan called “The Constant Gardener” focusing on Seaver’s life post baseball. I can’t find it anywhere but if you find it then it’s a must read.

RIP to one of my favorites!!!

I read that article online last year on Sports Illustrated's web site. It is a terrific article.

[redhawkfish]

I imagine the trade for Junior was as exciting to young kids as the the trade for Seaver was for me as an eleven year old!

[SunDeck]

I remember one part of his book on pitching where he described using specific pitches on batters early in the game so that later in the game he could have room to do something to get them off balance, as in completely unexpected, later should the need arise. I think maybe it was Darrell Evans, who came up late in a tight game with men on base and Seaver got him to pop up with a pitch he knew he hadn't thrown to him in his prior at bats. It was such a great description of the details that made him so good.

[RFS62]

His intellect was just as impressive as his perfect form.

How sad that such a smart guy had to go that way.

[jimbroznan]

I went to the same Jr High and High School (Fresno High) as Seaver (he was 5 years ahead if me). He also worked in a small grocery in my neighborhood that I often shopped at. Fresno High also produced: Jim Maloney, Frank Chance, Dick Elseworthg, Pat Corrales, Dick Selma and Bobby Jones.

[RichRed]

My earliest memories as a Reds fan date back to 1977 when I was 8 years old so as far as I was concerned, Tom Seaver had always been a Reds pitcher. It was weird when I found that he had once pitched for the dumb Mets.

RIP to one of the best of all time. This one hurts.

[westofyou]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/s...gtype=Homepage

Tony La Russa, then the White Sox manager, had been ejected from that game and watched the late innings from a dugout tunnel, straining to see just a sliver of the field. With Dave Winfield coming up as the potential tying run in the eighth, La Russa’s trusted pitching coach, Dave Duncan, spoke at the mound with Seaver and catcher Carlton Fisk. Seaver looked tired, and he was.

“One thing about Tom — he would always tell you the truth,” La Russa said by phone Wednesday night. “So Dunc went out to talk to him and said, ‘Tom, I think you’ve had enough,’ and Tom said, ‘Yeah, I don’t think I have anything left.’

“But Fisk went up to him and said something like: ‘You’ve had enough? This is your ballgame! Nobody’s coming in from the bullpen to get Dave Winfield. This is you — you’re Tom Seaver!’”

This was one Hall of Famer challenging another Hall of Famer to pitch to a third Hall of Famer — and Seaver did not back down. He ran the count full to Winfield, then fanned him on a changeup and went on to complete the game.

“He was the most intelligent pitcher we’ve ever been around,” La Russa said. “He was a great competitor and had really good stuff, but as he got older, he was still great because he knew how to pitch. Like Greg Maddux, in a way — they would look at a hitter, know what the hitter was thinking and pitch away from it. He was the perfect pro.”

In those later years, especially, Seaver had an intuitive understanding of how to work around his limitations. Early in the 1985 season, after beating the Tigers in Detroit, Seaver noticed the home plate umpire, Jim Evans, at the hotel bar. He tapped Evans on the shoulder, thanked him for a job well done, but told him he had missed one pitch: a 1-1 fastball to Kirk Gibson in the middle innings. Evans was puzzled; he had called the pitch a strike.

“I don’t want you to call that pitch a strike,” Seaver said, as Evans recalled a few years ago. “That was a mistake. I got it up too high, like a ball or two above the waist, and I don’t want any batter to get used to swinging at that pitch. My fastball is still my best pitch, my bread-and-butter, but if I keep throwing that one up there, they’re going to kill me.”

Seaver would share such insights with teammates, with conditions. (“You had to earn his respect,” La Russa said. “He didn’t give it up carelessly.”) With the Reds, he saw something in Mario Soto, a young pitcher from the Dominican Republic who lacked polish but yearned to be great. Every morning at spring training, Soto would show up at 6 a.m., practicing his changeup alone against a concrete wall in the outfield.

“The only guy that discovered me and found out what I was doing was Tom Seaver,” Soto said a few years ago. “He was my teacher.”

Soto would sit beside Seaver during games, and at one point, Seaver asked him a question that seemed elementary: “Do you try to throw a strike with every pitch?”

Soto said he did; wasn’t that the whole point?

“No, no, no,” Seaver told him, and then Soto asked why. “‘Because you have pretty good control, and you want to take advantage of that,’” Soto recalled him saying. “From then on, I started doing that. From that day I knew I had good control, and then I started moving the ball in and out, up and down.”

In 1982 — his last year as Seaver’s teammate — Soto had the best strikeout-to-walk ratio in the majors.

[RED VAN HOT]

The only time I saw him pitch was on a cross country trip when passing through Houston in 1979. Seaver made a two run HR by Foster stand up and out dueled JR Richard 2-1. My family was restless, so I didn't stay for the second game.

It was also a year of gas shortages so I had to get into a long line the next morning at one of the few stations that had gas. Aside from the game, it was a trip from hell.

[Betterread]

He was an all time great pitcher. Always think of him as Mr. Met. He was unbelievably good right from his rookie year until after the Reds acquired him. He willed the Mets organization into success.