On the night of August 11, I attended a baseball game that had me sitting quite literally on the edge of my seat from the first pitch on. Indeed, that was the day Wilson Alvarez pitched his no-hitter for the White Sox; but that was done in the afternoon, against the Orioles, in Baltimore. The game I saw was at Wrigley Field, between the Cubs and the New York Mets, and the pitcher on the mound at the start of the game was Rick Sutcliffe.
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Those thoughts come readily to mind now, because it was seven years ago this week that it happened, but they were also fresh in our minds on that night in August, because it seemed they would soon be all we had left of him. Alvarez’s no-hitter, which most of us had seen that afternoon on the television, only heightened our senses for this drama. The dichotomies implicit between the two pitchers (Alvarez was young and threw hard, Sutcliffe was old and threw soft. Alvarez had allowed no hits, how many would Sutcliffe allow? Alvarez had made his debut with the White Sox, would this be Sutcliffe’s last game with the Cubs?) were readily apparent to anyone who thought to look for them. Our season-ticket next-door neighbor had even brought opera glasses for the occasion, and she kept them focused on Sutcliffe.
There he was, the same old form–red beard, long back, relatively short legs, and quirky, deliberate pitching delivery. The seriousness of his situation was not lost on him: using what was left of his fastball, he came high and tight with a purpose pitch to the second batter, Dave Magadan. He got through the first inning, allowing only a single to Gregg Jefferies, but then ran into trouble in the second, walking leadoff man Howard Johnson, who went to third on a single by Mackey Sasser. Action in the Cubs’ bull pen. If Sutcliffe were removed here, he would not likely pitch again for the Cubs. After allowing a sacrifice fly to score a run, however, he forced Kevin Elster to ground into an inning-ending double play.
“There are some frustrated hitters over there,” Sutcliffe said afterward, “because after the first inning I think that food poisoning kind of kicked in on me a little bit, and I didn’t have a whole lot left–basically just threw change-ups and moved the fastball around a little bit. It was nice to get the runs early [the Cubs scored two in the first, two more in the third, and another in the fifth], and everybody it seemed made a nice defensive play. The numbers probably look pretty good, but they’re not going to indicate how I really pitched because our defense made some great plays.”
“I mean, I got Billy fired once before,” he said with a muffled chuckle, “and had I not pitched well, I might’ve got him fired again. Hopefully, he’s going to be out there a long time.”
Manager Jim Essian said, “I’d be happy to have Rick come back and pitch for me next year,” emphasizing the point by saying he was “pitching smart…pretty much putting on a pitching clinic.” But he also underscored the whole outing by saying, “He got two big outs in the first, otherwise it could have been an entirely different story.” In other words, it could have been the end of the story. That’s the mystery of the new Sutcliffe. Depending on pitching smarts rather than overpowering stuff to do the job for him, he gives up some vicious line drives and tries to entice the batters to hit them where the fielders are playing. Is there a dependable method to this, or has he simply been making sacrifices to the baseball gods?
