Tom Seaver

Twelve-time All-Star Tom Seaver was, arguably, the greatest pitcher in the major leagues between the retirement of Sandy Koufax and the blossoming of Roger Clemens, who was his teammate on the 1986 Boston Red Sox. Seaver, who won 311 games in his career, likely would have won more if he had been on a powerhouse team like the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, or Cincinnati Reds during the heyday of the Big Red Machine. (He did pitch, and very well, for the Reds towards the end of the Big Red Machine dynasty.) However, he pitched for the anemic hitting Mets, and helped pitch them into two World Series: 1969, which the Mets won in five games over the dynastic Baltimore Orioles of manager Earl Weaver, and 1973, which the Mets lost in seven to the dynastic Oakland A's of owner Charles O. Finley. A five-time 20-game winner, "Tom Terrific" won a then-record three Cy Young awards, in 1969 (the year he came in #2 in MVP voting), 1973 and 1975. (He ranked in the top five in Cy Young voting eight times). Nine times in his 20-year career he had an Earned Run Average of 2.59 or less, which placed him in the top four of National League pitchers with the lowest E.R.A.s seven times. He led the National League in E.R.A. in 1970, 1971 and 1973, in wins three times ('69, '75 and '79) (he came in second four other times) and in strikeouts five times. Tom Seaver finished his career with a 311-205 Won-Loss record for a .603 winning percentage, with 61 shutouts and 231 complete games, 3,640 strikeouts and a 2.86 E.R.A. However, that was not the sum of Seaver the player or the man. He was emblematic of new type of player, classy and erudite, with progressive views, rather than the skirt-chasing, drunken troglodytes of the post-dead ball era. (During the Dead Ball era, gentlemanly college graduates like Christy Mathewson were common in baseball.) Seaver helped usher in a new kind of ballplayer, and a new kind of ballgame. It helped make baseball reposition itself as America's past time, until the disastrous strike of 1994 derailed the sport into an era of steroids and souped-up baseballs in an attempt to get more American fannies into the seats under the commissionership of former used-card salesman Bud Selig.