Ron Guidry “Gator Wrestling”
For more than a century, pitchers were evaluated on the basis of Wins — plain and simple. There was Cy Young, with his five hundred eleven victories and Walter Johnson with his four hundred sixteen. And then there was everyone else. Strikeouts eventually became the sexy stat and earned run average was the discerning fan’s stat. But the prevailing logic was that both were in service of the uber-stat — the one that mattered most of all. Wins. It’s why the annual award for pitching greatness is named after Cy Young and not Mordecai Brown (1.04 ERA in 1906) or Old Hoss Radbourne (441 Ks in 1884). And it’s why, for nearly half a century, the winners of said award frequently led the league in Wins. Strikeouts were fun. Low ERAs were impressive. But Wins were the measure of a pitcher’s greatness.
More recently, however, things have changed. In the age of advanced analytics, attention has shifted towards statistics that are less “situation dependent.” ERA is valued, but perhaps less so than WHIP (Walks plus Hits divided by Innings Pitched) and FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching). The real eggheads look at things like WaaWL% (basically, Win / Loss percentage adjusted for an average team rather than the team and environment that the pitcher plays for), WPA (Win probability added by pitcher) and cWPA (championship probability added by pitcher). Where a pencil or abacus once sufficed, award voters now require TI-83 calculators.
Not so long ago, Bob Welch and LaMarr Hoyt dominated the Cy Young voting because of their gaudy Win totals. Far away from the smoke filled baseball writers rooms, though, Bill James and friends were quick to reveal the disproportionate contributions of those pitchers’ teams. Welch and Hoyt had very good seasons for great teams. Nowadays, the high school math of it all is canon. Jacob Degrom took home consecutive Cy Young awards despite winning six less games during those two seasons than Bob Welch won in 1990 alone. Degrom’s trophies were awarded not on the basis of Wins but on WAR (Wins Above Replacement), the king of all advanced stats — the best (but not necessarily true) indication of a player’s value relative to a replacement level player at their same position.
And this, of course, is where things get tricky. Is a Cy Young winner who loses nearly as many games as he wins actually a “winner”? This is the question that confounds and frustrates the old school. Degrom, they would say, is an elite talent. Possibly better than that. But to be a “winner,” one must surely need to win. And win a lot. Right? The more mathematically inclined would challenge the suggestion altogether. They would be interested in measuring the efficacy the pitcher’s work irrespective of their (team’s) winning. To which the old school would then pound their fists and respond “malarkey!” For them, winners are de facto great pitchers. One way or another, they achieved the goal set out by their job — they won. Jim Palmer was a winner. Catfish Hunter. Whitey Ford. Men with World Series rings. Guys you could count on every year for twenty plus victories — guys who won ballgames.
That standard brings us full circle, back to Cy Young and Walter Johnson — the winningest pitchers in the history of baseball. If you are the most traditional of traditionalists, they would be the one and two on pitching’s Mount Rushmore. But if you concede a modicum of tradition and consider winning percentage rather than Win count as the stat of choice, you might still feel validated. At the very top of the list of pitchers with the highest career winning percentage (minimum of two thousand innings pitched) is one Albert Goodwill Spalding. In addition to founding Spalding sports equipment (yes, that Spalding), popularizing the baseball glove (fielding gloves were exceedingly rare before Al Spalding), serving as President of the Chicago White Stockings and batting .313 for his career, Al Spalding won a staggering seventy nine percent of his games as a pitcher. During the six full seasons he played, he averaged more than forty Wins per year. Spalding’s .794 career winning percentage is almost one hundred basis points higher than the second man on that list, Clayton Kershaw. By every statistical standard other than strikeouts, and most blunt measures of a person’s worth — wealth, power, respect, legacy — Al Spalding was a winner.
On the one hand, Spalding’s radical supremacy makes the statistic appear a bit quaint and the exercise seem a little pointless. On the other hand, the more we consider the names below Spalding’s, the more we validate the old school. Pedro Martinez at five. Lefty Grove at six. Christy Mathewson at eight. All statistically elite pitchers. And all winners. Then, just further down — at fifteen — is the Al Spalding of his generation. The kid from Brooklyn who moved to Los Angeles and who, for four seasons, led the league in nearly every statistical pitching category while winning more than three quarters of his starts. The man who owns four World Series rings. The man about whom Yogi Berra once said: “I can see how he won 25 games. What I don't understand is how he lost 5.” The man who, for many — but especially for Boomers from New York and L.A. — embodied the definition of both “winning” and “winning with class.” Sandy Koufax.
That Koufax would rank so high on the list — in spite of his early inconsistency — is not particularly surprising. But the next name, right after Koufax, is a bit of an eye opener. Number sixteen on the list of pitchers with the highest career winning percentage is Ron Guidry. “Gator.” “Louisiana Lightning.” A pitcher whose peak was arguably similar to Koufax’s. In fact, a pitcher whose entire career is similar to Koufax’s. Across three hundred twenty-three starts, Guidry won one hundred seventy and lost ninety-one. Across three hundred fourteen starts, Koufax won one hundred sixty-five and lost eighty-seven. Guidry’s career WAR is forty-seven point eight. Koufax’s in forty-eight point nine. Guidry was the ace on two World Series winning teams. Koufax has four titles but he did not pitch in his first trip to the Fall Classic and lost his only start in the second (albeit one to nothing). Koufax has three Cy Young awards to Guidry’s one, but Guidry was — by some margin — the best pitcher in the AL in 1979, the year he finished third. Moreover, Guidry has two seventh place, one fifth place and one second place ballots in his career. Both men were, of course, lefties. Both were considered late bloomers — coming into their own around the age of twenty-six. And, ultimately, both men had careers shortened by arm injuries.
Koufax’s first god-tier season was 1963, the year he went twenty-five and five, accumulated more than ten Wins Above Replacement and took home both the Cy Young and MVP awards. It was as dominant a pitching season as anyone had ever seen. And while he would go on to match it in two of the next three seasons, when he retired in 1966 — seemingly at the peak of his powers — many thought we’d never see that kind of dominance again. But, barely a decade later, Ron Guidry arrived.
Guidry’s 1978 is, to this day, the winningest pitching season — by percentage — for any pitcher with twenty or more wins. Guidry won twenty-five games while losing just three, for a winning percentage just shy of ninety percent. He led the league in shutouts, WHIP, FIP (fielding independent pitching), WAR and ERA. His ERA+, a neutralized and adjusted measure of his ERA in comparison to the rest of the league, was an astonishing 209, meaning that he was more than one hundred percent better at preventing earned runs than the rest of the pitchers in baseball. By comparison, Koufax’s career high in ERA+ was 190. Unlike Koufax in 1963, but like him in 1965 and 1966, Guidry won the Cy Young award but not the MVP. Jim Rice took home that trophy that season. Years later, however, there is no question as to who the league’s most valuable player was in 1978: Louisiana Lightning.
While they were statistically and temperamentally similar, the differences between Guidry and Koufax are perhaps more glaring. Guidry was of average height (5’11”) and below average weight (150 pounds in his early days and never much more than 160) while Koufax was deceptively large (6’2” and over 200 pounds). Koufax’s motion was elaborate, famous for a high leg kick. Guidry, on the other hand, was compact and efficient, using his powerful thighs to generate velocity. As a kid, when Koufax wasn’t playing baseball, he was playing basketball and studying. He was strong and quick, but not especially fast. Conversely, when Guidry was not in school, he was either hunting frogs and ducks or, more likely, running. As a teen, he ran a sub 9.8 second one hundred yard dash. In the late Seventies, Guidry’s former teammate Mickey Rivers was among the fastest men in the sport. And yet it was widely understood that while he might be “Willie Wilson fast,” Rivers was not “Ron Guidry fast.”
Koufax was Jewish, grew up in Brooklyn and discovered greatness in Los Angeles. Guidry, meanwhile, was of Cajun descent, grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, and prevailed in The Bronx. Koufax was mostly clean shaven and wore his hair short and neat. Guidry, on the other hand, sported a Rhett Butler mustache and longer locks. If Koufax presented like a young accountant, Guidry was more riverboat gambler.
The most dramatic difference between Sandy Koufax and Ron Guidry, however, was the manner in which they said farewell to the game. Koufax famously retired at the age of thirty, while still at the top of his game, citing years of arthritis and the risks that pitching would pose for his future health. To fans, his exit was abrupt, but graceful. He won a pennant and a Cy Young award in his final season. Before there was Barry Sanders or Calvin Johnson or Andrew Luck — men who left while there was still obviously a lot of gas left in the tank — there was Sandy Koufax. He is the definition of an athlete leaving on their own terms.
Guidry, sadly, was the opposite. After a stellar ‘85 season, wherein he won twenty-two games, led the league in winning percentage and finished second in the Cy Young award, Gator regressed. He was nine and twelve in ‘86. And then the injuries really started to mount. Shoulder. Then elbow. Then both. Surgery was required. Rehabs were long. In both ‘87 and ‘88, the former ace did quick stints in the minors before returning to The Bronx. The Ron Guidry that returned was still plenty competent. But he was not the same guy from ‘85, much less ‘78. Every step forward required two steps back.
And then came 1989. The ‘89 Yankees were bad — real bad. They’d eventually finish fifth in the AL East. The “ace” of their staff was Andy Hawkins, who won as many games as he lost (fifteen) and posted an ERA near five. The second winningest pitcher on the team was Eric Plunk, who won seven games. The average baseball fan might not recognize the name of any other starter from their rotation that season. Meanwhile, Ron Guidry began what would have been his fifteenth season in the majors, five hundred miles away from The Bronx, pitching in AAA for the Columbus Clippers.
Back in the mid-Seventies, before Sparky Lyle had shared his secret of the slider and before he’d been christened “Louisiana Lightning,” Guidry was stuck between AAA and The Big Show. Yankees manager Billy Martin was unimpressed and team owner George Steinbrenner was impatient. And so, in ‘75, unable to translate his eminent talent into evident performance, Guidry packed up his car and started to drive back to Louisiana with his wife Bonnie. He was still a very young man — just twenty-five. But he didn’t want to wait much longer to start his life. If baseball wasn’t his calling, he wanted to get back to ranching, hunting and family — much sooner than later.
About a hundred miles outside of New York, his wife Bonnie asked, “Are you sure you want to give up on everything you've been working toward for the last 10 years? You've never quit at anything you thought you could do in your life. Don't quit on your own. Let the Yankees tell you you're no good before you think of quitting." A moment later, Guidry turned his car around. He couldn’t go through with it. He couldn’t walk away without knowing. Knowing whether he was good enough. If he was good at all. Or maybe — just maybe — if he could be better than good. If he could be great. Guidry reported back to AAA, where he decimated opposing batters, winning five of six decisions and allowing (much) less than one run per nine innings. And two years later, he was back in The Bigs, winning sixteen games for the World Series champs.
More than a decade later though, Guidry was back in The Minors, an aging veteran — once a legend but now the second most famous player on The Clippers, behind a twenty-one year old named Deion Sanders. Guidry started out the season slowly, as he frequently had throughout his career. In his mind, it was his Spring Training. He was simply getting his arm back into shape. Week after week, he kept at it, rebuilding muscles while waiting for Yanks’ skipper Dallas Green to call. The Yankees kept losing. But, out in Columbus, so did their former ace. Six weeks into the season, Guidry was one and six with an ERA over four. He rationalized thing by explaining that he was not throwing at full strength. That he was getting his reps, focusing on consistency rather than worrying about velocity or strikeouts. He reminded reporters that minor league parks were smaller and that many of the hits he was letting up would be outs in The Majors. But right behind the rationale, there was doubt.
Guidry was prepared for life after baseball. He owned fifty acres in Louisiana that he was eager to develop. He had young kids who wanted him around. He could clearly see where things were headed. In fact, his plan was to leave the game after the ‘89 season, regardless of outcomes. And yet, he hung around for two months in Columbus, loss after loss. It is not uncommon for players late in their career to wind up back in the minors for a stint before retiring. There are some who need the money. There are some who have no other skills to offer the world. But most are just hanging on. Ron Guidry was not one of those guys. He didn’t need the money. He could have easily coached or happily ranched. He was ready to let go. Except for one thing — he needed to know. After two plus years of fits and starts and injuries and rehabs, he needed to know if he could still compete. He needed to know if he could still win. In ‘89 he told New York Times writer Murray Chass: 'I would like to go out at least knowing I can't do it up there. I still don't know if I can't do it.''
In 1975, when Guidry faced a similar crisis, he turned his car around in search of the answer to that same question. But fourteen years later, he wasn’t given the same choice. He wasn’t getting called up. He wasn’t mowing down hitters. He wasn’t doing the thing he’d done better than all but fifteen other pitchers in the history of baseball: he wasn’t winning. And so, in the late spring of that season, with no road back to The Bronx and no interest in playing elsewhere, Ron Guidry did what Sandy Koufax had done twenty-three years prior. At the same time, he did the exact opposite. Koufax retired after a twenty-seven win, three hundred strikeout, sub-two ERA season. In his final three seasons, Guidry won just sixteen games while listing twenty-three. In 1966 Koufax knew. In ‘89 Guidry still wondered.
A decade before he was ignored into retirement, Guidry was the subject of a profile by Sam Moses for Sports Illustrated. Moses’ article paints a vivid picture of Gator’s Louisiana roots, going so far as to explore the etymology of the Cajun expression “canaille.” Taken literally, the word means something in between “common riff raff” and “wily or deceitful.” Further study, though, explains that the word is far less pejorative than its literal definition. Among friends, it’s far from an insult. In fact, it’s a compliment. It suggests something more like “one of us,” but also “somebody who knows who they are.” For those who know, “canaille” is someone unpretentious and sure of themself. Ron Guidry was “canaille.” He was never flashy. He worked fast. He never fussed. He trusted his stuff. And, more than all but fifteen pitchers in the history of the game, he knew how to win. He didn’t leave on his own terms. He never got to punch out Brett one last time. For two months, he might have wrestled with the decision. He most certainly wondered. But, in the end — whether he had one last gallon left in the tank or whether he had nothing at all — I’m pretty sure he knew.