On a warm Tuesday morning in Colorado Springs, Rich “Goose” Gossage walked the dog and helped his son pack for college, anxiously wringing out minutes as he waited for the call that changes lives.
His phone rang all right, but they were calls from reporters and teammates such as Reggie Jackson, wondering how he was holding up after again failing to make baseball’s Hall of Fame.
“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed,” Gossage said. “I know there weren’t many people who did the job better than I did it. I wouldn’t blow my own horn if I didn’t think it was an injustice.”
Gossage, considered the greatest player Colorado has produced, received 64.6 percent of the vote, painfully shy of the 75 percent required for election. Though little consolation to Gossage, two slivers of hope emerged from his close call.
Bruce Sutter joined baseball’s most exclusive club, becoming only the fourth reliever among the 261 Hall of Famers and the first to never start a game. Sutter’s enshrinement continues a trend of growing appreciation for closers, a specialty role long viewed with indifference by voters.
Secondly, and more salient, numbers are working in Gossage’s favor. Of those players who have received 60 percent of the vote, 75 percent eventually have received a Hall pass. And no player has garnered as much support as Gossage did this year without making it.
“He will get in,” Jackson said. “He’s like a woman carrying a baby for 18 months – he’s past due.”
Voters interviewed Tuesday indicated that Sutter’s inclusion bodes well for Gossage. There’s now a contemporary player to measure him against. Both starred during a similar time period in the late 1970s and early 1980s and performed similar roles, often functioning as their own setup men.
“Goose is a friend of mine, and he’s definitely a Hall of Famer in my mind,” Sutter said. “I just think that the voters try to compare us with the starting pitchers, and we can’t compete with their statistics. I think if you compare us against each other, you’ll see we’re all pretty equal. Without us, it’s tough to win.”
After spending 12 years on the ballot, Sutter found it tough to believe Cooperstown’s doors had swung open when Baseball Writers Association of America secretary Jack O’Connell phoned him. Three minutes into the call, reality sunk in.
“He finally said, ‘Jack, you aren’t kidding, are you?”‘ O’Connell said.
Sutter wept as his wife and kids cheered in the kitchen of his Georgia home. Sutter won the 1979 Cy Young Award, part of a stretch when he led the league in saves five of six years. He also revolutionized the split-finger pitch, adopting it out of necessity after elbow surgery.
Jim Rice finished second in the voting, falling 53 votes short, followed by Gossage, Andre Dawson (61 percent) and Bert Blyleven (53.3 percent).
“I never gave up. I know the Hall is for the best of the best,” Sutter said. “I always kept my fingers crossed and kept hoping.”
