The Franchise
By 
Tom Seaver, one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history and the star of the team that was one of the best American sports stories on the 20th century, died of COVID-19 after a long battle with dementia today:
At 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds, give or take a few, with a thick waist and tree-trunk legs that helped generate the velocity on his fastball and hard slider and the spin on his curveball, Seaver at work was a picture of kinetic grace. He had a smooth windup, a leg kick with his left knee raised high, and a stride so long after pushing off the mound that his right knee often grazed the dirt.
With precise control, he had swing-and-miss stuff. He struck out more than 200 batters in 10 different seasons, a National League record, and on April 22, 1970, facing the San Diego Padres, he struck out a record 10 batters in a row to end the game. His total of 3,640 strikeouts in his 20 big-league seasons is sixth on the career list.
He was also a cerebral sort, a thinker who studied opposing hitters and pored over the details of each pitch — its break, its speed, its location. As he aged and his arm strength diminished, it was his strategic thinking and experience that extended his career.
Seaver pitched for the Cincinnati Reds, the Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox during the second half of his career, winning more than 100 games, including his only no-hitter with the Reds against the St. Louis Cardinals in 1978.
If the starting pitchers of the last 50 years, the only one who I would put above him in career value is Clemens — he was one of the very greatest, and the Mets trading him away for a bunch of replacement-level filler was one of the worst deals of all time. R.I.P.
….CrunchyFrog in comments:
It’s almost lost to time, but the story of how Seaver came to the White Sox is worthy of a “this day in Labor History” post.
Following the player’s early legal victories in the 1970s the owners in aggregate were adamant that they were going to kill off free agency one way or another. There were a few exceptions willing to pay big bucks for free agents (Steinbrenner, Autry, Turner) but even they were on board with killing off the mechanism they used to improve their teams on the grounds that they hated workers making good money.
The 1981 baseball “strike” occurred before owners got up the courage to openly run a lockout. So the owners used the occasion of an expiring collective bargaining agreement to stop paying into a players’ fund and the players struck. The owners had signed up for strike insurance with Lloyd’s of London for 100 days so figured they would outlast the players. Lloyd’s realized they’d been had – that the owners forced the strike – and never offered that kind of policy again. The owners wanted one thing – forcing a team that hired a free agent to give up an equivalent player in compensation. This would for all intents and purposes kill off free agency. As an example, the NFL had a similar system – a pro bowl level free agent required two #1 draft picks – and as a result very very few free agents were signed.
The players said, sure, if a team losing a free agent loses a player it’s fine to have compensation, but you can’t penalize the hiring team. It has to be from a pool of players that come from all teams. (Hint: this is where the tie-in to Seaver will come in.)
The players held firm. It helps a lot that baseball careers are long and players can afford the loss of a half year or even year salary in order to get a better deal the rest of their careers. It also helps that baseball’s elder players, led by guys like Pete Rose, held firm on principle even though at that stage in their careers they were not likely to benefit financially. Years of feeling screwed over by the owners helped.
At 98 days the owners caved. It was clear that the players were not budging and that when the strike insurance ran out it was the owners who were financially scared. The owners needed a fig leaf of a win, though, to justify their action so they got the players to agree that for top free agents there would be a compensation pool of players not protected by teams, but allowed teams to protect most of their players.
For the first few years after the new agreement the compensation players pool did not make news. It was basically replacement-level players who teams felt they could do without. But during the 1984-5 off season the White Sox lost a star player to free agency – 1983 Cy Young Winner Lamarr Hoyt – and in a typical NY Mets bonehead move they didn’t protect Tom Seaver. At this point Seaver had come back to the Mets as an end-of-career, return-to-his-roots kind of move that is common in sports. He was still a strong starting pitcher, but the SchMets management figured that being near the end of his career Seaver would be of no interest to the White Sox. The Sox (sorry those who only read/listen to north-east-based national sports media, but in some parts of the country to say “the Sox” means the Pale Hose) didn’t hesitate to pick Seaver.
Seaver at first threatened to retire. He’d planned to finish his career with the Mets. But he quickly learned that the Sox, with manager Tony LaRussa and his great pitching coach Dave Duncan, were actually a wonderful management team to play for. Unfortunately, LaRussa/Duncan had to deal with an otherwise really sucky situation in Chicago, both ownership and a moronic fan base that was convinced the team would win the Series every year but LaRussa was holding them back, and the situation was never good (and resulted in LaRussa/Duncan being unceremoniously kicked out, after which they did absolutely nothing of note with the rare, notable exception of several world series in Oakland and St. Louis). Seaver was thrilled to be traded to Boston to get out of there.
The Seaver compensation pick did have long term impact, though, in that the owners specifically asked to get rid of free agent compensation in the next CBA to avoid that kind of embarrassment again.