Replies

BluesDuke is thinking of such a piece, though if'n you're going to get technical about it, I would argue that I've kind of done it, twice: the guys who are brought into the game with men on the pads and the other guys threatening to either knot it up or break it apart are the real stoppers. No disrespect to some gentlemen such as Trevor Hoffman, et.al., but no matter how hard the final three outs of the game are in the getting, it's a hell of a lot harder to walk into someone else's fire and smother that one. And Sparky Lyle was one of those men who'd be brought in as early as the seventh if the game got a little hot and then stick around to finish off. So were men like Phil (The Vulture) Regan, Dick (The Monster) Radatz, Elroy Face (who should be in the Hall of Fame and who, arguably, was the best pitcher in baseball in 1959, ahead at least of Early Wynn who did win that year's Cy Young Award - the prize was then given to one pitcher across the board, not one in each league), Joe Page, Hoyt Wilhelm, Clem Labine, Wilbur Wood (people forget he was a damn good relief pitcher before the White Sox made him a starter and an excellent one for a few seasons), Ron Perranoski, even Goose Gossage.

Classic World Series stopping: Sid Fernandez, New York Mets - usually a starter, he was used in the middle relief role for the 1986 Series and in Game Seven proved the man who swiped the momentum: he was brought in in the fourth to plug a Red Sox threat, then set them back on their heels in the fifth and sixth with six straight outs including four strikeouts, one of the four a daring whiff of Jim Rice...I mean, you do not challenge a first-ball, fastball hitter with a heater up around his belt, and then strike him out on three straight bam! bam! bam!. But he did, and it gave the momentum right back to the Mets and just in time, as Boston starter Bruce Hurst was running out of gas at last.

Classic Series stopping, part two: Moe Drabowsky, Baltimore Orioles - relieved Dave McNally in Game One, 1966 Series, and absolutely slammed the Dodgers shut - eleven strikeouts in six innings for the game. Usually a mop-up man with the flakiest personality in baseball, Drabowsky on that afternoon resembled Joe Page.