Whatever happened to complete games?

I’ve been a baseball fan for as long as I can remember. Some of my heroes from my kidhood were major league pitchers. And after the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee and became the Milwaukee Braves during my eighth-grade year, I had some new heroes to admire: Lew Burdette, Bob Buhl, and Warren Spahn chief among them.

It wasn’t only the pitchers, though, who became new heroes for me. Del Crandall, Eddie Mathews, Joe Adcock, Johnny Logan, Andy Pafko, and Billy Bruton came in that transfer.

I want to talk about pitchers, though. I watch a lot of Brewers games now, and I’m always interested in the way the announcers talk about the pitchers today. They’re constantly talking about “pitch count” and they become concerned when a pitcher starts to get beyond 100 pitches. And they’re always really pleased if a pitcher makes it through six innings. Whatever happened to complete games?

In 2018, there were only 42 complete games, which is a pretty small percentage when you consider there are 30 teams and each team plays 162 regular season games, and there are many (anywhere from 12 to 22) playoff games. So 42 complete games out of nearly 5,000.

Compare that to Warren Spahn’s career. Spahnie threw 145 complete games in seven years for the Braves. Over his 23 years in the majors he threw 328 complete games. Lew Burdette had 128 complete games in his career. Bob Buhl had 111. So pitchers in “the good old days” certainly earned their pay.

There are some amazing stories about some of those old-time pitchers. I remember listening late into the night when I was a sophomore in college to one of the most amazing games ever played (in my opinion). The Braves were playing the Pirates in Milwaukee, and it was Lew Burdette versus Harvey Haddix for the Pirates. What Haddix did that night was spectacular.

Haddix pitched 12 perfect innings (still the all-time record) while facing one of the most dangerous lineups in baseball: The Braves had won the pennant the two previous seasons and they had Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews. It’s fallen through the historical cracks for a remarkable reason that somehow, Pittsburgh lost the game.

So Haddix pitched 12 perfect innings — no hits, no runs, 36 batters. There was one problem, though: Milwaukee starter Lew Burdette had a shutout going himself. Pittsburgh had plenty of chances, pounding out 12 hits in all, but they left eight men on base, unable to come through in a big spot. The game went to extra innings, and in the bottom of the 13th, someone finally blinked: Pirates third baseman Don Hoak booted a Felix Mantilla grounder, and just like that, the perfect game was up in smoke.

After a sacrifice bunt from Mathews and an intentional walk to Aaron, slugger Joe Adcock came to the plate — and that’s when Haddix made his only mistake of the night:

Adcock hit what appeared to be a walk-off home run to deep right-center, but Aaron thought the ball had simply bounced off the wall, so he cut across the diamond back to the dugout rather than rounding the bases. Since Adcock had passed him and Aaron had left the basepaths, both men were ruled out, and the game ended 1-0 on Mantilla’s run.

Haddix was still hung with the hardest-luck loss in baseball history — a final line of 13 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 8 K.

In 1991, the Committee for Statistical Accuracy in Baseball announced that a no-hitter would be redefined as “a game in which a pitcher or pitchers complete a game of nine innings or more without allowing a hit,” meaning Haddix’s gem no longer qualified. When he was made aware that one of the greatest games ever pitched no longer had a place in the record books, his response was: “It’s OK. I know what I did.”

For teams in the current era, having a pitcher work as deep as the seventh, eighth, or ninth inning is a huge bonus. A deep and strong bullpen has become the most desired weapon in the majors since pitch counts and inning limitations have become the norm for monitoring starters.

We Brewers fans may never see another complete game, and I say that’s too bad.

Contact Roger VanHaren at rjmavh@gmail.com.