Bookshelf review: The 300 Club

July 31, 2010

Have We Seen the Last of Baseball’s 300-Game Winners? by Dan Schlossberg. Ascend Books, 2010.

Pitcher Jamie Moyer, at age 47, is the active leader in wins with 267. Next on the list is 38-year-old Andy Pettitte with 240. After that…well, no one can even claim 200 victories; knuckleballer Tim Wakefield (43) is next in line with 192. (Note that the Nationals’ pitching phenom Stephen Strausburg was recently placed on the 15-day disabled list. Just sayin’.)

With all this to consider, will there ever be another 300 game winner?

Perhaps not, according to Dan Schlossberg, whose latest book, The 300 Club: Have We Seen the Last of Baseball’s 300-Game Winners?, was published earlier this year by Ascend Books. He profiles the 24 pitchers who achieved the lofty mark, from Cy Young’s 511 wins to Early Wynn and Lefty Grove, both of whom landed on the exact mark. The entertaining stories are filled with anecdotes and observations and include box scores from the 300th win as well as each pitcher’s career record.

The subtitle offers the real conundrum and the final chapter asks “Who’s Next? Anybody?”, in which Schlossberg runs through a list of likelihoods for contemporary pitchers, incorporating comments from players and managers, including Bob Feller, who finished with 266 wins. He most likely would have made the elite group had he spent four seasons in the Navy during World War II.

Over the years, Feller has become the poster boy for those grizzled former players who believe everything was better in the old days.

“I think Randy Johnson is the last [300 game winner] we’ll have … until they get rid of this pitch count nonsense,” Schlossberg quotes him as saying. “A pitcher should be in good enough condition to finish his ballgame. That’s the kind of pitcher I want on my team — a man who can hold a one-run lead through the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings.” (By the way, Feller completed 279 out of 484 game starts during his 18-year career, including 31 of 37 in  1940 and 36 of 42 in 1946.)

By the way, Schlossberg will be signing his book at Foley’s, 18 W. 33rd St, NY, near Fifth Ave, on Wednesday, Aug. 18, from 6-8 p.m.

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