The call for the closer

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- Thirty-three years after his career appeared to be over before it barely had begun, Bruce Sutter will receive the ultimate tribute -- induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

When he's enshrined Sunday, Sutter will become the first honoree whose name never appeared on a starting lineup card. And, as implausible as it might seem, the former ace reliever can thank an injury to his pitching arm for his good fortune.

Signed as a free agent by the Chicago Cubs and desperate to make it to the major leagues, prior to the start of the 1973 minor league season Sutter scheduled -- and paid for with his bonus money -- surgery on his right arm for a pinched nerve incurred while trying to learn how to throw a slider.

"I didn't think they would pay for the operation," said Sutter, who hurt his arm after only two minor league games. "I thought if I told them I was hurt, I was gone."

He was unable to keep the operation a secret for long. Fred Martin, the Cubs' roving minor league pitching instructor, spotted the big scar on Sutter's elbow, then forever changed his life by teaching him to throw the split-fingered fastball.

Developed by right-hander Roger Craig before he retired from the Phillies in 1966, the "splitter" is a variation of the forkball that "Bullet" Joe Bush popularized during his journeyman career from 1912 to 1928 and Pittsburgh reliever Elroy Face took to new heights in the late 1950s and early 1960s in winning 22 straight games.

The splitter is thrown with the ball held between the index and middle fingers, and the thumb, placed underneath, pushes the ball out upon release, creating a vicious forward spin.

"It came to me easy, but it took a long time to learn how to control it," Sutter said. "I could throw pretty hard. I might strike out 16 guys, but I might walk 10. I mean, I was wild. I wouldn't be here without that pitch. My other stuff was A-ball, AA at best. The split-finger made it equal."

Not once he mastered it.

Give the bearded guy they dubbed "The Undertaker" a big edge there. Sutter's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't splitter looked like an ordinary fastball -- until it reached home plate. Then it plunged precipitously through the strike zone out of harm's way, leaving bewildered batters flailing at nothing but air.

"He used it like nobody else was ever able to use it. He brought an air of confidence," said Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith, Sutter's former teammate on the St. Louis Cardinals. "When he came in, the game was over. He was that good."

Howard Bruce Sutter was born Jan. 8, 1953, in Lancaster, Pa., and started playing the game when he was 5. He also played football and basketball in high school, graduated at age 17, and after attending less than a year of college began playing semipro baseball.

He was drafted by the Washington Senators in the 21st round of the 1970 amateur draft, but never signed. Cubs scout Ralph DiLullo eventually signed him with a $500 bonus the next August. Sutter met Martin, and three years after learning that pitch at Quincy, Ill., in the Midwest League, Sutter was pitching in Wrigley Field.

In 1976, he registered six wins and 10 saves and a 2.70 earned-run average in 52 appearances, and his career took off. The next season he assumed the role of closer for the Cubs and finished with 31 saves and a 1.34 ERA, and in 1978 registered 27 saves.

Sutter was even better the next season, winning the National League Cy Young Award and posting a National League record-tying 37 saves. He also was the winning pitcher in the All-Star Game for the second straight year. But when he won an arbitration award of $700,000 after the season, the Cubs, who had Lee Smith waiting for his chance, traded him to St. Louis after the 1980 season.

Sutter signed a four-year contract worth an estimated $3.5 million with the Cardinals, making him the highest-paid reliever in the game. And he rewarded their generosity in spades. He averaged almost 32 saves a year and led the league three times, establishing a league-record 45 in 1984, and closed out the Cards' 1982 World Series triumph over Milwaukee, their first title since 1967.

Sutter, who pitched the final two innings of Game 7, ended it by striking out Brewers slugger Gorman Thomas -- with a straight fastball up.

And, unlike relievers today, Sutter often pitched two innings or more for his saves, averaging more than 100 innings per year from 1977 through 1984.

"It was amazing to me how good he was," former Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog said.

Amazing, indeed. For the most part, he threw just that one pitch, everybody knew it, and nobody could hit it.

"I feel like a pioneer with the split-fingered fastball. I was the first one to really throw it pretty much 100 percent of the time," Sutter said. "It was a pitch that I had to have. If I didn't have it, I wouldn't have been in the big leagues. It didn't really change the game, but it did change how pitchers were going to get hitters out."

Sutter, just the fourth relief pitcher to be inducted, left the Cardinals after the 1984 season and signed a six-year, $10 million free-agent deal with Atlanta. But after posting 23 saves in 58 games and a 4.48 ERA in his first season with the Braves, a rotator cuff injury relegated him to mediocrity and more than his share of boos when he was able to pitch but unable to live up to his reputation.

Sutter missed the last five months of the 1986 season, all of 1987 with rotator cuff problems. and made a comeback the next year with 14 saves in 38 appearances. In March 1989, a complete rotator cuff tear was detected in his right shoulder, and at age 35 he retired with 300 saves, at the time an NL record, in 12 seasons.

Perhaps because his career was much shorter than Hall of Fame relievers Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers and Dennis Eckersley, and the end of his career was fraught with injury, Sutter was passed over a dozen times before his election this year.

One can only wonder why. Sutter was no less important because he paved the way for the star closers of today, such as Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees. Rivera, who also relies almost exclusively on one pitch (a cut fastball), usually throws only one inning, just registered his 400th save and likely will have his plaque hanging in the Hall of Fame some day, probably not far from Sutter's.

"When you're voting for the Hall of Fame, you're comparing starting pitchers to relief pitchers," Sutter said. "Well, statistically, we're never going to compare to the innings and strikeouts they rack up.

"To me, Rollie Fingers and Hoyt Wilhelm were the first relief pitchers to get in," Sutter said. "Yes, they both started some games, but they were known primarily as relief pitchers."

As for never starting a game, Sutter said, "I don't see any significance about it. All it does is show the sign of when the roles started changing. I don't think I'm setting the way for anybody. Relief pitchers are starting to get recognized. You've got to have them. Without a closer, you're not going to win."

Sutter will share the dais with J.G. Taylor Spink Award winner Tracy Ringolsby, current national columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, and Ford C. Frick Award winner Gene Elston, former broadcast voice of Houston baseball.

It promises to be an emotional day. A 17-person class of players and executives from baseball's segregated past also will be inducted, and Sutter's wife, Jayme, is facing surgery in two weeks to remove a cancerous kidney.

Sutter will finish the festivities, and like all of his major league appearances, he promised to make it brief.

"It's just special," he said. "You play the game and you hope you get remembered, and this makes sure I'll always be remembered."