Can we 20 questions this thing? Was it a baseball player? It wasn't Kap or Mahommes, but was it someone who's famous for another sport?
In 1971 Vida Blue won the AL Cy Young and MVP at 21 years of age. He was 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA. How many complete games did he have?
WAG, back when they let them complete games, 8. That might be high since they did have Fingers to close them out.
Folks we have a winner at Door #2! (Honestly I thought this one would take a while) He had 8 shutouts and 24 complete games! Oh, how I miss ol’school….
wowzers - I figured it had to be an insane number but didn't think it would be all of them lol. Talk about a WAG!
Honestly I don’t know if all 24 of his wins were CG’s or if it was 24 of his 32 games started were CG’s.
That is a lot of innings to put on a young arm. Maybe why he flamed out? IIRC he didn't lose a lot of velocity but lost a lot of motion on his two seamer. As a rookie it was almost unhittable and then it flattened out. Maybe not the arm but the fingers giving out?
I figured it would have to be a recent HOF player with modern radar getting speeds on release (higher speeds) and when it was revealed that it was a position player I figured it had to be an outstanding defensive outfielder. And a very beloved player so that he got to make the ceremonial first pitch. The intersection of those three sets is a very small number. But I liked my guess of Geronimo. IIRC my wife's family shared season tickets for Reds games way back then and she said that Geronimo could stand at home plate and throw the ball over the centerfield fence at Riverfront. Home plate to centerfield was 402 feet. He did this stunt often during pregame warm-ups according to her. If true I am very impressed.
That’s a good question and a good point Lurk. To have a real idea about what happened would take having film at his peak performances and film as struggles occurred. The kind of loss of movement on his two seamer that was talked about would make arm angle change and change in wrist snap suspect to my experience.
Wrist snap for sure. Have to have some counterclockwise element to it to get the right spin. Not a screwball but a pitch with that spin from a natural throwing motion. Some say it is a gift from God. I worked on it.
