Sure, you could’ve sent Tom Seaver a birthday card today — or at least written “Happy Birthday, Tom” on a Post-It note and stuck it to the cork atop a bottle of GTS Cabernet Sauvignon en route to toasting the Franchise — but there’s a better way to greet the day the Met who gave us 25 wins in ’69 turns 69.
Scroll toward the bottom of Baseball-Reference’s most Terrific player page [1] and treat yo’self to the portrait of a leader…a pitching leader.
Tom Seaver pitched 20 big-league seasons. In how many of those, do you suppose, did he not finish in the Top 10 of some positive pitching category? Well, there was 1982, when he was dealing with injuries in Cincinnati. Then there was 1986, when he was approaching the end of the line between Chicago and Boston.
And that’s it. There were TWO years when Tom wasn’t among the 10 best pitchers in his league at something related to his craft and EIGHTEEN when he was. Usually he appears among the leaders multiple times for a given season and often he leads all of his alleged peers. Most of that leadership was accomplished as a Met. Some of it came as a Red. A bit of it was saved for the White Sox. All of it, regardless of uniform, speaks to an immortal.
Says “Happy Birthday” to him, too.