bert blyleven

Blyleven's family savors Hall of Fame election

It would not, could not, go smoothly, not after 14 years of tooth-gritting and epithet-swallowing and slow-burning. Todd Blyleven, a baseball lifer like his dad, was ready to watch the MLB Network at his teaching facility, Blyleven's Dugout.
And then, a balky satellite made sure that he couldn't.
Calling an audible, he and wife Cathie and 7-year-old Dylan hurried over to The Salty Dog, on Beach Boulevard, a bar and grill that a friend opened just for them.
There, they saw National Baseball Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson mention that two players would join the pantheon on July 24.
The first was Roberto Alomar.
Then Idelson said, "Known for his consistency and his breaking ball...."
At that moment it got loud in the Twins' office and the Angels' office and in the homes of those who had brought Blyleven's career to public awareness.
Todd, Cathie and Dylan were spared the angst. They knew 20 minutes beforehand.
"Dad was nervous," Todd said. "He's got these superstitions, and he didn't want to talk to any media this morning. He had a tee time set up in Fort Myers (Fla.) in case he didn't get in. And he was up at 4 a.m."
Todd scouted for the Angels and Rockies, signed Troy Tulowitzki and Ian Stewart. He coaches the OC Vipers travel-ball team.
Dylan was excused from school for this occasion. He said that Grandpa had yet to light up his shoelaces, but then he's still young.
"I traveled with Dad for a lot of seasons," Todd said. "I remember the no-hitter he threw in Anaheim, when he was with Texas, on Sept. 22, 1977... And Sept. 22 is Dylan's birthday.
"I'd ride the bike behind him when he ran in the winter. He and Jim Abbott and Mark Langston would go to that river bed, near the stadium, and run from Ball to Chapman. I saw how hard he worked."
Blyleven remains fifth on the all-time strikeout list even though he hasn't thrown a pitch in the past 18 years, when the strikeout has become a proliferating mushroom.
He also remains ninth in shutouts and helped Pittsburgh and Minnesota win World Series in '79 and '87.
He was the only pitcher with 3,000 strikeouts and 50 shutouts who wasn't a Hall of Famer.
But Blyleven was a tough sell. He got Cy Young Award votes in only four of his 22 seasons and only won 20 games once.
Most baseball writers sneered at the very idea. Not enough dominance. A "compiler" who got his numbers because he hung on.
In 2000, Blyleven's third year of eligibility, he got 87 votes, a 17.4 percentage in a game where you need 75. No one had ever rallied from such obscurity to get through the doors.
Blyleven eventually became the baseball equivalent of Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim, who was derided for never winning "the big one." The deriders eventually rode off and Boeheim stayed, won the '03 Final Four and coached two other championship games. The new generation looks at the same coach and sees 844 victories.
"When Curt Schilling retired, it helped Dad because people started comparing the numbers," Todd said, noting 60 shutouts and 242 complete games, including 24 in 1985.
A former political consultant named Bill Hilsman founded a "Bert Belongs" website.
The devaluation of the "win" stat, while not a welcome development overall, helped Blyleven.
In Blyleven's youth he would go 17-17 with a 2.73 ERA and get ripped. Voters gradually realized that Blyleven nearly won 300 games while getting zero, one or two runs in 202 of his 553 career decisions.
In 2006 Blyleven's vote rose to 53.9 percent, and he began to hope. But in 2007 he slipped to 47.7 percent.
"That's when he sort of walked away from it for a while," Todd said.
Last year Blyleven came within five votes, and five voters sent in blank ballots. If those voters had gotten over themselves and simply failed to respond, Blyleven would have been on the 2010 podium.
On Wednesday he got 79.7 percent.
Blyleven will be under surveillance in Cooperstown, lest he apply the hotfoot to Willie Mays. But he might get emotional, too.
His dad Joe, who emigrated from Holland and became a plumber, died three years too early to watch this.
Last fall Bob Feller, who got to know Blyleven in Cleveland, told him, "I'll be there to see you get in." Feller died last month.
"I'm just proud of the fact that I'll go there and see Babe Ruth's plaque, all these great players, and my dad will be there, too," Todd said.
Blyleven's plaque will bear all the numbers that matter. At the Salty Dog on Wednesday, the 14 years suddenly didn't.