Ron Guidry

Ron Guidry went 25-3 in 1978 with a 1.74 ERA, won the Cy Young unanimously, and dragged a clubhouse full of lunatics to a World Series title. He weighed about 160 pounds. The New York Yankees got the most dominant pitching season of the post-expansion era from a wiry Cajun kid who'd almost quit baseball two years earlier. Louisiana Lightning didn't just strike once -- he kept coming back for 14 seasons, every single one in pinstripes.

The Kid Who Almost Went Home

Guidry grew up in Carencro, Louisiana -- a small Cajun town north of Lafayette where French was the first language and baseball was something you played on dirt fields between crawfish boils. The Yankees grabbed him in the third round of the 1971 draft out of the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and then proceeded to spend the next five years wondering what to do with him. He was too small. That was always the knock. At 5'11" and maybe 160 pounds soaking wet, the organization's brass couldn't wrap their heads around a power pitcher who looked like he should've been shagging flies in Double-A. (Never mind that his fastball sat in the mid-90s. He didn't LOOK like a starter, and in the 1970s, that mattered.)

By the end of 1976, Guidry was 26, had bounced between Syracuse and brief callups that went nowhere, and was seriously thinking about going home to Bonnie and the family for good. He'd gotten 17 total games and zero evidence that the Yankees saw him as anything more than organizational filler. Then Billy Martin gave him a rotation spot in spring training 1977. Everything changed.

1978: The Year

You can talk about great pitching seasons all day long -- Koufax in '66, Pedro in '99, Clemens in '97. Guidry's '78 belongs in every one of those conversations. He went 25-3. His ERA was 1.74. He threw NINE shutouts and 16 complete games. He struck out 248 batters in 273 innings. He did this while Reggie Jackson and Martin were trying to strangle each other in the dugout and Steinbrenner was calling the clubhouse phone every other inning.

The slider was the weapon. Gator himself said it best.

On June 17, he struck out 18 California Angels at the Stadium -- a franchise record that still stands. He was so filthy that night that fans started standing on every two-strike count, clapping in rhythm, waiting for the next punchout. Nobody organized it. Nobody told them to do it. It just happened. And it kept happening. For the rest of Guidry's career, the Stadium crowd stood on two-strike counts when he pitched. They invented a tradition in real time because the man on the mound was that electric.

The Yankees trailed Boston by 14 games that summer. Fourteen. Guidry kept winning, the club clawed back, and the whole thing came down to a one-game tiebreaker at Fenway on October 2. Guidry started. Bucky Dent hit the homer everybody remembers. Goose Gossage closed it out. But Gator was on the mound when it mattered most, same as he'd been all year. He won the Cy Young with every first-place vote and finished second in the MVP to Jim Rice. (That one still stings. Roughly 10 bWAR for a pitcher, and they gave it to the hitter. Voters gonna vote.)

The Long Run

Here's what separates Guidry from a lot of one-year wonders: he kept pitching, and he kept pitching well. He went 18-8 with a 2.78 ERA in '79. He won 21 games in 1983. He won 22 in 1985 -- seven freakin' years after the supposedly unrepeatable '78. The arm would fade, then he'd come roaring back. You'd write him off and he'd put up another 250-inning season just to remind you he wasn't done.

His body never made sense for what he did. A 160-pound lefty throwing complete-game shutouts deep into September. He looked like a high school shortstop standing next to the rest of the rotation. (The other pitchers probably outweighed him by 40 pounds. He outpitched them by 40 wins.) Five Gold Gloves, too -- the guy could field his position as well as anyone who's ever taken the mound in the Bronx.

Going Home

Guidry retired after the 1988 season, quietly and on his own terms. He'd gone 2-3 in 10 starts that year, and there was nothing left to prove. He went back to Louisiana, stayed close to the organization, and came back as the Yankees' pitching coach under Joe Torre in 2006 and 2007. He's been a fixture at Old-Timers' Day ever since -- one of those guys who gets a standing ovation before they even announce his name. (The crowd remembers. They always remember.)

Thurman Munson caught him during the best years. Gossage closed behind him. Reggie hit the bombs in front of him. But when you talk about the 1978 Yankees -- the comeback, the tiebreaker, the title -- it starts and ends with the skinny left-hander from Carencro who threw 160 pounds of lightning.