Bert Blyleven had the curve ball, Paul Molitor the smooth swing and peerless base-running. Dave Winfield was the preternatural athlete who could have played any sport but chose baseball, Rod Carew is simply remembered as one of the best hitters of any era.
Jack Morris will be different from most players in the Baseball Hall of Fame, remembered less for a particular skill than for a hot-tempered will to win that didn’t always put ink on the stat sheet. In fact, his career became the battleground between Hall of Fame voters who favored big-picture memories and those who demanded that certain statistical thresholds be met.
Morris was a five-time all-star but never finished higher than third in Cy Young Award voting (1981, 1983). He never led the American League in wins, and only once in strikeouts (232 in 1983). His 254 career wins, 3.90 career earned-run average and collective 44 WAR over 18 seasons left him at the fringe of what most (all?) sabermetricians consider Hall-worthy.
But what Morris accomplished in 16 seasons as a full-time major league starter made him unique among contemporaries: 14 winning seasons with at least 10 victories; 174 complete games; four World Series titles with three teams; and one of the greatest pitching performances in postseason history, a 10-inning shutout victory that pushed the Twins past the Atlanta Braves 1-0 in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.
Recognized as one of the greatest pitching performances of all time, that Game 7 has much to do with Morris’ election to the Hall of Fame by the Modern Era Committee on Dec. 10, 2017.
“I knew in the moment, when innings 7, 8 and 9 came and it was still scoreless, I knew it was history and it was a special game right then and there,” Morris said. “All it did was inspire me to keep going. I wanted to be part of that story.”
Morris will be the third St. Paul native enshrined into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., on Sunday not because of rare velocity, a signature changeup or his undeniable mastery of the split-finger fastball. Morris, 63, will join Molitor and Winfield in baseball’s most exclusive club because of how he harnessed the talent to make himself baseball’s best starting pitcher for most of a career that started in Detroit in 1977 and ended in Cleveland in 1994.
“He just didn’t accept losing,” said Molitor, who first battled Morris on the playgrounds of St. Paul and later won a World Series with him in Toronto. “You knew it was going to be ‘game on’ from pitch one.”
“As a competitor, there was nobody like Jack,” said former Tigers teammate and fellow member of the 2018 Hall of Fame class Alan Trammell. “He just wanted the ball. He just wanted it.”
It was a trait that showed up early, whether he was throwing stones on a fishing trip to Ontario with his family, ski jumping around the metro area in high school or playing his first Little League games in Mendota Heights and Eagan.
“I remember Jack on the bench, crying because they lost, and the other kids looking at him like, ‘What’s going on?’ ” said older brother Tom. “(The coach) said to the other boys, ‘Give me the kid that cries when he loses because he’s got a love for the game.’ ”
Morris and Trammell will join outfielder Vladimir Guerrero, reliever Trevor Hoffman, third baseman Chipper Jones and former Twins slugger Jim Thome as the Hall of Fame’s newest player members during an afternoon ceremony in Cooperstown.
On his plaque, Morris will wear the cap of the Detroit Tigers, with whom he played the bulk of his career and won his first World Series title in 1984. Thome, who reached 600 homers during two seasons in Minnesota, will go in as a Cleveland Indian.
“I know it’s gotten a lot of attention because people have been so kind to me,” Morris said. “Until I give the (acceptance) speech, I don’t think it’s going to feel different. It’s a very humbling and emotional time for me.”
COOPERSTOWN, MINN.
The biggest winner this weekend might be St. Paul, a city of just more than 300,000 residents that bills itself as the “Most Livable City in America” but maybe should be known as Cooperstown, Minn. There are four native Minnesotans in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Charles “Chief” Bender, who in 1911 pitched three complete games in a World Series, is from Crow Wing County. The rest are from St. Paul.
“Think about that,” Molitor said. “A very small geographical area that produced three players who are part of baseball immortality.”
Born within five years of one another, Winfield, Morris and Molitor grew up within a few miles of one another in St. Paul neighborhoods west of downtown – and that doesn’t include Joe Mauer, the current Twins first baseman raised in the same neighborhoods who won the 2009 American League MVP Award and is the only catcher to win more than one batting title.
From 1901 to 1960, the St. Paul Saints were a stop for some of baseball’s best players as a farm club for the Chicago White Sox and Dodgers, both Brooklyn and Los Angeles. In 1993, the Saints were resurrected as an independent team that still sends players to the big leagues.
In 1996, 40-year-old Morris joined a long list of big-time players to attempt comebacks with the Saints, bringing his career full circle – although much had changed from the days that he, Molitor and Winfield woke up on summer mornings and, in the words of Molitor, “tried to play as much baseball as we could.”
Without the internet, mobile phones and video games — and only four channels on television — kids like Morris who grew up in the 1960s spent their days outside.
“I can’t tell you how many hours that all the kids and I played baseball,” Morris said. “Life was different. It was about baseball. Summertime was getting together a group of kids and figuring out how to kill time. It was lot of fun inventing new games. Eventually, we’d take it more seriously and it became more competitive.”
The St. Paul parks department was dominated by summer baseball leagues, and Morris — who grew up on South Saratoga Street north of Highland National Golf Course — played for so many amateur teams that he had to juggle appearances to stay eligible for all of them.
“We played baseball as long as we could play it. It was just seasonal,” he said. “I played in as many games as I could.”
Morris’ older brother, Tom, was a baseball and basketball star at Highland Park High School when Jack followed him. Jack had a strong arm but couldn’t control it, in part because he couldn’t always control his temper. As a high school player, Jack was mostly a third baseman and shortstop.
“Tom was 22-3 in three years (pitching) at Highland. In the year I had both of them in varsity, I only used Jack as a starting pitcher when Tom needed rest,” Scots baseball coach Bill Lorenz told the Pioneer Press in 1984. “I don’t think Jack started more than three or four games.”
According to Tom, Highland Park junior varsity coach Jim Davis once told his brother, “ ‘Jack, you’re never going to be a pitcher.’ He always reminded Jim Davis of that when he made it up to the majors.”
Morris said he earned a full ride to play basketball at what was then Mankato State, and could have walked on the baseball team at the University of Minnesota. Instead, he went to Brigham Young, which discovered him through the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter day Saints grapevine and made him an offer. College coach Glen Tuckett, 90, said Morris could have played any position he wanted, and he wanted to pitch.
Morris’ reputation preceded him.
“We talked to him about (his temper),” Tuckett said. “He knew it would be an enemy throughout his life. He knew we didn’t tolerate certain things, like showing disgust with a call or pitch he made. He was able to curb it very well.
“He was not hard to coach. He was a joy for me to coach because he had a great desire to play.”
‘MOUNT MORRIS’
Morris’ chip-on-the-shoulder demeanor did, in fact, play a role in his life for years, and it made few friends among major league beat reporters, undoubtedly part of the reason he was never voted into the Hall of Fame in 15 years on the writers’ ballot.
As a player, Morris routinely clashed with reporters, a relationship that made national headlines when he insulted a female Detroit Free Press reporter with a sexist remark during the 1990 season. His reputation earned him the nickname Mount Morris – a volcano that could erupt at any time.
“That was a clever way for an editor to talk (smack), but they didn’t know me and why I was doing it and everyone was immature at the time,” Morris said. “It is what it is. One thing I’ve learned about living in the public eye is that nothing ever goes away; you’ve got to learn how to live with it. You have to look in mirror and accept that you have flaws. You’re never perfect, but you strive to get better.”
That temper wasn’t only directed at reporters.
According to Trammell, Morris was once so angry about being pulled from a game that he slammed the ball into the hand of Sparky Anderson so hard that it broke a blood vessel in the manager’s hand.
“He didn’t really do it on purpose, but he did it,” Trammell said. “Both learned from it. Jack learned that’s not protocol; Sparky learned how adamant he was about wanting to stay in games. That’s how relationships grow.”
Thereafter, Trammell noted, Anderson let Morris “go little bit longer” into games.
“Jack was always remorseful after the fact,” Trammell said. “It was just that competitive drive. But after the fact, he was very remorseful in the things he did. … He felt bad. That was just him. He would come out to make an apology and say, ‘I can’t believe I did that,’ but then he’d do it again. We knew that was Jack.
“Hey, we’re not all the same; he’ll talk to you about it now, as we age, look back and shake his head. He isn’t proud of it.”
Morris and Trammell were selected for enshrinement by the Modern Era Committee, which included several players against whom Morris played (Winfield, Carew, Robin Yount and George Brett) as well as Bobby Cox, who managed the Braves when Morris beat them in the World Series, and Paul Beeson, the Blue Jays’ president when Morris helped Toronto win titles in 1992 and 1993.
Molitor believes the process of waiting until the last moment to be inducted has been good for Morris.
“To watch him post-career and see the growth has been special,” the Twins manager said. “There’s a softness to Jack now, just the way he’s been able to keep things in perspective — never reflecting bitterness, just accepting the way things worked. I’m glad to see he was ultimately rewarded for his patience.”
Said Morris: “I still get fired up. I still get emotional. But I also want to be perceived as a person who cares in right things, and doing them the right way for the right reasons.”
‘JUST THANK YOU’
Morris was part of World Series-winning teams in Detroit (1984), Minnesota (1991) and Toronto (1992, 1993), the last of which he shared with Molitor — although Morris didn’t pitch in the postseason after going 7-12 with a 6.19 ERA in the regular season.
Still, he pitched three complete games and the Blue Jays were 11-16 in his starts during the last of Morris’ 12 seasons pitching for winning teams.
“Winning followed Jack. It wasn’t a coincidence,” Molitor said. “So, when I got a chance to join him with the Jays on the ’93 team, and had a chance to partner up in the same uniform, with the same goal in mind after so many years, it was nice. Two kids from St. Paul sharing that journey was special.”
New Hall of Fame members are allotted eight minutes for their induction speeches, which Morris noted “can’t cover everything.” But whatever he says on Sunday, he will be thinking of his father, Arvid, and mother, Dona. His brother, Tom, and sister, Marsha.
Asked what he wants most to convey in his speech, Morris said, “Just thank you.”
“It’s a thank you for all that baseball has done for me and my journey through it and all people involved in that journey,” he said.