I was a huge fan of Bert Blyleven growing up. When I was 7, I started following baseball. That was 1972, and that's the same year the Washington Sentors became the Texas Rangers.
Bert was one of the pitchers I loved to watch. He joined me on The Steve Mason Show Thursday, and we talked about his famous 12-6 curveball, and why it's not thrown very often anymore. (He does say that Toronto's Roy Halladay probably has the best curveball in the game today.)
The Flying Dutchman wasn't very interested in calling out Clemens for lying before Congress. He's inching closer to the Hall of Fame every year, up 15% in the most recent vote from a year ago, and controversial comments might hurt his chances of getting into Cooperstown. He did watch the entire Clemens hearing and offered his thoughts, but no sharp criticism of The Rocket.
Here's my favorite statistic about Bert Blyleven. He threw 60 complete game shutouts! That's insane. To put it into perspective Gregg Maddux has 35, Randy Johnson has 37 and Roger Clemens has just 46. Of modern day starting pitchers, only Nolan Ryan has more with 61. If that doesn't make him a Hall of Famer, I must not know as much baseball as those damn writers.
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