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Hall of Fame Pitches

Recently, the still living curator of the fantastic Obit Of the Day sent me a message that I thought was too good to keep to myself. 

That message reads as follows: 

On Tuesday I was listening to the Detroit Tigers radio broadcast, and they brought up Mariano Rivera’s cutter. One guy said they “should put that pitch in the Hall of Fame.” Which got me to thinking, what pitches should be in the HOF?

My thoughts:

Curveball: Candy Cummings, Three Finger Brown
Fastball: Nolan Ryan, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Roger Clemens
Split-Finger: Bruce Sutter
Slider: Randy Johnson
Knuckler: Phil Neikro and Tim Wakefield
Anything Pedro threw.

That’s a pretty great list and I’m not sure I can find much fault with it. Here is my list with only a few changes and additions: 

  • Curveball: Candy Cummings, Three Finger Brown, Sandy Koufax
  • Fastball: Nolan Ryan, Walter Johnson, Bob Feller (Do you include Aroldis for hitting 105.1? If so, does Steve Dalkowski make it to the list?) 
  • Split-Finger: Bruce Sutter 
  • Change-Up: Christy Mathewson, Pedro Martinez 
  • Slider: Randy Johnson, Bob Gibson
  • Knuckler: Phil Neikro, Tim Wakefield, Toad Ramsey (for the same reason Candy Cummings is included).
  • Cutter: Mariano Rivera
  • Sinker: Brandon Webb

The biggest questions come with the players who have limited to zero footage of their performances. We’ll also have to weight players against their contemporaries because, despite anyone’s claim that Walter Johnson or Bob Feller etc etc etc had the greatest fastball, thanks to improvements in medicine, training, and nutrition, I doubt theirs would stand up today. Maybe I’m wrong. 

I would love to continue this conversation, creating an officially unofficial list so please leave your thoughts in the comments or shoot me an email and we’ll keep revisiting this debate.

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