A Farewell to Don Gullett Who Passed Away Last Week at 73

Today I have a few thoughts on last week’s passing of Don Gullett. His time with the Yankees was very short because his career ended at the age of 27 due to a torn rotator cuff, but while he was in the Bronx, he played a role in helping the Yankees win two World Series titles. Lets get to it.

There was a time in the 1970s when Gullett was one of the best left-handed pitchers in baseball, and it was such a shame that his career - which according to his Cincinnati manager, Sparky Anderson, was on a Hall of Fame track - was cut short.

After just his first few seasons, some were comparing Gullett to arguably the greatest lefty of them all, Sandy Koufax, and Anderson boasted, “Barring an injury, he is almost sure of making the Hall of Fame. With Gullett’s body and the way he stays in shape, I know he’s going to pitch until he’s at least 35. So, doing that you know he’s going to win at least 250 games with the start he has. And anything over 250 has to rate a pitcher serious consideration for the Hall of Fame.”

Gullett passed away last week at the age of 73, not a member of the Hall of Fame, because injuries ruined his promising career. He was a man largely forgotten despite the fact that he pitched for four consecutive World Series-winning teams, a feat that very few players in the history of the game - most of them Yankees from the 1930s and 1950s - can lay claim to.

The first two came in 1975 and 1976 with the Reds, and his performance in Game 1 of that 1976 World Series when he pitched into the eighth inning and limited the Yankees to one run on five hits caught the attention of George Steinbrenner. That offseason, after the Reds swept the Yankees, Steinbrenner signed Gullett as a free agent.

He would go on to earn a ring when the Yankees beat the Dodgers in the 1977 and 1978 World Series, but injuries curtailed him both years, and his last one - the torn rotator cuff which he was never able to recover from - ended his career in July of 1978.

Gullett had been a first-round draft pick of the Reds in 1969 and by 1970 he was already on the Cincinnati team that eventually became the Big Red Machine. He made five postseason relief appearances in 1970, the year the Reds lost the World Series to the Orioles. “In time, he’ll be nothing but a star. We’re seeing a star being born right before our eyes,” Anderson said of his prized rookie.

He moved into the rotation in 1971 and went 16-6 with a 2.65 ERA, then took a step back in 1972 thanks to a bout with hepatitis, but still helped lead the Reds to another NL pennant before they lost to the A’s in the World Series. In his lone start in that Series, he gave up one run in seven innings of a 3-2 Game 4 loss in Oakland.

He won 18 games in 1973, 17 in 1974, and then in 1975 Gullett went 15-4 with a 2.42 ERA before throwing a complete game victory against the Pirates in the NLCS, and starting Games 1, 5 and 7 against the Red Sox in one of the great World Series of all-time.

In his last season with Cincinnati he was bothered by neck and shoulder ailments and made only 20 starts, but once the postseason arrived, Gullett was flawless. He pitched a two-hitter across eight innings to win Game 1 of the NLCS over the Phillies, then dominated the Yankees before having to leave the game because of an ankle injury in the eighth inning.

Free agency had just arrived in MLB and with Gullett’s Cincinnati contract expired, he was a popular guy on the open market despite the lingering ankle problem. But in those days, if you were a star, chances were you were heading to the Bronx because very few owners were willing to go above Steinbrenner’s offers if he was hellbent on acquiring a player.

“Our people believe Don’s the kind of pitcher who will be terrifically effective pitching in Yankee Stadium. We won’t be outbid without a fight,” Steinbrenner said the day Gullett signed a six-year, $1.7 million contract and was introduced during a Manhattan press conference, about a week before the Boss would also bring Reggie Jackson to the team.

Gabe Paul, the Yankees GM, called Gullett the “modern day Whitey Ford” and went on to say, “You add a player of Don’s caliber and you enhance your club’s chances of winning. We were in a very competitive situation, but we met the requirement on that.”

It was interesting in that Gullet was a quiet, unassuming small-town guy from Kentucky who had only known small-market Cincinnati as a big leaguer and some wondered whether he’d be able to handle playing in the media mecca of the baseball world. Gullett proclaimed he wasn’t worried about it.

“To go from my type of surroundings, even Cincinnati was a change,” he said. “I think I can adjust to New York. I’ve been successful in the National League so I’ll just stay with what I’ve been successful with. I’ll just pitch my own game.”

His first month as a Yankee portended his doomed stint with the team as he slipped on a wet mound in Baltimore in late April and missed time, and he was out all of August with a sore shoulder. When he did pitch, he was very good, 14-4 with a 3.58 ERA in 22 starts, but the postseason did not go well as he lost Game 1 of the ALCS to the Royals, got a no decision in Game 1 against the Dodgers, and then got shelled in Game 4 for another loss.

And then came the end in 1978. He missed the first two months because of his shoulder, then took his turn in the rotation eight times, the last of which was July 9 in Milwaukee. He was knocked out in the first inning and never pitched again as the shoulder gave out once and for all.

Maybe Anderson would have been right about Gullett had he stayed healthy. Instead, he pitched in only 266 games with 186 starts and finished with a 109-50 record, a 3.11 ERA and a 1.227 WHIP.

➤ One other thing about Gullett, his name is also attached to a piece of Yankee lore. With the Yankees mired in a brutal batting slump and riding a five-game losing streak early in 1977, an exasperated Billy Martin picked his batting order blindly out of a hat. Some have questioned whether it really happened, but why mess with a good story, right? Especially when it was reported that none other than Martin’s primary foil, Jackson, was the man he tabbed to pull the names out of Martin’s hat.

The order on that night - April 20 against Toronto - came out like this: 2B Willie Randolph, C Thurman Munson, RF Reggie Jackson, 3B Graig Nettles, CF Mickey Rivers, LF Roy White, DH Carlos May, 1B Chris Chambliss, SS Bucky Dent.

And the man on the mound as the starting pitcher was Gullett was. He wasn’t great but he lasted into the eighth inning and the Yankees won 7-5 as he earned his first career Yankee victory, one of only 18 he would achieve in pinstripes.

➤ Another interesting factoid about Gullett, who did get inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame - he gave up Hank Aaron’s 660th career home run in 1972, and then gave up the 660th and final home run of Willie Mays’ career in 1973.