Evolution of the Closer: How Baseball’s Ninth-Inning Heroes Changed the Game

On April seventh, nineteen sixty nine, the Dodgers Bell Singer gets credited for something no one has ever done before. In a game facing off against the Reds, he becomes the very first person to record a save in a Major League Baseball game. Before this, relievers were often forgot about and never given their due. And with this one stat change has led relief pitchers and closers to be able to make millions of dollars and revolutionize the game and become MVPs and cy Young winners due to this one stat that was created to give relief pictures their due. Today, we're going to dive into the background behind this game and how relief pictures came to be Today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily's History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide as you daily learned more about sports history, increasing your sports knowledge as we dive into the statistic of the save and today's trivia question to listen out for is how many saves did Belle Singer have during his career? Listen throughout the episode to hear the answer, and if you miss it, I will give it to you at the very end. So we got to go back to when baseball first started and how the game was played. Usually you had nine players, so whoever you had playing on the field was your team, and whoever started at pitching usually finished the game. That's why sall Young's records are way up there, because he pitched the entire games, and he won most of those games. But he would pitch two three times the amount of games that pitchers would pitch today, and he pitched the entire game. Relief pitchers wasn't very common unless a player got injured. In the very first time time that we saw a relief pitcher was in eighteen seventy six when the Red Caps outfielder Jack Manning replaced pitcher Joe Borden mid game due to injury. And in eighteen eighty nine a rule changed a loud substitution any time, paving the way for pictures to be more specialized in a relief role. But it didn't happen rapidly. It wasn't something that took the world by storm. It was something that happened gradually as teams began to realize a fresh picture could be more successful than a picture that had been pitching all game long. And the first true reliever was Ferpo Marberry of the Washington Senators back in the nineteen twenties and thirties, and he appeared in five hundred and fifty one games, and three hundred and sixty four of those were in relief being used to nail down victories, which was an early term to what would be called a safe. He would come in to relieve pitch that were tiring, their arm was wearing down, their speed was slowing down, and he'd come in to finish them off, much like we had today with closers. And then after World War Two, full time relievers became more common because it showed that it could be helpful and players could be more focused on relief pitching and focus on more singular pitches. There were pictures that focus on just knuckleballs and fourth balls and be more specialized, and this specialization led to a lot of good things, and in the nineteen seventies and eighties, pictures like Rally Fingers came about, who earned a Cy Young and an MVP in nineteen eighty one due to his dominance as a closer. And then Bruce Sutter showed that relief pitchers could master just one pitch, as he had the split finger fastball that he mastered, that he dominated with pitchers, and that showed possible as a closer you only needed one pitch instead of having multiple pitches to have control. And in the late eighties, Oakland Athletics manager Tony LaRussa redefined how bullpen strategy was used, and Dennis Eckersley would begin to become in in the ninth inning and be a closer for them what's more known as our closure today, coming into the eighth or ninth inning to finish out the game with clean bases, and he could work minimally so he could pitch more games, and he recorded a record zero point six one in nineteen ninety And he also, like Rolly Fingers, won Cy Young and MVP in nineteen ninety two, setting a record for the lowest ra and had fifty one saves that year. And we covered previously on an episode Mario ro Rivera, who really had also one of those specialized pitches, the cutter fastball, and he used that fastball to become the all time save leaders in MLB history. But how did this stat come about? We all started nineteen fifteen, So there was a Chicago sports writer, Jerome Holtzman, who conceived of a stat called the save in nineteen fifty nine after he observed that relief pictures were being undervalued. For example, the Pittbrock Pirates had reliever Roy Face who had an eighteen and one ERA in nineteen fifty nine, but that didn't show the instances where he allowed crucial runs that ended up losing the game. But his record looked like he was a good pitcher, but he wasn't a good relief pitcher for all the games he allowed to lose. So Holtzman put together a formula aiming to recognize relievers who preserved leads effectively and provided a fair metric on their impact to the game. Now. He devised this, but it took ten years before MLB used it in the modern pitching world. And this followed the Year of the Pitcher in nineteen sixty eight where Bob Gitson and Denny McClain broke records for pitching and this was part of their overhaul. And this also allowed relief pictures to earn save and allowed them to have a stat so they could show their value. Now this showed kind of the more of the analytics side of baseball that was coming for the future. Nowadays, analytics in baseball is almost too much. We know so much about the game that it's almost robotic now. But baseball is one of those sports where statistics is so important, and the fact that the save was introduced really changed the game. It allowed pictures to not view being a relief picture as a emotion, but it gave them an avenue to have more success. There are pictures that are just naturally born to have a rubber arm and can pitch over and over long innings with no issues. But there are other pictures that can do really good in an inning or two and go pitch back to back days. Every person is different and because of that, this allows people to be more specialized. So we come to the Dodgers playing the Reds in the opening of nineteen sixty nine season. The Dodgers had finished fourth the year before with a strong pitching staff that had a three point eight ERA and finished fourth in strikeouts that followed that previous year as they headed into opening day now. The game was played in Cincinnati to a sellout crowd, where Cincinnati has a long standing tradition where they host the first game of the MLB season dating back to eighteen seventy six, So this was the very first game of the year and the game got off to a rocky start for the Dodgers, great start for the Reds. We're in the bottom of the first inning. They gave up back to back home runs to Pete Rose and Bobby Tolan, though in the second inning the Dodgers would come back to score a run and in the third the Dodgers would take over the lead three to two. Now, previously before the game, Dodgers manager Walt Allson informed Bill Singer that he might need him in a relief duty, and Singer agreed without hesitation, despite normally a starting pitcher. It was opening day and they wanted to start the season on a high note. So in the bottom of the seventh Singer finally came in with that three to two lead that they had gotten in the third inning, and Singer pitched three scoreless innings, striking out two batters and allowing no walks. He retired nine consecutive batters to close out the game, giving them the win three to two. The victory went to Don Drydesdale, who started the game and pitched until the seventh inning, but the save went to Bill Singer, and this was the first time any player had gotten a recorded save, and remarkably, Singer didn't even realize he made history at the time. He was focused on helping his team win and preparing for his first start five days later, so he didn't save any memorabilia from that day. No ball, no scorecard, as the rule was so new and the changes that they previously made to lower the mound was so much more bigger to the pitchers rather than this save stats. It was a huge moment that he just didn't realize, and many people didn't even realize it as the stat was new when they saw it. People would see an in the box score and be like, s what does that even mean. Everyone was kind of learning as they went, and for twenty four hours, Singer held the record for the most saves recorded all time, but he was tied by other pitchers the following day, and Bill Singer had emerged as a standout pitcher. He led the team with the best ERA of two point three four and had a team tying twenty wins, but Bill ended up being kind of a journeyman pitcher. He did have two seasons where he won twenty games and four seasons where he had ra below three, and he didn't go on to become a relief pitcher or a closer. Really ended up having twenty four saves in his career, and he ended up winning one hundred and eighteen games for f his career with an earray of three point thirty nine. He did make one All Star Game, but probably his most memorable thing he did during his baseball career was recording the very first save in MLB history, And even though he's often forgotten about, he did have that one moment in sports history that we can always remember him by. I want to thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History, and if you really like this show, give us a review and tell us who your favorite closure is in MLB history, and come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History. And did you catch the answer to today's to be question how many saves did Bill Singer have during his entire career? And the answer is twenty four as he got the first save, but he wasn't really a closer as