Halladay was a complete pro
NEW YORK never enjoyed the treat of Roy Halladay as a hometown pitcher, the stars not quite aligning when the stud pitcher held real interest in being traded from the Blue Jays to the Yankees following the 2009 season.
If you didn’t get enough of a feel for his greatness as he made life miserable first for the Yankees in a Blue Jays uniform and then for the Mets in a Phillies uniform, you need look at only one statistic. One measure that underlines both his approach to the job and the particularly cruel irony of his shocking death from crashing his own plane Tuesday at age 40: Complete games. From 1996, the first full season following the highly damaging work stoppage of 1994-95 and, anecdotally speaking, the season in which illegal performance-enhancing drug usage appeared to reach a new level, through 2017, no one pitched more complete games than Halladay, who went the distance 67 times. The top active leader is free agent CC Sabathia, with 38 (per Baseball-Reference.com). Baseball’s last true workhorse left us way too soon. The game has evolved dramatically even from Halladay’s retirement in 2013. Only the best pitchers receive the opportunity to go through the opposing lineup three times, let alone the four it typically requires to pick up all 27 outs. Cleveland’s Corey Kluber and Minnesota’s Ervin Santana tied for the 2017 major-league lead with five complete games, career highs for both men. Halladay registered five or more complete games in seven of his 16 seasons. He earned such license from his managers because he dominated. His career 131 ERA+ meant that he performed 31 percent above his league’s average when ballparks were factored into the equation. He is one of six men to win the Cy Young Award in each league, one of 21 to have thrown a perfect game since 1900 and one of two to throw a no-hitter in postseason action. Hence the inevitability of his Hall of Fame election and induction — now, sadly, posthumous — with his first year on the ballot scheduled for December 2018.
These numbers tell much of Halladay’s story, yet they don’t fully explain the devastation that baseball people felt on Thursday. Halladay was as respected a teammate and opponent as I’ve seen in my two-plus decades of covering baseball. If he had any detractors, they didn’t speak out.
That speaks to the way Halladay did his job: With dedication, and without celebration. He served as a role model for both his physical conditioning and his mental strength; he gladly aided teammates with both components. He treated the fans and the media with respect, yet good luck trying to get him to do or say something colorful. His nickname, “Doc,” came about because of his last name matching up close enough with Wild West character Doc Holliday. It stuck because, in addition to being a nononsense guy you wanted on your side in a baseball battle, Halladay became a quiet sage.
In 2010, when Halladay joined the Phillies, the Mets’ Johan Santana proclaimed himself as the National League East’s best pitcher. Halladay responded the next day: “I steer clear of that. I think it was a Lou Holtz quote, ‘Well done is always more important than well said.’ I’ve always tried to take that philosophy and I stay out of those things as much as possible.”
Not only did he deliver the perfect retort, he added attribution. He was complete in that way, too.
And now, an incomplete life, done in by the same high-risk hobby that killed Yankees captain Thurman Munson in 1979 and Mets and Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle in 2006.
His baseball legend won’t diminish because tales of his work ethic, his commitment and his good nature will be passed on to future generations. And if Major League Baseball wanted to honor Halladay more specifically? That’s a slam dunk:
From now on, the season leader in complete games gets the Roy Halladay Award.