Bruce Sutter, who won the World Series in 1982 and won the Cy Young Award in 1979, died Thursday night in Georgia. He was in a hospital. Sutter threw for the Chicago Cubs, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Atlanta Braves for 13 years. In 2006, Sutter became a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Let’s dive deep into Bruce Sutter Cause of Death.Bruce Sutter Cause of Death
Bruce Sutter Cause of Death
Bruce Sutter died on Thursday at a hospice in Cartersville, Georgia. He was a relief pitcher who was a six-time All-Star and won the 1979 Cy Young Award as the National League’s best pitcher. He was also the first pitcher to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame without ever having started a major league game. He was 69.
On the website for the St. Louis Cardinals, they said that he had died. The Associated Press heard from his son Chad that he was recently diagnosed with cancer.
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Bruce Sutter Career
Right-handed pitcher Sutter saved exactly 300 games while playing for the Chicago Cubs from 1976 to 1980, the St. Louis Cardinals from 1981 to 1984, and the Atlanta Braves in 1985, 1986, and 1988.
He won the Cy Young Award in 1979 when he had 37 saves, which tied a National League record that has since been broken many times, including by Sutter himself, who had 45 saves in 1984. John Smoltz and Eric Gagne both have 55 saves in a single season, which is now the record.
In 1982, the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 7 of the World Series. Sutter pitched two perfect innings to help the Cardinals win.
“I think he was kind of a precursor to what Mariano Rivera did with the cutter,” Hall of Fame pitcher and Cardinals partner Jim Kaat told mlb.com. “Bruce did it with one pitch, and that was the split-fingered fastball.” “The batters knew it was coming, but they still couldn’t hit it.”
But Sutter didn’t always throw his signature pitch. The most memorable time he didn’t was when he closed out the Cardinals’ 1982 World Series win. “The irony is that he got Gorman Thomas out with a high fastball going just 84 miles per hour, which was the last out of the World Series,” Kaat said.
Sutter was lucky to have made it out of the lower leagues and into the Hall of Fame in 2006.
The tweet below shows STLCards celebrating the memory of the Late Bruce Sutter:
The #STLCards celebrate the memory of the late, great Bruce Sutter. pic.twitter.com/Qd3Tb0QXJJ
— Bally Sports Midwest (@BallySportsMW) April 16, 2023
Because of a pinched nerve in his right arm, he was only able to play in two games for the Cubs in 1972. He paid for his own surgery at the end of the season because he was afraid the Cubs would let him go if they knew how bad his injury was. But by the time he got to the minor league spring training in Chicago in 1973, his fastball had lost speed.
Fred Martin, who was a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals and played in the minor leagues for a long time, was the minor league pitching coach for the Cubs. He had tried out what became known as a “split-fingered delivery.” He saw the scar on Sutter’s arm from surgery and taught him how to throw the ball.
For the split-fingered delivery, the pitcher needs to hold the baseball with the thumb on the bottom and the index and middle fingers spread far apart on the side. As the ball gets close to home plate, it spins sharply forward, and what the batter thinks is a normal fastball or changeup suddenly dips down.
The tweet below shows STLCards Fact:
#STLCards Fact:
Bruce Sutter was the first pitcher inducted into the Hall of Fame who had never started a single game. pic.twitter.com/2eVOrS7Kuc
— Augie Nash (@AugieNash) April 12, 2023
In May of 1976, Sutter played his first game in the big leagues for the Cubs. In his second year with the team, he became closer. In that year, he had 31 saves and was named to the All-Star team for the first time. During his four years with the Cardinals, he was a “two-inning wonder” when he was asked to pitch for more than one inning.
“When I warmed him up, if I didn’t use him that inning, he’d still pitch the next inning,” Whitey Herzog, who got Sutter for the Cardinals when he was their general manager and manager, told mlb.com. “Many of his saves lasted between two and two third innings. I could bring him in with the bases full and a score of 3-0 against him, and he wouldn’t walk a batter.”
During his 12 years in the big leagues, Sutter went 68-71 and had an earned run average of 2.83. He pitched 1,042 innings in 661 games and got 861 people out.
After Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, and Dennis Eckersley, he was the fourth closer to be chosen for the Hall of Fame.
The ball that saved him is still used in the game today.
Howard Bruce Sutter was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on January 8, 1953. He was the fifth of Howard and Thelma Sutter’s six children. His father ran a factory for the Farm Bureau.
After a short time at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, he was throwing semi-pro baseball in Pennsylvania in September 1971 when the Cubs organization signed him.
After he stopped playing, Sutter moved to the Atlanta area. His wife, Jayme Leigh, their three boys, Josh, Chad, and Ben, and six grandchildren are all still alive.
In 2006, the Cardinals did their own thing to honor Sutter by taking away his number 42. Major League Baseball had already removed that number to honor Jackie Robinson, but the Cardinals have added Sutter’s name to the list of retired numbers at Busch Stadium.
Just before Sutter was inducted into the Hall of Fame, he talked about the pitch that saved his career.
He said, “I wouldn’t be here without that pitch.”
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