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QuickTake:
Suds Sutherland, raised in Eugene, was flying high until a Walter Johnson fastball and a feud between two Major League stars ended his career as quickly as it started.
Game 1 of the World Series starts today.
Had Monday night gone differently, I would have used this space to wax nostalgic about my childhood as a Mariners fan, watching games with my grandpa and the cloud of stink that finally lifted from the franchise after 49 years of existence.
But then George Springer hit that three-run bomb.
So in the spirit of heartbreak, I’m going to tell you the story of Harvey “Suds” Sutherland, an Oregon native who, like the Mariners, had everything in front of him until the rug was suddenly pulled out from underneath.
Just sub out Springer, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Dan Wilson as the villains for Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.
See, Sutherland was never supposed to be in the majors. Raised in Eugene in the early 1900s, he dropped out of school in eighth grade, worked as a railroad shoveler at 16, became a logger at 18 and was pretty darn hard to hit in local baseball leagues.
He stood 6 feet tall and weighed, at most, 185 pounds. He didn’t have much of a fastball, but his arsenal of off-speed pitches — screwball, curveball, change-up — and an unorthodox delivery kept hitters off-balance enough to earn his first professional contract with the Baker City Miners in 1914.
The next five years saw him pinball around the Northwest, pitching for Tacoma, Edmonton, Spokane, Forsyth (Montana), and then Tacoma again.
He worked in the Portland shipyards during World War I and kept sharp by pitching in the shipbuilding league.
He got his big shot with the Double-A Portland Beavers in 1919 and by 1920 was turning heads after winning 21 games with a 2.86 ERA.
Wrote Ed R. Hughes in the San Francisco Chronicle after Sutherland pitched a no-hitter against the San Francisco Seals: “When young Stud started his task, folks felt rather sorry for him, for he does not look like a pitcher who will start any conflagration in the majors, and in fact he is considered as a second-string hurler on Portland’s second division ball club. But he got away with it, so give the boy credit.”
Sutherland hadn’t suddenly discovered velocity — “He hasn’t thrown one that travels faster than 12 miles an hour,” wrote The Oregonian after one win — but he was effective and durable, pitching a workmanlike 352 innings.
Cobb liked that.
***
But Cobb didn’t like Babe Ruth.
The face of baseball’s deadball era, the slap-hitting, high-tempered, spikes-up-sliding outfielder for the Detroit Tigers despised Ruth and what Ruth was turning the game into.
Cobb hit for average, stole bases and was never confused as a good hang.
Ruth mashed home runs, hot dogs and mugged for the camera.
By 1921, the 26-year-old Ruth was the best player the game had ever seen, hitting in the heart of the New York Yankees lineup and coming off a 54-home-run season — 24 more than the entire Tigers roster hit. At 34, Cobb was on the downswing of his career and serving his first season as Detroit’s player-manager.
The Tigers finished with a 61-93 record in 1920 — 37 games behind Cleveland — but started hot in 1921, partially thanks to Sutherland.
Cobb had signed Sutherland sight unseen after the 1920 season. The two hit it off in spring training — Cobb noted Sutherland knew as much about baseball as he did — and Sutherland started his MLB career by baffling hitters just as he had in the minors.
He had a 5-0 record with a sub-3.00 ERA on May 15 when Washington Senators ace Walter Johnson drilled Sutherland with a fastball in his pitching arm.
That’s when things started to go south.
With a dead arm, Sutherland had an ERA of 7.50 over his next five starts before getting the ball on June 12 at New York’s Polo Grounds. The Yankees were second in the American League. The Tigers were third, 2.5 games back. And Sutherland took the mound in a game where Ruth and Cobb were at each other’s throats from the start.
They hurled insults before the game. They had to be separated by umpires in the fourth inning.
When Ruth came up in the fifth with a runner on third and worked a 3-0 count, Cobb wanted Sutherland to pitch around the slugger.
Instead, Sutherland grooved a dead-armed fastball over the plate.
Ruth put it into the right-field bleachers.
It was the first home run Sutherland gave up in the big leagues.
It was also the last.
An enraged Cobb pulled Sutherland from the game, demoted him to the bullpen and soon sold him back to Portland.
Sutherland’s Major League Baseball career was over.
***
Sutherland wasn’t completely done playing.
Before rejoining Portland, Sutherland was barred for life from professional baseball for playing in a semipro game featuring a banned player. During his suspension, he played independent ball in Ontario, Canada, and made headlines in Oregon newspapers after taking a pitch to the head.
“Suds Sutherland stone blind,” read The Bulletin. “That is the tragic news that comes down from Portland.”
The reports jumped the gun. While Sutherland was seriously injured, he regained his vision and in 1922 was reinstated to play for Portland. He was strong that year, but he was traded to Seattle during an inconsistent 1923 season and spent the next six years bouncing from club to club before finally hanging up the glove in 1929.
After baseball, Sutherland worked in Seattle, then moved to Portland to become a mechanic. He took up umpiring for a spell — until he reportedly knocked out a manager during an argument over a runner not touching first base.
He died in 1972 at the age of 78. He’s buried at Pioneer Cemetery in Gresham.
And maybe there’s a happy ending somewhere in there between the time Ruth took him yard and the end — but that’s not for today’s story.
You can thank George Springer for that.
Reporting for this piece came from archives of The Oregonian, The Register-Guard, The Bulletin, The Flint Journal, the Detroit Free Press, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Society for American Baseball Research.
