That Yankee team also vanquished mine, second year in a row, and cast an indelible imprint of Yankee hatred on my heart. Even 1981 didn't erase the pain.

I might have been different had Guidry been 24-4...

I think Guidry's 1978 season deserves to be in the argument. A Baseball Analysts article from 2005 (http://tinyurl.com/2ow4b6) doesn't come to that conclusion, but I think Guidry deserves points for authoring his masterpiece season during a white-hot pennant race between two outstanding teams.

Walter Johnson, 1913: 18.3 WARP3
Roger Clemens, 1997: 15.3
Bob Feller, 1946: 14.7
Dwight Gooden, 1985: 13.7
Bob Gibson, 1968: 13.5
Pedro Martinez, 1999: 13.0
Ron Guidry, 1978: 12.4
Randy Johnson, 2002: 12.2
Sandy Koufax, 1966: 12.0
Curt Schilling, 2002: 10.6

Just to add some color: Walter Johnson in 1913 had a 1.14 ERA, 36-7 record, started 36 games and appeared in 12 more in relief en route to 346 innings. He saved 2 games, completed 29 of his 36 starts, and pitched 11 shutouts.

I also really, really like Lefty Grove's 1931 season, an incredible piece of work in light of the fact that in the early '30s everyone and his grandmother was hammering the ball all over creation. Pete Alexander's 1915 season is another one that gets a lot of consideration in discussions like these.

1. Tim Keefe+ (23) 294 1880 R
2. Pedro Martinez (28) 291 2000 R
3. Dutch Leonard* (22) 279 1914 L
4. Greg Maddux (28) 271 1994 R
5. Greg Maddux (29) 262 1995 R
6. Walter Johnson+ (25) 259 1913 R
7. Bob Gibson+ (32) 258 1968 R
8. Mordecai Brown+ (29) 253 1906 R
9. Pedro Martinez (27) 243 1999 R
10. Walter Johnson+ (24) 242 1912 R
11. Christy Mathewson+ (24) 230 1905 R
12. Dwight Gooden (20) 228 1985 R
13. Roger Clemens (42) 226 2005 R
14. Pete Alexander+ (28) 225 1915 R
15. Christy Mathewson+ (28) 222 1909 R

No. You're right on target, which makes Pantheon the wrong word. Guidry's pitching was godlike, but he wasn't; he wasn't an imposing figure. He was about my size at the time: 5'11", 165. (I'm still 5'11". 165 is a fond memory.) Guidry just looked like...a guy.

Or, at least he did until I saw a picture of him with his shirt off. Then he looked like just a guy, but a guy whose left arm was bulging, rippling, muscular out of proportion to anything else.

He also became rather less godlike to me when I first heard him speak. Since then I've tried to not to hear him again. It's tough to hear your heroes struggle with basic English sentences.

Two little-known facts about that 1978 season:

1. All three of Guidry's losses were to left-handed pitchers named Mike.

2. The practice of clapping when a pitcher gets two strikes on a batter didn't exist before Ron Guidry. It began on June 17, 1978, when Guidry struck out 18 Angels. He roared through the middle innings - 11 Ks in innings 3-6, 14 total at that point. Somewhere in there it became clear that the record (still 19) was within reach, and the fans really got into it. I was watching on TV, and every time there was a grounder or a popup, we were screaming for the fielder to drop it. Oh yeah, and the people at the game started standing and clapping every time he got to strike 2.

As for Guidry, I was at the peak of my baseball fandom in 1978, an 11 year old with no other interests. Guidry was throwing the ball like he was scraping it with a rusty nail before each pitch, they moved so viciously away from the hitter. An earlier comment was right about the timing of this season: in 1978, the Yankees needed someone to go 25-3 with a 1.74 ERA. The team was in turmoil and other than Ed Figueroa, there was really no other reliable starter. Ronnie also pitched on short days' rest to win the one-game playoff against Boston, muddling through 6.1 innings and giving up 3 runs, maybe his shakiest outing of the season. But that game got the Yankees to the post-season. That game breaks the tie between Guidry in 1978 and Gooden in 1985.

Another connection between 1978 and 1985: as an earlier commentator noted, the hysterical clapping at 2 strikes began with Guidry that year. The K-Corner celebrating the starting pitcher's strikeout totals during the game began with Gooden.

Walter Johnson's was top. Pedro's two seasons were two and three.

13 : Ah, it all evens out. Joe Gordon in '42 and Joe Dimaggio in '47 didn't deserve the MVP over Ted Williams, who won THE FREAKING TRIPLE CROWN both years. Plus, didn't George King leave Pedro off his MVP ballot in '00 out of sheer spite? Classy. But yeah, even I have to admit that, monstrous as my man Jim Rice's '78 campaign was, Guidry's '78 efforts were even better. I'm not so sure that Mattingly deserved the '86 award over Clemens, however.

17 : I love watching Maddux, too. He's the closest to Seaver I've ever seen in terms of exuding an unmatched, unshakable, confident calm.

And the opening sequence to the otherwise poorly written syndicated show "Tales From the Darkside" used to absolutely scare the shit out me.

And when I was really little, of course, there was the sound of that fucking 'Land of Make-believe' trolley, which, undoubtedly, always meant that I would be horribly frightened by hideous puppets in just a few moments.

1. Maddux and Guidry are the only modern pitchers mentioned that weren't power pitchers. In every case except for those two, the pitcher in question threw really freaking hard even if, like Pedro in 99/00 or Seaver, there was great skill in the way that the power repetoire was used.

2. I've been trying to think of the best season not mentioned, either in the list or the posts. So here are three:

(1) Dizzy Dean, 1934.
(2) Randy Johnson, 1995.

In both cases, they were incredible down the stretch in really tight pennant races. Dean threw two shutouts in three days to clinch the pennant, came back on two days rest to win game 1 of the WS, then threw another shutout in game 7.

(3) Not to seriously compare Pedro to the guys that threw underhand and wore jerseys with frilly collars...but...as long as Tim Keefe's name is up there, why not Old Hoss Radbourn?

23 : The place where I bought baseball cards was in the opposite direction of the Doberman house. Probably no accident.

25 : Good calls on Diz and The Big Unit. As for Guidry being a non-power pitcher, like Maddux: I never thought of his '78 season that way, I guess because he racked up so many K's that year. He might not have been a power pitcher that year, but he wasn't what we usually think of as a soft-tossing "crafty lefty" (a la Bill Lee, Jimmy Key, Jamie Moyer, etc.) either.

I like Old Hoss Radbourn being part of the discussion. Might I also add Jack Chesbro and his 40 wins that one year near the turn of the century.

While I don't think you can hold up a guy from 100 years ago as being comparably dominant to a pitcher like Randy Johnson...

Waddell doesn't get credit because he was such an odd man. When we think of him, we remember all those stories of him acting crazy...I don't know if I've ever heard anybody describe him simply as a pitcher. But look at those strikeouts. I don't know if there's one season in particular but he's always WAY in front of everybody else in his league in K/9. He was striking out hitters almost twice as often as anybody else. I've always wondered about that anomaly but anytime Waddell's name comes up it means tales of him chasing fire engines.

One of my neighbors was a corrections officer with a doberman named Guy. He was a mean SOB even on the chain/rope/teflon or whatever they tried to use to restrain him, but invariably he got loose and he'd jog around the neighborhood with the restraint dangling around his neck, chasing anyone who moved (which would be anyone if they were smart). His favorite target was this girl who lived next door; whenever the kids saw him loose, we all ran to get on top of the nearest car, but he caught up and bit her at least three times. My Mom, no shrinking violet, tried to kill him on several occasions, but the owner would grab him and pull him inside before SHE caught Guy. Funny how nobody ever called the cops on the owner for letting his dog get loose and bite children, unless hey, being a corrections officer did have it's perks...

But one day Guy got loose, and the next thing you know he got hit by (irony!) a kindergarten school bus. Every neighbor who lived on our street gathered together and celebrated in front of the owner's house. I remember playing a game of stickball with every kid in the neighborhood in front of our house that day. A year later the owner and his family moved out.

Like Mom said, karma's a b-word... >;)