COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – He inadvertently left out Ted Turner, seemingly one of the few important people in John Smoltz’s life that the former Braves pitcher forgot to mention during a rambling speech Sunday at his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Part of an elite class with multi-Cy Young Award winners Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez and 3,000-hit-club member Craig Biggio, Smoltz became the third member of the Braves Big Three pitching dynasty inducted in a two-year span, after Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine were enshrined in 2014 with their longtime former manager, Bobby Cox.
“The best way to describe my career is unique,” said Smoltz, the only major leaguer to record at least 200 wins and 150 saves. “And I have fingerprints all over my career by those who touched me, and impacted me, and helped me along the way. It is a huge army that got John Smoltz from Lansing, Michigan, to where I am today.”
He named many of them during a speech that lasted 29 ½ minutes, the longest among Sunday’s four inductees and longer than the combined total of last year’s induction speeches by his pals Glavine and Maddux. More than 40,000 fans, family members and baseball officials filled the sprawling lawn at the Clark Sports Center on a sunny, unseasonably warm day, including thousands of Dominican Republic-flag waving fans who chanted Pedro Martinez’s name.
He thanked folks ranging from his boyhood best friend, to youth-league and high school coaches, to his parents, wife, four children and two step-children. From Tommy John, the pitcher who first had the surgery that bears his name — John called Smoltz in 2001 when Smoltz was struggling mightily in his first year back from “TJ” surgery — to Braves clubhouse attendants, whom he called “the heart and soul of our team.”
Smoltz praised team executives including Terry McGuirk and John Schuerholz, trainers, doctors and team chaplains. Later, he noted at a news conference his failure to mention former Braves owner Turner, and called him one of the greatest owners in baseball.
There weren’t many others left to wonder how much they meant to Smoltz, who praised not just former teammates such as Maddux, Glavine, Andruw Jones – “the greatest center fielder I’ve ever seen” – and catchers Greg Olson and Brian McCann, past and present Braves trainers – Dave Pursley, Jeff Porter, Jim Lovell – and doctors who spent countless hours working with pitcher who had five arm surgeries.
“The one doctor I spent the most time with, the most passionate doctor, Joe Chandler – there’s no possible way that I could have done this without you,” Smoltz said of the Braves team physician and former orthopedic surgeon. “I can’t thank you enough. You are everything that I could ask for in your profession.”
He thanked former Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone, who as a minor league coach worked with Smoltz soon after the August 1987 trade. Mazzone later served as pitching coach throughout the Braves’ entire run of 14 consecutive division titles through 2005. (Smoltz pitched for the Braves through 2008.)
“He helped simplify my mechanics, simplify my ability to pitch,” Smoltz said, “and with the throwing program that we were able to use over the last 15 years of our career, it was the reason why we stayed so healthy. Thank you, Leo, for your patience and your diligence in seeing something through and making it work.”
Smoltz had special messages for the three Braves inducted last year, who were seated along with 45 Hall of Famers, including Braves greats Hank Aaron and Phil Niekro, in tiered rows of chairs behind the podium.
Smoltz was at last year’s induction ceremony in his role as an MLB Network analyst, and the brunt of good-natured jokes by Maddux and Glavine regarding Smoltz’s progressively balding pate. Midway through his speech Sunday, Smoltz pulled out a unkempt wig and donned it before addressing Maddux and Glavine.
“Glav, Maddux, back when I had hair we had the time of our lives,” Smoltz said. “You know all the statistics that got (Glavine and Maddux) here for the Hall of Fame. But they did things for me behind the scenes that I will never forget…. I cannot say enough about them.”
He mentioned Chipper Jones, the former Braves third baseman expected to be a first-ballot inductee in 2018.
“To Chipper Jones, soon to be inducted in the Hall of Fame, I’m not going to say anything about him, because he’ll have the mic last,” Smoltz said. Then he joked, “But somebody steal his Twitter account, please. That will help.”
Smoltz made a special point to again praise Cox, the Braves general manager when he traded for the then-Tigers prospect struggling with command issues, and later the manager for the final 18 of Smoltz’s 20 years with the Braves.
“Bobby Cox is every single thing to me, on why I stand up here today,” Smoltz said, as TV cameras showed the stoic Cox smile at his former pitcher. “He’s the GM that traded for me, and yes they were the worst team in baseball at the time. It was the most devastating time of my life, but I realized that I would have an opportunity at a young age in an organization that desperately needed pitching.
“Bobby became my manager. He’s the reason I stayed in the organization for 20 years, I would rather go nowhere else. He empowered people, he gave you confidence when you didn’t have it. He was a tremendous leader, and I owe a great amount of my career to this man.”
He spent all but the final season of his 21-year career with the Braves, and said of the organization: “To wear this uniform and represent the great state of Georgia, I never took one day for granted. Wearing this uniform, I played every game as if it was my last.”
Smoltz, the first Hall of Famer to have had Tommy John elbow surgery, wasn’t finished until he’d added a coda of sorts, urging parents to protect young arms by bucking the trend of kids specializing and playing baseball year-round.
“I want to encourage parents that this is not normal to have a (Tommy John) surgery at 14 and 15 years old,” he said. “That you have time, that baseball is not a year-round sport. That you have an opportunity to be athletic and play other sports.”
