10 Best Nike Golf Glove

Best Nike Golf Glove in 2023

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Jim Kaat is a Hall of Famer

Jim Kaat won 283 games and 16 Gold Gloves in a pitching career that lasted 25 years. Why is this man not in the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Jim Kaat broke onto baseball's big stage in 1959 with the Senators at twenty years old, getting into three games late in the season. He went 1-5 in 1960, and then suffered through an awful 1961 campaign with the Twins, who had relocated from Washington and changed their name from the Senators. Jim Kaat was 9-17 that year, despite allowing fewer hits than innings pitched. Jim Kaat finally turned the corner in 1962, and over the next four seasons the left-hander won 18, 10, 17, and 18 games. In 1965, he helped lead the upstart Twins to their first World Series, where he hooked up three times with the fabulous Sandy Koufax. Jim Kaat won the first of these head to heads by a 5-1 score, but lost the last two, 7-0 and 2-0, the latter in the Series deciding Game Seven.

1966 was the last year that baseball gave out only one Cy Young award, or Jim Kaat would have easily won the award in the American League. Koufax's superlative 27-9 campaign earned him the Cy Young over Kaat, who had gone 25-13, leading the American League in wins by five over Detroit's Denny McLain and walking only 1.62 batters per nine innings. It was easily the best year Jim Kaat would enjoy in the game, and it would be nine more seasons before he would once again garner twenty victories. He started off 1972 by going 10-2, but on July 2nd slid into second base and broke his pitching hand. The injury forced Jim Kaat to miss the rest of the year.

The Twins put Jim Kaat on waivers in August of 1973, thinking that at age 34 his best days were behind him. But Jim Kaat proceeded to put together back to back twenty win seasons for the White Sox, winning 21 in 1974 and 20 the next year. The White Sox traded Jim Kaat to the Phillies in the winter of 1975, where he pitched for three plus seasons until going to the Cardinals, where he finished his career in 1983 at the age of 45. With St. Louis, Jim Kaat was a member of their 1982 World Series winning club, and even appeared in four of those contests against the Brewers.

With a lifetime record of 283-237, Jim Kaat's numbers compare favorably with several pitchers that are in the Hall of Fame. Jim Bunning, Phil Niekro, Gaylord Perry, Red Faber, Robin Roberts, Nolan Ryan, and Early Wynn all have a winning percentage similar to the .544 of Jim Kaat. He currently ranks 30th all time in wins, 16th in games played, 25th in innings pitched, 32nd in total strikeouts, and 16th in games started. His excellent control made him susceptible to home runs, as he ranks 10th on the all-time list, allowing 395 over his career; seven of the nine men above him on that list are in the Hall of Fame.

What separates Kaat from everyone in the Hall of Fame, except for Brooks Robinson, is his 16 Gold Gloves. Kaat, nicknamed "Kitty", had feline-like reflexes on the mound, and he set the standard for fielding greatness from 1962 though 1977, winning the pitcher's Gold Glove every year during that period. The three-time All-Star hit 16 home runs and batted a respectable .185 lifetime, even knocking in two runs against Koufax in his victory in Game Two of the 1965 World Series.

Jim Kaat is now 68 years old, working as an analyst for the YES Network. His laid back and insightful style, as he covers the Yankees, was also evident in a book he wrote in 2003. "Still Pitching" details Jim Kaat's many years in the game, without taking potshots at anyone and letting the readers know what it was like during the 60s and 70s in baseball. Jim Kaat definitely belongs in the Hall of Fame. His was a career based on a love for the sport of baseball, one that should not be held against him because he chose to play it as long as he could.