Sparky Lyle Marquee

In 1977 he went 13-5 with 26 saves and a 2.17 earned run average across 72 appearances and won the American League Cy Young Award, the first relief pitcher in that league to take it — Mike Marshall had won the National League award three years earlier. New York won the World Series that October.

The Yankees signed Gossage that winter. Lyle saved 9 games in 1978 to Gossage's 27, and Graig Nettles said he had gone from Cy Young to sayonara, which is the line everyone remembers. He was traded to Texas in a ten-player deal that November; one of the players who came back to New York was Dave Righetti.

He saved 238 games in sixteen seasons, 141 of them for the Yankees, and led the league twice, first with 35 in 1972 at a 1.92 earned run average. His diary of the 1978 season, The Bronx Zoo, sold well enough to be a bestseller and did his standing in the game no good at all. He got 56 votes of 427 in 1988 and was off the ballot by 1992.