Tom Glavine, a 20-year veteran of Major League Baseball (MLB) and currently a member of the New York Mets, has proven to be one of the sport's most durable pitchers. In the last two seasons, following a slump, the southpaw has strengthened his performance by throwing "inside" with both his changeup and his fastball, and he has enhanced his control with a quickening of his pitching motion; the result, in particular since the 2005 All-Star Break, has been a return to form that has brought him closer to an illustrious benchmark for starting pitchers--300 career victories. (Only 22 men have won 300 or more big-league games, a fraternity that includes baseball's most renowned hurlers.) Glavine spent the first 16 years of his career with the Atlanta Braves, the Mets' chief rival in the National League Eastern Division. While with the Braves he won the National League Cy Young Award in 1991 and 1998 and was elected to the All-Star Game eight times. He was selected as an All-Star representing the Mets in 2004 and 2006. Among the active leaders in career wins, innings pitched, games started, complete games, shutouts, batters faced, and strikeouts, Glavine ranks as one of the best pitchers of his generation.

    In a conversation with Scott Freeman for Atlanta Magazine (April 2001), Leo Mazzone, the Braves' pitching coach from 1990 until 2003, offered the following assessment of Glavine: "Steady, consistent, stubborn, on the edge, never giving in. He has tremendous arm action and change of speed, and that makes him deceptive. Hitters know he's going to throw down and away, and they still can't do anything about it." Echoing a commonly held sentiment, Mazzone also praised Glavine's ability to alter his game plan while on the mound, according to the effectiveness of certain pitches in particular situations. "He does it in different fashions," Mazzone told Steve Marantz for the Sporting News (May 1, 1995). "I've seen him throw 79 pitches in a 9-inning game. I've seen him do it with change of speed. Whatever is working for him on a particular night, he'll use. He's the type of pitcher who wins when he doesn't have his best stuff. I've seen him throw a shutout striking out one, and I've seen him throw a shutout striking out 10." Glavine is a crafty rather than overpowering pitcher, baiting his opponents into ineffectual swings instead of facing them down with blazing fastballs. Leigh Montville, writing for Sports Illustrated (July 13, 1992), noted, "He goes about his business with precision, not angst. He deceives. He fools. One pitch sets up another pitch, and another, and another. His dominant pitch, for goodness' sake, is the changeup."

    One of four children, Thomas Michael Glavine was born on March 25, 1966 in Concord, Massachusetts, and raised in a blue-collar, middle-class household in Billerica, in the greater Boston area. He has one sister, Debbie, and two brothers, Fred and Mike. (On September 14, 2003, at the age of 30, Mike Glavine made his major-league debut with the New York Mets, after an extensive minor-league career.) Tom's father, Fred, was a construction worker in Billerica, where he later started his own company, Fred Glavine Construction. Tom's mother, Mildred, was a school secretary. Fred Glavine encouraged Tom's interest in sports but did not pressure him to excel, merely wanting his son to enjoy himself. Tom Glavine played baseball, street hockey, and football with the other children in his neighborhood. He told an interviewer for Sports Illustrated for Kids (December 1992) that he "dreamed" of becoming a professional athlete, "but I knew that millions of kids had the same dream."

    Glavine played baseball and hockey at Billerica Memorial High School, concentrating on one sport per season and becoming a standout in both. He was so proficient at hockey, in which he played center, that National League Hockey (NHL) scouts sometimes attended his games. One scout, who ranked Glavine 56th out of some 240 prospective NHL players, noted in a written report the teenager's "good skating ability," "long stride with good balance," and "good acceleration," and found Glavine to be "an excellent scorer, smart around net . . . tough and durable," a player who "[would] not be intimidated," and an "excellent competitor," as quoted by Montville. At the end of his senior year, Glavine was named the Boston area's high-school hockey player of the year, an award that was presented to him at the Boston Garden, the former home of the Boston Celtics basketball team and the Boston Bruins hockey team. He also earned the Boston Globe's All-Scholastic and All Player of the Year honors for his efforts on the ice. (Playing hockey in high school, Glavine competed against such future NHL stars as Kevin Stevens, Tom Barrasso, and Brian Leetch, each of whom lived in the greater Boston area.)

    On the baseball diamond, meanwhile, Glavine played multiple positions, including pitcher and center fielder. The most memorable achievement of his high-school baseball career came in his senior year, in the 1984 Massachusetts state championship game, against Brockton High School. He started the game on the pitcher's mound, throwing for nine innings in which he surrendered only one run, and had been moved to center field, with the score tied 1-1, when the game went into extra innings. In the 11th inning, from the outfield, he threw out an opponent attempting to score. In the 13th inning, with his team at bat, he led off with a single, and later that inning he scored the championship-clinching run.

    On June 9, 1984 the Los Angeles Kings hockey team drafted Glavine with the 69th overall pick in the fourth round. (He was selected ahead of such players as Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille, who both went on to stardom in the NHL.) He was also offered a scholarship to play hockey at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. In the summer of 1984, when the Atlanta Braves baseball team selected Glavine in the second round of the amateur draft, he was faced with having to pick a career path. He chose baseball, signing with the Braves. Glavine said to John McMurray for Baseball Digest (October 1, 2005), "You just go through the plusses and minuses of both sports. I think that two things that weighed heavily with me in both sports were the health factor and the ability to play baseball probably longer than hockey."

    Just a few weeks after the Braves signed him, Glavine headed to Bradenton, Florida, to play in the minor leagues. In the 32 innings he pitched, he struck out 34 batters, triggering his promotion, in 1985, to the Braves' South Atlantic League team in Sumter, South Carolina. He spent the 1986 season in Greenville, South Carolina, with the Braves' double-A affiliate, and began the 1987 campaign playing triple-A ball in Richmond, Virginia, in the International League. On August 14, 1987 he was promoted to the big leagues and joined the Braves.

    From the 1984 season through the 1990 season, the Braves finished no higher than third place in the National League Western Division. They became the laughingstock of the National League, and their home attendance figures slumped mightily. Glavine attained his first victory in Atlanta on August 22, 1989, in a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. In the 50.1 innings he pitched that year, he won two games, lost four, and compiled a 5.54 ERA. In 1988, his first full season in the big leagues, Glavine won seven games, lost 17, and had a 4.56 ERA.

    One day in spring training in 1989, while standing in the outfield during batting practice, Glavine picked up a ball that had rolled toward him and, without intending to, hurled it back toward the infield with his middle and index fingers placed along the baseball's seams and the tip of his index finger and resting atop his thumbnail. Experimenting with the new grip in subsequent games, Glavine found that he could use it to reduce the velocity of his pitches while maintaining his normal arm speed--thereby coaxing hitters to swing prematurely. "Throwing that way just seemed natural to me," Glavine said to Leigh Montville, adding, "If I hadn't found that pitch, picked up the ball that way . . . I don't know. Maybe I would have found some other pitch. I don't know. I'm just glad I found it." The changeup pitch he developed (often called a circle-changeup) became Glavine's most reliable "out pitch," or pitch meant to secure a strikeout; he continues to throw it as many as 50 times in a game. He employed his new changeup with great frequency and success during the 1989 season. Of the 22 games in which he was the pitcher of record, he won 14, and recorded a 3.68 ERA. In 1990, taking a step backward, he won 10 and lost 12, compiling a 4.28 ERA.

    For both Glavine and the Braves, 1991 was the start of over a decade of highly successful seasons. Midway through the preceding season, on June 22, 1990, Bobby Cox had replaced Russ Nixon as the team's manager. Cox named Leo Mazzone as the Braves' pitching coach. Together, Cox, Mazzone, and John Schuerholz, hired as the team's general manager after the 1990 season, formed baseball's soundest and most successful brain trust. From 1991 through 2005 (except for the strike-shortened 1994 season), the Braves won an unprecedented 14 straight division titles. The strongest element of the team was its rotation of mostly young starting pitchers, including Glavine, who benefited from Mazzone's counsel. From 1992 through 2002, for example, the Braves had the lowest or second-lowest ERA in the major leagues. The team also took home six of the eight National League Cy Young Awards (presented to pitchers) given from 1991 to 1998.

    The Braves won 94 games in 1991 to take the National League Western Division title, advancing to the play-offs for the first time since 1982. They defeated the Pirates, four games to three, in the National League Championship Series (NLCS). In that series Glavine was saddled with two losses, despite pitching to a 3.21 earned-run average and surrendering less than one hit per inning pitched. In the World Series the Braves lost in seven games to the Minnesota Twins. In two starts in the World Series, Glavine pitched to a slightly higher ERA (4.05) but picked up a victory in the Braves' 14-5 victory in Game Five.

    Never the ace of the Braves' pitching staff, Glavine was nonetheless regarded as a model of consistency and durability. From 1991 to 1993, for example, he posted three consecutive 20-win seasons, leading the National League in victories in each of those years. In 1991, in recognition of his 20-11 record, 2.55 ERA, and nine complete games, the Baseball Writers Association of America named Glavine the Cy Young Award winner in the National League. The following year he became the first National League pitcher to start consecutive All-Star Games since Robin Roberts of the Philadelphia Phillies--who had accomplished the feat in 1954 and 1955. The Braves advanced to the World Series for a second straight season, winning a rematch against the Pirates in the 1992 NLCS, four games to three. Glavine rebounded from a Game Six start that lasted just one inning--one in which he surrendered eight runs--to toss a complete game in Game One of the 1992 World Series, a four-hitter against the Toronto Blue Jays, which the Braves won, 3-1. His performance in Game Four was equally strong: in notching his second complete game of the series, he allowed six hits, four walks, and two runs. The Braves, however, lost that game, 2-1, and went on to lose the series, four games to two. In the 1993 NLCS the Braves were thwarted by the Phillies from qualifying for their third consecutive World Series.

    Between the 1993 and 1994 seasons, when the National League was expanded to include a third division, the National League Central, the Atlanta Braves were moved from the National League West to the National League East. Baseball's realignment also included a restructuring of the play-offs, which would double the number of teams invited to the play-offs from two to four--the three division winners and a wildcard team. In 1994 Atlanta's hope of reaching the National League championship for the fourth consecutive time was dashed by the players' strike, which arose over plans to impose a salary cap on the MLB athletes. Glavine posted 13 wins, the fifth-highest total in the league, and an earned-run average of 3.97, his highest since the 1990 season, during the abbreviated 1994 season. Ironically, Glavine attributed those relatively modest figures to the strengthening of his left arm, which added roughly five miles per hour to his fastball and caused him to lose some control of his pitches. Glavine, who had become the players' union representative for the Braves in 1991, emerged as a target of many fans' ire because of his visible role in the strike and negotiations. The players' strike ended on April 1, 1995, and games resumed on April 25.

    Atlanta finished that season with a record of 90 wins and 54 losses. In the first round of the National League play-offs, beginning on October 3, 1995, the Braves faced the Colorado Rockies, the league's wild-card finisher. Taking the ball in Game Two, Glavine hurled five scoreless innings before surrendering a three-run homer to the Rockies' outfielder Larry Walker, with one out in the sixth inning--a blow that tied that game at three. (The Braves went on to win the game, 7-4.) After winning the series against the Rockies three games to one, the Braves swept the Cincinnati Reds in four games for the National League championship. In Game One of the pennant series, on October 10, 1995, Glavine pitched seven strong innings, striking out five opposing batters; the Braves won in 11 innings, 2-1. In the World Series, against the Cleveland Indians, Glavine won the first two games. (In Game Two he surrendered a second-inning two-run home run to the Indians' first baseman Eddie Murray before recording a 4-3 victory.) With Glavine resting, Cleveland took Game Three, Atlanta Game Four, and Cleveland Game Five. In Game Six, on October 28, 1995, Glavine took the mound at Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium to give what still stands as his most dazzling performance in a pressurized situation. He allowed only one hit over eight innings, striking out eight batters, and pitched the Braves to a 1-0 victory--and their first World Series championship since 1957. Glavine was named the series' most valuable player.

    The Braves advanced to the World Series again in 1996 and 1999, both times losing to the New York Yankees. In his 16 years in Atlanta, Glavine started 32 postseason games, racking up 12 wins and 15 losses and a 3.58 earned-run average. In World Series play during those years, in eight games started, he won four, lost three, and recorded three complete games. In 1998 Glavine took home his second Cy Young Award. That season he posted a career-best 2.47 ERA, 20 wins, and six losses.

    On December 5, 2002, after contract negotiations with the Braves failed to work out to his satisfaction, Glavine signed a four-year, $42.5 million deal with the New York Mets. Sportswriters believed that in signing Glavine the Mets had obtained a veteran leader who would bolster their pitching rotation. The Mets had reached the World Series in 2000 (in which they were defeated in five games by the New York Yankees), then finished in third place in their division in 2001 and compiled a disappointing 75-86 record under Bobby Valentine the following season. Art Howe replaced Valentine after that year. Acknowledging the team's recent decline, Jack Curry wrote for the New York Times (January 24, 2003),"[Glavine] walks, talks and acts like a leader, something the Mets desperately need."

    Glavine's career with the Mets began inauspiciously. On the cold and windy afternoon of March 31, 2003, in New York's Shea Stadium, he surrendered eight hits, four walks, and five runs in a game against the Chicago Cubs, in less than four innings pitched. (Speaking to reporters after the game, Glavine said that he had had trouble gripping the ball in the way needed to throw his changeup in the 39-degree weather.) The season as a whole was substandard for Glavine: he posted a 9-14 record (his first losing record since 1990) and a 4.52 earned-run average, which was uncharacteristically high. Also, in pitching only 183.1 innings, he ended a streak of seven seasons with at least 200 innings pitched. The Mets sank even lower in the standings, finishing with a 66-95 record (the second-worst in the NL in 2003), 34.5 games behind the division-champion Braves.

    In the first half of the 2004 season, Glavine seemed poised to bounce back, pitching to a 2.66 earned-run average and a 7-7 record. He was selected to play in the 2004 All-Star Game, held in Houston, Texas, in July. In early August his record stood at 8-10, with a 2.92 ERA. Then, on August 10, an SUV (sport utility vehicle) slammed into the taxi transporting Glavine from LaGuardia Airport to Shea Stadium. Glavine lost two front teeth. (He underwent extensive surgery, mostly after the season.) He returned to the field later that month but pitched poorly for a time, saddling himself with a 5.71 ERA. In his first two seasons with the Mets, he collected only 20 wins against 28 losses--while watching his former team, the Braves, win the Eastern Division championship both years. (They did so again in 2005.) Meanwhile, the Mets' 71-91 record in 2004 represented the team's third consecutive losing season.

    At the time of the 2005 All-Star Break, Glavine's record stood at 6-7 with a 4.94 earned-run average--numbers that fell short of the pitcher's past performance and did not meet the Mets' standards. Glavine's pitching increasingly drew boos from the Mets fans gathered at Shea Stadium. Because of his reluctance to pitch inside, which he had never done with consistent success, the hitters facing him were free to ignore that area of the strike zone and look instead for pitches over the outer area of the plate. To address the problem, Glavine worked with Rick Peterson, the Mets' pitching coach, and expanded his repertoire to include more pitches designed to cross the inner area of home plate. Also, he sought to unsettle hitters by occasionally throwing a curveball, a pitch he had consciously avoided since his days in Atlanta. Beginning after the All-Star Break, he won seven of the 13 games for which he was the pitcher of record and pitched to a 2.22 ERA. His final statistics for the season--a 13-13 record with a 3.53 ERA and two complete games, one shutout, and 211 innings pitched--belied his value to the Mets in the latter part of the year. Glavine has admitted that in his first two and a half seasons in New York, stubbornness played a part in his unwillingness to change his style. "My natural reaction was, 'I was successful for 17 years this way. . . . Surely, when I fix my mechanics I'll be all right,'" he said to Paul White for USA Today (June 29, 2006). Guided by first-year manager Willie Randolph, who stressed to his players the importance of mastering baseball's fundamentals and encouraged aggressive base-running, the Mets finished 2005 with an 83-79 record, registering their first winning season since 2001.

    As of mid-September 2006, the Mets had compiled the National League's best record, 90-55, and Glavine had won 13 games and lost six. He began the season by picking up where he left off the previous year, keeping hitters off-balance by throwing his fastball inside with greater frequency and by using a faster pitching motion. In July he was selected to play in his 10th All-Star Game. Glavine's sterling first half of the 2006 season refueled interest in his pursuit of 300 career victories. As of mid-September the southpaw had 288 wins, and he may reach the 300 mark in 2007. If he accomplishes that feat, he may be one of the last starting pitchers to do so for the foreseeable future--in part because of the introduction in the 1970s of five-man pitching rotations, which decrease the number of starts per pitcher. (Another factor is the rise of specialized bullpens, which lead to the departure of starters earlier in games.)

    "I know I am very stubborn in terms of my pitching, and that's part of what's made me successful," Glavine told John McMurray. "But I think away from the field, I would characterize myself as pretty quiet and very unassuming." Glavine is six feet one inch tall and weighs roughly 190 pounds. He and his wife, Christine, have two sons, Peyton Thomas and Mason Riley; Glavine also has a daughter, Amber Nicole, from his first marriage, which ended in divorce, and a stepson, Jonathan, from his current marriage. The pitcher and his family divide their time between homes in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Alpharetta, Georgia. Glavine is an avid golfer; his Georgia home sits on a golf course. He also enjoys listening to music by James Taylor. Among the most articulate players in baseball, Glavine said recently that he may pursue a career in broadcasting when his pitching days end.