Don Sutton
American baseball player (1945-2021)
Donald Howard Sutton (April 2, 1945 – January 19, 2021) was an American professional baseball pitcher who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), primarily for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Sutton won a total of 324 games, pitched 58 shutouts including five one-hitters and ten two-hitters, and led the National League in walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP) four times. He is seventh on baseball's all-time strikeout list with 3,574.
Sutton was born in Clio, Alabama. He attended high school and college in Florida before entering professional baseball. After a year in the minor leagues, Sutton joined the Dodgers. Beginning in 1966, he was in the team's starting pitching rotation with Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Claude Osteen. Sixteen of Sutton's 23 MLB seasons were spent with the Dodgers. He spent much of the 1980s with the Houston Astros, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Oakland Athletics and the California Angels, before returning for a second stint with the Dodgers. He registered only one 20-win season, but earned 10 or more wins in every season except 1983 and 1988.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Don Sutton” is american baseball player (1945-2021). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Sutton, American and baseball, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american baseball player (1945-2021)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3035912. The first chronological checks are 1945, 2021, 1966 and 1983.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Don Sutton”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Don Sutton primary sources, Don Sutton archive and Sutton research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Don Sutton”?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Don Sutton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.