Baseball’s timelessness was once the game’s blessing, the subject of sonnets. Now it is the game’s curse, the target of regulation. (Hello, pitch clock!)

But what it also is, is something of a myth. Because while the sport has always been timeless, it has never been limitless. Every night in a major league city (barring a suspended game or extra innings), you get nine innings. Twenty-seven outs. Those are the rules. Those are the limits.

That was the topic of discussion with Tom Herr last week, just a few days after his contemporary, one-time teammate and fellow Lancaster Countian, Bruce Sutter, died at age 69 in Georgia, where he lived after retiring from baseball: How hard it is for a closer to get that 27th out. And how good Sutter was at doing so.

Herr, a .271-hitting second baseman for five teams over 13 years in the bigs (1979-91), said everything changes when the score is close and the outs dwindle to a precious few. The hitters dial in. The fans dial up the volume. The umpires shrink the strike zone.

“Those guys that are able to be great closers,” he said, “they’re a special breed.”

Sutter saved exactly 300 games across 12 major league seasons (1976-88) and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2006. He was one of the first (and one of the best) to throw a virtually unhittable pitch, the split-fingered fastball. And he approached his craft with a single-mindedness best reflected by another contemporary, Gene Garber, who not only hails from the county, but the same part of the county as Sutter – the western part. (Garber grew up in E-town, and settled there following retirement. Sutter, a Donegal graduate, hailed from Mount Joy.)

Garber spent 19 years in the bigs as a reliever (1969-88). Sometimes a closer – he had 218 career saves – and sometimes a set-up guy, his stock in trade was his change-up. And his guile. And his competitiveness. Especially the latter.

Even at age 74, the fire still burns.

“All I hear about is how the last out’s the hardest one to get,” he said. “No, it’s not. That’s the one you want. That’s the one you have to have. And so you look forward to it. And it shouldn’t scare you at all. You should welcome it. … Go get it.”

He agrees that Sutter was cut from the same cloth.

“I would almost say he’s the best reliever there ever was,” Garber said, while quickly allowing that there is room for others on that top tier, like Rollie Fingers or the long-forgotten Mike Marshall. (Herr, for his part, mentioned Mariano Rivera, Goose Gossage and Dan Quisenberry as being in that club.)

If Sutter’s temperament was perfect for his role, his physique was also perfect for his signature pitch, which he learned from Fred Martin, a roving minor league pitching instructor for the Cubs, early in his career.

“His hands were huge and his fingers were real long,” Herr said, “so he could really manipulate the ball out on the end of his fingertips.”

Sutter won the NL Cy Young Award after saving 37 games for the Cubs in 1979, the first of five times he led the league in that category. He also made six All-Star teams and in 1982 won a world championship as Herr’s teammate in St. Louis.

“If we were ahead after seven innings,” Herr said, “we felt like we were gonna win every game, so (Sutter) was quite a tangible weapon to have and also a psychological weapon to have.”

That was never more evident than when Sutter nailed down Game 7 of the World Series against Milwaukee, a 6-3 Cardinals victory.

“Milwaukee knew that it was over,” Herr said, “before it was over.”

Sutter closed out his career as Garber’s teammate in Atlanta, though shoulder injuries cost him one season and limited him in two others. His last year was 1988. Same for Garber, whose signature moment with the Braves (one of four teams for which he pitched) had come a decade earlier — on Aug. 1, 1978, to be precise. That’s when he struck out Pete Rose in his final at-bat of the night, ensuring that Rose’s NL-record-tying 44-game hitting streak would come to an end.

“Garber was pitching like it was the seventh game of the World Series,” Rose groused after that game.

“I had an idea Pete was hitting like it was the last game of the World Series,” Garber said, upon being apprised of Rose’s remarks.

Reminded of that recently, Garber said, “He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but I thought it was and that’s exactly the way he hit, every time he ever hit.”

And exactly the way Garber pitched. Got him through nearly two decades, despite ordinary stuff. As he put it, “I was very lucky to play with a lot of Hall of Famers. I helped send a lot of hitters into the Hall of Fame, and never got a thank you from any of them.”

(He remembers one such Hall of Famer, Frank Robinson, hitting him well, and indeed Robinson went 3-for-6 off him. Then again, Robinson went 3-for-6 off a lot of guys. Among the lesser lights, Ken Oberkfell, who spent several years as Herr’s teammate in St. Louis, hit .643 against Garber. Bobby Murcer hit .583, with seven homers in 12 at-bats. Herr was 10-for-22 – that’s .455 – but somehow only batted once against Sutter, without a hit. “I didn’t realize I’d only faced him one time but I’m glad of that,” Herr said. “Saved me a couple oh-fers.”)

Nowadays Garber helps his son out by working the 350 acres of farmland the Garbers maintain near E-town. They have chickens, corn and soybeans, mostly, but some barley and wheat, too.

“I have had two jobs in my life,” he said, “and I love both of them.”

Herr? He’s done some coaching – basketball and baseball (naturally) – at his alma mater, Hempfield. Took a turn as the Barnstormers’ manager, too. Now, at 66, he mostly spends his time “being a grandfather.”

And remembering.

“He’s a special guy,” he said of Sutter, “and I was honored to be a teammate of his, that’s for sure. And he’s gonna be missed. It’s just sad because he was a young guy. I think he would have had a lot more great times ahead of him, but unfortunately some things happen that are out of our control.”

Garber put it much the same way.

“It’s nice that I can survive this long, working, and hope I can continue that way,” he said. “I would have liked to see Bruce be able to do that, but we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.”

For so many years their careers had followed three parallel lines, save some notable intersections. For so many years their names had appeared in the same headlines. The county had had major leaguers before, and has had them since. But to have three guys who were so accomplished, playing at the same time? That was quite something, and remains so. It is hardly an exaggeration to say it was a golden era, hardly an exaggeration to say that Sutter in particular is a legend here – that he has become, really, a timeless figure.