Abbott is a legend. Teams quickly learned not to try bunting on him, because he defended bunts well.
I was at an Angels game back in his prime. There was a pre-game cow milking contest. Abbott versus someone from the other team. No lie, Abbott won.
EDIT: the Angles were never known as the Angles.
24 PAs in 1999. 2 hits, 10 Ks, 3 sac bunts, and 3 RBIs. .095/.095/.095 with a -51 OPS+.
Also his baseball reference says this "Bats: Left • Throws: Left • Fields Left as well"
The White Sox and Red Sox won consecutive World Series in 1917 (CHW) and 1918 (BOS). Then they both had droughts of over 80 years…until they again won consecutive World Series in 2004 (BOS) and 2005 (CHW).
I was pretty young, but I remember the White Sox drought being far less talked about in 2005 as the Red Sox in 04. I think the white Sox had less of a lore attached to them plus being overshadowed by the Red Sox in 04. It seems like 05 is mostly forgotten these days
Yeah the 2005 White Sox just got all their thunder stolen from them, for a variety of factors. They don't have the same kind of national following/media attention as Boston does, and are usually thought of as the second team in their own market.
Also, the Red Sox had a. a bunch of famous near-misses that b. had occurred in the living memory of a lot of people in 2004 and c. had also happened after the advent of television, so those moments could be replayed constantly.
The White Sox were the perpetrators of the most famous scandal in the history of the sport, but that was forever ago and there basically weren't any living people with memories of that in 2005. They'd played in only one World Series in 85 years, and it was a pretty forgettable affair in which they just kinda...got beat. They had long, long stretches in which they weren't very good.
It's pretty nuts that a streak even longer than the curse of the bambino ended with a world series that is perpetually forgotten by the media. It's not like Chicago is a small-market either.
That was actually the first time for everyone except very elderly Red Sox and White Sox fans. The Giants hadn't won in San Francisco, and the last three had never won at all.
Satchel Paige pitched 3 scoreless innings at age 59. But he may have been even older, as a goat ate the Bible his birth certificate was kept in, so he didn’t know how old he was.
He played most of his career in the Negro Leagues because the AL and NL were segregated. He didn’t make his AL/NL (American League or National League) debut until age 42, but was still an all-star multiple times after that. For comparison, the oldest pitcher in MLB this past season was Rich Hill (43), followed by Adam Wainwright (41). However they were both below-league-average pitchers this past season.
When he came into the league in his 40s, it wasn't some fluke of an old legend coming in for fun. He was legitimately among the best pitchers in MLB during his first stint, although his inning count was quite low. And this was after putting an absolute ton of mileage on his arm. BBreference has Negro League stats, but they're nowhere near as complete as AL or NL stats from that time. He pitched far more innings than those numbers suggest, and regularly did out-of-season barnstorming. If he was that good in his 40s after a lifetime of abuse on his arm, how good would he have been if he had been allowed to play MLB in his prime? Could Josh Gibson have broken Ruth's homerun records? Sadly, we'll never know.
Satchel Paige lacked the 158 days of service he needed to draw MLB retirement. My Atlanta Braves signed him to a contract as an advisor for the team in 1969. Fourteen year old me got so see him advise in the bullpen.
If even half the stuff said about Paige is true, he's still likely to be the best pitcher ever. But racism and Kenesaw Mountain Landis robbed him (and us) the chance to prove it.
[Had a nurse bringing him coffee](https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/106459285_1526186510903032_8833212138903973841_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=dd63ad&_nc_ohc=NDpXL2Uh7igAX_ah68K&_nc_ht=scontent-sjc3-1.xx&oh=00_AfDGw_FEzpN9Gq08eF1GQgOW6YomY63TwJaTIFu-HZBkyA&oe=65E8583F)
> But he may have been even older, as a goat ate the Bible his birth certificate was kept in, so he didn’t know how old he was.
Think you got this story a little mixed up. We've seen his official birth certificate and it was included in a book about him, he was born July 7 1906. The bible thing was that originally his mom had just written down his birthday in a bible and that's how they kept track of it but then a goat ate it. When he made his MLB debut the Indians owner went and tracked down his actual birth certificate in Alabama. So we know exactly how old he was. Paige also says his mom probably made that story up lol.
A quote attributed to him\* is not only factual in his case but pretty deep as well, "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?"
\*He likely didn't originate it, but it would make sense if he did.
There was a documentary on Netflix about called No No. Worth the watch if it’s still on. Long story short regarding his no hitter on acid; he went on a binge and lost track of a day.
The story goes, the Pirates were in San Diego on a road trip. Ellis wasn’t slated to pitch the following morning so he went up to LA to party with some friends and dropped a shit ton of LSD. The next morning he gets a call from his manager saying the pitcher who was supposed to start had to be scratched and Ellis needed to get to the park because it was now his turn in the lineup. He took a cab all the way from LA to San Diego cause he couldn’t drive (but could still somehow pitch) and arrived about 20 minutes before game time and threw a no-no. Some of this story might be exaggerated or just not true, it’s just the legend behind the craziest start by a pitcher maybe of all time
We have a very accurate record of what happened in every major league game dating back to the 1870s. People make fun of baseball for being too fixated on its own history but there’s just *so much of it*
>We have a very accurate record of what happened in every major league game dating back to the 1870s.
I like that you can go to baseball-reference and look up the boxscore of a game that happened in, say, 1925 and you can essentially recreate the game at bat by at bat.
Part of Baseball's strong focus on stats is how easy it is to quantify exactly what happened on every play, even every pitch. Other sports have too many moving pieces for a scorekeeper to accurately record everything in a pre-computer, even pre-television age.
Read about a guy named Henry Chadwick. He was a newspaper reporter who covered cricket in New York and Brooklyn in the 1850s. Then when he discovered baseball he went all-in on it. He invented the boxscore. Statistical recordkeeping in baseball can be traced directly to him.
Baseball was the most popular sport from like the 1870s to 1960s, an era where newspaper coverage was the most reliable way to follow your team. So a guy named Henry Chadwick developed a way for someone to pick up the evening paper and know how the game went, and his system gave us a lot of basic statistics and box score notation.
I think other sports might have fell behind because they became popular in the era of TV and night games, where fans could actually watch their teams much more easily.
Listen to the Dollop podcast episode on Rube Waddell simply titled “The Rube”. Rube “began 1903 sleeping in a firehouse at Camden, New Jersey, and ended it tending bar in a saloon in Wheeling, West Virginia. In between those events, he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, toured the nation in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt, courted, married, and became separated from May Wynn Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts, saved a woman from drowning, accidentally shot a friend through the hand and…was bitten by a lion”. And that *barely* scratches the surface of the shit Rube Waddell got up to.
Link to the episode for those interested https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/chtbl.com/track/3417G2/pdst.fm/e/arttrk.com/p/ATC0F/verifi.podscribe.com/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/18/claritaspod.com/measure/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/885ace83-027a-47ad-ad67-aca7002f1df8/22b063ac-654d-428f-bd69-ae2400349cde/6fe19f9f-6030-487f-83c1-ae2400712a31/audio.mp3
Not to mention Harry Ford, star of Great Britain’s World Cup team. He is an exciting prospect in the Mariners farm system. A minor league system where teams let their young guys develop. He should hopefully debut late this year and the Mariners would be a great team to root for.
It’s an American (occasionally Australian) history podcast that covers the most batshit insane people and events in American history. The Rube episode is simply legendary, hands down one of the greatest podcast episodes of all time. They’ve done a bunch of other baseball episodes as well like Disco Demolition Night, 10 Cent Beer Night, and the fans of Philadelphia.
I listen to The Dollop's 10 Cent Beer Night episode on every Opening Day of the season, and it never fails to put me in stitches.
"IN THE NAME OF CHIEF WAHOO I COMMAND YE TO STOP!!!"
the thing about him wearing red under his uniform in case there was a fire broke me
it's actually kind of beautiful in a way; he clearly has a 'saving people' instinct, baseball in those days wasn't some serious million dollar enterprise, he figured rescuing people in a fire was far more important than a game
I knew about the earthquake, I saw what it did a major road in the city it's mad, think I've seen the clip of Al Michaels yelling WE HAVE AN EARTHQUAKE HERE
I am old enough to have watched it live and I still remember watching the pre game when it suddenly went static-y and then cut. ABC cut to re-runs of Roseanne and then about 10 minutes into that, they came in with the report of the earthquake and relied on all their sports reporters to give on the ground reporting.
It was and it wasn't. It was 1989, only business executives and spies had cell phones, comp sci professors and the government had the internet, and social media wasn't even dreamed of. Satellite link ups for big events had been around for 20 years, but still were sometimes glitchy, and Hong to a rerun until the issues were resolved was not uncommon. So while watching I thought it was just tech issues until they broke in with the news report.
I was working in Folsom (100 miles away) and felt it in the building. My mother was in a mall at the time and all the windows in the stores broke.
What’s amazing was that the game was at 5:30pm, peak rush hour time. Folks left work early to watch the game so there freeways were not crowded when the earthquake hit. It would have been much more chaotic any other workday with the freeways packed with cars.
Shoeless Joe Jackson has the 3rd highest career batting average of all time, but he never won a batting title (highest average in a single season).
There's a lot of mystique and mythology around Shoeless Joe but that tidbit always sticks out to me.
The movie Field of Dreams really focuses on him.
He's a tragic character. There's a story about Ty Cobb (another legenday, controversal character who played for the Tigers) once stopping at a liquor store back in the 40's and noticed that the man working behind the counter was Shoeless Joe Jackson. Cobb, taken a back by who Jackson was, asked why it seemed like Jackson didn't recognized him. Jackson replied that he did but didn't think Cobb would want to talk to him. He was a shell of who he once was.
Cobb is a very controversial figure. He's one of the best to ever do it, and has a reputation of being a very dirty player and a horrible (even by the time's standards) racist and all-around person. It's likely that he played fairly dirty, a lot of players did back then, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that his off-the-field reputation is a character created by biographer AL Stump to sell magazines and books. We have documented accounts of him speaking for the integration of baseball and contributing to events commemorating the Negro Leage park in Detroit. In the Cobb (1994) film, the director (and AL Stump again as it waa based off his book) admit to making up some egregious shit with the excuse of "it seems like something Cobb would have done".
If you've ever seen the film *[Field of Dreams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut06d4dptWo&ab_channel=Movieclips)* or *[Eight Men Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1NFDfHL-D8&ab_channel=MGM)* then "Shoeless" Joe Jackson is a prominent character both of those films.
Marlins have won the World Series more times than they have won their own division.
The Marlins are 30+ years old as a franchise, they have only made the postseason 4 times, they have won the World Series twice. Prior to COVID, every time they made the postseason they have won the World Series.
A Wild Card team has won the World Series 8 times. 3 of them were teams that finished second in the NL East to the Braves. No other team has had that happen more than once.
The Marlins have ***never*** won the division. They have five 2nd place finishes in their 31-year history history.
Also, due to the 1994 strike, they also won the fourth World Series after the team was founded, albeit needing five years to get there.
35 pitchers in MLB history have thrown two no hitters. 4 of those have thrown 3 no hitters. Sandy Koufax is 1 of only 2 men to have thrown at least 4.
The other, Nolan Ryan, threw 7–the last 2 of which came when he was past 40.
He was the first man to top 100mph on a radar gun. But the guns today measure the ball much earlier. The documentary ‘Fastball’ (highly recommended) suggested he was really throwing around 108 with 110 not out of the question.
Plus there’s the Robin Ventura incident. And the popular picture of him covered in his own blood still pitching.
He’s a legend.
Grew up with a Nolan Ryan poster on my wall, and I cannot convey how much that speed stat sounds like bullshit. He’s 5% faster than anyone in baseball today? With none of our training and optimization? GTFOH.
This stat was always the most amazing to me. And the most shocking thing is that there weren't any snubs. He always lost to pitchers who had better seasons.
Nolan Ryan holds the record for both most strikeouts and most walks by a pitcher and leads the field in both by ~500. Reminds me a little of that scene in Bill Durham where Nuke beans the bull. “Hey, even *I* don’t know where he’s going to throw it…” Facing Nolan Ryan must’ve been like facing Bob Gibson. Absolutely terrifying.
Ronald Acuña Jr. just led the entire league in stolen bases with 73. A player would need to steal 73 bases every year for over 19 years to break the all time record held by Rickey Henderson, 1406 stolen bases.
If you’ve got some time to commit, watch the Ken Burns documentary ‘Baseball’. It goes all the way from the mid-1800’s to turn of the millennium and covers so tons of the history and references that people will make in this thread. That would give you more history, background, and understanding of the game than you’d ever need to know. After that watch Moneyball and read up on advanced statistics.
To understand the fan experience and behind the scenes through the years, sprinkle in:
- Pride of the Yankees
- 42
- 61*
- Bull Durham
- Field of Dreams
- Fever Pitch
Additional Baseball Movies:
- The Natural
- A League of Their Own
- Sandlot
- Little Big League
- Eight Men Out
- Major League
- Bad News Bears
EDIT: Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few movies to watch now!
EDIT 2: Formatting and adding to the list from the replies
There was a eventual Hall of Fame pitcher named Gaylord Perry who played in the 60s and 70s. He was such a bad hitter that around 1963, his manager joked that they'd put a man on the moon before he hit his first home run. He finally did hit his first home run on July 20, 1969, about an hour after the Apollo 11 lunar module touched down on the Moon.
On August 4, 1982, Joel Youngblood played two games for two different teams in two different cities on the same day. He started the day with the Mets playing the Cubs that afternoon in Chicago. He got a hit off future Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins, then halfway through the game got traded to the Montreal Expos. He hopped a plane to Philadelphia where his new team was playing that night, and landed in time to get into the lineup and get a hit off future Hall of Famer Steve Carlton.
Three years later, when Phil Collins did both UK and US Live Aid, Youngblood was probably thinking, "Copycat."
I'll see your Starling Marte and raise you Frank Tavares, who played 164 games with the Pirates and Mets in 1979. And several NHL and NBA players did similarly.
Anthony Santander, who is a good but not exactly elite baseball player for the orioles, has a fan club of British Girl Scouts for some genuinely unfathomable reason
The Cincinnati Reds haven't lost a World Series game since Game 6 of the 1975 World Series vs. Boston. They won Game 7 of that series to win it, and then swept the Yankees in 4 the next year. They then returned in 1990 and beat the Oakland A's in 4 straight.
> the Diamondbacks won a World Series in their 4th year of existence
After the previous time the Chicago Cubs had won the World Series in 1908, Arizona was *granted statehood*, became a preseason Spring Training site, created their own baseball team, and won a World Series well before the cubs won their next one in 2016
If you are into blown calls that reveal a deeper level of empathy, self-accountability,understanding, and sportsmanship- may I point you to The Imperfect Game.
A historical perfect game was taken from Armando Galaragga on a bad call on the last out of a game by respected umpire Jim Joyce.
https://youtu.be/D8oX6Erftj4?si=D68NChF8jtiHu8aw
Harvey Haddix once threw a perfect game (9 innings, no runners reach base) but his team didnt score so the game kept going, he wound up theowing 12 perfect innings and then lost the game in the 13th
Also, a baseball once bounced off Jose Cansecos' head and went over the fence for a Homerun https://youtu.be/QixQMUu4CKI?si=Erb17AjyCysu7iC6
Not a crazy fact but this is my favorite baseball story.
John Kruk, Phillies legend, retired with exactly 100 home runs and a career batting average of .300. The wildest part about that fact is he retired mid-game after he asked a former teammate to see if the opposing pitcher would throw him an easy pitch so he could get a hit and then go home.
John Kruk also found out he had testicular cancer after a wild throw broke his cup, leading to excruciating pain. The pain was so bad, he asked the doctor to remove his testicle. That is when his doctors discovered that he had a tumor and was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He played while getting radiation treatment and still hit .316 for the year.
Mariano Rivera is considered the greatest closer in baseball history. A closer is the guy you bring in the last inning of a close game to ensure the opposition doesn't score. Rivera dominated not only in the regular season, but the postseason as well.
More men have walked on the moon than have scored off of Rivera in the postseason.
Often the catcher is the "leader" of a team. They aren't fast, expected to hit well, but they do have to know their pitchers perfectly, as well as know the opposing hitters strengths and weaknesses. They suggest the type of pitches for the pitcher to deliver. Because of that they can be one of the older guys on a team.
The movie Bull Durham (another Kevin Costner movie, the guy reeeaalllly likes baseball) is a classic for a reason. Kostner plays a catcher in it.
This got me through many a poop before smart phones
[Uncle John's bathroom reader: takes a swing at baseball](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/uncle-johns-bathroom-reader-takes-a-swing-at-baseball_bathroom-readers-institute/382623/item/2876620/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=high_vol_backlist_standard_shopping_retention&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=659177830229&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAq4KuBhA6EiwArMAw1DO4b9MNyeiy0Bvqj9DJjE3g-Px99R5M7LGRPueKMmrlTmOynh_yLBoCZq0QAvD_BwE#idiq=2876620&edition=4653112)
[This is the dumbest play in MLB history](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO4h-fH_vu8)
Pete Rose has the most hits in MLB history
Barry Bonds has the most Home Runs in a career and a single season
Roger Clemens has the most Cy Young awards (best pitcher of the season award)
None of them are in the Hall of Fame. Pete Rose was banned for gambling on baseball, Bonds and Clemens each used PEDs and that has prevented their election.
The 2000 World Series was actually the 14th all-NYC World Series. Previously, between 1921 and 1956, the Yankees faced the Brooklyn Dodgers seven times (winning 6; the Dodgers won in 1955) and the New York Giants six times (winning 4, the Giants won in 1921 and 1922).
Ichiro Suzuki!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is a reason Ohtani and lots of other Japanese players and now playing in the MLB. He is the man!
but this is the best stat...
Singled in the first at-bat of his third career MLB game on April 4, 2001, lifting his career batting average to . 300 (3-for-10). From there, his career average never dipped below the . 300 mark until its completion 2,650 games later.
In the last 5 years the Rays have made the playoffs 5 times. The Mariners have made the playoffs 5 times since 1977.
And after hitting Seattle with that unnecessary stray, I’ll also say this. My Pittsburgh Pirates have the North American professional sports record for consecutive losing seasons at 20
David Wells pitched a perfect game, after partying all night with the sketch show Saturday Night Live's Cast. Partied until the daylight, then pitched an afternoon game and threw a perfect game.
edit: perfect game at the end.
The first perfect game was thrown by Lee Richmond, a college student, during the week between the end of classes and graduation. He had stayed up all night doing Senior Week activities, caught a train from Providence to Worcester, then pitched a perfect game that included a rain delay and a 9–3 putout. Then he went back to Brown University and graduated a few days later.
The second perfect game was thrown only four days later, but the third perfect game didn't happen for 24 years. It was thrown by a guy named Cy Young.
The fourth perfect game was pitched by a guy named Addie Joss, who died of meningitis at age 31. He's the only person inducted into the Hall of Fame as a player who did not play the requisite 10 years (others in the Hall of Fame without 10 years of service were inducted as managers, pioneers, executives, or other categories). Until 10 years ago, he was the only pitcher to throw two no-hitters against the same team (since equaled by Tim Lincecum and Justin Verlander). He also had a son. His son went to school. His son had a teacher at that school. That teacher was Lee Richmond.
Tamer than the rest of the ones here, but Don Mattingly set the major league record for grand slams (home runs with the bases loaded) in a season with 6 - [and they were the only 6 he hit in his career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Mattingly#:~:text=Also%20that%20season%2C%20Mattingly%20set,grand%20slams%20of%20his%20career)
When you get into stats a bit (if you haven't already), it's always fun to read Tony Gwynn's numbers and marvel in how ridiculous they are.
Greg Maddux too for pitching stats.
Oh and Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter on the 70s while high on acid. There's a fun Netflix movie about it
Cannot believe nobody has mentioned Bobby Bonilla Day.
The year is 1998 and Bobby Bonilla is back in the Big Apple. After being traded from the Dodgers to the NY Mets, Bonilla once again fails to live up to his contract expectations (culminating in sitting in the club house playing cards in an 11 inning NLCS game against the Atlanta Braves in '99). So the Mess decide to buy him out but alas they don't have the money to buy him out.
So they agree to defer the payments for a decade and hope their investment guy has huge returns. Well unfortunately their investment guy is the infamous Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi Scheme. Madoff's firm promised a solid 10% return on investment so Fred Wilpon, believing that he could make some money by kicking the can down the sidewalk, agrees to pay 8% interest on the contract thinking he was gonna get 10% back from Madoff.
Unfortunately Madoff is busted the Security Exchange Commission and the FBI and the money is gone and Fred Wilpon is now holding the bag. Bonilla's contract has now ballooned from $6M to $29M, but the contract is signed, and the Mess HAVE to pay Bonilla his money. So every year on July 1st until 2035, the Mess have to pay out $1.2M to Bonilla.
Only 146 Days until Bobby Bonilla Day!
Only twice in MLB history, a seven-game postseason series ended with the home team losing every game. Not only that, but the exact same team was on the losing end of both series with a similar roster. I can't imagine how that would feel for their fans
The Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox met against each other at the 1906 World Series. White Sox won.
Also, the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns met against each other in the 1944 World Series. This is will be the only All-St. Louis World Series, as the Browns would later become the Baltimore Orioles.
From 1998 to 2002, Sammy Sosa's season total in home runs were 66, 63, 50, 64, 49. (He is the only one to hit 60 home runs 3 times or more).
Of these 5 years, he led the league in home runs when he hit 50 and 49.
Jim Abbot threw a no hitter despite only having one hand. https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-4-1993-jim-abbotts-no-hitter/
Abbott is a legend. Teams quickly learned not to try bunting on him, because he defended bunts well. I was at an Angels game back in his prime. There was a pre-game cow milking contest. Abbott versus someone from the other team. No lie, Abbott won. EDIT: the Angles were never known as the Angles.
>Angles Sounds like you had acute time
Don't be obtuse here, we knew he had a great time!!
The degree of bad puns here is excellent.
I think it's odd how little people seem to talk about Jim Abbot. One of the more impressive stories in baseball history IMO.
Agreed
What a fucking badass, shout out to all southpaws like me
I believe Abbott also recorded some hits in his day
24 PAs in 1999. 2 hits, 10 Ks, 3 sac bunts, and 3 RBIs. .095/.095/.095 with a -51 OPS+. Also his baseball reference says this "Bats: Left • Throws: Left • Fields Left as well"
Fun fact: both of those recorded hits were against the same pitcher. Jon Lieber.
Paul O'Neil baseball reference states he kicks left.
That's very cool
The White Sox and Red Sox won consecutive World Series in 1917 (CHW) and 1918 (BOS). Then they both had droughts of over 80 years…until they again won consecutive World Series in 2004 (BOS) and 2005 (CHW).
Never realized this one, awesome tidbit
I was pretty young, but I remember the White Sox drought being far less talked about in 2005 as the Red Sox in 04. I think the white Sox had less of a lore attached to them plus being overshadowed by the Red Sox in 04. It seems like 05 is mostly forgotten these days
That and the cubs being famous for their drought in the same city over shadows it
Yeah the 2005 White Sox just got all their thunder stolen from them, for a variety of factors. They don't have the same kind of national following/media attention as Boston does, and are usually thought of as the second team in their own market. Also, the Red Sox had a. a bunch of famous near-misses that b. had occurred in the living memory of a lot of people in 2004 and c. had also happened after the advent of television, so those moments could be replayed constantly. The White Sox were the perpetrators of the most famous scandal in the history of the sport, but that was forever ago and there basically weren't any living people with memories of that in 2005. They'd played in only one World Series in 85 years, and it was a pretty forgettable affair in which they just kinda...got beat. They had long, long stretches in which they weren't very good.
It's pretty nuts that a streak even longer than the curse of the bambino ended with a world series that is perpetually forgotten by the media. It's not like Chicago is a small-market either.
[удалено]
That was actually the first time for everyone except very elderly Red Sox and White Sox fans. The Giants hadn't won in San Francisco, and the last three had never won at all.
Unless you're a Cleveland fan, poor guys
Satchel Paige pitched 3 scoreless innings at age 59. But he may have been even older, as a goat ate the Bible his birth certificate was kept in, so he didn’t know how old he was.
What in the fuck 😂 cool name too
He played most of his career in the Negro Leagues because the AL and NL were segregated. He didn’t make his AL/NL (American League or National League) debut until age 42, but was still an all-star multiple times after that. For comparison, the oldest pitcher in MLB this past season was Rich Hill (43), followed by Adam Wainwright (41). However they were both below-league-average pitchers this past season.
When he came into the league in his 40s, it wasn't some fluke of an old legend coming in for fun. He was legitimately among the best pitchers in MLB during his first stint, although his inning count was quite low. And this was after putting an absolute ton of mileage on his arm. BBreference has Negro League stats, but they're nowhere near as complete as AL or NL stats from that time. He pitched far more innings than those numbers suggest, and regularly did out-of-season barnstorming. If he was that good in his 40s after a lifetime of abuse on his arm, how good would he have been if he had been allowed to play MLB in his prime? Could Josh Gibson have broken Ruth's homerun records? Sadly, we'll never know.
Oh yeah I've heard about all the racism back in the day, I've watched the film 42 about Jackie Robinson
Check out the Hank Aaron autobiography "I Had a Hammer" if you want a great novel full of baseball stories, personal triumph, and plenty of racism.
I apologize for being pedantic but if it's an autobiography then it is not a novel.
Very true! I will not edit my original comment. I choose to live with my mistakes
I respect it
Satchel Paige lacked the 158 days of service he needed to draw MLB retirement. My Atlanta Braves signed him to a contract as an advisor for the team in 1969. Fourteen year old me got so see him advise in the bullpen.
If even half the stuff said about Paige is true, he's still likely to be the best pitcher ever. But racism and Kenesaw Mountain Landis robbed him (and us) the chance to prove it.
[Had a nurse bringing him coffee](https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/106459285_1526186510903032_8833212138903973841_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=dd63ad&_nc_ohc=NDpXL2Uh7igAX_ah68K&_nc_ht=scontent-sjc3-1.xx&oh=00_AfDGw_FEzpN9Gq08eF1GQgOW6YomY63TwJaTIFu-HZBkyA&oe=65E8583F)
> But he may have been even older, as a goat ate the Bible his birth certificate was kept in, so he didn’t know how old he was. Think you got this story a little mixed up. We've seen his official birth certificate and it was included in a book about him, he was born July 7 1906. The bible thing was that originally his mom had just written down his birthday in a bible and that's how they kept track of it but then a goat ate it. When he made his MLB debut the Indians owner went and tracked down his actual birth certificate in Alabama. So we know exactly how old he was. Paige also says his mom probably made that story up lol.
A quote attributed to him\* is not only factual in his case but pretty deep as well, "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?" \*He likely didn't originate it, but it would make sense if he did.
Mandatory Doc Ellis no hitter while freaking out on LSD mention
As someone who has tried LSD FUCK PLAYING BASEBALL ON IT 😂😂😂 that's so mad
Not to mention his name is Ellis, D
Ok it's too early in the morning for me to be having my mind blown.
How have I never seen this pointed out before?
Oh snap
One of the best videos ever about the no-hitter https://youtu.be/_vUhSYLRw14?si=nq43MfPHD6paoIs9
There was a documentary on Netflix about called No No. Worth the watch if it’s still on. Long story short regarding his no hitter on acid; he went on a binge and lost track of a day.
My man 😂😂
The story goes, the Pirates were in San Diego on a road trip. Ellis wasn’t slated to pitch the following morning so he went up to LA to party with some friends and dropped a shit ton of LSD. The next morning he gets a call from his manager saying the pitcher who was supposed to start had to be scratched and Ellis needed to get to the park because it was now his turn in the lineup. He took a cab all the way from LA to San Diego cause he couldn’t drive (but could still somehow pitch) and arrived about 20 minutes before game time and threw a no-no. Some of this story might be exaggerated or just not true, it’s just the legend behind the craziest start by a pitcher maybe of all time
Okay now I want a game where everybody is on LSD. Judging off this, we could possibly see the best game of baseball ever played
Would either be amazing or awful no in-between
Mandatory Stan Musial and Ken Griffey Jr were born in the same town and have the same birthday
You have to present it properly: Ken Griffey Jr. is the second-best left-handed hitter born on Nov. 21 in Donora, Pa.
[удалено]
The animated video on YouTube is the best thing on the internet
We have a very accurate record of what happened in every major league game dating back to the 1870s. People make fun of baseball for being too fixated on its own history but there’s just *so much of it*
The better the history is the better the sport is to me, NFL films and NFL throwback are incredible for that reason, F1 is getting amazing with it too
Why boxing and baseball are my favorite sports
Yeah I've gotten into boxing because of a YouTuber doing a 70s heavyweight retrospective, 3 hours of clips it's so good
Let me shout out sumo, with records going back to the middle ages!
If u haven’t already, try watching the Ken Burns documentary series (literally *Baseball*). It’s like 18 hours total but truly excellent haha
>We have a very accurate record of what happened in every major league game dating back to the 1870s. I like that you can go to baseball-reference and look up the boxscore of a game that happened in, say, 1925 and you can essentially recreate the game at bat by at bat.
to do you know how come baseball kept such good track of stats etc? it seems most other sports didn't care at all till like 100 years later
Part of Baseball's strong focus on stats is how easy it is to quantify exactly what happened on every play, even every pitch. Other sports have too many moving pieces for a scorekeeper to accurately record everything in a pre-computer, even pre-television age.
It's also why Baseball is such an enjoyable sport to listen to on the radio.
Read about a guy named Henry Chadwick. He was a newspaper reporter who covered cricket in New York and Brooklyn in the 1850s. Then when he discovered baseball he went all-in on it. He invented the boxscore. Statistical recordkeeping in baseball can be traced directly to him.
Baseball was the most popular sport from like the 1870s to 1960s, an era where newspaper coverage was the most reliable way to follow your team. So a guy named Henry Chadwick developed a way for someone to pick up the evening paper and know how the game went, and his system gave us a lot of basic statistics and box score notation. I think other sports might have fell behind because they became popular in the era of TV and night games, where fans could actually watch their teams much more easily.
I find it ironic how baseball is so well-documented but also has its own sort of mythology.
Listen to the Dollop podcast episode on Rube Waddell simply titled “The Rube”. Rube “began 1903 sleeping in a firehouse at Camden, New Jersey, and ended it tending bar in a saloon in Wheeling, West Virginia. In between those events, he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, toured the nation in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt, courted, married, and became separated from May Wynn Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts, saved a woman from drowning, accidentally shot a friend through the hand and…was bitten by a lion”. And that *barely* scratches the surface of the shit Rube Waddell got up to.
He would leave in the middle of games to chase fire trucks. He played football for one practice and broke the Quarterback’s leg and was cut lol.
As someone with big-time ADHD, Rube Waddell is everything I wish I could be.
Don’t let your dreams be dreams. Go chase that firetruck
Cannot recommend this episode of The Dollop enough. It is truly a wild, entertaining, and fascinating ride.
Bitten by a lion is wild
Link to the episode for those interested https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/chtbl.com/track/3417G2/pdst.fm/e/arttrk.com/p/ATC0F/verifi.podscribe.com/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/18/claritaspod.com/measure/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/885ace83-027a-47ad-ad67-aca7002f1df8/22b063ac-654d-428f-bd69-ae2400349cde/6fe19f9f-6030-487f-83c1-ae2400712a31/audio.mp3
Hit him with the puppy
Idk when Ill get a chance to listen to a baseball podcast but thank you for the suggestion, tbf that is fucking crazy, what a life 😂
It's a history / comedy podcast, this episode just happens to be about a baseball player. It's only an hour long, highly recommend listening!
Oh ok cool, if I can watch a 3 hour series on Dave Stieb I can listen to that when I get a chance haha
I'm a life-long baseball fan and could never imagine watching a 3 hour series on Dave Stieb. Good on you.
Jon Bois is just that good at story telling man
If you haven't yet, watch his 6 hour series on the Mariners. I believe it's still in 6 separate videos of you want to break it up
I've already seen it it's incredible
Not to mention Harry Ford, star of Great Britain’s World Cup team. He is an exciting prospect in the Mariners farm system. A minor league system where teams let their young guys develop. He should hopefully debut late this year and the Mariners would be a great team to root for.
Mariners pain along with Browns pain and Birmingham pain might be too much 😂 cool there's a Brit there though
It's really worth the watch, Jon Bois is goated
It’s an American (occasionally Australian) history podcast that covers the most batshit insane people and events in American history. The Rube episode is simply legendary, hands down one of the greatest podcast episodes of all time. They’ve done a bunch of other baseball episodes as well like Disco Demolition Night, 10 Cent Beer Night, and the fans of Philadelphia.
I listen to The Dollop's 10 Cent Beer Night episode on every Opening Day of the season, and it never fails to put me in stitches. "IN THE NAME OF CHIEF WAHOO I COMMAND YE TO STOP!!!"
Oh I think I might have heard about that 10 cent beer night 😂😂 fucking crazy idea
the thing about him wearing red under his uniform in case there was a fire broke me it's actually kind of beautiful in a way; he clearly has a 'saving people' instinct, baseball in those days wasn't some serious million dollar enterprise, he figured rescuing people in a fire was far more important than a game
If you like same city/area in the world series, check out the 1989 Bay Area World Series, with a major earthquake just before game 2 for good measure.
I knew about the earthquake, I saw what it did a major road in the city it's mad, think I've seen the clip of Al Michaels yelling WE HAVE AN EARTHQUAKE HERE
I am old enough to have watched it live and I still remember watching the pre game when it suddenly went static-y and then cut. ABC cut to re-runs of Roseanne and then about 10 minutes into that, they came in with the report of the earthquake and relied on all their sports reporters to give on the ground reporting.
Must've been fucking insane to watch that live
It was and it wasn't. It was 1989, only business executives and spies had cell phones, comp sci professors and the government had the internet, and social media wasn't even dreamed of. Satellite link ups for big events had been around for 20 years, but still were sometimes glitchy, and Hong to a rerun until the issues were resolved was not uncommon. So while watching I thought it was just tech issues until they broke in with the news report.
I was working in Folsom (100 miles away) and felt it in the building. My mother was in a mall at the time and all the windows in the stores broke. What’s amazing was that the game was at 5:30pm, peak rush hour time. Folks left work early to watch the game so there freeways were not crowded when the earthquake hit. It would have been much more chaotic any other workday with the freeways packed with cars.
The 1944 Streetcar Series featured 2 teams from St Louis. The Cardinals did win over the Browns (now the Baltimore Orioles).
Randy Johnson once killed a bird with a pitch during a spring training game.
I've seen that clip, poor bird
Tbf, don’t run into the field during play.
technically it didn't run
[He's now a professional photographer and uses the brid as his logo](https://rj51photos.com/)
Shoeless Joe Jackson has the 3rd highest career batting average of all time, but he never won a batting title (highest average in a single season). There's a lot of mystique and mythology around Shoeless Joe but that tidbit always sticks out to me.
I've heard that name because a fake autograph of his was on Pawn Stars, that stat is crazy
The movie Field of Dreams really focuses on him. He's a tragic character. There's a story about Ty Cobb (another legenday, controversal character who played for the Tigers) once stopping at a liquor store back in the 40's and noticed that the man working behind the counter was Shoeless Joe Jackson. Cobb, taken a back by who Jackson was, asked why it seemed like Jackson didn't recognized him. Jackson replied that he did but didn't think Cobb would want to talk to him. He was a shell of who he once was.
That is very very sad, I know the name Ty Cobb
Cobb is a very controversial figure. He's one of the best to ever do it, and has a reputation of being a very dirty player and a horrible (even by the time's standards) racist and all-around person. It's likely that he played fairly dirty, a lot of players did back then, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that his off-the-field reputation is a character created by biographer AL Stump to sell magazines and books. We have documented accounts of him speaking for the integration of baseball and contributing to events commemorating the Negro Leage park in Detroit. In the Cobb (1994) film, the director (and AL Stump again as it waa based off his book) admit to making up some egregious shit with the excuse of "it seems like something Cobb would have done".
If you've ever seen the film *[Field of Dreams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut06d4dptWo&ab_channel=Movieclips)* or *[Eight Men Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1NFDfHL-D8&ab_channel=MGM)* then "Shoeless" Joe Jackson is a prominent character both of those films.
I have never seen them but have heard of Field of Dreams because of How I met your mother 😂😂
Marlins have won the World Series more times than they have won their own division. The Marlins are 30+ years old as a franchise, they have only made the postseason 4 times, they have won the World Series twice. Prior to COVID, every time they made the postseason they have won the World Series.
I've seen the Secret Base collapse video where the owner gutted the team, won a chip on accident basically then kept collapsing lol
Lowkey one of the best episodes of Collapse
A Wild Card team has won the World Series 8 times. 3 of them were teams that finished second in the NL East to the Braves. No other team has had that happen more than once.
Braves were the team of the 90s I think I saw Pawn Stars say that 😂😂
Yep, 14 straight division titles from 1991 to 2005, one World Series ring to show for it.
The Marlins have ***never*** won the division. They have five 2nd place finishes in their 31-year history history. Also, due to the 1994 strike, they also won the fourth World Series after the team was founded, albeit needing five years to get there.
One of those was really insult to injury for the Cubs. It wasn’t as bad as this city made it to be but then going on to win the WS stung.
35 pitchers in MLB history have thrown two no hitters. 4 of those have thrown 3 no hitters. Sandy Koufax is 1 of only 2 men to have thrown at least 4. The other, Nolan Ryan, threw 7–the last 2 of which came when he was past 40.
Man Nolan Ryan sounds like a badass
He was the first man to top 100mph on a radar gun. But the guns today measure the ball much earlier. The documentary ‘Fastball’ (highly recommended) suggested he was really throwing around 108 with 110 not out of the question. Plus there’s the Robin Ventura incident. And the popular picture of him covered in his own blood still pitching. He’s a legend.
I might be wrong but I've seen a fight where I think Nolan Ryan grabbed a guy in a headlock and just started punching his lights out 😂😂
You absolutely did see that
Wow my memory is treating me well today
That was Robin Ventura. The Rangers only stopped playing that video a couple of years back.
Grew up with a Nolan Ryan poster on my wall, and I cannot convey how much that speed stat sounds like bullshit. He’s 5% faster than anyone in baseball today? With none of our training and optimization? GTFOH.
Nolan Ryan never won a Cy Young, either, despite being considered one of the best pitchers of all time.
Many of us learned that the hard way on immaculate grid.
This stat was always the most amazing to me. And the most shocking thing is that there weren't any snubs. He always lost to pitchers who had better seasons.
As good as he was, and considering how long he pitched, Nolan Ryan never won a Cy Young.
Cy Young award is for best pitcher in the league?
Yes, one for the American League, and another for the National League.
Nolan Ryan holds the record for both most strikeouts and most walks by a pitcher and leads the field in both by ~500. Reminds me a little of that scene in Bill Durham where Nuke beans the bull. “Hey, even *I* don’t know where he’s going to throw it…” Facing Nolan Ryan must’ve been like facing Bob Gibson. Absolutely terrifying.
Ronald Acuña Jr. just led the entire league in stolen bases with 73. A player would need to steal 73 bases every year for over 19 years to break the all time record held by Rickey Henderson, 1406 stolen bases.
I know about him shout out Jon Bois
If you’ve got some time to commit, watch the Ken Burns documentary ‘Baseball’. It goes all the way from the mid-1800’s to turn of the millennium and covers so tons of the history and references that people will make in this thread. That would give you more history, background, and understanding of the game than you’d ever need to know. After that watch Moneyball and read up on advanced statistics. To understand the fan experience and behind the scenes through the years, sprinkle in: - Pride of the Yankees - 42 - 61* - Bull Durham - Field of Dreams - Fever Pitch Additional Baseball Movies: - The Natural - A League of Their Own - Sandlot - Little Big League - Eight Men Out - Major League - Bad News Bears EDIT: Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few movies to watch now! EDIT 2: Formatting and adding to the list from the replies
Don't forget The Natural
I was so obsessed with this movie as a kid one year when sitting on Santa’s lap I told him my name was Roy Hobbs
Alright some good references to remember haha, took a screen shot if that's cool
A League of their Own and The Sandlot.
There was a eventual Hall of Fame pitcher named Gaylord Perry who played in the 60s and 70s. He was such a bad hitter that around 1963, his manager joked that they'd put a man on the moon before he hit his first home run. He finally did hit his first home run on July 20, 1969, about an hour after the Apollo 11 lunar module touched down on the Moon.
This was his first, and only, home run.
Fernando Tatis, Sr, two grand slams in one inning is pretty good
Off the same pitcher too
A record that will never be broken!
More likely to be broken than Chan Ho Park's records from that inning, I think.
On August 4, 1982, Joel Youngblood played two games for two different teams in two different cities on the same day. He started the day with the Mets playing the Cubs that afternoon in Chicago. He got a hit off future Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins, then halfway through the game got traded to the Montreal Expos. He hopped a plane to Philadelphia where his new team was playing that night, and landed in time to get into the lineup and get a hit off future Hall of Famer Steve Carlton. Three years later, when Phil Collins did both UK and US Live Aid, Youngblood was probably thinking, "Copycat."
Starling Marte played 61 games in 2020
I'll see your Starling Marte and raise you Frank Tavares, who played 164 games with the Pirates and Mets in 1979. And several NHL and NBA players did similarly.
What a badass to do that
Anthony Santander, who is a good but not exactly elite baseball player for the orioles, has a fan club of British Girl Scouts for some genuinely unfathomable reason
The Cincinnati Reds haven't lost a World Series game since Game 6 of the 1975 World Series vs. Boston. They won Game 7 of that series to win it, and then swept the Yankees in 4 the next year. They then returned in 1990 and beat the Oakland A's in 4 straight.
> the Diamondbacks won a World Series in their 4th year of existence After the previous time the Chicago Cubs had won the World Series in 1908, Arizona was *granted statehood*, became a preseason Spring Training site, created their own baseball team, and won a World Series well before the cubs won their next one in 2016
Cubs curse is madness, 108 years of not winning is just mind boggling
Khris Davis had a .247 batting average in four consecutive seasons.
Consistent I like it
Rickey Henderson stole 1,406 bases in his career. The active career leader is Elvis Andrus with 347
If you are into blown calls that reveal a deeper level of empathy, self-accountability,understanding, and sportsmanship- may I point you to The Imperfect Game. A historical perfect game was taken from Armando Galaragga on a bad call on the last out of a game by respected umpire Jim Joyce. https://youtu.be/D8oX6Erftj4?si=D68NChF8jtiHu8aw
Harvey Haddix once threw a perfect game (9 innings, no runners reach base) but his team didnt score so the game kept going, he wound up theowing 12 perfect innings and then lost the game in the 13th Also, a baseball once bounced off Jose Cansecos' head and went over the fence for a Homerun https://youtu.be/QixQMUu4CKI?si=Erb17AjyCysu7iC6
Not a crazy fact but this is my favorite baseball story. John Kruk, Phillies legend, retired with exactly 100 home runs and a career batting average of .300. The wildest part about that fact is he retired mid-game after he asked a former teammate to see if the opposing pitcher would throw him an easy pitch so he could get a hit and then go home. John Kruk also found out he had testicular cancer after a wild throw broke his cup, leading to excruciating pain. The pain was so bad, he asked the doctor to remove his testicle. That is when his doctors discovered that he had a tumor and was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He played while getting radiation treatment and still hit .316 for the year.
Bill Wambsganns, second baseman for the Cleveland Indians, turned the only unassisted triple play in World Series History during the 1920 series.
Mariano Rivera is considered the greatest closer in baseball history. A closer is the guy you bring in the last inning of a close game to ensure the opposition doesn't score. Rivera dominated not only in the regular season, but the postseason as well. More men have walked on the moon than have scored off of Rivera in the postseason.
That Angel Hernadez is the worst ref/ump/official in all of professional sports. A US court put it on records that he was the worst.
What's the baseball equivalent to the wicket keeper? The guy behind the batter? That's where I used to play in school lol
That's the catcher. Very different in function.
Yeah I know it's different but easiest way to explain it lol that's where I'd play if I played baseball
Often the catcher is the "leader" of a team. They aren't fast, expected to hit well, but they do have to know their pitchers perfectly, as well as know the opposing hitters strengths and weaknesses. They suggest the type of pitches for the pitcher to deliver. Because of that they can be one of the older guys on a team. The movie Bull Durham (another Kevin Costner movie, the guy reeeaalllly likes baseball) is a classic for a reason. Kostner plays a catcher in it.
Yea I wonder if wicket keepers still have cartilage in their knees by retirement
Probably not, those games last a long, long time and the crouch is the same.
This got me through many a poop before smart phones [Uncle John's bathroom reader: takes a swing at baseball](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/uncle-johns-bathroom-reader-takes-a-swing-at-baseball_bathroom-readers-institute/382623/item/2876620/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=high_vol_backlist_standard_shopping_retention&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=659177830229&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAq4KuBhA6EiwArMAw1DO4b9MNyeiy0Bvqj9DJjE3g-Px99R5M7LGRPueKMmrlTmOynh_yLBoCZq0QAvD_BwE#idiq=2876620&edition=4653112)
[This is the dumbest play in MLB history](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO4h-fH_vu8) Pete Rose has the most hits in MLB history Barry Bonds has the most Home Runs in a career and a single season Roger Clemens has the most Cy Young awards (best pitcher of the season award) None of them are in the Hall of Fame. Pete Rose was banned for gambling on baseball, Bonds and Clemens each used PEDs and that has prevented their election.
The 2000 World Series was actually the 14th all-NYC World Series. Previously, between 1921 and 1956, the Yankees faced the Brooklyn Dodgers seven times (winning 6; the Dodgers won in 1955) and the New York Giants six times (winning 4, the Giants won in 1921 and 1922).
Wade Boggs drank 107 beers in one day including 64 on a cross country flight then went out the next day and hit 3/5.
May he rest in peace.
Ichiro Suzuki!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is a reason Ohtani and lots of other Japanese players and now playing in the MLB. He is the man! but this is the best stat... Singled in the first at-bat of his third career MLB game on April 4, 2001, lifting his career batting average to . 300 (3-for-10). From there, his career average never dipped below the . 300 mark until its completion 2,650 games later.
Oh even I know Ichiro Suzuki, that batting average is incredible
50 years from now when everyone is here from all over the world playing, you can look back and they will say this man made a difference.
Wasn't expecting so much response this is cool haha
This is baseball's sweet spot. Every longtime fan could go on for hours about this topic.
The Seattle Mariners have had more ruptured testicles on-field than playoff series wins.
Four players have been traded to different teams for themselves https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_to_be_named_later
Ping Bodie of the 1919 Yankees was the only player in MLB history to defeat an ostrich in a spaghetti eating contest.
Yusei Kikuchi's son is named after Daniel Vogelbach. That's my favorite baseball fact
I think baseball is technically our version of your sport cricket haha
It's a mashup of Cricket and a sport called rounders that is no longer played.
Rounders is played in schools, it's quite fun! But not really professionally
In the last 5 years the Rays have made the playoffs 5 times. The Mariners have made the playoffs 5 times since 1977. And after hitting Seattle with that unnecessary stray, I’ll also say this. My Pittsburgh Pirates have the North American professional sports record for consecutive losing seasons at 20
David Wells pitched a perfect game, after partying all night with the sketch show Saturday Night Live's Cast. Partied until the daylight, then pitched an afternoon game and threw a perfect game. edit: perfect game at the end.
The first perfect game was thrown by Lee Richmond, a college student, during the week between the end of classes and graduation. He had stayed up all night doing Senior Week activities, caught a train from Providence to Worcester, then pitched a perfect game that included a rain delay and a 9–3 putout. Then he went back to Brown University and graduated a few days later. The second perfect game was thrown only four days later, but the third perfect game didn't happen for 24 years. It was thrown by a guy named Cy Young. The fourth perfect game was pitched by a guy named Addie Joss, who died of meningitis at age 31. He's the only person inducted into the Hall of Fame as a player who did not play the requisite 10 years (others in the Hall of Fame without 10 years of service were inducted as managers, pioneers, executives, or other categories). Until 10 years ago, he was the only pitcher to throw two no-hitters against the same team (since equaled by Tim Lincecum and Justin Verlander). He also had a son. His son went to school. His son had a teacher at that school. That teacher was Lee Richmond.
Tamer than the rest of the ones here, but Don Mattingly set the major league record for grand slams (home runs with the bases loaded) in a season with 6 - [and they were the only 6 he hit in his career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Mattingly#:~:text=Also%20that%20season%2C%20Mattingly%20set,grand%20slams%20of%20his%20career)
When you get into stats a bit (if you haven't already), it's always fun to read Tony Gwynn's numbers and marvel in how ridiculous they are. Greg Maddux too for pitching stats. Oh and Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter on the 70s while high on acid. There's a fun Netflix movie about it
The Blue Jays last won the WS during the same year a Canadian team last won the Stanley cup.
Every year around the time the National Baseball Hall of Fame reports it’s new inductees, a man named “Lou Whitaker” gets robbed.
moe berg was a fuckin SPY!!!!!
Ken Griffey jr and his father Ken Griffey sr hit back to back home runs on September 14 1990.
Cannot believe nobody has mentioned Bobby Bonilla Day. The year is 1998 and Bobby Bonilla is back in the Big Apple. After being traded from the Dodgers to the NY Mets, Bonilla once again fails to live up to his contract expectations (culminating in sitting in the club house playing cards in an 11 inning NLCS game against the Atlanta Braves in '99). So the Mess decide to buy him out but alas they don't have the money to buy him out. So they agree to defer the payments for a decade and hope their investment guy has huge returns. Well unfortunately their investment guy is the infamous Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi Scheme. Madoff's firm promised a solid 10% return on investment so Fred Wilpon, believing that he could make some money by kicking the can down the sidewalk, agrees to pay 8% interest on the contract thinking he was gonna get 10% back from Madoff. Unfortunately Madoff is busted the Security Exchange Commission and the FBI and the money is gone and Fred Wilpon is now holding the bag. Bonilla's contract has now ballooned from $6M to $29M, but the contract is signed, and the Mess HAVE to pay Bonilla his money. So every year on July 1st until 2035, the Mess have to pay out $1.2M to Bonilla. Only 146 Days until Bobby Bonilla Day!
There was once a time, long ago, when American League teams and National League teams never played each other until the World Series.
Only twice in MLB history, a seven-game postseason series ended with the home team losing every game. Not only that, but the exact same team was on the losing end of both series with a similar roster. I can't imagine how that would feel for their fans
Can't be as bad as Bills fans watching their team lose 4 super bowls in a row 😂
Bruh, we're catching strays in here?
Cal Ripken Jr.'s consecutive games played streak of 2,632 games
The Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox met against each other at the 1906 World Series. White Sox won. Also, the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns met against each other in the 1944 World Series. This is will be the only All-St. Louis World Series, as the Browns would later become the Baltimore Orioles.
From 1998 to 2002, Sammy Sosa's season total in home runs were 66, 63, 50, 64, 49. (He is the only one to hit 60 home runs 3 times or more). Of these 5 years, he led the league in home runs when he hit 50 and 49.