Today is the 92nd anniversary of the walkingest game in major league history. At Shibe Park, the Tigers and Athletics got together for a game where pitches missed the strike zone at a record rate. Just how many walks were there in the game? You'll have to read after the jump.

Continue reading "'Ball Four' and more, so many more"...

Are maple bats now the most likely piece of baseball equipment to injure players or spectators? Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports looks into the issue of whether maple bats shatter into pieces that tend to fly into dugouts or the seats with the potential for gruesome injuries.

Someone’s going to die at a baseball stadium soon.

Might be a player. Could be an umpire. Possibly even a fan.

It almost was a coach.

The scar on Don Long’s left cheek still puffs around the edges, fresh enough that it looks like a misplaced zipper instead of the mark of someone who lived too hard. Like every scar, this one has a story, and it involves a piece of shattered wood, about two pounds heavy, that tomahawked 30 feet before slicing through his face.

Nate McLouth thought he just missed the sweet spot of the bat. It was April 15, the eighth inning, and the Pittsburgh Pirates were getting pummeled at Dodger Stadium. Long, the Pirates’ hitting coach, milled about the dugout until he heard McLouth hammer Esteban Loaiza’s 0-2 pitch. Long looked up and tracked the ball down the right-field line. He had no idea baseball’s greatest weapon was headed right at him, and that had he been positioned an inch to the left or right, he might not be here to talk about it.

About two or three times a game. players swinging bats made of maple wood end up with kindling in their hands while the barrel – blunt and thick on one end, splintered and sharp on the other – flies every which direction. Pitchers and middle infielders stand in the greatest line of fire and do their best acrobat imitations to avoid the remnants. On occasion, the shard will land in the stands and harm a fan. And sometimes, as it did in the case of Long, it will wind up in the dugout.

“Didn’t see it at all,” Long said. “It just hit me. I backed up. I saw the blood coming out on the card I keep and on my shoes.”

Passan talks to MLB officials who may be asking for a ban on maple bats or a requirement to make the handles thicker. However, it isn't known if ash bat manufacturers can fill orders fast enough.

The Board of Directors of the Baseball Reliquary, the Festivus of baseball museums compared to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, announced its three electees for this year: Buck O'Neil, Bill Buckner, and Emmett Ashford. The induction ceremony will be on July 20 in Pasadena. Full details after the jump.

Continue reading "The Hall of Fame for the Rest of Us: Baseball Reliquary announces new electees"...

The intricacies of Rule 10.19 apparently eluded the official scorer in Atlanta last night. Originally, the box score showed Atlanta reliever Manny Acosta picking up his third save in Atlanta's 5-2 win over the Padres. However, the Elias Sports Bureau stripped Acosta of his save because he didn't earn it under Rule 10.19.

Acosta retired the final two batters of the game after relieving Will Ohman, however, there were no runners on. Since Acosta did not pitch a complete inning and the lead was more than two runs and there were no runners on base, Acosta's save disappeared into the ether.

Today, a special guest report from James Ashenhurst, whom most of you know as Johnny Nucleo. He's an organic chemistry postdoc fellow by day at MIT and a guy who can appreciate a manager who moves a relief pitcher to the outfield temporarily. Here's his report:

Your post from last month about Bobby Cox moving a pitcher to the outfield and
back again got me wondering how often managers have pulled this little move. I
remembered that Whitey Herzog had done it a few times with Todd Worrell, and
commenter John O'Connor recounted that Kent Tekulve was switched to the
outfield in a 1979 game. Because I am strangely attracted to unusual baseball
phenomena, a trait undoubtedly shared by the Griddle's author, to say
nothing of his many readers, I thought I would try to find all the examples
where this had been done in the past 30 years or so. I self-centeredly chose
1979 as my starting point because: 1) that is where my living memory of baseball
begins, and 2) I really have a limited patience for digging through fielding
statistics. I found these events by looking for outfielders in the BR fielding
index for each year that had 5 or fewer innings in the field. Pitchers usually
stick out like a sore thumb. Since 1979, I found twelve instances where this
switch had been done. So here they are:

Continue reading "More on the Richards-Cantillon Gambit (Guest Report!)"...

Carlos Gomez of the Twins hit for the cycle in a 13-1 win for Minnesota at Chicago Wednesday. Gomez was actually at red alert status when he batted in the ninth and he led off the inning with a single.

With one out in the sixth, Arizona's Chris Snyder hits a grounder to Philadelphia third baseman Pedro Feliz. Feliz throws to Chase Utley at second to force Jeff Salazar. But Utley's relay throw for the double play is dropped by Ryan Howard.

Diamondbacks analyst Mark Grace goes on a small crusade to give Howard an error. "He just dropped it. Who cares if you can't assume the double play?" Play-by-play man Daron Sutton insists "Those are the rules. It's not an error."

But....

Rule 10.12(d) Comment: When a fielder muffs a thrown ball that, if held, would have completed a double play or triple play, the official scorer shall charge an error to the fielder who drops the ball and credit an assist to the fielder who made the throw.

And if you check the boxscore, Howard does indeed have an error to his name.

Continuing on my theme of commemorating the truly important events in baseball's history (unless I don't have enough time to write something up or I've got something actually interesting)...

Today is the 11th anniversary of the longest nine-inning 1-0 game by time. In a getaway day game at County Stadium, the Athletics and Brewers spent 200 minutes playing a 1-0 game that ended with the potential tying run thrown out at the plate to end the game and Oakland manager Art Howe along with Scott Brosius getting ejected from the game after it was over.

Continue reading "A long day's journey to 1-0"...

Kevin Gregg of the Marlins picked up a save tonight in Milwaukee making just one pitch. Scott Olsen went 8 2/3 innings, but left with the bases loaded and two outs after throwing 121 pitches.

Gregg threw one pitch to Bill Hall and got him to fly out to right to end the game and give the Marlins a 3-0 win.

Jon Rauch of Washington and Randy Flores of St. Louis also have one-pitch saves this season.

There have also been five one-pitch wins this season. In recent years, the one-pitch win has been slightly more common than its cousin the save, presumably because every game has a win and a loss and not every game has a save.

No, not this game of 10 years ago. Anybody can strike out 20 batters in a game. Or at least people named Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson. And Tom Cheney if you give him enough time.

But 40 years ago today, the Detroit Tigers, en route to a World Series title, tied a major league record by recording only 23 at bats while batting nine times in a game.

The game was played at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. Dave Leonhard started for the Orioles against Joe Sparma of the Tigers. Leonhard threw a complete game one-hitter, but he also walked seven batters and hit two others. But the Tigers never came close to scoring and did just about everything possible to keep themselves from scoring as the Orioles won 4-0.

• Inning 1 - Dick McAuliffe leads off with a walk and steals a second. Mickey Stanley comes up and hits into a fielder's choice as McAuliffe is thrown out at third. Stanley tries to steal second, but Curt Blefary throws him out. Al Kaline flies out. 2 AB
• Inning 2 - Willie Horton leads off with a fly out. Bill Freehan walks. Jim Northrup grounds into a force out. Northrup then tries to steal second and is thrown out to end the inning. 2 AB
• Inning 3 - Don Wert is hit by a pitch to lead off the inning and the next three batters strike out. 3 AB
• Inning 4 - Stanley strikes out. Kaline walks. Horton strikes out and Kaline is thrown out trying to steal for a DP. 2 AB.
• Inning 5 - Freehan is hit by a pitch. Northrup grounds into a DP. Wert flies out. 2 AB
• Inning 6 - Dick Tracewski flies out. Pinch hitter Tom Matchick walks. McAuliffe grounds out and Matchick moves up. Stanley lines out. 3 AB.
• Inning 7 - Kaline leads off with a walk and moves on to second on a passed ball by Blefary. Horton strikes out. Freehan flies out. Northrup singles to break up the no-hitter and Kaline goes to third. Wert grounds out. 4 AB.
• Inning 8 - Eddie Mathews pinch hits and flies out. Norm Cash pinch hits and walks. McAuliffe flies out and Stanley hits into a force play to end the inning. 3 AB.

Going to the ninth, the Tigers are at 21 ABs. The chance of tying the mark of 23 will require some doing.

• Inning 9 - Kaline grounds out. But, Leonhard delivers and he walks Horton. All that's left is for Freehan to hit into a DP and he complies 6-4-3. 2 AB.

Two other teams have managed to have just 23 ABs in a game. Cleveland did it on May 9, 1961 in a 4-2 loss at Chicago. The Indians drew six walks, had three sacrifices, and two sacrifice flies. They had no runners caught stealing, nor did they hit into a DP.

The other 23 AB game was in the AL and it occurred on May 6 as well, but back in 1917. In the second game of a doubleheader, the Chicago White Sox lost to the St. Louis Browns 3-0. Bob Groom of the Browns threw a no-hitter and walked three and hit a batter. The boxscore I found was incomplete, but the story mentioned that Groom faced only 28 batters. The White Sox hit into one double play and had one sacrifice. Caught stealings weren't an official stat then, so that would likely account for the missing ABs. Groom had also pitched the last 1 1/3 innings of the first game against the White Sox and didn't give up any hits then either.

Two brief asides: on May 5, 1917, Ernie Koob of the Browns had also thrown a no-hitter against the White Sox. And on May 2, 1917 Fred Toney of Cincinnati threw 10 no-hit innings to beat Hippo Vaughn of the Cubs who had thrown 9 no-hit innings before losing on a hit in the 10th.

The last team to make a run at the fewest AB record was on June 13, 2003 when the Pirates managed just 24 at bats in a 7-1 loss at Tampa Bay.

Jacque Jones of the Tigers was designated for assignment today.

The headline on Yahoo! Sports about it reads (since fixed):

Tigers OF Jones leaves with contusion

On this date in 1999, the Colorado Rockies became the tenth major league team to score in all nine innings of a game. Seven of these games were in the National League and three in the American Association, but no AL team has managed to pull it off.

The Cubs almost got out of the first inning scoreless, but third baseman Gary Gaetti made a two-out error on a ball hit by Vinny Castilla to let a run in. Cubs starter Terry Mulholland had retired the first two batters before giving up hits to Larry Walker and Dante Bichette.

The Rockies had close calls again on getting shut out in an inning in the fourth, when Chris Sexton got a two-out hit to score Neifi Perez and again in the sixth when Richie Barker threw a wild pitch with two outs to let Sexton score from third.

Sexton hit a 2-out, 2-run homer in the seventh and then in the ninth with the Rockies already up 11-6, Brad Woodall gave up a leadoff single to Mike Lansing. Larry Walker followed up with a force out and moved up to second on a wild pitch. Bichette walked, but Castilla grounded out. This brought up Todd Helton (who had not started the game and was batting sixth) and he hit a grounder to Mark Grace at first. But Grace couldn't handle it and two more runs came in on the error. The Rockies won 13-6.

And the score by innings for the Rockies read 111 121 222.

For the longest time, I never really looked at calendars much. I would just memorize my work schedule and keep track in my head of a few other important dates such as family and friend's birthdays. But as I've become responsible for other people's schedules at work and am required to be in different places at different times, I have to make a calendar and keep checking it.

I can tell you that this week, I'll get paid on Wednesday (and I need to make sure that the rest of my staff gets their checks too, they're picky about that) and I need to make "Count Week" sheets and trust me, you don't want to know about that.

But this Sunday, May 4, was my dad's birthday. Although I don't know if a person who has passed on still has a birthday. Unless it's a holiday. My dad would have been 79 Sunday (so would have Audrey Hepburn). And next Sunday will be Mother's Day, which is another day that lacks an important participant for me. So it's back to back Sundays in which the calendar seems to have conspired against me.

I looked back at a perpetual calendar and this same 1-2 combo of downer Sundays occurred in 2003 and will happen next in 2014. But with each year, the sense of loss lessens and gets replaced with more of an appreciation for the good times that were there. Maybe the calendar isn't conspiring against me, but rather giving me an opportunity to move ahead while I still look back.

(I will resume this blog's boring historical anecdotes Monday. Such as telling you that if we were using the French Revolutionary calendar today would have been Quintidi 15 Floreal CCXVI.)

• Cristian Guzman
• Augie Ojeda
• James Loney

All three players had 6 RBI games today. That's the first time that there have been three different players with 6 or more RBI in a game in one day since September 18, 2006 when Aramis Ramirez of the Cubs (with 7) and Jeff Baker and Garret Atkins (both of Colorado and both with 6) did it.

Back on June 8, 1990 four different players had 6 RBI in a game. Nelson Santovenia (for the Expos), George Bell (for the Blue Jays), and Will Clark and Rick Parker (both for the Giants) did the honors.

There was another instance on May 18, 1983 with Greg Brock, Ted Simmons, and Jack Clark being the trio. And it's possible there could be more.

Ojeda got his 6 RBI without hitting a home run, which isn't all that unusual as it happened twice last year. The list (since 1956) includes some great hitters, but also guys like Paul Bako, Duane Kuiper, and Dave Giusti.

Deanna Rubin of Marinerds, which is actually almost all about one woman's love of Japan's coolest team, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, finally made a trip to Sapporo to watch the Fighters in action.

She sat in the oendan, one of the official cheering sections for the team, at the Sapporo Dome and has video of the song that the fans sing when one of the Fighters' new imports, Terrmel Sledge comes up to bat.

Deanna's translation of the song is:

North Carolina power,

homerun Sledge Daichi ni banrifuu fukaseyo atsuku nare Hammer Sledge

(Go go let's go su-re-ji!)

Deanna also reports that the PA system plays "Sledgehammer" and the fans wave inflatable hammers when Sledge bats. (He's hitting .248 with six homers the last time I checked.)

Sledge, as I've mentioned before, went to my high school, John F. Kennedy High in Granada Hills, and was the starting center fielder for the team's L.A. City Championship team in 1995. Jon Garland was a sophomore pitcher and outfielder on that squad.

Right now (and I mean now as the Fighters are in action as I type this), Nippon Ham is in second place in the Pacific League, two games behind surprising Seibu, which was expected to be inhabiting last place after a tumultuous offseason.

Via Deadspin comes this announcement from the Mexican League website that Julio Franco has retired.

Este miércoles al término del segundo juego de la serie de Tigres frente a Petroleros, el dominicano Julio Franco le anunció a la directiva felina su retiro definitivamente como jugador activo.

Después de analizar la situación con la familia, el dominicano pone fin a una trayectoria de 26 años como jugador en donde cosechó un titulo de bateo con los Rangers de Texas, jugador más valioso de la Liga Americana en el 90, tres juegos de estrellas y dos títulos de bateo en México.

Does someone want to try a non-automated translation of that?

This article seems to confirm the above statement. It's in Spanish too.

19-year old Rinku Bhramdeen Singh and 20-year old Dinesh Kumar Patel were the winners of a nationwide talent search for baseball players in India called "The Million Dollar Arm Hunt" and they will now be heading to the U.S. for a year's worth of training.

The article in the Hindu  (title edited) says that Singh can hit 89 mph on the radar gun.

The Milwaukee Brewers were carrying 14 pitchers for a week in April. But then the number dropped to 13 when Mike Cameron's suspension ended and Dave Bush was sent to the minors.

And now, reliever Derrick Turnbow has been designated for assignment and outfielder Joe Dillon has been called up to replace him. Turnbow had an ERA of 15.63 in eight games.

Ichiro Suzuki now has the second most hits all time of a Japanese player with 2903. However, you only get that total if you add together Ichiro's hit total with the Orix Blue Wave (1278) and the Mariners (1625).

From the Kyodo News Service:

Suzuki showed no interest in being second on the hit list,
saying, ''It's like so what?'' when he was asked to comment after the
game.

For those not keeping track at home or too lazy to read the full article, the alltime hits leader in Japan is Isao Harimoto with 3085. According to this source, Harimoto wasn't even Japanese. He was a Korean born in Japan. And he had a couple of cool nicknames, including Komazawa Abarenbo and Anda Seizoki.

Longtime baseball executive Buzzie Bavasi passed away today in San Diego at the age of 92.

Bavasi started his career in baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939 as the team's traveling secretary and eventually made his way up to general manager in 1951. Bavasi was one of the few front office executives who survived Walter O'Malley's takeover of a controlling interest of the Dodgers after the 1950 season in a boardroom battle with Branch Rickey.

Bavasi's Dodger teams won four World Series: 1955, 1959, 1963, and 1965 and also lost World Series in 1952, 1953, 1956, and 1966. Bavasi resigned from the Dodgers in 1968, in part because he knew that O'Malley intended to pass control of the team over to his son Peter and also to get the chance to start fresh with the expansion San Diego Padres in 1969.

He also served as the Padres team president from 1969-1977 before moving over to serve as executive vice president of the Calfornia Angels from 1978-1984. Bavasi's son Bill is the general manager of the Seattle Mariners. Another son, Peter, served as GM for the Padres from 1973 through 1976, the Toronto Blue Jays from 1977 through 1981, and for the Cleveland Indians in 1986.

A few years ago, I got an email from Buzzie Bavasi. He was actually looking for Rob Neyer, but I thought it was pretty cool nonetheless. As he told me in his message, "You know, at my age you can only be expected to remember so much stuff right." Nevertheless, I thought it was cool to have an image of a guy who signed Sandy Koufax getting up every morning to check to see where his name turned up on Google.

(Initial reports said that Bavasi was born in 1914, but I've found more sources that say he was born in 1915 and was just 92. I believe his birthday is 12/12/1915.)

In the AP obituary, Bavasi had this anecdote.

“Money was scarce many times during my career, particularly during our early years in San Diego,” Bavasi recalled in his autobiography. “Every time we got a player with any value we would sell him. In one short span in the early ’70s, I sold Al Santorini to St. Louis, Al Ferrara to Cincinnati and Ed Spiezio to the Chicago White Sox. Then my phone rang.

“ ‘Am I next?’ the voice on the other end asked before hanging up.

“It was my mother calling from Florida. She was 81 at the time.

“I immediately phoned her back. ‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

“ ‘Well, you sold three Italians in a row. I figured I was next.’ ”

Checking the Padres transactions, Bavasi almost remembered it perfectly, except the three Italian players who were dealt in succession were Ferrara, Chris Cannizaro, and Santorini. Spiezio was dealt to the White Sox next year.

But for a guy who dealt with farm systems that had over 500 players in it for much of his tenure with the Dodgers, I think that Bavasi did a good job of remembering who was who.

Since this is a day for Baseball Toaster to discuss top ten baseball books, I thought I'd drop in my 10 favorite baseball books. I don't know if they qualify as "best" or "essential" or "influential" or perhaps any or all.

Most of the titles have been mentioned before in both of the two links above and they aren't presented in any order except the order I remembered them (this list changes as I see titles on my shelf):

The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris. Josh Wilker has written about Harris's work much more eloquently than I can over at Cardboard Gods, but the story of Henry Wiggen and Bruce Pearson is something that everyone should read. Even with the stories set in the 1950s, the themes are timeless.

The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter. Ritter lets the history of the Deadball Era speak for itself. Sure some players told some tales, but this is still the most enjoyable and enriching way to learn about baseball before the era of film, radio, and television. The Fred Snodgrass and Chief Meyers chapters are the best.

The Long Season by Jim Brosnan. Before there was Jim Bouton, there was Jim Brosnan and he was told us the story of being a big league relief pitcher in 1959. There aren't tales of players taking greenies or looking up women's skirts, but Brosnan's season is just as fascinating.

The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski. Posnanski took a man who had turned into an icon and turned him back into a human being and made you realize that the difference between icon and regular guy is not much. In the end, I admired the human being more than the icon.

Lords of the Realm by John Helyar. Helyar expertly details how baseball's owners took the country's leading legal monopoly and in, paraphrasing Ted Turner, "****** it up."

Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman by Lee Lowenfish. For a 683 page, greatly detailed, and heavily footnoted book, this is a quick read and tells you the good, the bad, and the in between about one of baseball's most influential figures.

Baseball Before We Knew It by David Block. Block turned up historical information on the history of baseball-like games that completely changed how we should view the sport's beginnings. It is an incredible work of scholarship.

Even the Browns by William B. Mead. (Also published as The 10 Worst Years in Baseball). This is picked more for sentimental reasons as Mead writes about the 1944 season in which the St. Louis Browns took advantage of rosters decimated by players sent off to serve in World War II to win their only AL pennant. 1944 was my mom's favorite year to watch baseball as her two hometown teams in St. Louis made it to the World Series.

Strange, but True Baseball Stories by Furman Bisher. This children's book was published in 1966 back when Furman Bisher was just a grouchy old man, unlike now when he is just a grouchy very old man. But it was one of the first baseball books I read over and over and over. I loved the story about how Stan Musial switched from being a pitcher to an outfielder (the story isn't that strange, he hurt his shoulder) or how Gene Rye hit three home runs in an inning in the minor leagues. I just ate stuff up like that. And what is The Griddle now, but a collection of strange, but true baseball stories?

The Potomac Nationals of the Carolina League won a 7-inning game in the nightcap of a doubleheader at home against the Winston-Salem Warthogs without getting a hit. Potomac scored three unearned runs in the bottom of the sixth to win the game, 3-2. Doubleheaders in the minors have two seven inning games.

Here's the play-by-play from the bottom of the sixth from MiLB.com:

Potomac Bottom 6th

• Pitcher Change: Matthew Long replaces Matthew Zaleski.
• Brian Peacock reaches on fielding error by third baseman C. J. Retherford.
• Elijah Dukes walks. Brian Peacock to 2nd.
• Jemel Spearman walks. Brian Peacock to 3rd. Elijah Dukes to 2nd.
• Pitcher Change: Kanekoa Texeira replaces Matthew Long.
• Christopher Marrero called out on strikes.
• With Leonard Davis batting, passed ball by Billy Killian, Brian Peacock scores. Elijah Dukes to 3rd. Jemel Spearman to 2nd.
• Kanekoa Texeira intentionally walks Leonard Davis.
• Edgardo Baez walks. Elijah Dukes scores. Jemel Spearman to 3rd. Leonard Davis to 2nd.
• Dee Brown grounds into a force out, third baseman C. J. Retherford to second baseman Javier Colina. Jemel Spearman scores. Leonard Davis to 3rd. Edgardo Baez out at 2nd. Dee Brown to 1st.
• Steve Doetsch strikes out swinging.

Elijah Dukes was playing as part of a rehab assignment for Washington. Paul Lo Duca had played in the first game.

Mike Hampton's rehab start for the Braves AAA Richmond squad was cut short in the fourth inning in a game at Durham when Hampton started feeling pain in his left pectoral muscle again. That was the injury that sent him to the DL this season as he was warming up to make his first major league start since 2005, back on April 3.

[Atlanta General Manager Frank] Wren said it is too early too determine the consequences of this setback. But it seems logical to believe the southpaw won't be able to rejoin the Braves' injury-depleted rotation within the next couple of weeks. His only other rehab start had come on Friday, when he tossed three scoreless innings for Richmond and felt minimal discomfort in his pectoral region.

George Vescey of the New York Times (after Graham Hays of ESPN.com ran the story) picked up on the story of Sara Tucholsky, a softball player for Western Oregon, who hit a 3-run homer against Central Washington last Saturday. Tucholsky tripped going over first base and hurt her knee, which left her unable to complete the circuit of the bases.

The umpires at the game ruled that Western Oregon couldn't put in a pinch runner for Tucholsky and that the runners on base could score, but Tucholsky would only be credited with a single. Two Central Washington players, Liz Wallace and Mallory Holtman, offered to carry Tucholsky around the bases so she could be credited with her home run. And they did.

The efforts by the Central Washington players are certainly worthy of praise, but ultimately, the umpires messed up the call. According to the copy of the 2008 NCAA Softball rules,

Rule 8.5.3.2 If an injury to a batter-runner or runner prevents her from
proceeding to an awarded base, the ball is dead and substitution may
be made. The substitute must legally touch all awarded or missed
bases not previously touched.

This is similar to the rule that exists in baseball where a player injured while running out a home run can be pinch run for.