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Since I've been told about this several times in the past half hour, I'll link the Reuters (to be precise Thomson Reuters) story about a Japanese high school game being called off after two innings when Shunshukan was leading Kawamoto Technical School 66-0.
The coach of Kawamoto technical high school threw in the towel to spare his pitcher’s arm with his team losing 66-0 with just one batter out in the bottom of the second.
The hapless hurler had already sent down over 250 pitches, allowing 26 runs in the first inning and 40 in the second before Kawamoto asked for mercy.
“At that pace the pitcher would have thrown around 500 pitches in four innings,” Kawamoto’s coach was quoted as saying. “There was a danger he could get injured.”
I haven't yet found any other source other than this that confirms the story.
(UPDATE)
I received an e-mail from Japanese reader Izumi Devalier who confirmed the story in the Japanese press. (The link is for a Japanese site). Lopsided scores are not unusual in Japanese high school baseball. The game in the story above was in an early round of the qualifying for the summer Koshien tournament.
More big scores in high school games can be found here. That page is in Japanese, but the numbers tell the tale.
High school was so long ago, I can't recall.
That seems too low for the majority of those runs to come on bases-loaded walks (if he were completely wild and never hit the strike zone). Still, I have trouble imagining that you'd have that many balls in play without getting more outs... Unless the defense was completely atrocious, I suppose. Weird.
I [heart] you Ken!
A friend of mine e-mailed me the story very early this morning, and I had responded:
"The Charlie Brown All-Stars, International Edition"
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