Important Dates in Major League Baseball from September and October

This is a continuation of the Robert Lookup Baseball Trivia Series.

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IMPORTANT DATES
in Major League Baseball
September / October 

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September 1, 1906
Joe Harris of the Boston Red Sox pitches 24 innings in one game, an American League record.

Pitcher Walter Johnson was one of the great ones.

September 4, 1908
Walter Johnson shuts out the Yankees/Highlanders 3-0, the first of three shutouts against the Yankees in four days. Saturday's September 5 game was 6-0 and Monday's 4-0.

September 5, 2001
Roger Clemens bests the Jays 4-3 for his 19th win out of 20 decisions, tying Rube Marquanrd of the 1912 New York Giants. Clemens also passed Jack Chesbro and Whitey Ford for the longest winning streak in Yankee history. Chesbro won 14 straight in 1904 and Ford 14 in 1961.

September 6, 1990
Cal Ripken plays in his 2,131st consecutive game to surpass Lou Gehrig's 56-year-old record. Baltimore beat Anaheim 4-3.

September 7, 1993
Mark Whiten of the Cards hits four home runs. He had 12 RBIs in the first game and 1 RBI in the second of a double header.

September 10, 2000
Randy Johnson becomes the 12th player in Major League history to reach 3,000 strikeouts, fanning a season high 14 i seven innings as Arizona lost 4-3 to Florida in 12 innings.

Sept 16, 1997
Curt Schilling strikes out 9 in Phillies win over the Mets to become the 13th pitcher since 1900 to achieve 300 strikeouts in a season.

September 22, 1904
Jim O'Rourke plays one game for the New York Giants and singles in four at bats. He plays catcher that day. 54 years old, he also played for the original Boston Nationals, the only National League player to play both in 1876 and the 20th Century.

September 22, 1911
Cy Young, 44, beats Pittsburgh 1-0 for his 511th and last victory.

September 25, 1995
Seattle uses 11 pitchers in a game, the most ever.

October 3, 1951

The historic homer by Bobby Thompson.

The shot heard round the world. Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants hits a 3-run homer in the ninth inning of the third game to beat the Dodgers 5-4 and win the National League pennant. (EdNote: When I was a bus boy at Fiddler's Elbow Country Club in 1969-70, Bobby Thomson was a member there. On one occasion, another employee took me downstairs where the lockers were and pointed to him, saying, "There's Bobby Thomson" as I peaked round the corner. He was putting on his cleats to head out for a round of golf.)

October 3, 1993
The Blue Jays become the first team in American League history to have teammates finish 1-2-3 in the batting race. John Olerud led the league in hitting, .363; Paul Molitor hit .322; Roberto Alomar hit .326.

October 8, 1959
Mike Morgan is born in Tulare, California

October 20, 1931
Mickey Mantle is born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma.

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Related Links
A-List of all MLB pitchers with 300 strikeouts or more in a single season.
The shot heard round the world.

Important Dates in Major League Baseball for the Month of June

One of baseball's true greats, Ty Cobb

Good heavens, we should be rolling into the second week of the season, and what have we here? A COVID-19 global tsunami. This is the third "Important Dates" blog post in this series.

You can read Important Dates for April  and Important Dates for May or you can jump right into June after these warmup pitches...

"The baseball mania has run its course. It has no future as a professional endeavor"
--Cincinnati Gazette, 1879

"Nearly everyone's son wants to be a baseball player. Why not? What other profession could he choose where he can slide around in the dirt, never work when it rains and spit whenever he wants?"
--Erma Bombeck

"I grew up in central Illinois midway between Chicago and St. Louis and I made an historic blunder. All my friends became Cardinals fans and grew up happy and liberal and I became a Cubs fan and grew up embittered and conservative."
--George Will

"Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off."
--Bill Veeck

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IMPORTANT DATES -- JUNE

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June 1, 1925
Lou Gehrig bats for PeeWee Wanninger in the eighth inning, replacing Wally Pipp at 1st base to start his streak of 2,130 consecutive games.

The Iron Man, Lou Gherig. 1933 Goudey baseball card.

June 3, 1932
Lou Gehrig becomes the first Major League player to hit four consecutive home runs in a game, giving the Yankees a 20-13 win over the A's.

June 3, 1932
John McGraw resigns as manager of the New York Giants

June 4, 1974
Darin Erstad was born.

June 8, 2001
Damion Easley, Detroit second baseman, hits for the cycle. First time a Detroit player has done this since July 28, 1993.

June 17, 1914
Sherwood Robert Magee hits a home run, but it is taken away from him by the antiqued rule that says an extra inning game can only be won by one run. Rule was changed in 1920.

June 24, 1955
Harmon Killebrew hits his first Major League home run off Billy Hoeft in Griffith Stadium. Tigers, however, beat the Nationals 18-7.

June 26, 1916
Cleveland wore numbers on their sleeves.

June 26, 1976
Rangers' Tobey Harrah, shortstop, plays a Double Header without handling a batted ball from the White Sox.

June 29, 1941
In a Double Header against the Nationals, Joe DiMaggio tied, and then broke, the American League record of hitting in 41 straight games. Batting 1 for 4 in the first and 1 for 5 in the second, he broke the record set by George Sisler in 1922.

June 29, 2001
Dave Burba of Cleveland gives up four home runs in one inning to Kansas City's Sweeney, Dye, Ibanez and Beltran.

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"Baseball can be summed up in one word — youneverknow."
--Joaquin Andujar

"You know what baseball is? It's playing cards, sleeping, watching TV. Dress. Batting practice. Fool around with the fans. Joke with teammates. Football is a little different. Before the game, everybody sits on the floor, quietly, thinking whose head they're going to take off."
--Bo Jackson

Trivia: Did you know Bob Dylan once recorded a song about a Major League pitching star? What was his name and who did he play for?

Here Comes the Windup, and the Pitch: Baseball Haiku

Poetry comes in all shapes and forms, from ballad to sonnet and epic to comic. One favorite for many contemplatives who appreciate the form is haiku.

While perusing the shelves of our local library my eye caught two words on the yellow spine of a book on the 811 shelf: Baseball Haiku. The elegant hand-sized volume features an illustration of a pitcher staring down from the mound toward home plate, a baseball gripped tight behind his back. The book's subtitle: The Best Haiku Ever Written About the Game.

I always chafe at these kind of claims, the best this or the best that. But it was certainly fun to crack the spine and taste the flavor of a few of these little gems. I knew instantly that I would be bringing it home with me.

Here are some sentences from the introduction.

Haiku and baseball were made for each other. The few words of a haiku can bring to life a pitcher rotating the ball behind his back as he looks in at the catcher's sign or they can reveal the over-confidence of a rookie getting picked off at first.

Fans of haiku will want this book for it’s outstanding haiku. Fans of baseball will want it for the way the haiku let them relive the joys and the sorrows of the game. The unforgettable images that pop up out of the pages of this collection capture the actions and atmospheres, the moods and tensions, the weathers and memories of America’s national past time--and Japan’s.

Yes, just as Japan has imported a love of baseball from us, so Americans have imported a love of this distinct poetry form from Japan. I think it's a pretty fair trade when two cultures can share an appreciation for something they each created, and love.

The imagery of some of these pithy little baby's breath-sized flowers is vivid in its profound simplicity. Try this one, which by its very specificity evokes a distinct memory.

rainy night

a hole in the radio 

where a ballgame should be

That one brought to mind my little robin's egg blue transistor radio with which I used to listen to Cleveland Indians games in the back yard. Here's another in which you can feel someone's pain.

change of pitchers

the right fielder puts his glove

over his face

This one carries an alternate mood.

Home run trot --

the batter's eye a tape

measuring the distance

The cover copy on the back of the book declares that baseball and haiku were made for each other. If you can find a copy of the book and sift through it, you will likely draw the same conclusion.

The poems aren't just about Major League Baseball. They include Little League and sandlot moments, too. As well as metaphorical images like this one.

new girlfriend

safe

at first

The fun in these little gems is often how the last line gives the first lines an O Henryesque twist. It's pure pith.

We're only just over two weeks away from Opening Day for the 2020 season and for the third year in a row all 30 teams will be in action that day. Are you ready?

Related Link
Important Dates in Major League Baseball for the Month of April
Wilde Observations #20
Wilde Observations #37

Major League Baseball: Some Things Have Changed and Some Haven't in the Umpire Business

Technology has changed the world of baseball in both fundamental and incidental ways. Watching the Cubs-Indians World Series it became apparent that one of the side effects of technology is the shift in power that was once fully in the hands of the umpires. That is, until cameras could capture every single angle and transmit all these perspectives to a single location for instant review, the umpire's authority was unchallenged. It could be disputed but in the context of the game itself the ump made the final call.

In today's world, the power has shifted away from the umpire to some extent. If he makes a bad call, the manager of the team that took it on the chin could challenge the call. The verdict was determined elsewhere, and the ump's role marginally reduced to being a mouthpiece for the verdict. Sure, the umps still make all the calls, but they've got their butts covered.

This undoubtedly proves to be a liberating change for umpires. I know from first-hand experience how brutal it can be to make a bad call. Somehow the umpire's word had such total authority it was as if it had been etched on two tablets by the finger of God.

When I was seventeen I was asked to be a Little League umpire, no doubt because I played on the high school team and knew the rules of the game. I was fair, earnest and it also paid a few greenbacks to boot.

Two of my most memorable experiences as an ump were the bad calls I made. I wrote about this here in 2009, but you can read the pertinent material here in this excerpt.

My worst call came on a windy day at Hamilton Field. The infield was dusty and the count two balls and a strike. Just as the pitch was released, the wind threw grains of dirt into my eyes so that I was temporarily blinded. I could see that the ball, when I got my vision back, had gone over the backstop so naturally I assumed (don’t EVER assume when you are an umpire) that the kid fouled it off. I shouted, with confidence, “Strike two.”

The reality is, the ball had hit the plate and gone over the backstop. And everyone saw it as plain as day, except the ump. The parents went berserk. Naturally, when I discovered what had happened it seemed only right to change my call to make it correspond to reality. Then, the other team’s went berserk, and trust me, there are very few closets to hide in on a baseball diamond.

My second bad call went like this. The batter hit a dribbler to the right side. The first baseman came forward to get it, picked it up clean and swung around to tag the runner on the back as he sprinted past. I made a mistake, however, by not running out toward the mound to get a better angle on the play. It looked like he tagged the runner, but from where I was standing he might not have done so. I called the kid out.

The first base coach and the manager arched their backs in amazement, shouting, “He missed him by a foot!” Whereupon, having failed to learn from my first bad call experience, I changed the call to “Safe!” I cringe to think of it. When you change a call there is No Mercy. 

The common denominator in both these instances was this: the parents went berserk. O.K., the coaches did, too. The worst of it was that everyone behaved as if the umpire did not even have permission to change the call, even when everyone saw it with their on eyes.

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I share all this because there's another part of Major League Baseball that has not changed and maybe ought to as well. Let's set it up this way.

Women have served on the Supreme Court. Women have served as heads of state (e.g. Margaret Thatcher) and may even serve as our own soon. Women are CEOs of major corporations. But there are no female Major League umpires. Why is this? Are the rules more complicated than the U.S. legal system?

This glass ceiling in the umpire business strikes me as strange. Can you imagine if black ball players had never been permitted to cross the color barrier? I'm unsure what the risks are. It's already verboten to hit an ump.

The reason this notion is fresh in my mind is because I have a cousin who was a professional umpire. Theresa has been one of a handful of women umps in professional minor league ball. Here's a 2012 article addressing the situation. In 2011 ESPNW investigated the progress of women referees and umps in a range of pro sports, underscoring the challenges and abuse they've had to overcome.

So tonight, while the Indians try to break free of "the curse of Rocky Colavito" and the Cubs fight for their first championship in 108 years, ask yourself the question: Why can't women be umpires?

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My apologies to friends who live in Chicago... I will be rooting for the Indians tonight. Go Tribe!

Throwback Thursday: It Happens Every Fall (Baseball Memories)

It's that time of year again. The Major League Baseball playoffs are underway, and the hibernating fan in me begins to awaken. Congrats to the teams that have progressed thus far. The Cubs fans must surely be biting their nails with excitement as their team has passed another hurdle. Good luck! 

When you get to the end you will notice that this 2008 post was written at a different time of the year. 

As noted in a previous post, no man is an island. Nor any woman. From the moment we enter this world we not only have a connection to our personal families, and simultaneously connected to our extended family, the body of humanity.

Of course this is not something we immediately sense – and some never sense it at all. But as we enter this world, we do come to appreciate and understand that our grand appearance here takes place within a context, for some less fortunate than others.

I made my entry into the world as a firstborn to young parents in Cleveland, Ohio. (Feet first, for what it's worth.) My mom and dad each had rural roots, West Virginia and Kentucky respectively, but had taken up residence in a second floor apartment in a section of Cleveland known as Little Italy.

They were evidently avid baseball fans because the four teddy bears in my crib were named after the 1952 Cleveland Indians starting rotation: Mike Garcia, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn and fireballer Bob Feller. These guys were awesome pitchers in their prime but only handed Indians fans one pennant in the fifties due to the heartless dominance of the Yankees of that era.

I don’t recall what happened to Wynn and Garcia (the teddy bears), but Lemon and Feller accompanied me for many a year. So did the love of baseball.

One of my mom’s favorite players was the Indians’ second baseman Bobby Avila. Three times a candidate for the League’s Most Valuable Player, Avila hailed from Mexico, a fact which I learned many years later while living in Monterrey in 1981. My wife and I were walking through the Baseball Hall of Fame in that city whereupon I saw a Cleveland Indians baseball uniform. (I will try to find the photo I took and post it here.) It immediately made me think of my Mom.

In the fifties my grandfather and dad took my brothers and I to many a ball game at Cleveland Stadium. I can recall box seats behind the Indians dugout on a bright sunny afternoon. On another occasion I remember box seats just a little to the right of the backstop during a double header in which the Yankees’ Elston Howard hit home runs over the deep center field fence in each game.

Each spring, as the baseball season commenced, our family watched the movie It Happens Every Spring, starring Ray Milland, about a professor who discovers a way to juice a baseball so that it avoids being hit by wood. Like the annual airing of The Wizard of Oz, our family watched this Saturday Night at the Movies feature year in and year out.

Within this context, it’s hard to imagine not having an interest in baseball.

Maybe things would have been different if the Indians had not been contenders. And probably it would have been much different if I had been born and raised in a town with no team at all. But it is what it is. And for this reason, to some extent Fate has a hand in how we become who we are… though I must immediately add that I believe, too, that our decisions today help make us who we will become.

Besides my own appearance here, other significant events of 1952 include the publication of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea and John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Herman Wouk won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Caine Mutiny. Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower won the 1952 election for president of the United States. The Korean Conflict was happening across the Pacific, and McCarthyism was in full swing in the corridors of power here in the homeland.

Two other features of note. First, not that it matters much, 1952 was a Leap Year. And second, 1952 was a year in which a major wave of Baby Boomers entered the world. One of them was Bob Costas, a sports announcer who many Americans recognize and still welcome into their homes via television. Currently he is the anchor for this year’s Olympic Games. He is a passionate fan of baseball to such an extent that he has even been considered for the position of baseball commissioner.

Costas has certainly had a charmed life, being in a position where he not only gets to meet his heroes and the great sports figures of our time, he gets to ask them probing questions, to find out what makes them tick. Hopefully he still gets a thrill from this privileged position. He certainly excels at projecting the kind of educated passion that makes people (and by this, I mean viewers) want to spend time in his presence.

If I were interviewing Mr. Costas, I would like to know…
Did your parents name your teddy bears after the New York Yankees starting rotation? (He grew up in the Queens, New York.)
How many Yankees vs. Indians double headers did you see in the fifties?
When did you see your first All Star Game? (I saw mine in Cleveland, 1963.)

What would you consider the three greatest sports moments of the past thirty years?
And finally, what makes you tick? It has to be more than the money, which can’t be half bad. What do you love most in life and what are your goals for the next thirty years?

And, if you could ask Mr. Costas a couple questions, what would they be?

Bob Costas Trivia: Costas was a huge Mickey Mantle fan and purportedly carried a 1958 Mickey Mantle baseball card in his wallet. Here's a picture of my own 1958 Mickey Mantle card, one of baseball's legendary heroes when we were both young fans.

And now, back to the Olympics. Go, team.