Baseball Trivia of Various Degrees of Significance

Major League Baseball has has tucked another season under its belt and we're headed into the postseason. This weekend the Wildcard Playoffs will eliminate four of the 16 teams in contention for the World Championship. The division playoff will follow and eventually the World Series. 

As I like to say, I've been a baseball fan since my infancy. My parents adorned my crib with four teddy bears, each named after the starting rotation for the then Cleveland Indians who are now the Cleveland Guardians. Three of my four teddy bears became Hall Of Famers. Cleveland had some great teams back then. 

So, to mark the moment... a little baseball trivia is on the menu.

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In 2019 the Washington Nationals won the World Series. Today, only three years later, they have the worst record in baseball. What happened?

What a surprise (for me) to learn that Ty Cobb was only second in most career triples. First place in that category was his teammate Sam Crawford, the only player with over 300 triples (309 total), a record that will likely never be broken.

To give you an idea of how much fear Barry Bonds generated in opposing pitchers, check out these stats. In 2004 he was intentionally walked 120 times, which is 25 more walks than the American League leader in walks. 

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That's nothing compared to this: In 2004 Bonds got on base more times than he had at-bats. Baseball is funny in that way. If you go to the plate and draw a walk, then it is not counted as an at-bat. 

In my first year of Babe Ruth League, for example, I struck out 50% of the time and walked 50% of the time. I hadn't hit my growth spurt yet, so even though I had been a Little League all star, I was not ready for the next level. And yet, based on my record that year my on-base percentage was .500 even though I never once hit the ball into play. My record: 15 walks, 15 strike outs. 

Barry Bonds did hit the ball in play, a lot. And he got on base a lot... in fact, he reached base more times (376) than he had at-bats (373). In addition to those 120 intentional walks he walked another 112 times (by not swinging at bad pitches), plus had 129 hits, was hit by a pitch 9 times and got on base via an error 6 times.

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In 1999 The Sporting News named Ty Cobb as #3 on their list of all-time greatest ballplayers. 

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Pitcher Mickey Lolich played for 16 years and never hit a home run in over 1,000 major league regular-season plate appearances, but in his first ever World Series at-bat in 1968 he homered off St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Nelson Briles. He stepped to the plate 452 times prior to his World Series homer, then another 565 after and failed to hit another.
(Source: Mike Lynch on Quora)

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April 23, 199: Fernando Tatis hit two grand slams in the same inning. I think the interesting thing is that the pitcher, Chan Ho Park, was still pitching when Tatis came to the plate again with the bases loaded. 

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In 1918, while Babe Ruth was with the Red Sox, he pinch hit in the tenth inning, a runner on base. Back in those days, the game would be over as soon as the winning run crossed the plate, so when Ruth hit a blast out of the park the game was over before he rounded the bases. His homer only counted as a hit, with a run batted in, and not a homer. 

I know that many people think of the Babe as a beefy, somewhat lumbering power hitter loping around the bases. Evidently he had more quickness and agility than we've imagined. Babe Ruth had 10 inside the park home runs in his career, four in 1923 alone!

This season, the big man Aaron Judge finally broke the American League single season home run record. Roger Maris did it '61 with 61. This past week Judge made it 62.

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In 1879, the Cincinnati Gazette wrote, "The baseball mania has run its course. It has no future as a professional endeavor." Maybe some day, but that day is not yet.

Memory Lane: The Greatest Ballplayers of All Time Faced Off in the Dream World Series

OK, I'M BUMMED.

When I was in high school in the late 1960s, there was an incredible radio production called the Dream World Series. It was a virtual world series in which the greatest American League and National League all stars faced off in a best of seven competition, re-enacted as if it were really happening.

I listened to every game, which was broadcast complete with crowd noise, the crack of the bats and great announcers calling the game. I kept scorecards, cheered for the American League throughout--I was a Ty Cobb fan, plus there were so many other greats--and never missed an inning.

WHAT I'M BUMMED ABOUT is that I can't find this epic event online. I have done periodic searches, and always come up empty.

I can't recall who won the series, but I do remember it went to seven games. I also remember that Ty Cobb may have been ejected from one of the games for his aggressive manner of playing.

Does anyone out there remember this historic event? If it is online anywhere, can you send me the link? ennyman3 AT gmail.com.   I would love to re-live that memory.

The baseball cards here are from my Hall of Fame collection. For some reason they don't have the value old Topps cards have. If you are a collector I have a number of very interesting items, like the programs from two All Star Games in Cleveland (1954 and 1963). 

Now that we live in the amazing digital age, someone will assemble a Dream World Series that is video. It would be an epic undertaking, but... wow. You can imagine it... "Here's Mariano Rivera coming in to relieve Cy Young as 8-time batting champion Honus Wagner steps up to the plate, runners on first and third. Wagner flexes, digs in and gets set. The windup... and the pitch.... strike one."

Rare Events

An interesting, or maybe unusual, chapter in the history of Duluth was the presence of Harry Rimmer here as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in the Central Hillside. Rimmer had been a nationally known evangelist, Fundamentalist and Creationist whose reputation was nearly as large as Billy Sunday's, the Billy Graham equivalent of his time. I bring him up only to comment on an incident that occurred here in Duluth in the late 1920's when he was conducting a week of meetings at the church he would later return to preside over from 1934-39.

If I had access to the archives of the Duluth News Tribune I would perhaps be able to find the exact date of this event, because the DNT gave Rimmer's meetings front page headlines while he was in town. The net result was a packed out sanctuary five nights in a row, more than a thousand cramming the balcony, aisles and doorways.

At the end of the first night Rimmer promised that everyone who came back the following evening would see something they had never seen before, and would never see again.

Whereas the proclamation was true, I'm sure that anyone who has ever clicked on a misleading banner ad (what we've come to term clickbait) will recognize the ploy for what it was. At some point the following night Dr. Rimmer (the credentials were similarly misleading) pulled an unshelled peanut from his pocket, held it up, cracked it open and declared, "This peanut which you now see has never been seen before." After popping it into his mouth and swallowing it, Rimmer proclaimed, "And you will never see it again."

This story came to mind as I contemplated our 2016 World Series. Why? Because whichever team wins will set off an explosion of pent up emotions like you can't even imagine.

The Chicago Cubs will take a monkey off their backs that has tormented them for 108 years. The Indians will be liberated from a curse that has afflicted Cleveland's Tribe and fans since 1948.

If the Cubs achieve their dream this time around, it will be a victory with consequences so rare that it may never happen again in our lifetimes. The very worst case scenario for Indians fans would be a failure and continued series of failures through 2056 just to tie this rare feat. I myself will be 104 years old that year, and I'll only wait if I have to.

Ticket prices this weekend still hover near $2000 for Games 3, 4 and 5 in Chicago. That's just for the cheap seats. Some bars near Wrigley are charging $250 just to get in the door. Why would anyone pay these kinds of outrageous prices? Well, there's nothing like celebrating a big moment with friends. And when you're a fan, everyone who cheers for your team is a friend.

One difference between Harry Rimmer's peanut trick and the World Series should be obvious. I can repeat his shenanigan every time I eat a bag of pistachios. You definitely will not see the Cubs win the World Series every day, though they have a lot of talent and they are young, so who knows, we may be watching the beginning of a dynasty.

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Other rare events of note:

 ~ Neil Armstrong's "One small step..." on the moon.

~ Last night Cleveland Indians pitchers achieved their 5th post-season shutout.. a first in MLB history. (Go Tribe!)

~ Bob Dylan wins and accepts Nobel Prize for Literature. Why had he not responded to the Nobel committee? "The news... left me speechless."

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Meantime, life goes on all around you. Take it, dream it, live it.