Category: May

MAY 3: 6-RBI INNING!

MAY 3, 1951 | ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI– Six RBI (runs batted in) in a week is pretty good. Six in a day is a headline grabber. How about six RBI in an inning! New York Yankees rookie Gil McDougald exploded for a 6-RBI inning on this date in 1951.

McDougald hit a two-run Triple to kick off a 9th inning rally against the St. Louis Browns at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. He came around to bat again. This time he hit a grand slam. The Yankees ended up scoring 11 times that inning on their way to a 17-3 shellacking of the Browns.

The runs batted in (RBI) statistic is a valuable measure of a player’s offensive production, but is dependent on situations. You need to have runners on base or hit a lot of home runs to get RBI. It also depends where you are in the batting order and how productive the hitters ahead of you are.

Fernando Tatis holds the major league record for most RBI in an inning with 8. He hit two grand slams in one inning in 1999. Alex Rodriguez had 7 RBI in one inning in 2009.

Here are the RBI leaders in various other categories:

Season:
Hack Wilson, Cubs (1930) 191
Lou Gehrig, Yankees (1931) 184
Hank Greenberg, Tigers (1937) 183

Career:
Henry Aaron, Braves, Brewers 2,297
Babe Ruth, Yankees, Red Sox 2,213
Cap Anson, Cubs (White Stockings) 2,076
Lou Gehrig, Yankees 1,995
Stan Musial, Cardinals 1,951

Game:
Jim Bottomly, Cardinals, Sept 24, 1924 12
Mark Whiten, Cardinals, Sept 7, 1993 12
Tony Lazzeri, Yankees, May 24, 1936 11

On this date in 1951 Gil McDougald exploded for a 6-RBI inning.

Contributing Sources:
All-time RBI Leaders
Gill McDougald stats
Baseball-Almanac

A story from MAY 2 in baseball history – Gehrig not in lineup!

TODAYinBASEBALL TAKES US TO DETROIT, MICHIGAN, MAY 2, 1939. The New York Yankees crushed the Detroit Tigers 22 to 2. But the game was more noteworthy for who didn’t play. Shocker! Lou Gehrig not in lineup. The Iron horse first baseman voluntarily decided for the good of the team he couldn’t play. He had played every single game for 14 years – 2,130 games! Gehrig’s record of most consecutive games played would stand until Cal Ripken broke it in 1995.

Something really had to be wrong for Gehrig to keep himself out of the lineup on May 2, 1939. Something was.

Ludwig Heinrich Gehrig was born in New York City in 1903. His name was Americanized to Henry Louis Gehrig. He went to Columbia University in New York on a football scholarship, but also played baseball. Gehrig left Columbia to sign with the Yankees.

As legend has it, early in his career, the Yankees offered Gehrig to the Boston Red Sox for a starting pitcher as kind of re-payment for the Babe Ruth deal a few years earlier. The Red Sox didn’t want Gehrig.

Something really had to be wrong for Gehrig to keep himself out of the lineup on May 2, 1939. It was a shocker, Lou Gehrig not in the lineup. The problem was Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which later became known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, had attacked his body. He was too weak to play baseball. His health deteriorated shockingly fast. Henry Louis Gehrig died just two years later.

Contributing sources:
ALS.org
Lou Gehrig.com 

 

A STORY FROM MAY 1 IN BASEBALL HISTORY – ASTROS TURN THE TABLES ON REDS

TODAYINBASEBALL.com TAKES US TO CINCINNATI, OHIO MAY 1, 1969? On April 30 Cincinnati Reds pitcher Jim Maloney no-hit the Houston Astros 10 to nothing. The next day, May 1, 1969, Astros’ starter Don Wilson turned the tables on the Reds. He no-hit them. What are the odds?

No-hitters are significant accomplishments, but they aren’t unheard of. There have been over 300 in the modern era — since 1901. That’s almost two per season.

Here are a few rarer events than a no-hitter:

  • Two no-hitters on the same day – June 29, 1990. Dave Stewart of the Oakland A’s no-hit the Toronto Blue Jays. A couple hours later the Dodgers‘ Fernando Valenzuela no-hit the St. Louis Cardinals.
  • In 1959, Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates not only had a no-hitter for 12 innings, he had a perfect game. He lost the perfecto, the no-hitter and the game in the 13th inning. [Look for story May 26th]
  • In 1990 Andy Hawkins of the New York Yankees pitched a no-hitter and lost 4-0 when the Chicago White Sox took advantage of Yankee errors. Initially Hawkins got credit for a no-hitter. Later Major League Baseball changed the criteria and took away Hawkins’ no-hitter because it didn’t go a full 9 innings. It only went 8 and a half because the home team White Sox were ahead and didn’t bat in the ninth.

The  rarest of them all may be the Astros turning the tables on he Reds. Houston no-hit the Reds, the day after the Reds no-hit Houston.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 2, 1969
Retrosheet’s no-hitters and stuff

JUNE 19-America’s game takes shape

1846 | HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY – It’s unlikely anyone will ever figure out when the first game of baseball was played because, in all likelihood, there was no first game. Baseball evolved. Some version of the game dates back to pre-Revolutionary War days, and is based on “ball games” played for centuries. However, a significant contest in that evolution occurred on this date in 1846 in Hoboken, New Jersey.

The Knickerbocker Club of New York organized a game at Elysian Field using rules documented in 1845 by member Alexander Cartwright (Abner Doubleday was nowhere to be found). Cartwright, a surveyor by trade, laid out the dimensions of the field. Club members tinkered with the rules and practiced among themselves before the June 1846 game. Historian Leonard Koppett, author of Koppett’s Concise History of Major League Baseball, says the Cartwright rules “formalized” many of the rules that remain intact today.

Among the 20 rules laid down by the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in the 1840’s:

  1. There would be four bases in a diamond configuration.
  2. The “batter” placed at “home plate” at the bottom of the diamond, if looking from above.
  3. The game consists of 21 outs.
  4. Three outs made up a half inning.
  5. Runner no longer out by having ball thrown at him
  6. Foul and fair territory established
  7. The bases shall be from “home” to second base, 42 paces; from 1st base to 3rd base, 42 paces, equidistant.
  8. The ball must be pitched, and not thrown, for the bat.
  9. A ball knocked out of the field, or outside the range of first or third base, is foul.
  10. Three balls being struck at and missed and the last one caught is a hand out; if not caught is considered fair, and a striker is bound to run.
  11. A ball being struck or tipped and caught either flying or on the first bound is a hand out.
  12. A player running the base shall be out, if the ball is in the hands of an adversary on the base, or the runner is touched with it before he makes his base; it being understood, however, that in no instance is a ball to be thrown at him.
  13. A player running who shall prevent an adversary from catching or getting the ball before making his base is a hand out.
  14. No ace or base can be made on a foul strike.
  15. A runner cannot be put out in making one base, when a balk is made by the pitcher.
  16. But one base allowed when a ball bounds out of the field when struck.

Reportedly, a team called the New York Nine beat the Knickerbockers 23-1 on that June day in 1846. They played four innings.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
Koppett’s Concise History of Major League Baseball, 2004, Leonard Koppett
Knickerbocker Rules
Baseball in the Garden of Eden, by John Thorn, Simon & Schuster, 2011
LISTEN: John Thorn NPR interview

June 18-Not again!

1962 | NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Remember yesterday’s story about Lou Brock being only the second player to hit a home run into the center field bleachers of New York’s Polo Grounds on June 17, 1962? The bleachers were 475 feet from home plate.

Well, it happened again the very next day. Henry Aaron, a more likely slugger, put one into the bleachers in center as the Milwaukee Braves beat the New York G.

What are the odds? Just four players had hit balls into the cent-field bleachers in the 52-year history of the Polo Grounds (Luke Easter of the Negro Leagues also did it) two of them on consecutive days.

The Polo Grounds had some interesting quirks. While the center field fence was a great distance away. The left and right field lines were short. The distance down the left field line varied over the years, but was usually 270 or 280 feet away, never more than 300 feet away, the right field line was even shorter. The upper deck in left hung over the lower deck, meaning a ball that could be caught if it fell all the way to the ground, could end up in the upper deck and be a home run.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Polo_Grounds
http://www.ballparks.com/baseball/national/pologr.htm
http://www.retrosheet.org/

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/04/not_715_ten_other_great_hank_a.html