Cieradkowski: Bill Crouch, one for the record books

From SABR member Gary Cieradkowski at The Infinite Baseball Card Set on October 12, 2016:

Baseball is completely governed by statistics and records. It’s the one thing that makes the game unique when compared to other sports. While football, hockey and (especially) basketball have radically evolved over the years in both playing style and equipment, since the introduction of the juiced up ball in 1920 baseball is essentially the same. That means you can pretty much compare a guy like Dazzy Vance, Brooklyn pitching star of the 1920’s with Sandy Koufax of the 1960s and then with Orel Hershiser of the 1990’s. There’s differences of course, like mound height, watered-down talent pool, etc., but much less so than any other big-money sport. That’s why baseball’s records are more sacred than other sports. Home run totals, hitting streaks, etc, are all measuring sticks we use to gauge how good a ballplayer is.

Some records are ever changing, like career home run totals or stolen bases. Others, like single season wins by a pitcher will never be topped because we’ve learned (and been told by agents and the Player’s Union) not to over-use a player. A 30-win season is simply unreachable these days, let alone Hoss Radburn’s 59 set in 1884. Johnny Vander Meer’s back-to-back no-hitters is one that theoretically could be matched, but the odds are radically against it. Heck, even complete games are rare.

Today it’s newsworthy when a pitcher makes it past the 7th inning stretch, and that’s why the record set in today’s story – most strikeouts in one game – will never be broken. Most fans know that Roger Clemens, Kerry Wood and Max Scherzer hold the MLB record for most K’s in 9 inning game: 20. When the game gets extended into extra innings, the totals go a bit higher: Tom Cheney struck out 21 in a 16 inning game back in 1962. Trudge into the wild and woolly recesses of the minor leagues and it gets even better: in 1952 Ron Necciai whiffed 27 batters in a 9 inning Appalachian League game and Hooks Iott struck out 30 batters in a 16 inning Class D game in 1941. But one semi-pro pitcher topped even that, in both innings pitched and K’s recorded…

Read the full article here: http://infinitecardset.blogspot.com/2016/10/223-bill-crouch-one-for-record-books.html



Originally published: October 12, 2016. Last Updated: October 12, 2016.