Search Results for “node/Galarraga” – Society for American Baseball Research https://sabr.org Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:59:50 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Which Venezuelan Batter Has Had the Best Season in the Major Leagues? https://sabr.org/journal/article/which-venezuelan-batter-has-had-the-best-season-in-the-major-leagues/ Thu, 08 May 2025 17:58:46 +0000 The greatest offensive season ever recorded by a Venezuelan player belongs to Miguel Cabrera, who delivered an extraordinary performance for the Detroit Tigers in 2013, posting an impressive WAR of 7.5. Remarkably, this came just one year after Cabrera achieved baseball immortality by capturing the American League Triple Crown, cementing his status as one of the sport’s all-time legends. (Getty Images)

The greatest offensive season ever recorded by a Venezuelan player belongs to Miguel Cabrera, who delivered an extraordinary performance for the Detroit Tigers in 2013, posting an impressive WAR of 7.5. Remarkably, this came just one year after Cabrera achieved baseball immortality by capturing the American League Triple Crown, cementing his status as one of the sport’s all-time legends. (Getty Images)

 

This research aims to identify the best season by a Venezuelan hitter in the major leagues through the 2023 season. Only hitting parameters are considered. In the first stage, we defined the criteria to select extraordinary offensive seasons. We identified 42 seasons from 19 players. They are arranged chronologically, citing the player in his first extraordinary season: César Tovar, Antonio Armas, Andrés Galarraga, Bob Abreu, Richard Hidalgo, Magglio Ordóñez, Melvin Mora, Carlos González, Miguel Cabrera, Víctor Martínez, David Peralta, César Hernández, José Altuve, Yolmer Sánchez, Eduardo Escobar, Eugenio Suárez, Ronald Acuña, Salvador Pérez, and Luis Arraez.

Then we compared the seasons using two criteria:

  1. Traditional offensive parameters
  2. Sabermetric parameters

Both criteria led to the same result: The best season of a Venezuelan hitter in the big leagues was Miguel Cabrera’s in the 2013 season, which was even better than his 2012 season, in which he won the Triple Crown. If stolen bases are included in addition to hitting, Cabrera 2013 would still maintain first place, but second place would be occupied by Acuña 2023, benefiting from his remarkable 73 stolen bases.

Introduction

Since Alejandro Carrasquel got to the major leagues in 1939, there have been almost 500 Venezuelans in major league baseball. In the 80-plus years that followed, there have been excellent players who have led the league in almost every category of hitters, pitchers, and fielders. This research aimed to identify the best single-season offensive performances, compare them, and classify them according to an assessment criterion. The intention is not to determine the best season of a player, which would also require including the pitchers, as well as considering defense and baserunning. We consider only hitting.

The offensive performance of a season will be assessed in two ways: first, using the traditional methods, then using the novel sabermetric parameters, which provide a more objective description, since they allow comparing players of different eras and ballparks. We will use the English acronyms describing offensive parameters, first defined and listed in Annex 1. Additionally, to ease the reader’s understanding, we include Annex 2, which brings the definition and way of calculating the sabermetric parameters we used, and some common traditional parameters.

Selection criteria

To determine the best offensive season of a Venezuelan player in the majors, it is necessary to begin by looking at what we will call extraordinary seasons. We define a season as extraordinary if it meets one of the three following criteria:

  1. Having led the league in an offensive category during the regular season. We considered: R, H, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, TB, BB, BA, OBP, SLG, and OPS. (Criterion 1)
  2. Having had a global offensive performance equal to or better than 1.5 times the league average, with the required minimum plate appearances. Such performance is measured using Adjusted OPS (OPS+), which should be equal to or better than 150; this is a sabermetric parameter detailed further on. Reaching 150 OPS+ is very good, without question. For instance, in 2018, only seven major leaguers had an OPS+ of 150 or better, which represents just 5% of qualified players (those having the minimum required PA). (Criterion 2)
  3. Having reached a single-season record for a Venezuelan player in offensive stats, in some of the categories cited in the first criterion. (Criterion 3)

Considering these three criteria, we list 42 extraordinary seasons of Venezuelan hitters. These 42 seasons belong to just 19 players, given the fact that Tovar, Armas, Galarraga, Abreu, Ordoñez, Cabrera, Hernández, Altuve, and Acuña all repeat with more than one extraordinary season each. Of the 42 seasons, 35 meet Criterion 1, and 19 meet Criterion 2. Two seasons don’t meet any of the first two criteria but meet Criterion 3 (Hidalgo and Suárez). Fifteen seasons simultaneously meet the first two criteria.

We must take into account that Criterion 1, which incorporates players leading any of the offensive categories, in some cases includes seasons that, strictly speaking, could not be called extraordinary. This is the case of the good seasons by Tovar (1971), Hernández (2016 and 2020), Sánchez (2018), and Peralta (2021); although they had some league leads, their OPS+ is not extraordinary, as it was slightly above (Tovar, Hernández) or below (Sánchez, Peralta) the league average, as indicated further on. Even recognizing this limitation, the authors decided to maintain Criterion 1 as a qualifier of an extraordinary season, given the natural importance of leading the league in these offensive categories. We reiterate that the definition of extraordinary season does not include stolen bases; it includes only batting statistics.

 

Table 1. Offensive parameters of the 42 extraordinary seasons. Bold indicates league leader. OPS+ of 150 or better gets highlighted with a gray background

Table 1. Offensive parameters of the 42 extraordinary seasons. Bold indicates league leader. OPS+ of 150 or better gets highlighted with a gray background

(Click image to enlarge)

 

Description of Extraordinary Seasons

Table 1 shows the records of each player in the offensive parameters defined by Criteria 1 and 2. Additionally, we list at-bats (AB). All 12 categories were taken from Baseball-Reference. The procedure for calculating the last four parameters (OBP, SLG, OPS, and OPS+) can be seen in Annex 2. The numbers in bold indicate that the player led the league in that category. Seasons with an OPS+ of 150 or higher are highlighted in a gray background.

We hereby summarize the 42 extraordinary seasons, chronologically organized:

César Tovar, 1970 (Minnesota Twins)

The first Venezuelan to lead the league in a category was César Tovar, who led the American League in doubles with 36 (tied with two other players) and triples (13), while being second in runs with 120, third in hits with 195, and sixth in steals (30), making him one of the top hitters in the league.

César Tovar, 1971 (Minnesota Twins)

Tovar continued his good performance, leading the league in hits with 204 while becoming the first Venezuelan to reach 200 hits in a season, ending second in runs with 94 and fourth in batting average (.311), even though his OPS+ was just 104, mainly due to his low number of extra-base hits.

Antonio Armas, 1981 (Oakland Athletics)

In 109 games during a strike-shortened season, Armas led the league in homers with 22 (tied with three other players) while becoming the first Venezuelan to lead a major league in that category.

Antonio Armas, 1984 (Boston Red Sox)

Armas led the American League with 43 homers, 123 runs batted in, and 339 total bases, becoming the first Venezuelan to lead his circuit in RBIs and TB.

Andrés Galarraga, 1988 (Montreal Expos)

This was the Big Cat’s first great season, in which he showed his potential as a hitter with a .302 average, 29 homers, and 92 RBIs, leading the league in hits (184), doubles (42), and total bases (329), while becoming the first Venezuelan to reach the 150 OPS+ plateau.

Andrés Galarraga, 1993 (Colorado Rockies)

Galarraga was coming off two bad seasons, with batting averages of .219 in 1991 and .243 in 1992, when in the Rockies franchise’s debut in Denver in 1993, he became the first Venezuelan to win the batting title with an impressive .370. He was also the first Venezuelan to close a campaign with a line of .300 BA, .400 OBP, and .600 SLG, by slashing .370/.403/.602.

Andrés Galarraga, 1996 (Colorado Rockies)

This was Galarraga’s great season in his power burst when he led the league with 47 homers and 150 RBIs, and was second with 89 extra-base hits, the last two records for a Venezuelan in the majors. More importantly, his 150 RBIs are the National League record for a first baseman.

Andrés Galarraga, 1997 (Colorado Rockies)

Galarraga continued his golden years as one of the Blake Street Bombers, ending with a .318 batting average, 41 homers, and a league-leading 140 RBIs.

Andrés Galarraga, 1998 (Atlanta Braves)

Galarraga hit 44 home runs and drove in 121 runs with a high .991 OPS. He did not lead the league because it was the year of Mark McGwire’s 70 homers and Sammy Sosa’s 66, but his OPS+ of 157 put him on the list. More importantly, with this season in Atlanta, Galarraga proved that his quality as a slugger was not favored by playing in the hitter-friendly ballpark in Denver.

Bob Abreu, 1999 (Philadelphia Phillies)

This was one of the great years of “El Comedulce” Abreu. He paced the league in triples (tied with Neifi Pérez, Colorado) and was third in batting with .335 and OBP with .446, the latter being the second-best mark by a Venezuelan in the majors, very close to the best, Cabrera’s .448 in 2011.

Richard Hidalgo, 2000 (Houston Astros)

Hidalgo had his career year with 44 homers, the third-best mark for a Venezuelan, .636 SLG, 1.028 OPS, and .314 BA. Despite those great numbers, Hidalgo did not lead the league in any category. His OPS+ was 147. His 89 extra-base hits tie Galarraga’s best mark for a Venezuelan, and his .636 SLG ties Cabrera’s, which makes this season good enough to meet Criterion 3.

Bob Abreu, 2002 (Philadelphia Phillies)

Abreu led the league with 50 doubles (first Venezuelan to reach this mark) and had high percentages in OBP (.413) and OPS (.934).

Magglio Ordóñez, 2002 (Chicago White Sox)

Despite not having led the league in any category, Ordóñez had a great season with 38 HR, 135 RBIs, and a .320 BA. His OPS+ of 154 makes this an extraordinary season (Criterion 2).

Melvin Mora, 2004 (Baltimore Orioles)

This was Mora’s best career season. He led the league with a .419 OBP, plus an excellent .340 BA and .981 OPS.

Magglio Ordóñez, 2007 (Detroit Tigers)

Ordóñez had an exceptional season, winning the batting title with a .363 average and a league-leading 54 doubles, apart from 28 home runs and great numbers with 139 RBIs and 1.029 OPS. His 54 doubles top all Venezuelan batters historically.

Carlos González, 2010 (Colorado Rockies)

González had his best season, proving to be one of the best hitters by leading the league with a .336 BA, 197 hits, and 351 total bases. He also drove in 117 runs and had a .974 OPS.

Miguel Cabrera, 2010 (Detroit Tigers)

In what can be considered Cabrera’s first super-season, he led the league in three departments, with 126 RBIs, .420 OBP, and 178 OPS+. Additionally, he had a .622 SLG and a .328 BA. For the first time, he had a slash line better than .300/.400/.600.

Miguel Cabrera, 2011 (Detroit Tigers)

Cabrera led the league in three offensive departments: batting (.344), OBP (.448), and doubles (48), and also in games played (161) (tied with Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle), while sporting a 1.033 OPS. His OBP is the highest by a Venezuelan in the majors.

Miguel Cabrera, 2012 (Detroit Tigers)

Cabrera won the Triple Crown – something that had not been accomplished by any major-league player in 45 years – while leading the league in six categories (HR, RBI, BA, TB, SLG, and OPS). His total bases rank first all-time among Venezuelans. He was also awarded the MVP.

Miguel Cabrera, 2013 (Detroit Tigers)

Cabrera led again in six categories (BA, OBP, SLG, OPS, OPS+, and wRC+) with .348, .442, .636, 1.078, 190, and 193 – all of them better than the previous season. For the second time, he had a slash line of .300/.400/.600. His SLG, OPS, OPS+, and wRC+ represent the best single-season performance of anyone from his country. At the end of the season, he won the MVP award again.

Miguel Cabrera, 2014 (Detroit Tigers)

Cabrera led the league with 52 doubles, but his numbers decreased from the previous season. He finished with a .313 BA, 25 HR, and 109 RBIs.

José Altuve, 2014 (Houston Astros)

Altuve had his first extraordinary season, leading the majors with a .341 BA and 225 hits and the American League with 56 stolen bases while ranking second with 47 doubles.

Víctor Martínez, 2014 (Detroit Tigers)

In an extraordinary season, Martínez led the league with a .409 OBP and a .974 OPS, while finishing with 32 homers, 103 RBIs, and a .335 BA.

Miguel Cabrera, 2015 (Detroit Tigers)

Injuries limited him to 119 games, but that didn’t keep him from winning his fourth batting title (.338) and leading the league in OBP for the fourth time (.440).

David Peralta, 2015 (Arizona Diamondbacks)

In his first full major league season, David Peralta led the National League with 10 triples and was sixth in slugging percentage with .522 while hitting .312. He was the team’s Rookie of the Year in his debut (2014) at age 27, after a surprising transition from pitcher to position player; several injuries that drove him to a temporary retirement; and his emergence as a good independent league hitter.

José Altuve, 2015 (Houston Astros)

Altuve led the league in hits with 200, his second season with 200+ hits, while also leading the league in at-bats with 638.

José Altuve, 2016 (Houston Astros)

Altuve led the league again in hits with 216 and batting average with .338, along with a high OBP (.396) and OPS (.928).

César Hernández, 2016 (Philadelphia Phillies)

This year, César Hernández surprised by leading both circuits with 11 triples (tied with two other players) and a good BA of .294.

Miguel Cabrera, 2016 (Detroit Tigers)

For the first time in the last seven years, Cabrera did not lead any offensive category, finishing with a .316 BA, 38 homers, and 108 RBIs, but his high OPS+ of 155 makes this another extraordinary season.

José Altuve, 2017 (Houston Astros)

In what has been his best year as of 2024, Altuve led the league in hits for the fourth straight time with 204, and in BA for the third time with .346.1

Yolmer Sánchez, 2018 (Chicago White Sox)

Sánchez led the American League in triples with 10, tied with Mallex Smith (Tampa Bay), making this an extraordinary season despite having a BA, OPS, and OPS+ below the league average.

Eduardo Escobar, 2019 (Arizona Diamondbacks)

In what has been his best season, Escobar led the league in triples, and his 118 RBIs were fourth in the National League. He finished with 29 doubles, 10 triples, and 35 homers, which made him finish close to a select group of players with 30/10/30 in a season.

Eugenio Suárez, 2019 (Cincinnati Reds)

Suárez blasted 49 home runs and at some point led the National League, but he finished second. Despite not having led the league in any category and having an OPS+ below 150, he set the HR record for a Venezuelan in the majors, which meets Criterion 3 and puts him on the list.

Ronald Acuña Jr., 2019 (Atlanta Braves)

At just 21, Acuña led the National League with 127 runs, 37 steals, and 715 PA. An injury in the last week of the season may have kept him from entering the 40-40 club. (Only five other players have hit 40 homers and stolen 40 bases in a season.) He finished with 41 HR and 37 SB.

Ronald Acuña Jr., 2020 (Atlanta Braves)

Injuries slowed Acuña down in a pandemic-shortened season (COVID-19). However, his .406 OBP, .581 SLG, .987 OPS, and 156 OPS+ are the best in his short three-season career. His OPS+ makes this another extraordinary season.

César Hernández, 2020 (Cleveland Indians)

Playing for a new team, Hernández led the league with 20 doubles, plus outstanding fielding, good enough to win the Gold Glove Award at second base.

David Peralta, 2021 (Arizona Diamondbacks)

In his second extraordinary season, at 34 years old, David once again led the National League in triples (3B) with 8.

Salvador Pérez, 2021 (Kansas City Royals)

Pérez surprised many by becoming the home-run (48) and RBI (121) leader in both leagues. After a close competition, he tied for the home run lead with Vladimir Guerrero. His 48 home runs are the second-best for a Venezuelan major leaguer, surpassed only by Eugenio Suárez (49).

Luis Arráez, 2022 (Minnesota Twins)

Arraez won his first batting title (.316) in the American League, which many expected, taking into account his formidable average of .331 in seven years in the minor leagues. Contact was his main virtue; he struck out fewer times (43) than he walked (50).

Jose Altuve, 2022 (Houston Astros)

For the sixth time in his career, Altuve finished with an average of .300 or more. His remarkable 161 OPS+, fourth place in the majors, makes him worthy of being included in this list as an extraordinary season, according to Criterion 3.

Luis Arráez, 2023 (Miami Marlins)

Arráez repeated as the batting champion, but this time in the National League, with an average of .354. Arráez’s great season stands out when one notes that only nine major leaguers (among qualified players) reached .300 that season and that the major-league average was a low .248. Additionally, he had 203 hits (third in the majors) and an excellent .393 OBP. More importantly, he became the first player in major league history to win consecutive batting titles in different leagues.

Ronald Acuña Jr. 2023 (Atlanta Braves)

Acuña Jr. had a super season, a legendary one in terms of impact and visibility, leading the league in hits (217), runs (149), OBP (.416), OPS (1.012), and total bases (.383). His 171 OPS+ was also the best in the league. With 41 home runs and 73 stolen bases. Acuña Jr. joined the 40-40 club, which had only four members, and gave rise to a new club (40-70) with a single member.2

Note about José Altuve 2023: We must highlight that José Altuve had an excellent season in 2023, with a high OPS+ of 151. However, by not having the minimum number of at-bats (AB), he does not qualify as an extraordinary season according to Criterion 2.

Comparison of extraordinary seasons using the traditional parameters

Which of the 42 seasons in Table 1 can be considered the best offensively? To find the answer, we must establish certain criteria to value each of the offensive categories. It seems reasonable not to give the same value to a single as to a double, a triple, or a home run. On the other hand, we must admit that RBIs and runs, despite being essential to the game, depend on the other players on the team and the opportunities the player has to find men on base (for RBIs) or be driven by other hitters (runs).

Aiming to value quantitatively each one of the extraordinary seasons, we decided to combine the six offensive parameters listed below, using a weight factor of 0.5 for walks (BB), because we considered them less important than a single (1B), which we value as 1. The single can move runners up more than one base, whereas the walk does not. The double, triple, and home run are valued at 2, 3, and 4, respectively, reflecting their increased importance and the number of bases for each. We arbitrarily assigned 2.5 to each RBI, taking into account that they depend not only on the effort of the hitter but also on the contribution of teammates who have been able to get on base. The runs are not included because we don’t consider them a direct contribution of the player, but of other players who drive in the run, except for the run they score on their home run, which is already accounted for.

The following formula is proposed to determine a parameter that can be named VOT (Spanish for Season Offensive Value):

VOT is calculated by dividing by the number of at-bats (AB) to incorporate the opportunities the batter had in his offensive production. Noting that equals the total bases, the previous equation can be simplified to:

We can see that the middle term (TB/AB) of the VOT equals the slugging percentage (See Annex 2), but we have added the ability to draw walks (BB/AB) and drive in runs (RBI/AB) with their respective values. VOT is not cumulative; it is simply an index of offensive power. For instance, a batter with two hits in five at-bats will have a .400 VOT, but if he drove a run, it gets to .900, whereas another player with a double, a homer, and two RBIs in the same five at-bats will get to 2.200. Although we can define other criteria different from VOT, the authors consider that it provides a reasonable quantification of the key elements contributing to the offensive performance of a hitter.

Table 2 presents the results obtained by applying the VOT equation to the data included in Table 1. Under those criteria, we conclude that the best season of all was Miguel Cabrera’s 2013 with a 1.334 VOT, followed by his own 2010 season with 1.278, Ordóñez with 1.243, Hidalgo’s 1.233, and Galarraga’s 1996 with 1.232, all at the top five spots. Cabrera’s 2012 season, in which he won the Triple Crown, stands sixth with a 1.218 VOT. We must also mention Acuña’s 2020 season, in which, despite playing in only 46 games due to the pandemic and injuries, he stands 10th with 1.153. Acuña’s 2023 super-season appears in a distant 19th place, due to the fact that, among other reasons, the VOT parameter does not consider stolen bases.

 

Table 2. Best seasons among Venezuelan hitters in Major League Baseball using traditional statistics to calculate VOT (Spanish for Season Offensive Value)

Table 2. Best seasons among Venezuelan hitters in Major League Baseball using traditional statistics to calculate VOT (Spanish for Season Offensive Value).

 

Improving assessment by using sabermetrics

The results obtained with the use of the traditional parameters of hitting (Table 2) have the singularity that they assess equally all players who performed in different times and different ballparks, when we all know the influence of the latter on performance. For instance, Richard Hidalgo ranks fourth among the best seasons (Table 2), above the sixth place held by Miguel Cabrera in 2012, reflected on a better OPS (1.028 vs .999). Is that a reason to say his 2000 season was better than Cabrera’s 2012?

To answer this more objectively, we must take into account that Cabrera’s .999 led the majors, whereas Hidalgo’s 1.028 ranked 13th in a year better for hitters when 19 players went above 1.000 OPS. Hidalgo indeed had a better OPS than Cabrera in 2012, but Cabrera’s performance in OPS was better when analyzing the performance of the other players in the league. This is a weakness of traditional parameters, which can be fixed using sabermetric parameters.

Another aspect to be considered in terms of offense is that some ballparks are more hitter-friendly than others due to their different dimensions and the density of the air in the location. In a place with much less dense air (as in Denver, for instance), the ball travels faster and farther. Looking at 2018, in the Texas Rangers’ home, 35 percent more runs were scored than when they played on the road; in Denver, it was 27 percent, whereas the opposite happened in Miami, where teams scored 35 percent fewer runs at home than on the road. So we have a Park Factor PF=1.35 for the Rangers, PF=1.27 for the Rockies, and PF=0.65 for the Marlins. The first two are hitter-friendly ballparks, while the latter is pitcher-friendly. Park Factor is not a constant value; it changes from season to season and might refer to other offensive parameters, apart from runs scored.

For a more objective assessment of offensive performance, we need to take into account individual performance, but compare it to the rest of the players in that season. At the same time, objectivity requires the incorporation of the ballpark effect, whether hitter-friendly or not. It is here that sabermetric parameters have made a significant contribution to baseball, enabling a more objective evaluation of players’ performance in general, by incorporating new elements enabling the comparison of performance in different times, different leagues, and different ballparks. For instance, going back to the comparison between Hidalgo’s season and Cabrera’s 2012 season in which Hidalgo’s 1.028 OPS was better than Cabrera’s .999, we can see that Adjusted OPS or OPS+, which incorporates the aforementioned correction (see Annex 2) and is defined below, yields a better number for Cabrera (164) than for Hidalgo (147).

Sabermetric parameters

We selected two sabermetric parameters to qualify offense, both with the same objective but with a difference in the way they are calculated. One is OPS+ from Baseball-Reference and the other is wRC+ from FanGraphs.

Other sabermetric parameters are not considered here, such as WAR (Wins Above Replacement), which considers the global performance of a player (offense, defense, and baserunning), Baseball-Reference’s offensive WAR, or Bill James’s Runs Created (RC), because they all include baserunning, and this research intends to value hitting alone.

The OPS+ Parameter

The traditional parameter OPS is the sum of the capacity to reach base (OBP) and the slugging or power of the hitter (SLG). The sabermetric parameter OPS+, also known as adjusted OPS, is a correction of OPS taking into account the league average and ballpark effect. OPS+ has been conveniently designed to make an OPS+ of 100 the league average, and every point above or below the league average is a percentile point above or below the league average. For instance, a 150 OPS+ means that the player produces 50 percent more than the league average, and an OPS+ of 80 means he produces 20 percent below average. OPS+ is a more adequate parameter than OPS because it enables the comparison of players from different times, leagues, and ballparks. For instance, in 2018, only 10 percent of the qualified players had an OPS+ of 136 or better. Qualified players had at least 502 plate appearances. The highest OPS+ in 2018 was Mike Trout with 199. Miguel Cabrera reached 190 in 2013.

Equations to calculate OPS and OPS+ are presented in Annex 2. More details of OPS+ can be found on the Baseball Reference portal.

The wRC+ parameter

The sabermetric parameter wRC+ gets the name of Weighted Runs Created Plus. Runs Created are the number of runs a player contributes to his team during the season. It is a concept that differs from runs (R), which depend on what other players can do. Runs created depend solely on the hitter. In the wRC+ parameter, two adjustments are included: one that takes into account the league average of the rest of the players in the year (enabling the comparison between players from different eras) and another one that incorporates the park factor. Similar to OPS+, the formula is scaled to make 100 the league average. In 2018, only 10 percent of the players had a wRC+ above 137. The best was Mike Trout with 191. Miguel Cabrera had an extraordinary value of 193 in 2013.

The formulae for its calculation are shown in Annex 2. More details can be found in the FanGraphs portal.

 

Table 3. Best seasons of a Venezuelan hitter in the major leagues using sabermetric parameters, organized by averaging OPS+ and wRC+

Table 3. Best seasons of a Venezuelan hitter in the major leagues using sabermetric parameters, organized by averaging OPS+ and wRC+

 

NOTES

1 This season, Altuve won every possible award: The Sporting News Player of the Year, the Hank Aaron Award to the best hitter in the major leagues, the Baseball America Player of the Year, the Outstanding Player Award by the MLBPA, which is voted by the players themselves, the Silver Slugger Award, and the American League Most Valuable Player Award.

2 In this – Acuña’s super-season – he won the MVP and the Hank Aaron Award in the National League, the Sporting News Player of the Year, the National League Outstanding Player Award, and the Silver Slugger Award.

 

]]> Appendix 1: Analysis of Andrés Galarraga’s Home Run of May 31, 1997 https://sabr.org/journal/article/appendix-1-analysis-of-andres-galarragas-home-run-of-may-31-1997/ Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:48:15 +0000 This is the appendix for “Analysis of Andres Galarraga’s Home Run of May 31, 1997,” by José L. López, Oscar A. López, Elizabeth Raven, and Adrián López.

Editor’s note: This is the appendix for “Analysis of Andres Galarraga’s Home Run of May 31, 1997,” by José L. López, Oscar A. López, Elizabeth Raven, and Adrián López.

This appendix describes in detail the procedure followed to obtain the most reliable solutions for the Galarraga’s home run. To select them, the maximum height (H) reached by the ball in each of the 18 trajectories obtained is compared to the height shown in the video after performing orthogonal and conical projections. Figure A1 (top) shows a plan view of the stadium obtained from LIDAR point clouds using the program Global Mapper. Home plate, the ball’s point of impact, and the location of the camera were plotted on this plan.

 

Figure A1. Plan and cut of the stadium obtained from the LIDAR image showing a conical projection of the 18 trajectories and some significant points. Top: Plan view indicating cut A-A which goes from the camera to the impact point (Row 20). Bottom: Vertical view through cut A-A. (Click image to enlarge.)

 

Cut A-A in Figure A1 (bottom), also made using the LIDAR point clouds, shows a side view of the stadium and it passes through the location of the camera and the ball’s point of impact. Note the colored points of LIDAR in Figure A1 (bottom) that delineate the right sector of the stadium where the press box and the camera are plotted as well as the left sector where the ball hit row 20. The 18 trajectories are also shown in the figure; the dark lines indicate the 7 most reliable solutions (Table 2) and the lighter lines indicate the remaining 11 solutions.

Figure A2 shows an enlargement of the lower portion of Figure A1. Only the 7 most reliable solutions (Table 2) are shown in Figure A2. For comparison purposes the solution proposed by ESPN (2016) is also shown.

 

Figure A2. Comparison of the trajectories and maximum heights drawn on the video frame showing the maximum heights (H) of the seven most reliable solutions found by this study and the one found by ESPN Home Run Tracker (2016). (Click image to enlarge.)

 

Conical projections are shown in the top and side views of Figure A1. Several rays go from the focus located in the camera to the lateral projection plane shown at the left end of figures A1 and A2. Those rays pass through several points such as the ball’s point of impact, the maximum heights of the trajectories and significant points of the stadium, as indicated.

For visualization purposes this lateral projection plane is folded 90 ° along its axis and shown at the left end of figures A1 and A2 where a video frame is superimposed. The video frame shows the stadium from the bottom to the top. In order to correctly scale the video frame with the orthogonal projections, its size is adjusted using the rays previously mentioned so that they match some characteristic points of the stadium such as border of railing of the stands. These rays also pass through the highest points of the trajectories (real and apparent H) and by the point of impact, extending to the lateral plane of projection, as pointed out in Figure A1 (bottom) and Figure A2. A 3D view of the conical projection, made using a SketchUp pre-existing model of the stadium (3D Warehouse, 2016), can be seen in Figure A3 where one solution is used as an example of the procedure.

 

Figure A3. Real and apparent maximum height H. Right: in the 3D model the real H is higher than the apparent H. Left: in the video frame the apparent H looks higher than the real H due to an optical effect induced by the inclination angle of the camera. (Click image to enlarge.)

 

For the discussion that follows, it should be kept in mind that in the video the ball at its highest point is always shown within the frames throughout the filming, i.e. the cameraman never lost sight of the ball until the moment it impacted the deck. In Figure A2 the maximum height indicated by the video frame can be compared to the maximum heights of the solutions found.

A geometric analysis was done for the eighteen solutions (Table 2) but only seven are shown in Figure A2 because they have maximum heights within the video frame as indicated by the grey shade superimposed to the projection rays of the maximum heights; the other solutions were discarded because they reached heights that were outside of the video frame and therefore are not considered reliable solutions. ESPN’s maximum height is also outside the video frame as shown on the same figure. As a result, the most reliable solutions whose maximum heights remain inside the video are the following: Solutions #5 and #6 for wind hypothesis 1, solutions #11 and #12 for wind hypothesis 2 and solution #16, #17 and #18 for wind hypothesis 3. These are highlighted in Table 2. At this point it is important to explain that Figure A2 indicates two maximum heights for each solution: the real maximum height (real H) which is represented by the top point of the ball’s trajectory and the apparent maximum height (apparent H) which is represented by the tangent point of the trajectory with a projection line that goes from the camera to the lateral plane. The apparent H appears to be in the video higher than the real H but actually is not as can be seen in Figure A3, where a 3D view of the trajectory of one solution is shown. This figure clearly shows which one is the real maximum height (real H). This optical effect occurred because the location of the camera was low and close to the home plate. As a consequence, the maximum height of the ball in the video seems to occur 2.5 seconds after the ball is impacted by the bat, when in fact happens around 3.0 and 3.1 seconds as predicted by the model and as indicated in the seven most reliable solutions in Table 2.

The ball’s impact point, the actual ball trajectory taken from the video (black dots) and the trajectory of Solution #12 (black dashed line), were projected and drawn on the video frame shown to the left in Figure A2. This solution is taken as an example from the seven most reliable solutions.

The dots at the top of the actual ball’s trajectory are a portion of the trajectory that couldn’t be seen in the video due to the clouds; this portion was estimated by interpolation with the video editing software (Adobe Premiere).

Five points were used to project solution #12: impact point, real H, apparent H and two additional points that allowed its interpolation, as shown in Figures A1 and A2. The similarities between the ball’s trajectory #12 (black dashed line) and the actual trajectory from the video (black dots) can be seen in Figure A2, which validate the solution.

]]> Braves Alphabet https://sabr.org/journal/article/braves-alphabet/ Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:16:33 +0000 A is for AARON—“Hammerin’ Hank” and Tommie, too—
and young Steve AVERY and Felipe ALOU.

B is for BEDROSIAN, BLAUSER, and BREAM—
a reliever, a shortstop, and a slider supreme.

C is for COX, a manager for the ages,
and just as well known for his on-the-field rages.

D is for Dale—MURPHY, I mean,
a gentleman, a scholar, a hitting machine.

E is for EVANS, who guarded the hot corner,
and hit lots of homers—as did Bob HORNER.

F is for FRANCOEUR, FRANCO, FURCAL—
different in age, but good hitters all.

G is for GARBER and GRISSOM and GILES
and GALARRAGA, who could hit ’em for miles.

H is for HUBBARD, a scrapper and a gem,
and also for HUDSON, that pitcher named Tim.

I is for Inferno, ’cause our stadium was aflame
on the night that McGRIFF brought us his game.

J is for the JONES boys—Chipper and ’Druw—
and for David JUSTICE, a fine hitter, too.

K is for KLESKO, who swung for the fence,
and was known for his bat, not his defense.

L is for LOPEZ, LEMKE, and LUM,
and for LEMASTER, who made the ball hum. 

M is for MATHEWS and MAHLER and McCANN,
and let’s never forget little Felix MILLAN. 

N is for NIEKRO—“Knucksie” to all—
and for Otis NIXON, who oft climbed the wall.

O is for two catchers, OLSON and O’BRIEN,
and Ken OBERKFELL, who never quit tryin’.

P is for Terry PENDLETON, once MVP,
and Biff POCOROBA and Gerald PERRY.

Q is for QUINONEZ. While others played better,
none gave us this needed letter.

R is for two noted ROCKERs—a hurler named John
and Leo MAZZONE, who swayed on and on.

S is for John SCHUERHOLZ, a stellar G.M.,
and “Neon Deion” SANDERS; we all remember him! 

T is for TURNER—the Field bears his name.
He was a sailor, a mogul, and he managed one game. 

U is for Cecil UPSHAW and Bob UECKER, too,
and the bevy of umpires whom we love to boo.

V is for Vinnie with “CASTILLA” on his back;
hitting home runs was his special knack.

W is for WILHELM, WALK, and WOHLERS, as well,
and for a WASHINGTON whose name was Claudell.

X is for the many “times” the CARAYs (father and son)
made the game come alive—run after run.

Y is for Yunel—ESCOBAR, that is,
a Cuban refugee and a shortstopping whiz.

Z is for the Zeroes that seemed to abound
with GLAVINE, MADDUX, or SMOLTZ on the mound.

WYNN MONTGOMERY, author of the biography of Willard Nixon for SABR’s BioProject, has seen ballgames in every major-league city except Arlington, Texas, and in almost fifty minor-league parks. His article “Georgia’s 1948 Phenoms and the Bonus Rule” appears in the Summer 2010 issue of the Baseball Research Journal.

]]> Who Threw the Greatest Regular-Season No-Hitter since 1901? https://sabr.org/journal/article/who-threw-the-greatest-regular-season-no-hitter-since-1901/ Sat, 17 Apr 2021 21:50:33 +0000 Nolan Ryan celebrates his 7th no-hitter on May 1, 1991 (MLB.COM)

Nolan Ryan celebrates his 7th no-hitter on May 1, 1991. (MLB.COM)

 

A pitcher usually needs good command and quality stuff to toss a no-hitter.1 Stellar fielding and a dollop of good luck doesn’t hurt, either. A bad-hop single or a flare off the end of the bat that falls for a hit is all it takes to break one up. Between 1901 and 2020, a no-hitter was thrown in the American, National, or Federal League 263 times.2 It has been done just once in every 769 regular-season games.3

Although joining this exclusive club is a significant accomplishment, some no-hitters are more impressive than others. The two no-hitters thrown under postseason pressure, Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series and Roy Halladay’s no-no in the 2010 NLDS, are truly remarkable. At the other end of the scale are the no-hitters thrown in the dying days of the season against a weak-hitting, second-division club. In extreme cases, a pitcher may have the dubious honor of tossing a no-hitter in a losing cause, which is exactly what happened to Baltimore’s Steve Barber when he walked 10 batters in his combined no-hitter with Stu Miller in 1967.

Setting aside the two postseason no-hitters, an interesting question comes to mind: Who threw the greatest regular-season no-hitter since 1901?4 Some might suggest Max Scherzer’s 17-strikeout, zero-walk performance against the New York Mets on October 3, 2015, was the best of them all. I’d argue it may be the most dominant no-hitter of all time, but it’s not the greatest. It’s probably not even the most commendable no-hitter that Scherzer threw in 2015. Less than four months before his no-no at Citi Field, he no-hit a much stronger Pittsburgh lineup, striking out 10 without walking a single batter.

Rather than focusing on who threw the most dominant no-hitter, this paper will identify a short list of the greatest no-hitters thrown since 1901 based on their difficulty. An objective, quantitative method will be used. The results are not intended to be a definitive list, because different methodologies may lead to different results.

This article will also highlight the particularly noteworthy no-hitters identified and list some of the more interesting bits of trivia uncovered during the data analysis.

METHODOLOGY

The key factor when assessing the difficulty of each no-hitter is the batting average of the hitters in the opposing lineup. Statistics that measure speed, on-base ability, and power are important in generating runs, yet they are less relevant when it comes to breaking up a no-hitter.

The end-of-season batting average will be used for each player instead of the batting average at the time of the no-hitter. This will provide a better measurement of a hitter’s ability, since batting averages in early-season no-hitters can be misleading. For example, all Chicago White Sox batters had a .000 batting average immediately after Bob Feller’s Opening Day gem in 1940.

Neutralized batting averages (BAn) will be used instead of regular batting averages to eliminate the impact of a player’s home ballpark. This will allow, for instance, the batting averages of the 1996 Colorado Rockies to be compared fairly to those of the 1905 Chicago White Sox.5

A weighted neutralized batting average (BAwn) will be calculated for each no-hit lineup. This figure will be weighted based on the number of official at-bats in the game by each batter. For example, the BAn of a pinch-hitter who had one at-bat in the game will have one-third of the impact on BAwn as the BAn of a player who had three at-bats. One of the benefits of weighting by at-bats instead of plate appearances is that a pitcher will not get credit for walking a dangerous hitter, which may be done to help preserve the no-hitter.

A composite batting average (BAc) of the no-hit lineup will be calculated by adjusting the weighted neutralized batting average by the one-year park factor for hits (divided by 100) of the ballpark in which the no-hitter occurred. This composite batting average will approximate the combined season batting average of the opposing lineup had they played all their regular-season games in that ballpark, with each player having the same proportion of at-bats during the season as in the no-hitter.

The park factor for hits is not to be confused with the much more common park factor for runs, which is less relevant to no-hitters. The one-year park factor is used instead of the three-year version, since many ballparks, such as Braves Field in Boston, have undergone frequent modifications.6

DATA

A list of no-hitters was downloaded from Retrosheet. All 263 no-hitters thrown between 1901 and 2020 in the National, American, and Federal Leagues were included in the analysis.

Batting data for each of the 263 no-hitters were downloaded from the Regular Season Box Score Event Files, Regular Season Event Files, and Post-Season Event Files on the Retrosheet web site. The neutralized season batting averages for the players in the no-hit lineups were obtained from the Baseball-Reference.com web site, as were the yearly league-wide batting averages. The one-year park factors for hits were gleaned from the Ballparks Database on the Seamheads.com web site.7 The Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference.com player and team identifiers were cross-referenced using the Teams and People tables in the Lahman Baseball Database, which is available at SeanLahman.com.

No-hitters thrown in the Negro Leagues and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League were not included because the required (structured) data are not currently available.

All data were loaded into an Oracle 18c database. SQL queries were used to generate the results.

DISCUSSION

Historical Trends

As the chart in Figure 1 shows, there is a strong negative correlation between the major-league batting average and the frequency of no-hitters in a decade.8 It’s no surprise the 2010s saw the highest frequency of no-hitters since the 1960s given that the batting average in the big leagues plummeted from .269 in 2006 to just .252 in 2019. If batting averages continue to decline, no-hitters may soon be as frequent as they were in the Deadball Era and the 1960s.

 

Figure 1: Regular-Season No-Hitters in the National, American and Federal Leagues (1901–2019)

(Click image to enlarge)

 

Summary Data by No-Hitter Type

Of the 263 no-hitters thrown between 1901 and 2020, there were 238 nine-inning no-hitters with baserunner(s), four 10-inning no-hitters with baserunner(s), and 21 (nine-inning) perfect games.9 Because of their varying degrees of difficulty, this article will treat each category of no-hitter separately. Refer to Table 1 for summary statistics on each type of no-hitter.

 

Table 1: Summary Data by No-Hitter Type

 

As one would expect, most no-hitters are thrown in pitchers’ parks. That is, those with a one-year park factor for hits below 100. Only 25.5 percent of no-hitters (67 of 263) have been thrown in hitters’ parks.10

The data also show that the weighted neutralized batting average of the opposing lineup in perfect games is on average 2.8 points lower than in nine-inning no-hitters with baserunner(s). Likewise, the composite batting average is 3.5 points lower.

The summary data for ten-inning no-hitters suffer from a small sample size and are skewed by one particularly difficult 10-inning no-hitter, which will be highlighted later in the paper.

Top 20 Nine-Inning No-Hitters with Baserunner(s)

The Top 20 nine-inning no-hitters with baserunner(s) ranked by composite batting average can be found in Table 2. At the top of the list is the unlikely no-hitter thrown by Hideo Nomo at Coors Field on September 17, 1996.

 

Table 2: Top 20 Nine-Inning No-Hitters by Composite Batting Average

(Click image to enlarge)

 

This notoriously extreme hitters’ park hosted 2,047 regular-season games between 1995 and 2020. Nomo’s no-hitter was the only one thrown at “Coors Canaveral” during that time. Amazingly, he turned the trick against the Rockies in 1996, the year in which the Denver ballpark was at its most severe for hits.11 Its one-year park factor for hits was a stunning 129 that season. Nomo’s extraordinary accomplishment was as much a conquest of Coors Field as it was the Rockies, since the Colorado club hit .343 at home and a paltry .228 on the road in 1996.

The lineup Nomo faced included five hitters who finished in the National League Top 20 in batting average: Ellis Burks, Eric Young Sr., Dante Bichette, Vinny Castilla, and Andrés Galarraga. Future Hall of Famer Larry Walker, a key member of the Blake Street Bombers, was out of action that evening because of lingering pain from a broken collarbone suffered three months earlier.12

Nomo used his fastball and a devastating split-fingered pitch to shut down the Rockies, who hit just three balls sharply all game.13 Not a single spectacular play was required in the field.14 Because of the wet conditions, Nomo abandoned his deceptive, whirling delivery in the later innings to stabilize his footing.15 The Rockies still struggled against him. Nomo ended the night by striking out Burks, a .344 hitter, on a filthy split-fingered fastball. He struck out eight and walked four Colorado batters.

One notable aspect of the Top 20 nine-inning no-hitters is that six of them occurred in the Deadball Era. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, since the first two decades of the twentieth century still featured a fair number of teams with solid batting averages. For example, Ernie Koob of the St. Louis Browns no-hit the 1917 White Sox, a 100-win team that went on to defeat the New York Giants in the World Series. Koob faced a Chicago lineup containing four players with a neutralized batting average greater than .300: Happy Felsch (.325), Shoeless Joe Jackson (.318), Eddie Collins (.306), and Buck Weaver (.301). In a bizarre twist, the game ended with Koob having been credited with a one-hitter. Following the game, the official scorer changed a first-inning hit by Buck Weaver to an error. The next day’s headline in the Chicago Tribune erroneously read “Koob Tames Sox in One Hit Game, 1-0.”16

The entry in Table 2 for the combined no-hitter by Babe Ruth and Ernie Shore does not contain a misprint; Ruth did in fact pitch zero innings in that 1917 game. After he walked the Nationals leadoff hitter, Ray Morgan, a heated argument ensued over two alleged missed strike calls by home plate umpire Brick Owens. Ruth punched Owens during the altercation and was ejected from the game, forcing Ernie Shore to come on in relief. After Morgan was caught stealing, Shore retired the next 26 batters in order.17

The first of Nolan Ryan’s record seven no-hitters ranks fifth. The 26-year-old fireballer completely shut down Kansas City at Royals Stadium on May 15, 1973, which was no easy feat. The Royals finished second in runs scored in the American League that year, fueled by a .277 team batting average in their new, spacious ballpark.

In the introduction, Max Scherzer’s two no-hitters in 2015 were used as an example of a common pitfall in evaluating no-nos. Scherzer’s 17-strikeout performance at Citi Field ranks 196th out of the 238 nine-inning no-hitters with baserunner(s) using the methodology outlined in this article. The Mets lineup had a composite batting average of only .232, roughly 16 points less than an average no-hitter of that type. However, his no-hitter against the Pirates at Nationals Park less than four months earlier ranked 37th all-time with a solid .269 composite batting average.

Ten-Inning No-Hitters

A list of the four 10-inning no-hitters tossed between 1901 and 2020 can be found in Table 3. George “Hooks” Wiltse of the New York Giants threw the most difficult of the four by an exceedingly wide margin. His 1908 masterpiece came against a Phillies lineup that had a robust composite batting average of .293. Even more impressively, Wiltse would have thrown a 10-inning perfect game were it not for circumstances reminiscent of Armando Galarraga’s lost perfect game more than a century later.18

 

Table 3: Ten-Inning No-Hitters Sorted by Composite Batting Average

(Click image to enlarge)

 

Wiltse had overtaken a fading “Iron Man” Joe McGinnity as the Giants’ number two starter that season, forming a dominant lefty-righty combination with Christy Mathewson. Together, the duo combined to pitch 720 2/3 innings and record the win in 60 of the Giants’ 98 victories.19

The heart of the Philadelphia lineup facing Wiltse consisted of John Titus, Sherry Magee, and Kitty Bransfield, all of whom finished in the Top 10 in the NL batting race in 1908. Bransfield was one of just five .300 hitters in the entire National League that season.

Wiltse twirled his gem on Independence Day morning at the Polo Grounds, the wooden ballpark that opened in 1890 for the New York team that played in the Players’ League.20 With its distinctive horseshoe shape, the Polo Grounds was the most extreme hitters’ park (for hits) in the National League in 1908.21 In theory, the Phillies hitters were far more dangerous there than they were in their home park, the Baker Bowl, which played as a pitchers’ park in 1908.22 However, the ballpark in Coogan’s Hollow proved to be of no help to the Phillies that game.23

Wiltse breezed through the Philadelphia lineup, retiring the first 26 men in order. The fielders behind him weren’t required to make any outstanding plays, although right fielder “Turkey” Mike Donlin made a nice running catch in the fourth inning.24 Wiltse, one of the best-fielding pitchers of his era, took care of two other difficult chances himself.25

With two outs in the top of the ninth inning and the game still scoreless, Wiltse faced his mound opponent, George McQuillan. On a 1-and-2 count, the Giants hurler threw a curveball that started outside and broke sharply to “cut the heart out of the plate.”26 Home plate umpire Cy Rigler, normally an excellent judge of balls and strikes, called it a ball.27 Even the Philadelphia Inquirer admitted Wiltse had “fanned” McQuillan.28 The plate appearance continued. The very next pitch from Wiltse hit McQuillan in the shoulder, and the perfect game was no more. The next batter, Eddie Grant, grounded out to end the inning.

After the Giants failed to score in the bottom of the ninth, Wiltse returned to the mound and retired Otto Knabe, Titus, and Magee in order. New York finally scored a run in the bottom of the 10th inning, giving Wiltse the first extra-inning no-hitter in the National or American League.29 The 28-year-old moundsman retired 30 of 31 batters, with the only runner reaching base on a hit-by-pitch immediately following a missed strikeout call by Rigler. The respected umpire later acknowledged he made the wrong call. “Every time I saw Charlie Rigler after that he gave me a cigar,” Wiltse recalled in 1953. “He admits (the disputed ball) was one of the pitches he missed.”30

Top 10 Perfect Games

A list of the Top 10 perfect games by composite batting average can be found in Table 4. Charlie Robertson’s immaculate outing against the 1922 Detroit Tigers leads the way with a .291 composite batting average, almost 19 percentage points better than the second-ranked perfect game, which was thrown by Catfish Hunter in 1968.

 

Table 4: Top 10 Perfect Games by Composite Batting Average

(Click image to enlarge)

 

One day after being shut out by future Hall of Famer Red Faber and his grandfathered spitball, the mighty Tigers expected to maul Robertson, an unheralded 26-year-old righthander making his fifth big league appearance. The Detroit lineup featured three sluggers who finished in the Top 10 in the American League batting race: Ty Cobb (.401), Harry Heilmann (.356), and Bobby Veach (.327).

Navin Field had a neutral park factor of 100 in 1922, although it was potentially more hitter-friendly during Robertson’s outing considering there was a large overflow crowd standing in the outfield. As it turned out, the fans in the outfield didn’t have a significant impact on the game. When Veach led off the second inning by sharply hitting a ball towards the roped-off area in left field, the Detroit crowd graciously gave way to allow Johnny Mostil to make an easy grab.31 The only standout defensive play of the game came two batters later when Harry Hooper made a “splendid running catch” on a ball hit by Bob Jones.32

The frustrated Tigers began to lose their cool once Robertson’s perfect game lasted into the middle innings. During his fifth-inning at-bat, Heilmann complained to home plate umpire Frank Nallin that the White Sox hurler was discoloring the ball. He continued to carp about it for the remainder of the game, as did Cobb, the Detroit player-manager.33 Cobb had first baseman Earl Sheely’s glove checked for evidence in the eighth inning, and in the ninth he had Robertson’s clothing inspected.34 Nothing untoward was uncovered. The unfazed Robertson retired the side in the final frame, including two left-handed-hitting pinch-hitters, to seal the perfect game.

“Had any student of baseball even dared to suggest that any pitcher could qualify to keep the Tigers away from first base and retire 27 men in order he would have been carted away to some state institution for the mentally unbalanced,” opined the Detroit Free Press.35 The writer’s hyperbole could be forgiven, because almost a century later those Tigers still possessed the highest weighted neutralized batting average (.291) of any lineup victimized by a perfect game—or any no-hitter for that matter.36

Hunter’s perfect game in 1968 is also noteworthy, considering the weighted neutralized batting average of the Twins lineup he faced was almost 40 points higher than the league-wide batting average (.230) in the “Year of the Pitcher.” Not only is it the largest such differential for any of the 21 perfect games, but it’s also the largest in all 263 no-hitters.

Bottom 10 No-Hitters

Although throwing a no-hitter is never easy, let’s turn our attention to those that were the least difficult to achieve according to the methodology outlined in this paper. A list of the 10 no-hitters with the lowest composite batting average can be found in Table 5. Two no-hitters stand apart from the others: Sandy Koufax’s perfect game against the Cubs in 1965 and Jimmy “Nixey” Callahan’s no-hitter against the 1902 Tigers.

 

Table 5: The 10 No-Hitters with the Lowest Composite Batting Average

(Click image to enlarge)

 

The September 9, 1965, game between the Dodgers and Cubs was one of the most memorable regular-season games in baseball history. Koufax struck out 14 Chicago batters en route to becoming the first pitcher to record four no-hitters in the American, National, or Federal League.37 His mound opponent, Bob Hendley, limited the Dodgers to just one unearned run on one hit and one walk. As of the end of the 2020 season, this thrilling contest still held the big-league record for the fewest combined hits (1) and baserunners (2).

The Cubs lineup, sporting a composite batting average of .166, was incredibly weak. Five of their starters were rookies, including 19-year-old Don Young and 22-year-old Byron Browne, who were both playing in their first major league game.38 Browne had spent most of the season playing single-A ball, and to make his debut even more challenging, he had only arrived in Los Angeles earlier that afternoon.39

The Chicago batting order had three easy outs, as Young and Browne combined to go 2-for-41 with the Cubs in 1965, and Hendley came into the game with a career .093 batting average. Only three batters in the starting lineup finished the season with a batting average over .239. To Koufax’s credit, he was dominant enough that day to throw a perfect game against any team. The heart of the Chicago lineup—Billy Williams, Ron Santo, and Ernie Banks—combined to go 0-for-9 with six strikeouts.

Callahan threw his no-hitter for the White Sox at South Side Park III, the most extreme pitchers’ park in American League history.40 Although the ballpark hosted only 721 White Sox games between 1901 and 1910, four of those games featured a no-hitter.41

Callahan easily handled a feeble Detroit lineup that had only three hitters with a neutralized batting average above .227. Tigers manager Frank Dwyer even let his weak-hitting starting pitcher, Wish Egan, bat for himself with the team trailing by three runs in the eighth inning, a move that was not uncommon in the early twentieth century.42 Egan struck out to end the inning.

Miscellaneous Observations on No-Hit Lineups

During the data analysis for this research paper, several interesting observations were made while inspecting the batting data of no-hit lineups.

Even casual baseball fans know that Nolan Ryan holds the record for tossing the most no-hitters (seven). But which batter has been the victim of the most no-hitters? That distinction is shared by three individuals, two of whom were teammates on the Philadelphia Phillies. Between 1960 and 1969, Johnny Callison and Tony Taylor played together in the same six no-hit lineups.43 Callison, a fine-hitting outfielder, went 0-for-18 with two walks and four strikeouts in the six no-hitters, while Taylor went 0-for-16 with three walks and five strikeouts. Their record was tied in 1977 when Bert Campaneris was no-hit for the sixth time.44 Campy went 0-for-19 with three walks and four strikeouts in the six no-hitters.

As of January 2021, the Internet was teeming with web pages that listed the record for the most walks in a no-hitter as 10. Yes, Jim Maloney did walk 10 batters in his 10-inning no-no against the Cubs in 1965, as did Steve Barber in his nine-inning combined no-hitter with Stu Miller in 1967. However, the record for walks in a no-hitter is 11, set in 1976 by Chicago’s Blue Moon Odom and Francisco Barrios in their combined no-hitter against the Oakland Athletics. Odom walked eight batters in the first five innings. When he issued his ninth free pass to open the bottom of the sixth, White Sox manager Paul Richards summoned Barrios from the bullpen. He walked two more over the final four innings. Odom earned the win and Barrios picked up the save in a 2-1 White Sox victory. Although the no-hitter may have been messy, the Oakland lineup had a respectable composite batting average of .256, which ranks 87th out of the 238 nine-inning no-hitters with baserunner(s).

The single-game record for walks by a batter in a no-hit lineup is three, held by seven players. The hitters (and pitchers) are: Earl Torgeson (Cliff Chambers) in 1951, Dale Long (Sam Jones) in 1955, Mickey Stanley (Steve Barber) in 1967, Reggie Jackson (Jim Palmer) in 1969, Steve Huntz (Dock Ellis) in 1970, Bill Hall (Justin Verlander) in 2007, and Juan Pierre (Francisco Liriano) in 2011.

The single-game record for strikeouts by a batter in a no-hit lineup is four, held by Tony Graffanino of the Milwaukee Brewers. He donned the Golden Sombrero in Justin Verlander’s 2007 no-hitter. Verlander struck out 12 and walked four in the game.

No batter in a no-hit lineup has ever reached base on a hit-by-pitch (HBP) more than once in a game. The only batter with two career HBP in a no-hit lineup is Bill Freehan, who was plunked on April 30, 1967, by Barber and again just over four months later in Joel Horlen’s no-no. The two hit-by-pitches weren’t out of the ordinary for Freehan, as the Tigers catcher led the major leagues with 20 HBPs that season.

For additional information on no-hitters, the reader is invited to visit NoNoHitters.com, an excellent website created by journalist and SABR member Dirk Lammers.

 

 

Hideo Nomo celebrates his no-hitter at Coors Field in 1996 (LOS ANGELES DODGERS)

Hideo Nomo celebrates his no-hitter at Coors Field in 1996 (LOS ANGELES DODGERS)

 

CONCLUSIONS

This paper introduced a methodology for objectively comparing the difficulty of each no-hitter thrown in the American, National, or Federal League between 1901 and 2020. This mathematical model produced a short list of the most impressive no-hitters in that period.

Hideo Nomo’s nine-inning no-hitter at Coors Field in 1996 was one of the greatest pitching accomplishments in baseball history. The Rockies lineup that he no-hit had a composite batting average of .302. No other pitcher was able to throw a no-hitter in the 2,047 regular-season games played at Coors Field between 1995 and 2020.

Charlie Robertson threw the greatest regular-season perfect game in 1922 when he waltzed through a powerful Detroit lineup that included Ty Cobb, Harry Heilmann, and Bobby Veach. As of the end of the 2020 season, those Tigers still had the highest weighted neutralized batting average (.291) of any lineup victimized by a perfect game—or any no-hitter for that matter.

But who threw the greatest regular-season no-hitter since 1901? The author believes that distinction belongs to Hooks Wiltse for his incomparable 10-inning no-hitter and near-perfect game against a tough Phillies lineup at the Polo Grounds in 1908. In 31 Philadelphia plate appearances, the sole batter to reach base did so on a hit-by-pitch immediately following a missed strike-three call, an error later acknowledged by the home-plate umpire, Cy Rigler. Many believe that Armando Galarraga, the victim of another unfortunate umpiring error over a century later, deserves to be recognized for throwing a perfect game. So, too, does George “Hooks” Wiltse.

GARY BELLEVILLE is a retired Information Technology professional living in Victoria, British Columbia. He has written articles for both the SABR Games Project and the Baseball Biography Project, in addition to contributing to several SABR books. Gary grew up in Ottawa, Ontario and graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Mathematics (Computer Science) degree. He patiently awaits the return of his beloved Montreal Expos.

 

Author’s note

Shortly after beginning the data analysis for this article, I noticed that Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference.com listed one more nohitter than I was expecting—the 1901 Pete Dowling no-hitter. As luck would have it, this was mere days after Retrosheet posted the box score for it. This started me on my quest to solve the case of the lost Dowling no-hitter, and it culminated with the publication of the SABR Games Project article titled “June 30, 1901: Cleveland’s Pete Dowling tosses the American League’s first no-hitter — or does he?”

A spreadsheet containing the ranking of no-hitters based on this research paper’s methodology can be found here. Please note that new no-hitters will be added to this spreadsheet after the completion of each season. Gary can be reached at gbelleville@gmail.com.

 

Acknowledgments

Thanks to fellow SABR member Kevin Johnson for generating park factors for 1901-05 and for answering my questions about the Ballparks Database at Seamheads.com.

 

Notes

1. The pitching term “stuff” is not easily defined. However, the following definition is as good as any: “Stuff is a pitcher’s pitches, judged by how inherently hard those pitches are to hit.” Tom Scocca, “Here Is What “Stuff” Means in Baseball,” Deadspin, October 7, 2015, http://deadspin.com/here-is-what-stuff-means-inbaseball-1734592813, accessed January 29, 2021.

2. As of December 2020, Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference.com recognized 263 major-league no-hitters thrown between 1901 and 2020. However, Major League Baseball only recognized 262. The one discrepancy is the June 30, 1901, outing by Pete Dowling of Cleveland against the Milwaukee Brewers. This paper will include all 263 no-hitters. Gary Belleville, “June 30, 1901: Cleveland’s Pete Dowling tosses the American League’s first no-hitter—or does he?,” SABR Games Project, 2020, http://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/june-30-1901-clevelands-petedowling-tosses-the-american-leagues-first-no-hitter-or-does-he, accessed January 26, 2021.

3. There were 261 no-hitters thrown in the 401,330 regular-season team-games in the National, American, and Federal Leagues between 1901 and 2020. Two no-hitters were thrown in the postseason (a perfect game in 1956 and a no-hitter in 2010).

4. This paper will only consider no-hitters thrown since 1901, the year the American League was first designated as a major league. As of December 2020, the Retrosheet.org web site didn’t provide box scores or event data files for the 1900 season.

5. The neutralized batting averages of the 1996 Colorado Rockies can be found at http://baseballreference.com/teams/COL/1996-batting.shtml#all_players_neutral_batting, accessed January 26, 2021.

6. It is not possible to generate meaningful one-year park factors for ballparks hosting a small number of games in a season. The San Diego Padres played three home games in Estadio Monterrey in 2018; an estimated park factor of 100 was used. The Houston Astros played two home games in Miller Park in 2008 because of Hurricane Ike; the Brewers’ 2008 park factor for Miller Park (98) was used for those games. The Braves played 29 home games in Fenway Park in 1914; the Red Sox’s 1914 park factor for Fenway Park (94) was used for those games. The White Sox played 28 home games at South Side Park III in 1910 before moving to Comiskey Park I; the 1909 park factor for South Side Park III (91) was used for the games played there in 1910.

7. Unlike some other websites, the park factors at Seamheads.com are not automatically divided by two to account for the fact that half of all regular-season games are played at home. For instance, a park factor for hits of 108 on Seamheads is equivalent to a Fangraphs park factor of 104. In this example, eight percent more hits were recorded at that ballpark than a league-average park. Likewise, a Seamheads one-year park factor for hits of 94 is equivalent to a Fangraphs park factor of 97.

8. The data used to generate the chart in Figure 1 (batting average by decade and number of no-hitters per decade) have a correlation of -0.73.

9. An extra-innings perfect game has never been thrown. Pittsburgh’s Harvey Haddix threw 12 perfect innings against the Milwaukee Braves on May 26, 1959, before the perfect game, no-hitter, and shutout were broken up in the 13th inning. He lost the game 1-0. Although he was initially credited with throwing a no-hitter, that decision was reversed in 1991 by Major League Baseball’s Committee for Statistical Accuracy. Their revised definition of a no-hitter (“a game in which a pitcher or pitchers complete a game of nine innings or more without allowing a hit”) resulted in the elimination of 50 no-hitters from the record books, dating back to the 1890 season.

10. No-hitters were thrown in pitchers’ parks 67.7 percent of the time (178 of 263) and in neutral parks 6.8 percent of the time (18 of 263).

11. There were three seasons (1995, 1999, and 2000) in which Coors Field was more extreme for home runs than 1996. However, 1996 was peak Coors Field in terms of the one-year park factor for hits.

12. Quinton McCracken substituted for Larry Walker in the lineup Hideo Nomo faced. Walker had broken his collarbone on June 9, 1996, crashing into the fence at Coors Field. He returned to action on August 15. Walker left a September 7 game against the Astros because of pain in his left clavicle, and he made his final plate appearance of the year on September 12. He was limited to use as a pinch-runner and defensive replacement for the remainder of the year. A healthy Walker won the NL MVP award the following season.

13. Bill Staples Jr., “September 17, 1996: Hideo Nomo No-Hits Colorado Rockies at Hitter-Friendly Coors Field,” SABR Games Project, 2017, http://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-17-1996-hideo-nomo-no-hitscolorado-rockies-at-hitter-friendly-coors-field, accessed January 26, 2021.

14. Bob Nightengale, “NoooooooooMo,” Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1996, p35.

15. Associated Press, “Nomo Gets No-No,” The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction, Colorado), September 18, 1996, 23.

16. Gregory H. Wolf, “May 5, 1917: On Second Thought, It’s a No-Hitter for Ernie Koob,” SABR Games Project, 2017, http://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/may-5-1917-on-second-thought-its-a-no-hitter-for-ernie-koob, accessed January 26, 2021.

17. Michael Clair, “Ernie Shore Once Threw a Quasi-Perfect Game…after Babe Ruth Punched an Umpire,” CUT4, June 23, 2015, http://mlb.com/cut4/ernie-shore-threw-quasi-perfect-game-after-babe-ruth-ejection/c-132245176, accessed January 26, 2021.

18. On June 2, 2010, Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers retired the first 26 Cleveland batters he faced. The 27th batter of the game, Jason Donald, hit a groundball in the hole to first baseman Miguel Cabrera, who threw to Galarraga covering first. Video replays showed that Donald was clearly out, but first base umpire Jim Joyce called him safe. It was ruled an infield single, breaking up the perfect game and no-hitter. The next batter, Trevor Crowe, grounded out to end the game.

19. Hooks Wiltse went 23-14 with a 2.24 ERA in 330 innings pitched in 1908, while Christy Mathewson went 37-11 with a 1.43 ERA in 390)3 innings on the hill.

20. This facility, known precisely as “Polo Grounds IV,” was originally named Brotherhood Park. It burnt down in April 1911 and was replaced later in the season by the steel-and-concrete version of the Polo Grounds (“Polo Grounds V”) that served as the Giants’ home until they moved to San Francisco following the 1957 season.

21. The Polo Grounds had a one-year park factor for hits of 107 in 1908. Its dimensions were 258 feet to right field, 277 feet to left, and 500 feet to straightaway center field. South End Grounds III, home of the Boston Braves, was the most extreme hitters park in the National League for runs in 1908.

22. Over its history, the Baker Bowl was generally considered a hitters’ park, especially for left-handed batters. While it greatly inflated home run numbers beginning in 1911, the Baker Bowl had a one-year park factor for hits of 96 in 1908. The Phillies hit .243 at home and .245 on the road that season. Not a single Phillies batter hit a home run at the Baker Bowl in 1908.

23. The Polo Grounds were built on farmland known as Coogan’s Hollow.

24. Joe Cox, Almost Perfect: The Heartbreaking Pursuit of Pitching’s Holy Grail (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2017).

25. “Wiltse’s No-Hit Game,” Sporting Life, July 11, 1908, 6.

26. “Giants Win Two Games,” Brooklyn Citizen, July 5, 1908, 6.

27. David Cicotello, “Cy Rigler,” SABR Bio Project, 2004, http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/cy-rigler, accessed January 26, 2021.

28. “Wiltse Too Much for the Phillies,”Philadelphia Inquirer, July 5, 1908, 24.

29. As of December 2020, the only previous extra-inning no-hitter in the big leagues (recognized by Retrosheet and Baseball Reference) was thrown in the American Association by Sam Kimber of Brooklyn against Toledo on October 4, 1884. The game ended in a scoreless tie when it was called on account of darkness.

30. Cox.

31. David Fleitz, “April 30, 1922: Charlie Robertson’s Perfect Game,” SABR Games Project, 2016, http://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/april-30-1922-charlie-robertsons-perfect-game/, accessed January 26, 2021.

32. Jacob Pomrenke, “Charlie Robertson,” SABR BioProject, http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/charlierobertson, accessed January 26, 2021.

33. Irving Vaughan, “Kid Robertson Flings Perfect Game for Sox,” Chicago Tribune, May 1, 1922, 23.

34. “Tigers Helpless before Robertson Who Pitches Perfect Game and Wins 2-0,” Detroit Free Press, May 1, 1922, 12.

35. “Tigers Helpless before Robertson Who Pitches Perfect Game and Wins 2-0.”

36. The second-highest weighted neutralized batting average (.287) of a no-hit lineup was in 36-year-old Hoyt Wilhelm’s nine-inning no-hitter of the 1958 Yankees at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. However, that ballpark’s one-year park factor for hits was a mere 94, so Wilhelm’s no-no ranks 35th in composite batting average (.270) out of 238 nine-inning no-hitters with baserunner(s). Memorial Stadium had a massive amount of foul territory. According to the Ballparks Database at Seamheads.com, its dimensions in 1958 were 309 feet down the lines, 405 feet to each power alley, and 410 feet to straightaway center field. Center field was even deeper during Memorial Stadium’s first four years (1954-57).

37. Koufax’s three other no-hitters ranked 48th (May 11, 1963, versus the San Francisco Giants), 118th (June 4, 1964, versus the Philadelphia Phillies), and 218th (June 30, 1962, versus the New York Mets) out of the 238 nineinning no-hitters with baserunner(s).

38. The three other rookies in the Chicago lineup were 25-year-old Chris Krug (playing in his 50th majorleague game), 23-year-old Don Kessinger (92nd major-league game), and 24-year-old Glenn Beckert (134th majorleague game).

39. Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 22.

40. Eric Enders, “Exploring Extreme Ballparks Past,” The Hardball Times, November 16, 2018, http://tht.fangraphs.com/exploring-extreme-ballparks, accessed January 26, 2021.

41. The White Sox played 718 regular-season games and three World Series contests at South Side Park III. It was the home of the Chicago White Sox from 1900 until June 27, 1910, when the team moved into Comiskey Park I. The other three no-hitters thrown at South Side Park III between 1901 and 1910 were by Jesse Tannehill of the Boston Americans (August 17, 1904 versus the White Sox), Chicago’s Frank Smith (September 20, 1908 versus the Athletics), and Cleveland’s Addie Joss (April 20, 1910 versus the White Sox). The ballpark was renamed Schorling’s Park in 1911 and it served as the home of the Chicago American Giants until 1940. Several no-hitters were thrown there during that period, including a near-perfect game by Frank Wickware of the Chicago American Giants against the Indianapolis ABCs on August 26, 1914. Both teams were part of the Western Independent Clubs circuit in 1914.

42. James Elfers, “September 20, 1902: Chicago’s Nixey Callahan throws American League’s first no-hitter,” SABR Games Project, 2017, http://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/september-20-1902-chicagos-nixey-callahan-throwsamerican-leagues-first-no-hitter, accessed January 26, 2021.

43. The six no-hitters against lineups that included Johnny Callison and Tony Taylor were pitched by Lew Burdette of the Milwaukee Braves (August 18, 1960), Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves (September 16, 1960), Don Nottebart of the Houston Colt .45s (May 17, 1963), Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers (June 4, 1964), George Culver of the Cincinnati Reds (July 29, 1968 – Game 2), and Bill Stoneman of the Montreal Expos (April 17, 1969).

44. Bert Campaneris was victimized by no-hitters thrown by Jim Palmer of the Baltimore Orioles (August 13, 1969), Clyde Wright of the California Angels (July 3, 1970), Jim Bibby of the Texas Rangers (July 30, 1973), Dick Bosman of the Cleveland Indians (July 19, 1974), Blue Moon Odom and Francisco Barrios of the Chicago White Sox (July 28, 1976), and Jim Colborn of the Kansas City Royals (May 14, 1977).

]]> 2000 Winter Meetings: Show Me the Money https://sabr.org/journal/article/2000-winter-meetings-show-me-the-money/ Tue, 06 Sep 2016 11:29:52 +0000 Baseball's Business: The Winter Meetings: 1958-2016

They say everything is bigger in Texas, and when you combine that with the most anticipated free agent in history and a new owner determined to throw money at his team to try to win it all, you get the 2000 Winter Meetings. Over the course of the weekend, nearly a billion dollars was given to players by teams with seemingly more money than they knew what to do with, and once again prognosticators predicted the doom of the sport.

The stars of the show were expected to be shortstop Alex Rodriguez, outfielder Manny Ramirez, and left-handed pitcher Mike Hampton, and so it was. People had been anticipating Rodriguez’s free agency for years, reasoning that a young superstar with the numbers he had put up would break all kinds of records both on and off the field.

A lot of free-agent action had already taken place before the meetings, with the Yankees, most notably, giving right-hander Mike Mussina a six-year, $88.5 million contract, taking him away from a division rival (the Orioles.).

Manny Ramirez had asked the Indians for a 10-year deal worth $200 million. Balking at that, the Indians responded with seven years and $119 million.1 With the two sides far apart, the Indians had signed Ellis Burks to a three-year, $20 million contract, reasoning that they were likely to lose out on Ramirez and would need a replacement, although they said the door was still open for Manny to return.2

Rodriguez, for his part, was looked at by every team in the league. Some, of course, just made cursory glances, knowing they had no hope at landing the four-time All-Star. By the time the Winter Meetings arrived, agent Scott Boras said that a number of teams had expressed serious interest in Rodriguez, and thought they might be able to get it done during the meetings. “We’ve narrowed it down to eight, and I’ve been negotiating with a smaller group,” he said.3

Rumors had spread about Rodriguez’s demands. Many expected him to become the first $200 million man, with a contract length of at least 10 and perhaps as high as 15 years for the 25-year-old. The Mets reportedly dropped out of the bidding, claiming that Rodriguez wanted an office in the ballpark, his own PR staff, and a billboard as big as Derek Jeter’s in New York.4 Meanwhile, when Rodriguez mentioned on his blog how far back the fences at Safeco were, the Mariners said they were not going to move them, and Boras had to clarify that they were not asking for the fences to be moved as part of the contract.5

As the days ticked down to the meetings, things began to happen. Southpaw Denny Neagle, who had won 15 games between the Reds and Yankees during the season, signed with the Rockies for five years and $51.5 million on the Monday before the meetings. The day before the meetings, the Red Sox signed pitcher Frank Castillo for two years and $4.5 million.

Also on Thursday, future Hall of Fame outfielder Tony Gwynn returned to the Padres on a one-year, $2 million deal, keeping him with the only team he’d known for 19 years. “I wanted an opportunity to play my whole career here,” he said. “When you think about all the options that you have, that was foremost in my mind. I’m glad that it worked out.”6

On Friday, December 8, the Winter Meetings opened at the Wyndham Anatole Hotel, near downtown Dallas, Texas. Anticipation ran high, and fans flocked to see what was going on. Neither of the top two free agents was in town yet, with Rodriguez and Boras in Miami meeting with Mariners officials, while Ramirez’s agent, Jeff Moorad, was in California talking to Red Sox people.

Still, news of the first big deal broke right away, that of pitcher Mike Hampton signing with the Rockies. Not formally announced until Saturday, the news raced through the hotel that Hampton had signed for eight years and $121 million, the biggest contract in baseball history, passing the $116.5 million that Ken Griffey Jr. had signed with the Reds in February.

Hampton rejected similar offers from several teams, including the team he was leaving, the Mets, and said he wanted to go to a place where he could raise his family. “What it boils down to is a family decision,” he said. “As a whole, this was the place I could move my family to without taking my kid out of school every three months or so.”7

The New York media — and Mets brass — slammed Hampton for talking about “quality of life” issues in choosing Denver over New York. “I consider that an insult, with a capital ‘I,’” one Mets official said. “But if Mike really believes that, (bleep) him, let him go.”8 Hampton was also attacked for his comments about school districts. Mets GM Steve Phillips said, “It’s always the money, especially when it’s not about the money.”9 But Hampton’s agent, Mark Rodgers, said the offers he had received were all equivalent in terms of money. “The New York media want to rake him over the coals. That’s fine, but it’s not justified.”10

Major League Baseball Vice President Sandy Alderson said that once again teams had gone too far in giving in to player demands. “There is a benefit to saying no from time to time,” he commented. “It would be nice for baseball to experience that benefit occasionally.”11

On the baseball side of things, Hampton was moving to Coors Field, the worst pitching ballpark in baseball, where he had never done well. “It’s a test I look forward to and something that I think will make me a better pitcher in the long run,” he said.12

The Rockies knew their park was a problem in attracting pitchers, and had decided to offer so much money to top-level talent that it would blow them away. Signing Hampton and Neagle for more than $175 million was all part of their plan. “We added a horse. A number-one starter at the top of the rotation,” said Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd. “He’s one of the best competitors in the game at his position.”13

Also on Friday, a few other smaller deals were announced. Andrés Galarraga signed with the Rangers for a year and $6.25 million. Galarraga had missed 1999 because of cancer, then hit .302/28/100 for the Braves in 2000, and was being looked at by several teams after winning The Sporting News Comeback Player of the Year Award. “We looked to add a bat with home-run potential, something we sorely missed last year,” said Rangers GM Doug Melvin.14

Meanwhile, another first baseman, Mark Grace, accepted a two-year, $6 million contract with the Diamondbacks. The Cubs felt they had young first-base talent coming through their farm system and didn’t want to block them, so they decided to let Grace go. Grace was unhappy that the Cubs didn’t try to re-sign him after he had spent his whole career there, and promised he would get revenge on his old team on the field. “I know we play them nine times this year and I want to kick their (butt) nine times,” he said.15

For their part, the Cubs were busy looking for pitching, and signed relievers Jeff Fassero (a lefty) for two years at $5.1 million and right-hander Tom Gordon for two years and $5 million. Gordon had missed the whole 2000 season after surgery, and his deal was pending a physical.16

After the big start on Friday, Saturday was quiet, although the Hampton deal was formally presented. Instead, everyone was speculating about Rodriguez and Ramirez, reasoning that if Hampton could get so much money, just how far would people go for those two? Teams were beginning to realize just how big a commitment it would take for one of them. “We’re not going to get crazy on the Manny Ramirez chase,” said Phillips. “We feel that mortgaging our future for an outfielder is not in the best interest of the club.”17

Not much was happening on the business side of things, either, as everyone was watching the free-agency fireworks. On Saturday, baseball did release its minority hiring report, which showed that minorities had gone from 20 percent to 22 percent of employees overall since the 1997 survey. On the field, minority employees, such as managers, coaches, and scouts, had gone from 26 percent to 30 percent.18

Managers and umpires got together during the weekend for a rare discussion. In recent years the top of the strike zone had gotten lower, to the point where anything above the belt was being called a ball. Umpires said they were now being instructed to call the strike zone by the book, while managers said that some movement was okay, but not that much. “We’d all like it to move up an inch or two above the belt. … But 10, 11, or 12 inches? That’s wrong. I don’t know if the umpires can do that,” said Twins manager Tom Kelly.19

The discussion was said to be fruitful, but everyone had reservations until they saw the new zone in practice. “There needs to be patience on all parts. We have to live with it. That’s what this meeting was about,” said umpire Ed Montague, while Alderson said, “There are two things we are looking for in the strike zone. One is accuracy and two is consistency.”20 Managers and umpires also had discussions about the pace of the game, body armor, and other topics.

Managers were also talking about the possibility of a work stoppage when the current labor contract expired after the 2001 season. Commissioner Bud Selig had recently addressed competitive-balance issues and payroll disparity, which led players to believe owners wanted to implement salary caps. “I’m fearful of what might happen,” said Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, with Marlins manager John Boles saying, “I’m just petrified.”21

The minor leagues had their meetings in association with the major-league teams. The Lowell Spinners (a Boston Red Sox affiliate) were awarded the Larry MacPhail Trophy, annually bestowed upon the minor-league team judged to be the best-run.22 It was also announced that the Triple-A World Series was being canceled. The best-of-five series had been held in Las Vegas for the past three years between the winners of the International League and Pacific Coast League. Due to poor attendance, minor-league officials decided to cancel the event for 2001 and look into future possible formats and locations.23

Sunday saw a lot of activity, including the first trade of the meetings, when Anaheim sent right-hand pitcher Seth Etherton to Cincinnati for shortstop Wilmy Caceres. Overall, trading proved to be very quiet during the meetings, with only five swaps being completed. The biggest deal of the meetings, in both quality and quantity, happened on Monday when the Tigers sent catcher Brad Ausmus, and right-handers Doug Brocail and Nelson Cruz to the Astros for outfielder Roger Cedeño, catcher Mitch Meluskey, and right-hander Chris Holt.

Free-agent deals continued to be announced, however. The Pirates gave two-year deals to left-hander Terry Mulholland and right fielder Derek Bell. Shortstop Alex Gonzalez re-signed with the Blue Jays for four years and $20 million, after the team warned him it would move in a different direction if he didn’t sign quickly.24 And catcher Todd Hundley signed for four years and $23.5 million with the Cubs, pending a medical exam, because of the elbow surgery he had undergone three years earlier. It was a return home of sorts for Hundley, who grew up in Chicago while his father, Randy, played for the Cubs. “I’ve always wanted to play here and to come home to the organization. To play at the place I was at a lot as a kid, missing school. … It’s great to be home,” he said.25

Late on Sunday, the Mets announced they had signed a four-year, $42 million contract with right-handed pitcher Kevin Appier. “New York is a very exciting city,” he said. “You can’t get a bigger stage than that. If we do great that’s only better. I’m glad to have the opportunity.”26

Also on Sunday, the Rangers gave contracts to right-handed pitcher Mark Petkovsek (two years and $4.9 million) and third baseman Ken Caminiti, the 1996 National League MVP, for one year and $3.25 million, with two option years and bonuses that could take the full contract over $20 million. But the best was just about to break.

Scott Boras spent four hours with Rangers officials during the afternoon, followed by five more hours late into the night.27 The news broke in the early hours of Monday morning, and was made official a few hours later: The Rangers had come to an agreement with Alex Rodriguez on a 10-year, $252 million contract, by far the largest deal in the history of baseball, or any other sport, for that matter.

In 1998 Tom Hicks had spent $250 million to buy the Rangers, and now he was spending $252 million on just one player. “I like to win. I like to build things,” he said.28 Hampton’s record contract had lasted just two days, with the Rodriguez deal more than doubling the baseball record. It also exactly doubled the dollar total of the previously listed highest contract in sports, the $126 million that Kevin Garnett had received to play for the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves in 1997.29

Reaction across the league was furious. “In two days, we’ve doubled a new highest salary,” said MLB’s Alderson. “I don’t like the exponentiality of that. … It’s a straight upward trend that doesn’t look like it will augur at all. Every club will be affected by this.”30 Faced with criticism by the industry about how big and how distorted the deal was, Hicks said, “I think that’s a very complicated issue that can’t be solved just by the owners but solved collectively by the whole industry.”31

Meanwhile Rangers players were excited. “If the money wasn’t there, it wouldn’t be offered,” said first baseman Rafael Palmeiro.32 Galarraga, signed by the Rangers on Friday, reacted with delight to the Rodriguez deal. “With this team, we’ve got four or five guys who can hit 40 home runs,” he said.33 In the front office they were bullish on the team’s future. “Alex is the player we believe will allow this franchise to fulfill its dream of continuing on its path to becoming a World Series champion,” said Hicks.34 “I know expectations will be high. We’re ready to meet that challenge,” said GM Melvin.35

When they saw the price tag for Rodriguez, the other teams that had been finalists for his services learned just how far away they really were. The Mariners were eliminated because they wouldn’t offer more than five years. “When they came with a three-year guarantee and a two-year out, I was in disbelief. I just walked away from it, and knew I wouldn’t have a real choice,” Rodriguez said.36 “We couldn’t go there,” said Mariners GM Pat Gillick. “There would have had to have been a major hometown discount to get us into the ballpark.”37 The Braves lost out when they would not give a no-trade clause. “Where (Alex) plays ball, he wants to make his home. So that was really something that directed us in a different direction,” Boras said.38

Later in the week Rodriguez addressed the Mets’ lack of attention during the bidding process. The Mets had dropped out early, citing various requirements by Rodriguez, such as an office in the ballpark and his own PR staff. Reportedly his original first choice, they were never in the running after they made those allegations. “I was intrigued by the way they dropped out of negotiations. That was quite dramatic. All they had to do was say they’re not interested. And I would have been very happy with that and moved on,” he said.39 On the other hand, it was suggested in some quarters that the Mets were making excuses, because they had chickened out when the price got so high.40

Comparisons of how much money the contract was worth ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. One note said that you could pay the entire payrolls of the Yankees, Braves, and White Sox for $244 million. Another said that Rodriguez would average $45,000 per at-bat during the course of the contract. And one even pointed out that you could get more than 84 million McDonalds Happy Meals ($2.99 each).41

Even the Yankees chimed in on the Rodriguez contract, with their own star shortstop Derek Jeter a year away from free agency. “We expect to no longer hear any criticism from any quarter of the Yankees since our record is absolutely consistent in that we have not broken any barriers. The lion’s share of our spending is on retaining our own players,” Yankees President Randy Levine said. He also said it would be “the height of hypocrisy” for the teams that had spent big to “ever complain about anything again.”42

In other action on Monday, right-hander Darren Dreifort decided to stay with the Dodgers for five years and $55 million. Then, late on Monday night, the second superstar contract was agreed on when — almost overshadowed by the Rodriguez deal — Manny Ramirez decided to sign with the Red Sox for eight years and $160 million, the second largest deal ever.

By that point the meetings were coming to a close, with a number of teams having already packed up and left town the day before they were officially scheduled to end on Tuesday. With the circus folding its tent, the news that Ramirez had spurned a $136 million offer from Cleveland barely caused a ripple in the media, exhausted by the huge numbers being thrown around.

Although both sides had given their best pitches to Ramirez, sending players, coaches, and others to talk to him, he decided that Boston had a better chance to win than Cleveland did. The presence of his good friend Pedro Martinez was also cited as a huge factor for Ramirez going to Boston.43 Both sides gave the obligatory quotes about how well the process had worked, and how good a player the Red Sox were getting. “Dan was a bulldog on this project from Day 1,” said Manny’s agent, Jeff Moorad.44 “This kid has been the most gifted hitter in the business. We’re a lot stronger than we were,” said Red Sox GM Dan Duquette.45

Deals continued to be made in the days after the meetings ended, however, following up on events that had begun in Dallas. Having signed a new shortstop in Rodriguez, the Rangers then traded the incumbent, sending Royce Clayton to the White Sox for two right-handed pitchers, Aaron Myette and Brian Schmack.

A week after the meetings ended, the Houston Astros joined the money parade, extending the contract of first baseman Jeff Bagwell for five years and $85 million, tying another first baseman, Toronto’s Carlos Delgado, for the third highest average annual salary.

With that, the 2000 Winter Meetings effectively came to an end. It had been a weekend that had shocked the sport, and the ripples from those few days in Dallas would reverberate for years to come. Commissioner Bud Selig said he hadn’t been surprised by the money spent at the Winter Meetings. “The inequity in this system is now so apparent,” he said. “The question is, how do we fix it and what do we do?”46 Wendy Selig-Prieb, president and CEO of the Milwaukee Brewers, followed her father’s lead, saying that all the money being spent got their attention. “There needs to be meaningful reform in the economics of baseball,” she said.47

There were renewed calls for the economic restructuring of the game, with owners pointing to other sports as a model. The NFL and NBA, for instance, had salary caps, revenue-sharing, and other limits on player pay that helped them to succeed, and Braves President Bill Bartholomay called for similar structures in baseball. “They have to recognize what other sports have done, bite the bullet and everybody will do better,” he said.48

With the labor agreement expiring after the 2001 season, people were already looking at the threat of tough negotiations leading to another strike or lockout. “I pray there isn’t another work stoppage, because if there is, baseball is in trouble,” said Phillies manager Larry Bowa.49 Donald Fehr, executive director of the players union, heard the discussion of a work stoppage, but dismissed it. “I’m not going to respond to that stuff,” he said. “They’ll say what they say. I’m not going to play that game.”50

In total, teams had committed to almost three-quarters of a billion dollars in contracts throughout the Winter Meetings, putting them over a billion dollars for the offseason. “The well’s got to run dry. It seems it does for a little bit, but then it starts back up,” said Bowa.51

A final word may go to the star of the weekend. “Hopefully when it’s over, they won’t be calling Mr. Hicks a fool but the wisest man in baseball. Only time will tell. But I’m looking forward to the challenge. For me, it revolves around baseball,” said Rodriguez.52 Time would prove him completely wrong.

 

Notes

1 Tom Withers, “Tribe Offers Arbitration to Three,” Ashtabula (Ohio) Star Beacon, December 8, 2000: B1.

2 Ibid.

3 “Amending Fences Not in Mariners’ A-Rod Plan,” Lethbridge (Alberta) Herald, December 5, 2000: B3.

4 Jon Heyman, “A-Rod Upset at Mets,” Stamford (Connecticut) Advocate, December 13, 2000: C6.

5 Ibid.

6 Ronald Blum (Associated Press), “Gwynn Stays With Padres; Cone Leaving the Yankees,” Northwest Florida Daily News (Fort Walton Beach), December 8, 2000: C5.

7 Ronald Blum, “Hampton Gets $121M to Love Coors Field,” Rockford (Illinois) Register Star, December 10, 2000: 9G.

8 Bob Klapisch, “Criticism of Area by Hampton Has Mets’ Brass Angry,” Stamford Advocate, December 10, 2000: C5.

9 Blum, “Hampton Gets $121M.”

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid. It didn’t work out that way. Hampton only spent two years with the Rockies, compiling a 21-28 record, with a 5.75 ERA and a 1.677 WHIP. He would have two good years in Atlanta before injuries derailed his career.

13 Josh Dubow (Associated Press), “Hampton Hoping to Avoid the Curse of Coors Field,” Fitchburg (Massachusetts) Sentinel & Enterprise, December 10, 2000: C3.

14 “Galarraga Finds Home With Rangers,” Chicago Daily Herald, December 9, 2000: section 2, page 3.

15 “Cubs Get Help for Bullpen,” Rockford (Illinois) Register Star, December 9, 2000: 3E.

16 “Cubs Bolster Bullpen; Galarraga Signs With Texas,” Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World, December 9, 2000: 10C.

17 Blum, “Hampton Gets $121M.”

18 “Baseball Makes Marginal Increases in Number of Minority Employees,” Chicago Daily Herald, December 10, 2000: section 2, page 4.

19 “Baseball Notes,” Columbia (South Carolina) State, December 11, 2000: C3.

20 “Mets Load Up on Pitchers Appier, Trachsel,” Columbia State, December 12, 2000: C5.

21 “Baseball Notes,” Columbia State, December 11, 2000: C3.

22 “Simply the Best,” Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun, December 8, 2000: 9.

23 “No Triple-A Series,” Syracuse (New York) Herald-Journal, December 13, 2000: D2.

24 “Rodriguez Narrows Field,” Doylestown (Pennsylvania) Intelligencer Record, December 11, 2000: B8.

25 “Ramirez Gives Sox a Building Block,” The Capital (Annapolis, Maryland), December 14, 2000: D5.

26 Ben Walker (Associated Press), “Appier in New York for Physical, Close to Deal With Mets,” Ukiah (California) Daily Journal, December 11, 2000: 6.

27 “Megadeal,” Northwest Florida Daily News, December 25, 2000: D5.

28 Thomas Stinson, “$252 Million,” Columbia State, December 12, 2000: C1.

29 Ibid.

30 Ronald Blum, “Owners Deliver $1B to Players,” Rockford (Illinois) Register Star, December 13, 2000: page number unknown.

31 Stinson.

32 “Rodriguez’s Deal Shocks Baseball,” Augusta Chronicle, December 12, 2000: 3C.

33 “Galarraga Should Fit Nicely in Texas,” Stamford Advocate, December 12, 2000: C5.

34 Ronald Blum, “Rangers Win Rodriguez Sweepstakes — at Record Price,” Chicago Daily Herald, December 12, 2000: 2.

35 Ibid.

36 “ARod Addresses the Media,” St. Albans (Vermont) Messenger, December 13, 2000: 9.

37 “M’s Couldn’t Come Close to Texas-Sized Bid,” Walla Walla (Washington) Union-Bulletin, December 12, 2000: 14.

38 Stinson.

39 Jon Heyman, “A-Rod Upset at Mets,” Stamford Advocate, December 13, 2000: C6.

40 Bob Klapisch, “Despite Signing Mussina, All Not Well With Yanks,” Stamford Advocate, December 5, 2000: B8.

41 Stinson.

42 “Jeter May Benefit From A-Rod’s Deal,” Syracuse (New York) Herald-Journal, December 13, 2000: D2.

43 “Ramirez Gives Thumbs-Up to New Deal With Red Sox,” Augusta Chronicle, December 14, 2000: 5C.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 “Selig: Changes Coming in Game’s Economic Structure,” Augusta Chronicle, December 14, 2000: 5C.

47 Ibid.

48 “Selig Knows Score and It’s Not Good,” The Capital, December 14, 2000: D5.

49 Blum, “Rangers Win Rodriguez Sweepstakes.”

50 Ronald Blum, “Salaries, Naysaying on Rise,” Doylestown (Pennsylvania) Intelligencer, December 13, 2000: B6.

51 “ARod Addresses the Media,” St. Albans Messenger, December 13, 2000: 9.

52 Stephen Hawkins, “Texas Welcomes A-Rod,” Fitchburg (Massachusetts) Sentinel & Enterprise, December 13, 2000: B3.

]]> SABR 50 at 50: Greatest Games https://sabr.org/50at50/games Thu, 08 Apr 2021 07:00:17 +0000 .flex_column.av-2vltign-c82da4e8cda990246d218888a5d81f58{ border-radius:0px 0px 0px 0px; padding:0px 0px 0px 0px; }

SABR 50 at 50: Greatest Games

As part of the SABR 50 at 50 project to commemorate the organization’s fiftieth anniversary, we offer 50 of the greatest games played over the past 50 years.

A baseball game can be great for many reasons. It may be a high-stakes game in September or October (or even November) that meets or exceeds the hype. It may be a mundane schedule-filler that distinguishes itself with a special individual or team performance. A game’s context — from capping an unexpected championship run to breaking a shameful racial legacy — may elevate what is otherwise merely memorable to greatness. And sometimes off-field actors, including fans, medical professionals, baseball researchers, and team employees who green-light a postgame fireworks show even when the final out comes several hours after midnight, contribute to the flavor of a great game.

Of course, a game that is unquestionably “great” to one team’s fans may represent unspeakable heartbreak for residents of another city — the thin line between the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat is often what makes baseball so compelling.

Baseball’s official scorebook contains more than 100,000 major-league games from SABR’s lifetime since 1971; minor leagues, amateur leagues, and international leagues have played countless more. This list strives to reflect all of the ways baseball games have been great during this time. Many received immediate recognition as being among the greatest ever; others gained significance over time.

As an overarching principle, this list favors excitement — an outcome in the balance until the final pitch, an individual’s step-by-step triumph over challenging circumstances — over games merely featuring unusual or interesting occurrences. It aims to identify those games that, for whatever reason, fans and historians will still be talking about 50 years from now. Games already recognized in SABR’s 50 at 50 Players and Records lists were, in general, excluded.

We invite you to read the list and the short descriptions of the games — stirring and surprising and joyful and crushing and bizarre alike. Click on the titles to read stories from the SABR Games Project or Baseball-Reference box scores for each game.

— Compiled by John Fredland, with Mark Armour, Gary Belleville, Kurt Blumenau, Thomas J. Brown Jr., Scott Bush, Dan Cichalski, Ray Danner, Gordon J. Gattie, Tim Hagerty, Andrew Harner, Chuck Hildebrandt, Mike Huber, Kevin Larkin, Len Levin, Madison McEntire, Bill Nowlin, Laura H. Peebles, Jacob Pomrenke, Cory Ritterbusch, Tom Schott, Steven C. Weiner, Gregory H. Wolf, and Jack Zerby.


Willie Stargell, left, hugs his Pittsburgh Pirates teammate Al Oliver, center, as Roberto Clemente looks on during the 1971 season. On September 1, 1971, the Pirates fielded an all-Black lineup of African-American and Latino players, a first in the history of Major League Baseball. (MLB.com)

September 1, 1971: Pittsburgh Pirates start all-Black lineup


Stennett. Clines. Clemente. Stargell. Sanguillen. Cash. Oliver. Hernandez. Ellis. Twenty-four seasons after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line, the Pirates fielded the first all-Black starting lineup in the integrated major leagues. “Hey, Scoop, we’ve got all brothers out there,” second baseman Dave Cash said to first baseman Al Oliver after they took the field. Pittsburgh’s ground-breaking alignment beat the Phillies that night, and the Pirates went on to win the World Series in October.

USC's Fred Lynn and Minnesota's Dave Winfield matched up in the 1973 College World Series (Photos: University of Southern California, University of Minnesota)

June 12, 1973: USC rallies past Minnesota in College World Series thriller


In a sport dominated by warm-weather schools, Dave Winfield pitched and batted the University of Minnesota to within two outs of the College World Series final. But the Golden Gophers’ 7-0 lead over the University of Southern California, built on Winfield’s 15-strikeout, 1-hit performance, crumbled against an eight-run Trojan ninth. USC — featuring future major-leaguers Fred Lynn, Roy Smalley, and Rich Dauer — closed out its fourth consecutive CWS title a day later.

Frank Robinson (MLB.COM)

April 8, 1975: Frank Robinson breaks color line, hits home run in managerial debut


Frank Robinson ended one of baseball’s most shameful legacies — no Black managers through 99 National League seasons and 74 American League seasons — when Cleveland named him player-manager in 1975. Still a power threat at age 39, Robinson selected himself as designated hitter on Opening Day and celebrated with his 575th career home run, leading the Indians to a win over the Yankees.

Carlton Fisk waves his game-winning home run fair in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series (BOSTON RED SOX)

October 21, 1975: Carlton Fisk’s home run wins Game Six


Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine was four outs from winning the World Series against the Boston Red Sox when Bernie Carbo’s pinch-hit homer knotted things up in the eighth inning. The drama escalated from there, continuing through midnight, sustained by game-saving defense from the Reds’ George Foster and Boston’s Dwight Evans. Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk finally ended matters by willing his 12th-inning home run off Fenway Park’s left-field foul pole, ensuring the game would be remembered as a classic, even after the Reds closed out the Series a night later.

Mike Schmidt (MLB.COM)

April 17, 1976: Mike Schmidt’s four home runs rally Phillies to 18-16 win over Cubs


Blowout scores accompany many of baseball’s four-home-run days, but Mike Schmidt’s biggest game was worth sticking around until the end. Schmidt’s home runs in the fifth, seventh, eighth, and 10th innings turned an 11-run Phillies deficit into an 18-16 win over the Cubs — foreshadowing another Wrigley Field slugfest, three years later, when Schmidt’s 10th-inning home run enabled the Phillies to escape with a 23-22 victory.

Tommy John (TRADING CARD DB)

April 21, 1976: Tommy John duels J.R. Richard after return from surgery


Tommy John went 21 months between starts for the Dodgers, hoping against hope that an experimental surgical procedure would restore his damaged left elbow. His second start back after Dr. Frank Jobe’s so-called “Bionic Arm” surgery suggested he had a longer future in the game. John threw seven scoreless innings at the Astrodome — only to encounter an ace-level performance by J.R. Richard, who put up ten zeroes of his own, as Houston eventually won in the 16th.

Mark Fidrych (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

June 28, 1976: “The Bird” shuts down Yankees on national TV


For six weeks in the spring of 1976, a whisper spread through baseball and became a legend: the 21-year-old Detroit Tigers rookie known as “The Bird” who sprinted to the mound, did his own groundskeeping, and talked to the ball before pitching. The legend materialized before a national television audience on ABC’s “Monday Night Baseball,” when Mark Fidrych dazzled the pennant-bound New York Yankees and every fan at Tiger Stadium with a complete-game win. Fidrych’s time in the limelight was sadly cut short, but greatness keeps its own timetable.

Chris Chambliss hits a pennant-winning home run in the 1976 ALCS (ESPN.com)

October 14, 1976: Chris Chambliss’s home run wins AL pennant


Yankee Stadium went dark for 11 postseasons in a row until October’s thrills returned in Billy Martin’s first full season at the helm of the Bronx Bombers. In Game Five of the AL Championship Series, George Brett’s three-run homer tied the game in the eighth inning and it stayed that way until Chris Chambliss lifted Mark Littell’s first pitch of the bottom of the ninth through the autumn air, over Hal McRae’s glove, and into the bullpen to send New York back to the World Series. Fans swarmed the field and Chambliss, preventing their hero from touching home plate until after all had settled down.

Bucky Dent connects for a go-ahead home run in the 1978 AL East tiebreaker at Fenway Park (MLB.COM)

October 2, 1978: Yankees edge Red Sox for AL East title


The Yankees’ title defense was one of the weirdest in baseball history: their popular manager (Billy Martin) was fired in midseason, they overcame a 14-game deficit in July, they squandered their own 3½-game lead in September, and their deposed closer (Sparky Lyle) wrote it all down in a bestselling book, The Bronx Zoo. The regular season ended with the Yankees tied with the rival Boston Red Sox for the AL East lead, forcing a one-game playoff to decide the division. Seven outs away from elimination, weak-hitting Bucky Dent hit a shocking home run over the Green Monster at Fenway Park to put the Yankees ahead for good. Goose Gossage closed it out and sent New York back to the postseason and, eventually, a second straight World Series crown.

Fernando Valenzuela (LOS ANGELES DODGERS)

April 22, 1981: Fernandomania sweeps through Houston


“Unreal!” exclaimed a Sports Illustrated cover in May 1981, as 20-year-old Dodgers rookie Fernando Valenzuela threw seven complete games and posted an 0.50 ERA over his first eight career starts. Valenzuela’s 1-0 win over future Hall of Famer Don Sutton at the Astrodome serves as a definitive example of Fernandomania: 11 strikeouts and six runners stranded in scoring position in another complete game. The sweet-swinging pitcher even knocked in the game’s only run with an RBI single off Sutton. That fall, he helped carry the Dodgers to a World Series championship.

George Brett explodes after umpires called him out for excessive pine tar on July 24, 1983 (MLB.COM)

July 24, 1983: The Pine Tar Game


Rule 1.10(b), regulating a batter’s use of pine tar, languished in obscurity until George Brett’s two-out, ninth-inning home run off Goose Gossage transformed a one-run Yankees lead into a 5-4 Royals advantage on a Sunday afternoon in the Bronx. Yankees manager Billy Martin alerted the umpires to Brett’s excessive pine tar spread, and Brett was ruled out, erasing the home run and triggering one of the most memorable tantrums of the television era. The American League upheld the Royals’ protest and Kansas City closed out its long-delayed win 25 days later.

Tom Seaver (THE TOPPS COMPANY)

May 8-9, 1984: White Sox, Brewers play the longest major-league game


After 17 innings without a decision, an American League curfew rule forced the White Sox and Brewers to adjourn for the night with the score tied 3-3. Resuming the following night, the teams played eight more innings before two future Hall of Famers ended it in the 25th inning: Tom Seaver pitched a scoreless top half in his first relief appearance in nearly eight years, and Harold Baines homered in the bottom of the inning, securing Chicago’s 7-6 win in a record eight hours and six minutes of play.

June 23, 1984: The Ryne Sandberg Game


Ryne Sandberg emerged as a star for the Chicago Cubs in the spring of 1984 on daytime cable TV with WGN, but his network performance on NBC’s “Game of the Week” at the beginning of summer announced his arrival as one of the National League’s top players for years to come. His ninth-inning home run off Bruce Sutter dramatically tied the game. After the Cardinals took the lead in the 10th, Sandberg’s second home run off the St. Louis closer deadlocked it again. The Cubs finally won in 11 innings and had a signature game for their first postseason run in 39 years.

Rick Camp (THE TOPPS COMPANY)

July 4, 1985: Mets outlast Braves 16-13 in 19 innings


Heading to the bottom of the 18th inning, Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium had seen a cycle (by the Mets’ Keith Hernandez), a game-tying home run in the 13th (by the Braves’ Terry Harper), and more than two hours of rain delays. What happened after that separated this game from any other adventures in weird baseball: After giving up the go-ahead run in the top of the 18th to give the Mets an 11-10 lead, Braves relief pitcher Rick Camp shocked anyone still awake with a two-out, game-tying home run. The Mets scored five runs in the 19th and emergency reliever Ron Darling struck out Camp for the final out at 3:55 a.m. The Braves then woke up the city with a scheduled postgame fireworks display on what was now the Fifth of July.

September 8, 1985: Pete Rose becomes the hit king with 4,190th hit


Images fill a carefully curated album: Pete Rose breaks Ty Cobb’s hallowed hit record before an adoring home crowd, four years before scandal exiles the hit king to the game’s fringe. However, real life is messier and more interesting. Years earlier, baseball researchers had discovered that two of Cobb’s hits had been double counted, giving him a career total of 4,189 instead of 4,191 as was commonly believed at the time. The 44-year-old Rose, doing double duty as manager of the Reds, had unknowingly passed Cobb three days earlier when he inserted himself into the lineup at Wrigley Field and banged out career hits 4,190 and 4,191 before darkness ended the game — three years before Wrigley added lights — in a tie.

October 15, 1986: Mets edge Astros in 16-inning thriller to clinch NL pennant


Both teams faced a must-win: an Astros loss meant elimination, but a Mets loss meant a date with dominant Houston ace Mike Scott in Game Seven of the NL Championship Series. New York kept this one going with a three-run ninth, then a Billy Hatcher home run pulled the Astros even in the 14th. Three more Mets runs in the 16th were decisive, but the high point of a thrilling October of Dave Henderson, Lenny Dykstra, and Bill Buckner wasn’t over until Jesse Orosco threw his glove into the air to celebrate a final strikeout with the potential winning run on base.

Tim Raines (TRADING CARD DB)

May 2, 1987: Tim Raines returns with game-winning grand slam


In one of baseball’s ugliest labor battles, team owners eventually had to pay $280 million for collusion over three consecutive free-agent markets in the late 1980s. One of the victims was future Hall of Famer Tim Raines, the National League’s 1986 batting and on-base leader, who was forced to miss the first month of the following season before he returned to the Expos in early May. In his first game back, Raines showed a national television audience what it had missed. His fourth hit was a tie-breaking grand slam in the 10th inning, lifting Montreal over the defending world champion Mets.

Kirk Gibson celebrates his game-winning homer in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series (MLB.COM)

October 15, 1988: Kirk Gibson’s home run shocks Dennis Eckersley, A’s


Kirk Gibson’s hamstring and knee ailments kept him in the trainer’s room for the first eight innings of the Dodgers’ World Series opener against the mighty A’s, who carried a 4-3 lead into the ninth. With a runner on and two outs, manager Tommy Lasorda summoned Gibson to pinch hit against future Hall of Fame closer Dennis Eckersley. Gibson hobbled up to the plate, worked the count full, and then somehow launched Eckersley’s full-count backdoor slider over the right-field fence with a one-armed swing. He never batted again in the World Series, but that one swing was enough to help the Dodgers defeat the A’s in five games.

July 11, 1989: Bo Knows All-Star heroics


Bo Jackson’s football resume already included a Heisman Trophy and a 221-yard rushing performance in the NFL. In baseball, the Royals outfielder was just getting started when he was voted to start his first MLB All-Star Game in Anaheim. Jackson announced his presence immediately, making a running catch in the top of the first inning and crushing a Rick Reuschel pitch 448 feet for a leadoff home run in the bottom half. Nike was ready to capitalize on Jackson’s MVP-winning performance by debuting the first of a series of iconic “Bo Knows” commercials on national television during the Midsummer Classic.

Nolan Ryan celebrates his 7th no-hitter on May 1, 1991 (MLB.COM)

May 1, 1991: Nolan Ryan throws seventh career no-hitter at age 44


“Some people think he’s a Superman. But when a 44-year-old has to throw 75 fastballs, even Nolan Ryan’s muscles can ache.” Four months after his 44th birthday, Advil’s most prominent pitchman threw 122 pitches and allowed no hits to a division title-bound Blue Jays team. Ryan struck out 16 Jays and allowed only two walks in completing his seventh career no-hitter, ensuring that the day’s other major milestone — Rickey Henderson breaking Lou Brock’s career record for stolen bases — would do no better than share the headlines.

Jack Morris (MLB.COM)

October 27, 1991: Jack Morris pitches 10-inning complete game in Game 7


Kirby Puckett’s walk-off home run in Game Six guaranteed we would see the Twins and Braves again on Sunday night. In the winner-take-all finale, Jack Morris matched zeroes with young Braves fireballer John Smoltz as high-decibel crowd noise filled the Metrodome. Morris’s 126th pitch finished off the Braves’ 10th; five batters later Gene Larkin’s single scored Dan Gladden with the run that delivered Minnesota’s second World Series championship in five seasons and secured Morris’s place in the Hall of Fame.

Sid Bream slides into home plate to win Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS (MLB.COM)

October 14, 1992: Francisco Cabrera and Sid Bream send Braves to World Series


The Braves were on the verge of a massive postseason collapse, after squandering a three-games-to-one lead and scoring only one run with the bases loaded and no outs in the ninth inning of Game Seven of the NLCS. Trailing 2-1 and down to their final out, Braves manager Bobby Cox summoned seldom-used utilityman Francisco Cabrera to pinch-hit for reliever Jeff Reardon. Cabrera lined Stan Belinda’s pitch into left field, David Justice scored the tying run, and Sid Bream slid in ahead of Barry Bonds’ throw and Mike LaValliere’s tag to clinch Atlanta’s second straight NL pennant and make Cabrera one of baseball’s unlikeliest heroes.

September 4, 1993: Jim Abbott pitches no-hitter at Yankee Stadium


After making it to the major leagues despite missing his right hand, Jim Abbott’s remarkable career smashed expectations and misconceptions, never more so than on this Saturday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. Over 119 pitches, Abbott induced groundout after groundout from Cleveland’s lineup of rising stars until Randy Velarde and Don Mattingly teamed up to retire Carlos Baerga on a groundout to complete the no-hitter. “The last couple of innings, I had these huge goose bumps on my forearms, and the hair on the back of my neck was standing up,” Mattingly said.

Joe Carter (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

October 23, 1993: Joe Carter touches ’em all with World Series-ending home run


When Joe Carter batted against Philadelphia closer Mitch Williams in the ninth inning of Game Six, the Blue Jays were down by one run and two outs away from falling into a deadlock — in a series they had led three games to one, in a game they had led by four runs just two innings earlier. Carter ripped Williams’ pitch over the left-field wall at the Skydome in Toronto, clinching the Blue Jays’ second straight World Series title and giving Bill Mazeroski company on one of the sport’s most hallowed lists.

Tony Gwynn (TRADING CARD DATABASE)

July 12, 1994: National League rallies for All-Star Game win


A month before a labor impasse between the players and owners shut down the season for good, baseball’s best staged a gripping All-Star exhibition in Pittsburgh. Fred McGriff tied it with a ninth-inning home run off Lee Smith; an inning later, Tony Gwynn scored from first base on Moises Alou’s double, giving the National League an exciting 8-7 win over the American League. The season’s abrupt end in August left Alou’s division-leading Expos and Gwynn’s .394 batting average forever frozen in amber, but that night’s action provided a reminder of what might have been.

Ken Griffey Jr. slides home with the winning run in Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS (SEATTLE MARINERS)

October 8, 1995: Edgar Martinez’s hit lifts Mariners to ALDS win over Yankees


With the Mariners facing rumors of relocation and a 12½-game deficit in late August, Seattle surged over the season’s final six weeks and earned the first postseason berth in franchise history by beating the Angels in a one-game playoff to decide first place in the AL West. The magic continued in the 11th inning of Game Five of the AL Division Series against the Yankees. Edgar Martinez smacked Jack McDowell’s split-finger fastball into the left-field corner, Joey Cora scored the tying run, and Ken Griffey Jr. came dashing around from first base, beating the relay throw to send the Mariners forward to the ALCS — and eventually, a brand-new, retractable-roof home in downtown Seattle.

Hideo Nomo celebrates his no-hitter at Coors Field in 1996 (LOS ANGELES DODGERS)

September 17, 1996: Hideo Nomo no-hits Rockies at Coors Field


Fifteen years after Fernandomania swept Los Angeles, the Dodgers added another pitcher with a distinctive delivery when Hideo Nomo arrived from Japan in 1995. Nomo’s early years provided many memorable moments, but the height of his mastery came during his sophomore season. He took the mound in Denver’s mile-high air, against a team that averaged more than eight runs per game at home, and held the Rockies hitless. A quarter-century later, it remains the only no-hitter ever pitched at Coors Field.

Edgar Renteria celebrates his game-winning hit in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series (MLB.COM)

October 26, 1997: Marlins beat Indians on Edgar Renteria’s Game 7 walk-off


Cleveland was seeking its first championship in nearly five decades, while the Marlins’ history didn’t even extend back five full seasons. Cleveland took an early two-run lead, but Florida rallied to tie the game on a ninth-inning sacrifice fly by Craig Counsell — the only member of the Marlins’ starting nine who would still wear teal by Opening Day 1999. In the bottom of the 11th, Counsell raced home to score the winning run on Edgar Renteria’s single to give the wild-card Marlins their first World Series title, in a scene laced with as much joy and frustration as any in postseason baseball.

Kerry Wood (THE TOPPS COMPANY)

May 6, 1998: Kerry Wood strikes out 20 in fifth major-league start


Kerry Wood’s first four big-league starts provided little indication of what would happen in his fifth: one of the most dominating pitching performances the game has ever seen. Against an Astros lineup in the middle of an NL Central three-peat and featuring Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, and Moises Alou, the 20-year-old Chicago Cubs rookie recorded a record-tying 20 strikeouts while yielding no walks and only a single hit. Wood stands alongside Roger Clemens (1986 and 1996), Randy Johnson (2001), and Max Scherzer (2016) in the record books, but for complete mastery his gem shines a little brighter.

Robin Ventura (NEW YORK METS)

October 17, 1999: Robin Ventura ends NLCS Game 5 with “Grand Slam Single”


With the Braves one win away from the World Series, 15 pitchers took the mound at Shea Stadium, holding serve in a game tied from the fourth inning onward. Eleven innings of zeros later, Atlanta pushed across a run, only to see the Mets tie the game on a bases-loaded walk in their half. Robin Ventura followed by driving an apparent grand slam over the fence in right-center field — but his teammates mobbed him between first and second base, preventing him from scoring on the play. What would have been the first walk-off grand slam in postseason history was officially scored as an RBI single.

Ichiro Suzuki (SEATTLE MARINERS)

April 6, 2001: Ichiro’s four hits, 10th-inning homer lead Mariners over Rangers


Already a single-name star in his home country, Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese position player to start in MLB when the Mariners signed him away from the Orix Blue Wave prior to the 2001 season. Ichiro’s fourth game in the US foreshadowed his long run of sustained excellence. His leadoff double sparked a four-run first inning, while his tie-breaking 10th-inning homer capped a four-hit night and gave the Mariners a 9-7 win.

Kenny Lofton scores the winning run in the Cleveland Indians' comeback win over the Seattle Mariners on August 5, 2001 (MLB.COM)

August 5, 2001: Cleveland overcomes 12-run deficit against Mariners


Cleveland’s comeback on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” offered an object lesson on why to stay tuned in to every game until the final out. The Mariners rolled out to a 12-run lead by the third inning; before the seventh-inning stretch, several starters on both sides had gone to the showers. Suddenly reanimated, Cleveland rallied for 12 runs over the next three innings, finally tying the game on Omar Vizquel’s bases-clearing triple. An 11th-inning run gave the Indians a 15-14 victory, much to the surprise of everyone who had checked out early.

Mike Piazza (MLB.COM)

September 21, 2001: Mike Piazza homers in first game in NYC after 9/11 attacks


Ten days after a devastating terrorist attack in New York City and around the US, the Mets and Braves resumed their rivalry in baseball’s return to the field at Shea Stadium. The Mets trailed 2-1 in the eighth inning when Mike Piazza batted against Steve Karsay with one on and one out. The future Hall of Famer lined a two-run homer over the fence in left-center field, provoking chants of “USA! USA!” from the crowd and giving the Mets a lead they did not relinquish.

Luis Gonzalez wins Game 7 of the 2001 World Series (MLB.COM)

November 4, 2001: Diamondbacks win Game 7 of World Series with ninth-inning rally


The Yankees and Diamondbacks provided an entertaining nighttime serial for a nation recoiling from the tragedy of September 11, featuring an on-target first pitch by President George W. Bush, MLB’s first-ever November walkoff by Derek Jeter, and stellar work by some of the era’s finest pitchers. Game Seven began as a duel between the Yankees’ Roger Clemens and Arizona’s Curt Schilling, but turned into a classic thanks to an emergency relief appearance by Randy Johnson, a blown save by baseball’s greatest postseason closer, Mariano Rivera, and a soft single from Luis Gonzalez to win it all.

Scott Hatteberg (MLB.COM)

September 4, 2002: A’s win 20th in a row in ‘Moneyball Game’


The details seemed closer to fiction than fact: a 19-game winning streak on the line, an 11-0 lead squandered. Then Athletics pinch-hitter Scott Hatteberg, famously acquired for his ability to get on base, broke the tie with a ninth-inning homer and Oakland had won its 20th game in a row. When Hollywood turned Michael Lewis’ all-access book into a feature film, it didn’t have to embellish to get a fantastic sequence that could stand up alongside Roy Hobbs turning ballpark lights into fireworks or Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez stealing home.

Randy Johnson (ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS)

May 18, 2004: Randy Johnson pitches perfect game at age 40


Elevated from “tallest player ever” status after Nolan Ryan’s early-career mentoring, Randy Johnson racked up a string of highlights, from big-strikeout games to headline-grabbing trades to high-pressure gems. The Big Unit’s capstone came four months before his 41st birthday, when he became the oldest player in major-league history to record a perfect game. With his trademark slide-slung delivery, Johnson struck out nearly half of the Braves he faced, including fellow future Hall of Famer Chipper Jones three times.

David Ortiz (TRADING CARD DB)

October 18, 2004: David Ortiz’s 14th-inning hit wins Game 5 of ALCS


A night after Dave Roberts’ steal and David Ortiz’s 12th inning walk-off home run avoided the ignominy of an ALCS sweep, the Red Sox fell behind the Yankees again in Game Five thanks to a Derek Jeter bases-clearing double and a Bernie Williams home run. Mike Mussina’s solid start sent New York to the eighth with a two-run lead. But Ortiz started a rally with another homer and Red Sox kept things going in extra innings. Nearly six hours after the first pitch, Big Papi singled home the winning run in the 14th, and from there it was a straight line until the phrase “Curse of the Bambino” was forever relegated to obsolescence.

Matt Holliday slides across home plate to score the winning run in the 2007 NL West tiebreaker (TRADING CARD DB)

October 1, 2007: Matt Holliday’s slide gives Rockies win in NL West tiebreaker


More of a physics oddity than a championship contender for their first 15 seasons of existence, the Rockies tore off 13 wins in 14 games down the stretch to erase a 6½-game deficit and tie the Padres for the NL West lead after 162 games. They played a one-game tiebreaker long into the night at Coors Field. San Diego took a two-run lead in the top of the 13th, but Matt Holliday tripled home the tying run and then slid in with the game-winner on Jamey Carroll’s sacrifice fly in one of the most memorable — and controversial — photo finishes of the pre-replay era.

Japan celebrates its win in the 2009 World Baseball Classic Championship Game against South Korea on March 23, 2009 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California. (JUAN OCAMPO / LOS ANGELES DODGERS)

March 23, 2009: Japan beats South Korea in World Baseball Classic


Baseball has grown as an international phenomenon during the past 50 years, and the World Baseball Classic reflected — and boosted — that growth. Japan beat Cuba to win the inaugural WBC in 2006 and their second title in 2009 was capped off with a thrilling finale at Dodger Stadium. South Korea tied the game in the ninth inning with a two-out run off 22-year-old reliever Yu Darvish. But Japan’s veteran star Ichiro came through with a two-out, two-run single in the 10th to put his national team ahead for good. Darvish closed it out in front of a raucous crowd of nearly 55,000 fans.

Detroit Tigers' Armando Galarraga, right, and umpire Jim Joyce shake hands the day after Joyce's blown call cost Galarraga a perfect game in 2010 (MLB.COM)

June 2, 2010: Armando Galarraga’s near-perfect game


Major League Baseball’s 23 perfect games have a special place in the sport’s history, but the near-misses sometimes gain a stronger hold on the public’s imagination. After retiring the first 26 Cleveland batters he faced, Detroit’s Armando Galarraga forced Jason Donald to hit a weak ground ball to first baseman Miguel Cabrera. But first-base umpire Jim Joyce erroneously ruled Donald safe and no replay review was possible under the rules at the time. Galarraga retired the next batter to settle for a one-hit shutout. A distraught Joyce acknowledged his mistake after the game and shook hands with Galarraga on the field the next day, earning both umpire and pitcher praise for their forthrightness and humanity.

Roy Halladay (THE TOPPS COMPANY)

October 6, 2010: Roy Halladay’s postseason no-hitter


Roy Halladay’s phenomenal career combined elite talent and superior work ethic, and on one October night in Philadelphia, he earned one of the rarest spots in the game’s history. Only a full-count walk kept him from joining Don Larsen with the second perfect game in MLB postseason history. But his performance in Game One against the Reds resulted in the first no-hitter in the playoffs since Larsen’s gem in 1956.

Evan Longoria (MLB.COM)

September 28, 2011: Evan Longoria’s home run ends dramatic final day


In a span of 129 minutes on the final day of the regular season, four teams, playing in four separate games, decided two open postseason spots. First, the Cardinals shut out the Astros, then clinched a wild-card spot when the Braves squandered a ninth-inning lead against the Phillies and lost in the 13th. Meanwhile, the Red Sox lost a ninth-inning lead against the Orioles, giving the Rays a chance at the AL’s wild card spot — which they seized by rallying from a 7-0 deficit against the Yankees, finally concluding the wild night with Evan Longoria’s walk-off homer.

David Freese (MLB.COM)

October 27, 2011: The David Freese Game


The Cardinals made up a 10½-game deficit to reach the postseason as the NL wild card, then survived an elimination matchup with Phillies ace Roy Halladay. But they saved their most remarkable feat for Game Six of the World Series. With the Texas Rangers one strike away from their first championship, David Freese tied the game in the ninth inning with a two-run triple. Lance Berkman knotted the score again in the 10th with a two-out, two-strike RBI single. Then Freese finished it off with an 11th-inning walk-off homer, setting up the Cardinals to finish their survival quest with a Game Seven victory a night later.

Johan Santana (TRADING CARD DB)

June 1, 2012: Johan Santana pitches first no-hitter in Mets history


Mets ace Johan Santana accomplished a feat that Tom Terrific, Dr. K, and Pedro Martinez could not do: throw a no-hitter while wearing the blue and orange. Santana navigated five walks, a close call on a Carlos Beltran foul ball, and Mike Baxter’s wall-banging, shoulder-injuring grab in left field to record the Mets’ first no-hitter in their 51st season of play. Less than three months after his 134-pitch effort, Santana threw his final major-league pitch at the age of 33. But he earned an indelible spot in Mets lore.

Madison Bumgarner throws a pitch during Game 7 of the 2014 World Series (MLB.COM)

October 29, 2014: Clutch relief by Madison Bumgarner lifts Giants in Game 7


With the Giants leading by one run in the fifth inning of Game Seven, manager Bruce Bochy called on his ace starter, Madison Bumgarner, on two days’ rest. Bumgarner retired Royal after Royal to make the margin hold up. Alex Gordon broke Bumgarner’s streak of 14 consecutive outs with a two-out single in the ninth and he scooted to third base on an error. But with the game and World Series on the line, Bumgarner retired Salvador Perez on a foul pop-up to complete a spectacular five-inning save and a fantastic postseason run: a 1.03 ERA in 52 2/3 innings pitched.

Jose Bautista bat flip, 2015 ALDS (MLB.COM)

October 14, 2015: Jose Bautista celebrates ALDS-winning home run with bat flip


The Blue Jays rallied from a two-games-to-none deficit against the Rangers in the best-of-five AL Division Series, only to fall behind in the seventh inning of Game Five on a bizarre play involving catcher Russell Martin’s return throw to the pitcher. Rangers errors on three consecutive plays enabled Toronto to tie the game in the bottom of the inning, and then Jose Bautista’s majestic home run — followed by an equally majestic bat flip — put the Blue Jays into the ALCS for the first time in more than two decades.

Ben Zobrist (THE TOPPS COMPANY)

November 2, 2016: Cubs win Game 7 to end 108-year title drought


The Chicago Cubs had waited 71 years just to get back to a World Series and their championship drought was the longest in North American sports history, stretching back more than a century to 1908. They had to fight just to get to Game Seven, rallying from a three-games-to-one deficit against long-suffering Cleveland. Cubs closer Aroldis Chapman squandered a lead in the eighth inning and then a rain delay after the ninth inning pushed anxious fans to the limit. Ben Zobrist doubled home the go-ahead run in the 10th and the Cubs bullpen held on to deliver that long-awaited title to the North Side’s faithful.

Rich Hill (LOS ANGELES DODGERS)

August 23, 2017: Rich Hill loses perfect game in ninth, no-hitter and game in 10th


Rich Hill emerged from a decade on baseball’s fringes to secure his spot on a pennant-bound Dodgers team. On an August night in Pittsburgh, he brought back memories of Harvey Haddix by retiring 24 Pirates in a row until Logan Forsythe’s error broke up the perfect game in the ninth. Three batters later, he had nine no-hit innings — but still no decision since the game remained scoreless. On Hill’s fourth pitch of the 10th inning, Josh Harrison homered to left field, leaving Hill as one of the hardest-luck losing pitchers in recent memory.

Game 5, 2017 World Series (THE TOPPS COMPANY)

October 29, 2017: Astros outlast Dodgers 13-12 in a wild Game 5


Houston’s sign-stealing scandal will forever taint this World Series, but for compelling baseball, Game Five’s excitement is hard to beat. The Astros and Dodgers passed the 5-hour, 17-minute slugfest changing leads over and over again, with seven home runs rocketing around Minute Maid Park. Alex Bregman’s 10th-inning single off Kenley Jansen drove in pinch-runner Derek Fisher to give Houston a 13-12 win.

2019 Washington Nationals (THE TOPPS COMPANY)

October 30, 2019: Nationals win every World Series game on the road


A Game Seven pitching duel between a certain Hall of Famer (Max Scherzer) and a strong contender (Zack Greinke). A seventh-inning lead overcome by two home runs, the second by Howie Kendrick striking the foul pole with a percussive clatter. Baseball’s final game of 2019 offered all the tension and drama that anyone could want in a winner-take-all clash, regardless of anything — including a cheating scandal and a global pandemic — that followed the end of the season.

Photo Credits: National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, MLB.com, Cleveland Indians, ESPN, Juan Ocampo/Los Angeles Dodgers, Oakland Athletics, Seattle Mariners, The Topps Company, Trading Card Database, University of Minnesota, University of Southern California. Used by permission.

SABR 50 at 50

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]]> Editor’s note: Fall 2017 Baseball Research Journal https://sabr.org/journal/article/editors-note-fall-2017-baseball-research-journal/ Fri, 10 Nov 2017 18:45:04 +0000 Read a note from the editor of the Fall 2017 BRJ.Many of the best conversations I’ve had at SABR conventions — and at ballparks around the world — begin with the question “Did you know…?” Nearly every baseball fan knows some amazing story or fact about the game, the players, or the team. Some of them are even true. And no matter how well read or knowledgeable about the game I may be, there’s always something I haven’t heard before.

Sometimes it’s because the story comes from the misty past. Check out the examples of early scorecards in Stew Thornley and Bob Tholkes’s article on the evolution of the official scorer in this issue. Or Paul Doutrich’s recap of the 1885 postseason series between Chicago and St. Louis, a precursor of the World Series. Did you know bad umpiring in that series provoked the fans to storm the field and umpire David Sullivan to need a police escort back to his hotel for his own safety?

Other times the novelty is because the story comes from the margins, from an unexpected source, like the Bush Library. Herm Krabbenhoft presents here an exhaustive study of former president George H.W. Bush’s collegiate baseball career. Did you know that while he was Vice President, Bush played in an old-timers’ game with the likes of Warren Spahn, Tony Oliva, Ernie Banks, Moose Skowron, and Brooks Robinson? Then there are the tales from the bushes: Rich Arpi brings us inside a 1914 prison in Minnesota to see the birth of the “Sisal Sox,” and Bob LeMoine takes us to the farm where Cy Young retired. Did you know that at age 67 Cy Young went on a barnstorming tour?

And sometimes we learn something new about something we thought we knew. Sometimes we learn a new way of thinking about something old, or we re-think in the face of new information. Jose Luis Lopez and a team of researchers from Venezuela prove beyond much doubt that Andres Galarraga did indeed hit a homer well over 500 feet at Pro Player Stadium. Two Canadian researchers, Lori Livingston and Susan Forbes, challenge the notion that amateur umpires quit because of the negative image and verbal abuse heaped on them. Did you know that although hitting for the cycle is a rare feat, hitting for the “quasi-cycle” (like a cycle but replace the single with an extra-base hit) is even rarer? Herm Krabbenhoft is at it again, identifying all 88 instances of the quasi-cycle since 1876 (compared with 318 regular cycles).

I’ve arranged this issue roughly chronologically, from the nineteenth century to the present. Next time you go to the ballpark, you’ll have plenty of did-you-know’s to share, if you just keep turning these pages.

CECILIA M. TAN is SABR’s Publications Editor. She can be reached at ctan@sabr.org.

]]> Surprise Swings at Intentional Balls https://sabr.org/journal/article/surprise-swings-at-intentional-balls/ Wed, 15 Jun 2011 19:36:02 +0000 In 2009, on SABR-L (SABR’s online listserv), Trent McCotter cited two instances of a player taking a swing while being walked intentionally and wondered if anyone knew about other instances of a batter hitting a deliberate ball. I responded with two such incidents I had happened on during my research. Several other SABR members, including Brian McMillan, Stew Thornley, Bob Timmermann, and Michael Hoban, contributed more instances. Later, having found notes I had made about three more surprise swings, I thought it was time to collect all these occurrences together.

Hall of Fame lefty was twice victimized by batters swinging at intentional balls.I decided to eliminate instances of players taking half-hearted, empty swings at intentional balls. For example, it has been written that pitcher Jack Coombs once deliberately struck out while the opposition was trying to walk him, because it was a hot day and he didn’t want to run the bases. In May 1976, Rod Carew took a couple of insincere swings at deliberate balls, hoping to encourage the pitcher to pitch to him with two strikes, but wound up walking anyway. A similar thing reportedly happened to Mel Ott on the last day of the 1929 season, as Phillies pitchers denied him the opportunity to catch their teammate, Chuck Klein, in the NL home run race.

To date, we have uncovered only eleven instances in which a batter, in the process of being intentionally walked, swung and actually put the ball in play:

  • On August 8, 1907, Detroit’s Ty Cobb tripled against the Athletics’ Eddie Plank to cap a four-run third inning, leading the Tigers to a 5–3 win. Cobb came up with one out and runners on second and third when Plank tried to put him on, but the third pitch was close enough for Cobb to whale down the right field line, scoring both runners.
  • On September 20, 1908, Philadelphia’s Eddie Plank (again!) lost to the White Sox, 1–0 (Chicago’s Frank Smith threw a no-hitter) on a freak ninth-inning run. With runners at first and third and one out, Plank was trying to walk Freddy Parent intentionally. Parent crossed things up by reaching out at the third pitch and swatting a grounder to second baseman Scotty Barr, who threw home too late to get Frank Isbell.
  • On May 28, 1937, according to The Sporting News, “Instead of accepting an intentional pass to first base, Second Baseman Odell Hale of the Indians rifled the fourth ball to [White Sox’] Center Fielder Mike Kreevich in the ninth inning … With Hal Trosky on second and the score tied, Vernon Kennedy, Chicago right-hander, was trying to walk Hale to take a chance on a double play with Frankie Pytlak at the bat.” Cleveland wound up losing 3–2 in ten innings.
  • On May 1, 1955 in the 16th inning, with the Giants’ Whitey Lockman on second base, one out, and a 3–0 count, Don Mueller singled off the Reds’ Bob Hooper. Lockman moved to third and scored moments later to give the Giants a 2–1 victory.
  • On May 7, 1959, with runners on second and third and one out in the eighth inning, the Dodgers’ Stan Williams tried to walk the Giants’ Willie Mays intentionally. Mays, perhaps inspired by the memory of his former teammate, took a cut at the 3–0 pitch. But unlike Mueller, Mays fouled out to the catcher and the Giants lost, 2–1.
  • Just 22 days later, on May 29, 1959, Milwaukee’s Joe Adcock came up in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game with one out and runners on second and third. The Phillies’ Gene Conley tried to put Adcock on, but Joe swung at the first pitch, grounding the ball up the middle. Second baseman Sparky Anderson, stationed far behind the bag in case of an errant pickoff attempt, fielded the ball but threw home too late to get Hank Aaron, who scored to give the Braves a 6–5 win.
  • As Reds’ manager, Sparky probably enjoyed this one a lot more. In the first game of a May 16, 1972 twin bill, with one out in the eighth and Dave Concepcion on second, Pete Rose swung at a deliberate ball thrown by the Giants’ Ron Bryant. Third baseman Jim Ray Hart “was caught by surprise and fumbled [the] ball, allowing Concepcion to score,” according to The Sporting News. It proved to be the winning run for the Reds, making the score 4–2 en route to a 4–3 victory.
  • On September 27, 1973, the Phillies’ Bob Boone came up against the Pirates’ Chris Zachary in the 13th inning with one out and Greg Luzinski on second. Zachary tried to put Boone on, but Bob slapped the first pitch for a single, moving Luzinski to third. The Bull promptly scored on a wild pitch to give the Phils a 3–2 win.
  • On August 25, 1980, the Dodgers led the Phillies 6–4 in the ninth. Joe Ferguson came up with runners on second and third and one out. Ferguson swung at Tug McGraw’s second intentional pitch and got a two-run single out of it. McGraw drilled the next batter in retribution, starting a bench-clearing brawl. The Dodgers won, 8–4. Interestingly, that day’s Phillies lineup included the two most recent perpetrators of the surprise swing.
  • On September 2, 1996, Colorado’s Andres Galarraga came up in the eighth inning with a runner on third, one out, and a 4–3 lead. Pittsburgh’s Matt Ruebel tried to pass Galarraga intentionally, but the Big Cat swung and reached on an error by second baseman Jeff King, bringing in a run. This ignited a four-run inning and an 8–3 win for the Rockies.
  • On June 22, 2006, Miguel Cabrera was being walked intentionally by the Orioles’ Todd Williams when he took a surprise swing at the first pitch and came through with an RBI single, knocking in the go-ahead run and sparking the Marlins to an 8–5, ten-inning victory.

One thing I have noticed is that walks described as “intentional” yesteryear were often what we would today call “pitching around” a batter. For example, the Detroit Free Press account of Cobb’s hit said that team captain Harry “Davis instructed Plank to pass Cobb, so that any field grounder by the next batter would be good for a double play. Plank apparently intended to follow instructions, but did not keep them away far enough. The third ball that he tried to waste went just inside the plate [Italics mine]. Ordinarily a batter would take a ball on it, but it was just the right hight (sic) and Cobb smashed it.”

Click on the image below to view the original list in table form.

Interestingly, of the 11 documented instances, nine resulted in positive results: five in hits, two in errors by the caught-off-guard defense, and two in game-winning RBI. Of course, it could simply be that successful results are more likely to be reported.

Author’s note

This is presented as a work in progress rather than a definitive list. Should anyone know other instances which belong on this list, please contact the author at billdeane14@gmail.com.

BILL DEANE is in his 30th year as a SABR member, and has been a frequent contributor to its publications and Listserv.

 

 

Postscript

By Bill Deane
February 5, 2012

In the Spring 2011 Baseball Research Journal, I presented a list and description of “Surprise Swings at Intentional Balls” — 11 documented instances in which a batter was being intentionally walked, but swung at a pitch and put it into play.

Since then, as hoped, I have been contacted by others with details about, or leads on, other such examples. Possible ones involving Ed Delahanty, Cap Anson (July 15, 1896), Nap Lajoie (September 24, 1901), Mel Ott (October 5, 1929), Clay Dalrymple (c. 1964), Ralph Garr (c. 1975), and Bo Jackson (c. 1987) lack documentation or evidence. But, thanks to Frank Vaccaro, Barry Sparks, Bob Brelsford, and Mike Cameron, I have added four more instances to the list:

  • In an NL game on July 11, 1892, Kid Nichols and Boston led Chicago, 3-2. According to THE SPORTING LIFE, “With two men on bases, in the ninth inning, and one hand out, [Chicago player-manager Cap] Anson refused to take a base on balls. Nichols lined the ball over the plate. Anson met it and shot it to [second baseman Joe] Quinn, who caught it, and, touching second base, completed a [game-ending] double play.”
  • On June 10, 1912, the Cubs and Giants went into extra innings tied at seven. According to THE SPORTING LIFE, “Chicago won in the tenth, when, with [Joe] Tinker on third, [Giants’ relief pitcher Doc] Crandall was ordered to pass Zimmerman. Zimmerman reached out of the batter’s box and drove a wide pitch into the right-field wing of the grand stand for a home run.” New York scored one in the bottom of the frame but lost, 9-8.
  • On April 17, 1918, the Senators and Yankees were tied at seven in the 12th inning. With runners on first and third, Nats’ relief pitcher Walter Johnson tried to walk long-time nemesis Frank “Home Run” Baker intentionally. Baker lashed at the third pitch, sending it to deep center field to score the winning run.
  • On May 30, 1956 (second game), the Cubs’ Harry Chiti reached out to poke an intentional ball from Milwaukee’s Ray Crone, earning an RBI-triple. According to one baseball writer, “Chiti had a reputation for vastly overrating his abilities. In extreme contrast, Cubs fans had totally turned on him by ’56. His last name was pronounced ‘Cheety,’ but Cubs fans had taken to calling him ‘Shitty.’ Even in his moment of glory — getting a surprise hit on a deliberately wide pitch and chugging all the way to third — a Cubs’ fan stood and yelled: ‘That was a really stupid thing to do, Shitty.'” The Cubs lost anyway, 11-9.

Postscript to the Postscript

  • On September 10, 2016, Gary Sanchez of the New York Yankees reached out and lined an “intentional ball” to the warning track for a sacrifice fly off Tampa Bay’s Enny Romero in the eighth inning at Yankee Stadium. Click here to watch the play at MLB.com. New list through 2016 is below:

]]> Stan Musial Breathes Joy into a Somber Night in 1993 https://sabr.org/journal/article/stan-musial-breathes-joy-into-a-somber-night-in-1993/ Mon, 26 May 2025 19:29:26 +0000

SABR Digital Library: Stan Musial, edited by Bill Nowlin and Glen SparksOn a bitterly cold winter’s night, almost 30 years after his last swing of a bat in a meaningful baseball game, Stan Musial again came through in the clutch for St. Louis Cardinals fans. In doing so, The Man sent everyone home with a smile and warm heart on what could have been remembered only as a tragic night.

The daytime high temperature was a mere 32 degrees on January 19, 1993. That plunged to 17 overnight. So hundreds of Cardinals faithful had to bundle up as they trekked to a downtown hotel for the 35th annual awards dinner hosted by the St. Louis chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Not much to toast about the 1992 Cardinals. The ballclub had finished four games over .500, in third third place in the six-team NL East and 13 games behind the first-place Pirates.

Catcher Tom Pagnozzi, pitcher Bob Tewksbury, and shortstop Ozzie Smith were All-Stars; the Wizard of Oz won another Gold Glove, and Tewksbury – with less than one walk for every nine innings pitched – landed number 3 in the Cy Young Award voting. Left-handed hurler Donovan Osborne came in fifth in Rookie of the Year balloting. Center fielder Ray Lankford finished among the top 20 in MVP voting with a team-high 20 homers and 86 RBIs; he also led the league in strikeouts and times caught stealing.

Lee Smith led the league in saves. Cris Carpenter was a Cardinals pitcher. No, not THAT Chris Carpenter, who didn’t wear the uniform for another 12 years. Andres Galarraga, Pedro Guerrero, Ozzie Canseco, Juan Agosto, and Bob McClure also were Cardinals in 1992.

Overall, the Cardinals had begun their second 100 years as members of the National League in mostly forgettable fashion.

That didn’t matter to several hundred fans who packed the grand ballroom of the Adam’s Mark hotel. They seemed to do it every winter: Look hopefully toward the next summer and – maybe more importantly – celebrate memories of a rich baseball history.

As a recap in the next day’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch said: “They heard Cardinals manager Joe Torre give his first pep talk of the season. They heard Ozzie Smith, the night’s principal drawing card, talk of his love affair with St. Louis and the Cardinals’ fans.”1

A group of us sat around a table just to the front-right of the long head table. The mood was festive. Once Christmas decorations come down in St. Louis, most folks in the region look with great anticipation to that date when pitchers and catchers report for spring-training camp.

Our table – with friends, family and co-workers – brimmed with that kind of excitement.

The most prominent guest at the head table, seemingly as usual, was Stan Musial. The St. Louis writers’ group had decided to give him their “Nostalgia Award” – for the fourth time. “That must be a record,” wisecracked Musial, certainly no stranger to setting records.2

Sometime after dinner and before the speeches – these moments of my memory are understandably hazy – the unthinkable happened.

One of our dining partners suffered a heart attack.

The event, so close to the front of the room, put an immediate pause on the program. Paramedics rushed to the man’s aid while the rest of the room filled with hushed whispers. Concern for the gentleman teetered against impatient curiosity about whether the rest of the night’s plans would be canceled.

After an ambulance took the man to a nearby hospital, the writers’ committee decided to move ahead. But how to lift the somber mood?

Musial stepped up and took center stage.

Musial, 72 years old, appeared to have some vim and vigor as he greeted the crowd. That proved a welcome sight, as there had been reports he had faced some recent health issues.

At that moment, Musial pulled out his harmonica, which always seemed to be inside one of his pockets, and immediately broke into a rollicking rendition of “The Wabash Cannonball.” By the second verse, everyone in the room was clapping along, then Musial enticed the crowd to sing along as he played “It’s a Small World.”

And the rest of the night moved along according to plan.

Yes, those of us at that table remember it as the night our friend, who loved baseball and the Cardinals, passed away. But the rest of the fans in attendance have good memories of the evening, and there always has been certain solace in that.

Thanks to Stan the Man, ever the hit of the party.

MIKE EISENBATH was a longtime member of the St. Louis BBWAA during his 25-plus years as a professional sportswriter, including 18 years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

 

NOTES

1 Cathie Burnes Beebe, “Stan the Harmonica Man Tunes Up the Baseball Writers Dinner,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 20, 1993.

2 Beebe.

]]> Ron Hunt, Coco Crisp, and the Normalization of Hit-by-Pitch Statistics https://sabr.org/journal/article/ron-hunt-coco-crisp-and-the-normalization-of-hit-by-pitch-statistics/ Tue, 20 Nov 2018 22:07:29 +0000 Ron HuntIt’s a basic rule that’s familiar to all baseball fans: A batter, when struck by a pitched ball, shall be awarded first base. While some people may dismiss the hit-by-pitch as a relatively minor aspect of the game, a hit batsman can have significant consequences. As an extreme example, the Tommy Byrne pitch that struck the foot of Nippy Jones in the 10th inning of Game Four of the 1957 World Series ignited a thrilling come-from-behind rally by the Milwaukee Braves, and it is generally regarded as the turning point of the series. Certain batters, such as the indomitable Ron Hunt, intentionally used the hit-by-pitch on a regular basis to boost their on-base percentage; in Hunt’s case, his HBP prowess helped prop up a faltering career, extending his time in the big leagues by several years.

Aside from Hunt, many other batters throughout baseball history have routinely used the hit-by-pitch as an offensive weapon. This brings up an obvious question: Who was the best of all time at reaching base on an HBP? Previous research on this topic has relied on rudimentary statistics, such as the total number of hit-by-pitches in a season or career. While these traditional measures do provide some insight, their inherent drawbacks limit their usefulness. This article will briefly outline these deficiencies and introduce a new and improved metric for effectively comparing hit-by-pitch statistics of players, including those from different eras. This metric will then be used to identify the players who employed the hit-by-pitch to their greatest (or least) advantage. A discussion section of this paper will focus on the most noteworthy performances identified and describe some of the reasons why those players stood out so much from their peers.

DEVISING A NEW HBP METRIC

One obvious drawback with simply comparing players based on their HBP totals is that those figures do not factor in how many opportunities each player had to get plunked. Even among the group of players with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title in a given season, there may be some players with roughly 50 percent more plate appearances than others. Effectively comparing career HBP totals is even more problematic using these traditional methods, since some players may enjoy 20-year careers (or more), while others may be forced to retire after only a dozen or so years in the major leagues.1 Clearly, the formula devised for an improved HBP metric must include the total number of plate appearances.

Another significant issue that limits the effectiveness of using raw HBP totals to compare players from different eras is the fact that hit-by-pitch rates have varied significantly over the years, as shown in Figure 1. The graph, which was generated from statistics in the Lahman Baseball Database, demonstrates that hit-by-pitch rates have ebbed and flowed throughout baseball history, from an all-time high of 1.24 percent of all plate appearances in 1899 to a low of 0.32 percent in 1941.2

 

Figure 1. HBP Percentage per Plate Appearance.

Yearly rates combined for the American Association (1884–91), National League (1887–2017), Players League (1890), American League (1901–2017), and Federal League (1914–15).

 

Since HBP rates have fluctuated so dramatically over the years, simply dividing the number of hit-by-pitches by the number of plate appearances to calculate a HBP average wouldn’t be sufficient to effectively compare HBP statistics across the different eras. For instance, a batter getting hit in 5 percent of his plate appearances in 1941 would be far more significant than someone being plunked at the exact same rate in 2001, when hit batsmen were roughly three times more common. A better approach would be to devise a metric that also adjusts for the HBP rate of the corresponding season.

However, a closer look at the numbers shows that there are many seasons in which the individual leagues have had significantly different HBP rates. For example, the American League HBP rate in 1909 was roughly 40 percent higher than the corresponding National League rate. Conversely, the senior circuit’s HBP rate was 21 percent greater than in the American League in 2013.

 

Figure 2. HBP Percentage per Plate Appearance.

Data shown for the American Association (1884–91), National League (1887–2017), and American League (1901–2017). Data for the Players League (1890) and Federal League (1914–15) are not shown due to legibility issues.

 

Due to the disparate HBP rates of the individual leagues, the proposed metric will adjust for the hit-by-pitch rate of the corresponding league and season instead of using a combined rate for all leagues. This will allow players to be compared relative to their league peers rather than those who may have played under markedly different conditions (e.g. opposing pitchers, fastball usage rates, and umpire strike-zone interpretations that may alter the percentage of pitches delivered high in the zone).

 

METHODOLOGY

Adjusted HBP, also known as HBP+, will be used to normalize hit-by-pitch numbers across leagues and seasons. Single-season HBP+ numbers can be calculated for a player using the following formula:

This formula adjusts HBP numbers so that players who get hit with pitches at the same rate as the league average will have an HBP+ of 100. Players who are struck twice as often as league average will have an HBP+ of 200, and those who are hit at half of the league rate will have an HBP+ of 50.

Career HBP+ numbers can be calculated for a player using a similar formula:

Please note that Expected HBP is calculated as per the single-season HBP+ formula.

 

DATA ANALYSES

Data were downloaded from the Lahman Baseball Database and loaded into an Oracle database.3 The author wrote several SQL queries to produce the data for the tables and figures in this article.

The Lahman Baseball Database contains complete hit-by-pitch data for the following leagues/seasons: American Association (1884–91), National League (1887–2017), Players League (1890), American League (1901–2017), and Federal League (1914–15). Batting data from other seasons and leagues were excluded from the SQL queries.

 

DISCUSSION

Single-Season HBP Leaders (Traditional Metric)

Before we turn our attention to the single-season HBP+ leaders, let’s take a brief look at the top marks in our traditional metric, the total number of hit-by-pitches in a season, as shown in Table 1.

The list is dominated by Baltimore Orioles from the 1890s such as Hughie Jennings, Dan McGann, and Curt Welch. The Orioles of that era were a juggernaut, winning three consecutive National League pennants from 1894 to 1896 using an aggressive brand of small ball. The architect and manager of those teams, Ned Hanlon, was a strong proponent of using the hit-by-pitch as an offensive weapon, and his clubs led the National League in hit-by-pitches for seven consecutive seasons: the 1894–98 Orioles and the 1899–1900 Brooklyn Superbas.4 The hit batsmen on Hanlon’s squads peaked in 1898, when the Orioles were plunked an astounding 160 times in 154 games, more than the combined total of the St. Louis Browns and Pittsburgh Pirates, who finished second and third in hit-by-pitches respectively.

 

Table 1. Single-season HBP leaders

Player

Year

Team(s)

HBPs

Hughie Jennings

1896

Baltimore Orioles

51

Ron Hunt

1971

Montreal Expos

50

Hughie Jennings

1897

Baltimore Orioles

46

Hughie Jennings

1898

Baltimore Orioles

46

Dan McGann

1898

Baltimore Orioles

39

Dan McGann

1899

Brooklyn Superbas, Washington Senators

37

Curt Welch

1891

Baltimore Orioles

36

Don Baylor

1986

Boston Red Sox

35

Curt Welch

1890

Athletics (Phila.), Baltimore Orioles

34

Craig Biggio

1997

Houston Astros

34

Tommy Tucker

1889

Baltimore Orioles

33

Hughie Jennings

1895

Baltimore Orioles

32

Brandon Guyer

2016

Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Indians

31

Jason Kendall

1997

Pittsburgh Pirates

31

Jason Kendall

1998

Pittsburgh Pirates

31

Steve Evans

1910

St. Louis Cardinals

31

Anthony Rizzo

2015

Chicago Cubs

30

Craig Wilson

2004

Pittsburgh Pirates

30

Chief Roseman

1890

St. Louis Browns, Louisville Colonels

29

Tommy Tucker

1891

Boston Beaneaters

29

Tommy Tucker

1887

Baltimore Orioles

29

Curt Welch

1888

Philadelphia Athletics

29

 

Single-Season HBP+ Leaders

Calculating the single-season HBP+ leaders across baseball history produces quite a different list than using the traditional metric. These rather eye-popping results can be found in Table 2. Not only does Hunt hold the top two spots of all time and five of the top 15 entries, but his 1971 season surpasses all others by an exceedingly wide margin. That year, Hunt was hit by a pitch almost 15 times more frequently than a league-average batter. To put that figure in perspective, to surpass the league-average home-run rate by a similar multiple, he would have had to have slugged a whopping 175 home runs in 1971, a season in which Willie Stargell led the National League with 48 round-trippers. Of course, Hunt was anything but a power hitter; the slap hitter spent most of his career batting leadoff or second in the order, and he was clever enough to understand his limitations and use every tool at his disposal to get on base, including intentionally getting in the way of a pitch.5

Hunt was quite open about his hit-by-pitch techniques. “First, I would blouse the uniform—this big, wool uniform, I would make sure it was nice and loose,” he recalled in a 2015 interview. “Then I’d choke way up on the bat and stand right on top of the plate. That way, I could still reach the outside pitch. That was the Gil Hodges philosophy on hitting: The two inches on the outside corner were the pitcher’s, the rest was his. I thought, ‘If I can take away those two inches, and he’s not perfect, I can put the ball in play and get some hits. And if he comes inside, I can get on base that way, too.’”6

Rule 5.05(b)(2) of the Official Baseball Rules clearly states that a batter hit by a pitched ball is not entitled to first base when “the batter makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball.” To get around this stipulation, Hunt developed a spin move to help deceive the plate umpire. “The ball would be headed toward his elbow or his ribcage,” said Dave Van Horne, the longtime Montreal Expos broadcaster. “He would turn his back away from the pitcher and deflect the ball with that spin move, so that he avoided those direct hits. To the average person, it would look like he was trying to get out of the way of the pitch, when, in fact, he just wanted to stand in there and take it.”7

Another aspect that may have boosted Hunt’s hit-by-pitch totals was the fact that the feisty player was almost universally disliked by both opponents and teammates.8 He had a mean streak and a short temper, and he was not averse to resorting to fisticuffs on the field.9 One habit that didn’t exactly endear Hunt to other players in the league was his routine of picking up the ball after getting plunked and casually flipping it back to the pitcher in an act of defiance. One opponent, San Diego Padres catcher Bob Barton, took exception to Hunt’s attempt to return the ball to pitcher Steve Arlin after he got plunked in consecutive at-bats in an August 1971 game, which led to Hunt yanking off Barton’s mask and punching him in the face. The benches emptied, and when order was restored, Hunt was the only player ejected from the game.10

While Hunt was an average hitter who used the hit-by-pitch to help extend a middle-of-the-road career, the same cannot be said of Don Baylor. In a stellar 19-year career, Baylor slugged 338 home runs, won the Silver Slugger award three times, and was named the American League MVP in 1979. He was also quite happy to stand in the batter’s box and let pitches hit him. Not only did he lead the American League in HBPs in eight different seasons, but in a three-year period from 1984 to ’86, Baylor posted three of the top five single-season HBP+ marks in history, getting hit almost nine times more often than his American League peers. “My first goal when I go to the plate is to get a hit,” he said in a 1987 interview. “My second goal is to get hit.”11

 The primary reason Baylor was hit so often was that he crowded the plate. “When the ball is inside, I don’t back away,” he said. “Common sense says back away, but I guess common sense isn’t that common. I just stiffen up and take the blow.”12 Baylor had a stubborn streak and he refused to be intimidated by the opposing pitcher. “There was always that confrontation,” he said. “You’re not going to beat me, and I’m not going to give in. I’m going to be right here. If you hit me, I’m coming right back again. I’m going to be right on the plate and you’re not going to move me off the plate.”13

Other than Hunt and Baylor, the only name that appears more than twice on the single-season HBP+ leaders in Table 2 is Chet Lemon, the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox center fielder who was known for both his outstanding fielding and potent bat. Lemon’s raw HBP numbers from 1981 to ’83 may be rather modest, but they were partially masked by a moderate number of plate appearances and the fact that he played at a time of relatively low HBP rates. Although he led the American League in hit-by-pitches four times, Lemon spent most of his career in Baylor’s HBP  shadow, and he is not particularly well known as an HBP specialist by baseball fans today. Like Baylor, Lemon stood almost on top of the plate. “I actually didn’t mind being pitched inside, I wanted to be pitched inside,” he said. “I felt I could always turn on pitches. If you look at my hits, like all those doubles, I think you’ll find that I went down the left-field line in most of them.”14

 

Table 2. Single-season HBP+ leaders (min. 3.1 PAs per team game)

Player

Year

Team(s)

HBPs

HBP+

Ron Hunt

1971

Montreal Expos

50

1,463

Ron Hunt

1972

Montreal Expos

26

968

Don Baylor

1986

Boston Red Sox

35

885

Don Baylor

1985

New York Yankees

24

878

Don Baylor

1984

New York Yankees

23

854

Hughie Jennings

1896

Baltimore Orioles

51

829

Ron Hunt

1969

San Francisco Giants

25

733

Mike Macfarlane

1994*

Kansas City Royals

18

716

Hughie Jennings

1897

Baltimore Orioles

46

713

Chet Lemon

1983

Detroit Tigers

20

712

Frank Robinson

1956

Cincinnati Redlegs

20

704

Chet Lemon

1981*

Chicago White Sox

13

692

Chet Lemon

1982

Detroit Tigers

15

685

Ron Hunt

1968

San Francisco Giants

25

663

Ron Hunt

1974

Montreal Expos, St. Louis Cardinals

16

649

Steve Evans

1910

St. Louis Cardinals

31

627

Carlton Fisk

1981*

Chicago White Sox

12

621

Jason Kendall

1997

Pittsburgh Pirates

31

612

Jimmy Dykes

1933

Chicago White Sox

12

603

Jason Kendall

1998

Pittsburgh Pirates

31

601

* Strike-shortened season.

 

Career HBP leaders (traditional metric)

Table 3 contains a list of the career hit-by-pitch leaders. Hall of Fame shortstop Hughie Jennings holds the record with 287, while Biggio, another Hall of Famer, is in second with 285 during his 20 seasons with the Houston Astros. As expected, the career leaders in this traditional metric are dominated by batters who played in an era of relatively high HBP rates and/or those who enjoyed lengthy careers.

 

Table 3. Career HBP leaders

Player

Years Active

HBPs

Hughie Jennings

1891–1903, 1907, 1909–10, 1912, 1918

287

Craig Biggio

1988–2007

285

Tommy Tucker

1887–99

272

Don Baylor

1970–88

267

Jason Kendall

1996–2010

254

Ron Hunt

1963–74

243

Dan McGann

1896, 1898–1908

230

Chase Utley*

2003–17

199

Frank Robinson

1956–76

198

Minnie Miñoso

1949, 1951–64, 1976, 1980

192

Jake Beckley

1888–1907

183

Jason Giambi

1995–2014

180

Andres Galarraga

1985–98, 2000–04

178

Alex Rodriguez

1994–2013, 2015–16

176

Curt Welch

1884–93

173

Carlos Delgado

1993–2009

172

Derek Jeter

1995–2014

170

Kid Elberfeld

1898–99, 1901–11, 1914

165

Fernando Viña

1993–2004

157

Fred Clarke

1894–1911, 1913–15

154

Brady Anderson

1988–2002

154

* Active as of 2018.

 

Career HBP+ leaders

Minnie MinosoTable 4 contains a tally of the top 20 hitters in career HBP+ and, not surprisingly, Hunt appears in the top spot. Although his career HBP+ of 713 is still comfortably ahead of Baylor’s 550, the figure is considerably lower than Hunt’s peak single-season numbers. In his first five years in the major leagues, Hunt “only” registered an HPB+ of 372, but his use of the hit-by-pitch as an on-base tool really kicked into gear following his trade to the San Francisco Giants just prior to the 1968 season.15 From that point on, Hunt led the National League in hit-by-pitches every year for the rest of his career, posting an HBP+ of 941 in those seven bruising seasons.

Jennings holds the third-best career HBP+ at 477. In the five-year period 1894–98, he was hit by a stunning 202 pitches, a figure that represents over 70 percent of his career total. Jennings also stood extremely close to home plate when he batted. “Hughie had a way of riding the plate, standing up as close as he could get and shoving his body out over it,” said his Orioles teammate Jack Doyle.16 While some may dismiss the hit-by-pitch statistics from this rough-and-tumble era, the achievements of Jennings, along with McGann, Tommy Tucker, and Kid Elberfeld, should not be minimized. For instance, if one excludes the batters on Hanlon’s Orioles, the HBP rate for the rest of the league was 1.1 percent of all plate appearances in 1898, which is not that much different from the HBP rate in the American League in 2001 (1.05) or the National League in 2006 (1.03).

Aside from the trio of Hunt, Baylor, and Jennings, both Frankie Crosetti and Minnie Miñoso merit special mention as being head and shoulders above all others in career HBP+. Crosetti, a player and coach with the New York Yankees for 37 seasons, led the American League in hit-by-pitches eight times, including 1942, when he appeared in a mere 74 games. Crosetti was proud of his hit-by-pitch accomplishments, which were made possible by one of his coaches, Art Fletcher, who taught him the art of avoiding injury while getting hit.17 Fletcher, ranked 11th overall in career HBP+, had an opportunity to perfect that technique years earlier as a member of the New York Giants, a team managed by the former third baseman of those pugnacious Orioles of the 1890s, John McGraw.

As baseball’s first Latin American superstar, Minnie Miñoso possessed a lethal combination of speed and power. Miñoso, along with Willie Mays, helped reintroduce speed as an offensive weapon in the 1950s, and in addition to his other talents, he led the American League in hit-by-pitches a record 10 times. Like most other HBP+ leaders, Miñoso crowded the plate, and he was not opposed to leaning into a pitch to “steal first.”18 He was also fearless in the batter’s box; after having his skull fractured on a pitch from Bob Grim in 1955 that hit him above the left eye, he bounced back and hit better than ever upon his return.19

When Miñoso broke in with the Cleveland Indians in 1949, he became only the eighth openly black player in major-league history, a mere two years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. In April 1951, he was traded to the White Sox, making the Cuban native the first black player on either of Chicago’s MLB teams. Much like the seven black players before him, Miñoso endured discrimination and segregation, although he also had to deal with language and cultural issues that the others did not. Years later, Orlando Cepeda would refer to Miñoso as “the Jackie Robinson of Latino players.”20 “He was everybody’s hero,” Cepeda reminisced. “I wanted to be Miñoso. [Roberto] Clemente wanted to be Miñoso.”21

Racism may have contributed to Miñoso’s elevated hit-by-pitch rate, a subject he broached in a 2015 interview, mere days before he passed away suddenly. “What was I doing wrong in the game, that they’d purposefully want to hit me? They didn’t do it because I’m nice-looking, and I didn’t do it to get the record. I crowded the plate, because if you only have to look middle-outside, you can kill a pitcher, and if it’s outside it’s a ball,” he said. “My father and my mother taught me there was a way to pay somebody back if they tried to break your arm or break your face: Pay them back on the field with a smile on your face.”22

Biggio holds the modern-day high for the most career hit-by-pitches, so it is a bit of a surprise to see him only ranked 20th in career HBP+. However, he did make 12,504 plate appearances during his lengthy career, much of which was played at a time of relatively high HBP rates.23 Fans looking for a relatively recent example of a HBP machine would be wise to refer to Jason Kendall, the rugged catcher who played most of his career with the Pirates. Not only did Kendall place well ahead of Biggio with a career HBP+ of 327, but he is the only player since 1900 to have been hit by 30 or more pitches twice in a season (as of the end of 2017). Two other twenty-first century players, Rickie Weeks and Andres Galarraga, also rank higher than Biggio in career HBP+.

 

Table 4. Career HBP+ leaders (min. 5,000 PAs)

Player

Years Active

HBPs

HBP+

Ron Hunt

1963–74

243

712.8

Don Baylor

1970–88

267

549.7

Hughie Jennings

1891–1903, 1907, 1909–10, 1912, 1918

287

477.3

Frankie Crosetti

1932–48

114

468.0

Minnie Miñoso

1949, 1951–64, 1976, 1980

192

464.5

Dan McGann

1896, 1898–1908

230

385.1

Chet Lemon

1975–90

151

369.7

Sherm Lollar

1946–63

115

357.4

Tommy Tucker

1887–99

272

356.9

Kid Elberfeld

1898–99, 1901–11, 1914

165

352.5

Art Fletcher

1909–20, 1922

141

350.7

Gene Tenace

1969–83

91

337.4

Lonnie Smith

1978–94

92

336.7

Jason Kendall

1996–2010

254

327.1

Frank Robinson

1956–76

198

303.7

Frank Chance

1898–1914

137

298.0

Rickie Weeks

2003, 2005–17

134

296.1

Andres Galarraga

1985–98, 2000–04

178

291.7

Bucky Harris

1919–29, 1931

99

290.0

Craig Biggio

1988–2007

285

287.9

 

Career HBP+ laggards

If Hunt was the most distinguished hitter at reaching first base on a hit-by-pitch, then who was plunked the least often compared to his peers? The answer to that question can be found in Table 5, which lists the batters with the lowest career HBP+ in baseball history.

Coco Crisp, who was hit only five times in his 15 years in the big leagues, holds the distinction of having the lowest career HBP+ for players with more than 5,000 plate appearances. His HBP+ of 8.4 means that he was hit with a pitch roughly 12 times less often than his contemporaries. There are several reasons why Crisp was hit so infrequently, starting with the structural advantage of being a switch-hitter, which means that he was always batting against an opposite-handed pitcher. Due to typical pitch trajectories, hurlers hit opposite-handed batters significantly less often than they do same-handed hitters.24

However, the fact that Crisp hit from both sides of the plate doesn’t explain why he was struck by pitches so much less frequently than other switch-hitters in the American League. Crisp, an agile center fielder, also had a willingness to scoot out of the way of inside pitches, and a video review of a half-dozen examples from 2012 to 2016 of extreme inside pitches that he successfully dodged shows his quickness and dexterity at work.25 However, perhaps the most significant reason for his extremely low HBP+ is the fact that the book on Crisp was to feed him a steady diet of outside pitches. An analysis of PITCHf/x data from the last 10 years of his career shows that only 22 percent of pitches thrown to him were on the inner third of the plate or further inside.26

One of the more obscure players listed in Table 5 is Bones Ely, who at 6-foot-1 was the tallest man to play shortstop regularly in the big leagues during the nineteenth century.27 The steady-fielding Ely was 155 pounds soaking wet, so his low HBP numbers could at least be partially chalked up to self-preservation. A controversial figure throughout his career, he was let go by the Pirates during the 1901 season on suspicion of recruiting players to join the upstart American League. Ely’s release led the way for Honus Wagner to be converted from an outfielder to a shortstop, a move the 27-year-old Wagner was initially hesitant to make due to Ely’s popularity with Pittsburgh fans.28

 

Table 5. Lowest career HBP+ (min. 5,000 PAs)

Player

Years Active

HBP

HBP+

Coco Crisp

2002–16

5

8.4

Garret Anderson

1994–2010

8

9.7

José Cruz Jr.

1997–2008

5

9.9

Sandy Alomar

1964–78

3

10.1

Ruben Sierra

1986–98, 2000–06

7

11.0

Otis Nixon

1983–99

5

13.0

Neifi Pérez

1996–2007

7

13.9

Ozzie Guillén

1985–2000

7

15.0

José Reyes*

2003–17

11

15.4

Lance Johnson

1987–2000

7

16.9

Jim Hegan

1941–42, 1946–60

4

17.0

Jerry Mumphrey

1974–88

4

17.2

Joe Tinker

1902–16

10

17.3

Luis Castillo

1996–2010

12

17.8

Bones Ely

1884, 1886, 1890–91, 1893–1902

11

18.2

José Cruz

1970–88

7

18.4

Chipper Jones

1993, 1995–2012

18

19.3

Sam West

1927–42

5

19.8

Pete O’Brien

1982–93

7

20.0

Rollie Hemsley

1928–44, 1946–47

4

20.3

* Active as of 2018.

 

CONCLUSIONS

By factoring in the number of plate appearances and the league-wide HBP rate, the HBP+ metric provides an effective means of comparing hit-by-pitch numbers of players from different eras.

Although the HBP rates in the late nineteenth century were the highest ever recorded, the hit-by-pitch accomplishments of players of that era should not be downplayed. Ned Hanlon’s Baltimore Orioles and Brooklyn Superbas were among the first teams to use the HBP as an offensive weapon, and his club skewed the hit-by-pitch rates of the entire National League for several seasons. Of all of Hanlon’s batters, none were as proficient at leveraging the hit-by-pitch as Hughie Jennings, although Dan McGann was also among the very best of all time at taking one for the team. In addition, two other nineteenth-century ballplayers, Tommy Tucker and Kid Elberfeld, appear in the top 10 for career HBP+.

When viewed through an HBP+ lens, Ron Hunt’s modern-day record of 50 HBPs in 1971 stands out as one of the most impressive single-season records in baseball history. His feat represents an HBP+ of 1,463, which means that he was plunked at a rate that was almost 15 times greater than his National League peers that season. His career HBP+ of 713 easily surpasses all others, a clear indication that Hunt is worthy of being referred to as baseball’s all-time HBP king. Perhaps the Montreal Expos press guide summed it up best with its cheeky assessment of Hunt: “He gets good flesh on the ball,” it said.29

Aside from Hunt, nobody had a penchant for getting hit with a pitch like Don Baylor. Between 1984 and 1986, Baylor notched an HBP+ of 854 or greater, giving him three of the top five single-season marks. By a comfortable margin, his career HBP+ of 550 is the second best of all time. Chet Lemon, whose hit-by-pitch skills were overshadowed by Baylor in the 1980s, quietly posted exceptional HBP numbers. Lemon ranks seventh all time with a career HBP+ of 370.

Hughie Jennings, Frankie Crosetti, and Minnie Miñoso put up equally impressive career HBP+ numbers despite playing under considerably different conditions. While the trio is well behind Hunt and Baylor in career HBP+, they are still significantly ahead of all other major-leaguers.

In recent years, no batter had a better knack for reaching first base on a hit-by-pitch than Jason Kendall. Other players from the early part of the twenty-first century with a similar aptitude include Rickie Weeks, Andres Galarraga, and Craig Biggio.

GARY BELLEVILLE is a retired Information Technology professional living in Victoria, British Columbia. He spent seven years as an editor and lead writer for baseball blogs devoted to local independent league and college wood-bat teams. Gary served as an official scorer in the West Coast League for two seasons, and he worked for the Asheville Tourists in the South Atlantic League. He grew up in Ottawa and graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Mathematics (Computer Science) degree. He patiently awaits the return of his beloved Montreal Expos.

 

Notes

1 This paper will use a similar approach as The SABR Baseball List and Record Book and only consider players with at least 5,000 plate appearances for the list of career leaders in the new HBP metric. Single-season leaders will require at least 3.1 plate appearances per team game. Society for American Baseball Research, The SABR Baseball List and Record Book (New York: Scribner, 2007).

2 This paper does not offer opinions on why HBP rates have fluctuated across the different eras of baseball history. While that topic may be of interest to some and it may be the subject of further research, this article will focus on the development of an improved HBP metric and the resulting insights from reviewing the all-time leaders in this metric.

3 Lahman Baseball Database, March 31, 2018, http://www.seanlahman.com/baseball-archive/statistics/.

4 Jack Smiles, ”Ee-Yah”: The Life and Times of Hughie Jennings, Baseball Hall of Famer, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), 48.

5 Jonah Keri, “The Year Ron Hunt Got Hit By 50 Pitches,” FiveThirtyEight, February 3, 2015, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-year-ron-hunt-got-hit-by-50-pitches/.

6 Keri.

7 Keri.

8 Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, (New York: Free Press, 2001), 520.

9 Keri, “The Year Ron Hunt Got Hit By 50 Pitches.”

10 Keri.

11 Jack Friedman, “For Don Baylor, Baseball Is a Hit or Be Hit Proposition,” People, August 24, 1987, https://people.com/archive/for-don-baylor-baseball-is-a-hit-or-be-hit-proposition-vol-28-no-8/.

12 Friedman.

13 Jose De Jesus Ortiz, “Don Baylor brings rugged style back to game,” Houston Chronicle, March 28, 2004, https://www.chron.com/sports/astros/article/Baseball-Notebook-Don-Baylor-brings-rugged-style-1959380.php.

14 Mark Liptak, “Flashing Back . . . with Chet Lemon,” White Sox Interactive, ND, http://www.whitesoxinteractive.com/rwas/index.php?category=11&id=2719.

15 Benjamin Pomerance, “Where Are They Now: Ron Hunt,” Baseball Savvy, January 14, 2011, http://www.baseballsavvy.com/w_hunt.html.

16 Smiles, ”Ee-Yah,” 79.

17 Tara Krieger, “Frankie Crosetti,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/460d26a7.

18 Mark Stewart, “Minnie Minoso,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/796bd066.

19 Larry Moffi and Jonathan Kronstadt, Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947–1959, (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 43.

20 Jay Jaffe, “Baseball pioneer and seven-time MLB All-Star Minnie Minoso dies,” Sports Illustrated, March 1, 2015, https://www.si.com/mlb/2015/03/01/minnie-minoso-chicago-white-sox-cubs-mlb-cuban-obituary.

21 Los Angeles Times, “Minnie Minoso dies; Chicago’s first black big-league baseball player,” March 1, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-minnie-minoso-20150302-story.html.

22 Christina Kahrl, “’If Jackie Could Make It, I Could Too,’” ESPN.com, http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/page/blackhistoryMLBminoso/white-sox-great-minnie-minoso-integration-fan-appreciation-cuba-hof-slight.

23 As of the beginning of the 2018 season, Craig Biggio ranked 11th in baseball history with 12,504 career plate appearances. Biggio’s 34 HBP in 1997 translates into an HBP+ of 516; although that was the highest single-season HBP+ mark of his career, it was still well out of the top 20 of all time due to his extraordinary 744 plate appearances and a robust league-wide HBP rate of 0.88 percent.

24 Mike Fast, “Spinning Yarn: Why are Batters Hit by Pitches?” Baseball Prospectus, August 17, 2011, https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/14807/spinning-yarn-why-are-batters-hit-by-pitches/.

25 Neil Weinberg, “The Man Who Hasn’t Been Hit in Almost Six Years,” Fangraphs, January 13, 2017, https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-man-who-hasnt-been-hit-in-almost-six-years/.

26 The PITCHf/x data was extracted from the two 5×5 heat maps (from both the right and left sides of the plate) for the 2007 to 2016 seasons on Coco Crisp’s Fangraphs player page at https://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1572.

27 Jacob Pomrenke, “Bones Ely,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/3a97d15b.

28 Pomrenke.

29 Jonathan Fraser Light, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball, 2nd ed., (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005), 412.

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