Surprising baseball facts
 

Here's one that doesn't seem right -- Greg Maddux pitched for the Braves only one more season (11) than for the Cubs (10).

I’ve always liked Warren Spahns career stats:

Pitching: 363 wins — 356 with Braves, 4 with Mets, 3 with Giants
Batting: 363 hits — 356 with Braves, 4 with Mets, 3 with Giants
Playoff pitching: 4 wins
Playoff batting: 4 hits

In 1919 Cleveland pitcher Ray Caldwell was hit by lightening during a game. He finished the game and picked up the win.

Jim Palmer is the only pitcher in major league history to win World Series games in three different decades; 1966, 1970 (and 1971) and 1983.

That was randomly cool. Thank you.

And never gave up a grand slam in his career.

Hoyt Wilhelm hit his first and only home run in his very first at bat.

Rogers Hornsby played until he was 41.

At age 35 he had 2855 hits.

Over the next 6 injury-filled seasons he only managed 75 hits over 305 plate appearances. Even with the injuries he still managed hitting .291 with a .400 ob%.

He finished his career with 2930 hits. He should have been flirting with 3500 hits

Cecil Fielder and Prince Fielder both hit 319 career home runs. Stan Musial had 1815 hits at home and 1815 hits on the road. Adam Dunn hit exactly 40 home runs four years in a row.

2010 Topps Prince Fielder is an all-time great baseball card. If it was made a decade later it would be a SP/SSP at best.

In 1974 Herb Washington appeared in 92 games for the A’s. He scored 29 runs and stole 29 bases, appeared in 3 World Series game and won a ring without ever getting an official at bat.

Joe Niekro hit only one home run in his career. The victim was his brother, Phil, in 1976.

In 1941, Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games, got stopped, and then hit safely in the next 16 games as well. Meanwhile, Ted Williams went 6-for-8 on the final day of the season to hit .406. But neither led the American League in hits that season.

From 9/21/75 through 9/25/75 Jim and Gaylord Perry had identical lifetime records 215-174.

Mattingly hit 6 grand slams in '87 which is tied for the most in any season. Crazy stat is he never hit another one in his career.

I always liked that Vinny Castilla of the Rockies
had 40 Home Runs, 113 RBI & hit .304 in 1996 & in 1997

Khris Davis hit .247 four years in a row.

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Columbia University, hardly a big name these days in collegiate athletics, is the only college in America that has three alumni in the baseball hall of fame.

Lou
Eddie Collins
John Montgomery Ward

John Miller hit HRs in his first and last plate appearances. This is made especially bewildering by his .164 career BA and the fact that those were the only two HRs of his brief career.

In a ten season career, Will White won 40 games three times and 30 games twice...yet nobody ever seems to talk about him getting into Cooperstown.

Baseball Stats
 

Speaking of Spahn, 277 of his 363 lifetime wins came AFTER the age of 30….incredible! Only Cy Young (316) and Phil Niekro (287) compiled more wins after turning 30.

Already posted about stanthe man.

University of Michigan has George Sisler, Charlie Gehringer and Barrly Larkin.

USC produced Randy Johnson, and both Don Sutton and Tom Seaver also went there for a year.

Still pretty amazing that Columbia produced 3 HOFers.

Speaking of Lou Gehrig--not everyone knows what a well-rounded athlete he was. He had football scholarship to Columbia and was their pitching Ace. His greatest mound performance came on April 18, 1923, the same day that Yankee Stadium opened, in a game against Williams College. Gehrig struck out 17 batters, setting a school record that stands to this day.

Chuck Finley was the first pitcher to have two four-strikeout innings. He did it three times before anyone else had done it twice. All three were in a period of less than one year.

In 1945, Tommy Brown became the youngest to hit a MLB hr at 17 yrs old.


https://www.history.com/this-day-in-...er-tommy-brown

Thanks! The claim sounded reasonable and I guess was correct for many years.

Gehrig had to sit out the 1921 football season at Columbia as a suspension for playing some semi-professional baseball in Hartford the preceding summer under an assumed name ("Lou Lewis" I believe). I do think he played in 1922.

Stan “the man” Musial and Ken Griffey Jr. “the kid” share a birthday (November 21) and a hometown--Donora, PA, population less than 5,000.

$700,000,000 for 10 years.

Mario Mendoza's career batting average is above the Mendoza line.

I had to look up who led the AL in hits in 1941. C. Travis… I didn’t know this as both Williams & DiMaggio outshined the entire season

Roberto Clemente is the only MLB player to hit a walk-off inside-the-park grand slam. His hit gave the Pirates a 9–8 win over the Chicago Cubs at Forbes Field on July 25th, 1956.

Brian

Odd Stat
 

Mickey Lolich hit his only home run in the 1968 World in Game Three off of Nelson Briles. He also pitched 3 winning complete games.

If you include Koufax, who attended night classes in Architecture at Columbia during his Rookie season, and actually went to class right after the Dodgers' game 7 when they finally won a World Series, then Columbia can claim 4 HOFers.

Hall of Famer Joe Sewell had an interesting career:

1) He was called up mid-season by Cleveland to replace Ray Chapman after he tragically died after being hit by a Carl Mays pitch.

2) He used only one bat during his entire major league career. It was a 35-inch, 40-ounce Ty Cobb model Louisville Slugger he dubbed "Black Betsy" and kept in condition by seasoning it with chewing tobacco and stroking it with a Coke bottle.

3. He only struck out 114 times in 7,132 at bats including 115 straight games without a strikeout.

I had to look up Cecil Travis, too.

He should be in the Hall of Fame.

Yeah, I've always said there'd be no argument from me on that idea.

Both Cecil and his contemporary Mel Harder, who was a friend of mine, need to be put in there. Harder has the strange distinction of getting enough votes but NOT being inducted (?!). He could have lived to see it happen, too. Stupid, stupid "institution", Cooperstown is.

Nolan Ryan was robbed of a Cy Young in 1973 by the pretty boy in Baltimore.

Game 2.

Spahn is incredible. Look up his WW2 combat experience.

+1,000,000 on that. Some of these guys getting in are pathetic next to him. Now he's forgotten.

Not trying to be argumentative, but it doesn't look like Harder came close to getting the 75% needed to get in with the regular voting. Which election are you referring to where he got enough votes but was not inducted? Was it one of the versions of the Veteran's Committee? It's harder to find percentages for those, especially for the earlier incarnations of the committee.

EVERY ONE of you, +1 +1 +1 for each of you!!!

Great thread. Thank you.


Will White and Cecil Travis should both be in The H _ _ _ of F _ _ _.

Joel Horlen's ERA in 1964 was 1.88. https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...orlejo01.shtml

Admittedly not especially interesting, though obviously very good, but I just noticed it is listed wrong on the AL ERA Leaders 1965 Topps card. (Not sure why these are sideways, for some reason I consistently have this problem on this forum.)

I was checking out another 19th century Hall of Fame candidate (Jim McCormick) and I noticed that he had won 40 games and lost 40 games in different seasons. Will White and George Bradley (who threw the first National League no-hitter) are the only other players to do this.

Wow amazing.

In 1982, Dave Kingman led the NL in HRs with 37 and finished last in batting average at .204.

Dick Ruthven pitched for 14 years in MLB and won a World Series in 1980. He made two All Star Games. In one of those years, he led the league in losses and in the other, he had an ERA over 5.00.

I think you’re leaving too much of a wide border around the item you’re trying to show. If you take your photo and crop it closer, you can then use the preview function to see how it’s going to look before you actually post it. Then if needed, you can rotate the photo to its correct orientation.

In the history of the major leagues, there have been 24 perfect games (should be 25).

Two of the perfect games were thrown by Yankees (actually, 4 of the perfectos were thrown by 4 different Yankees).

Don Larsen and David Wells were two Yankees that threw to perfection and both attended the same high school (Pt. Loma High School - San Diego).

Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays started and finished their careers in the same city but with different teams.

Ted Wingfield, who began his career as a shortstop for the Chattanooga Lookouts, struck out 1 batter in 74.2 innings for the 1927 Red Sox.

Red Barbary was a minor league catcher from 1941 to 1945. His pitching line for the Piedmont League Charlotte Hornets in 1942 was 1-0, 22 innings, 11 hits, 3 runs - and 1 game. The catcher won a 3-2 22 inning game.

Frank Shone won a pitching triple crown in his first full season as a pitcher. As a 31-year-old former PCL catcher, with Albuquerque in the West Texas-New Mexico League, he had a line of 21-7/223/3.85.

In 1942, for Sheboygan of the Wisconsin State League, Roman Wantuck had a 19-6 record, 2.70 ERA, .291 AVG, and hit 16 home runs in 62 games. He started the All-Star game as pitcher, threw 5 shut-out innings, and hit two home runs. He was killed in action in New Guinea June 16, 1944.

Sachio Kinusaga hit 504 home runs in his 23-year-career, all of it spent with the Hiroshima Carp, but never hit more than 31 in a season.

Craft Akard had a 18-1 record in his last pro season.

Katsuya Nomura was a catcher who hit 657 home runs.

In 1944 Roger Wolff was 4-15 with a 4.99 ERA for the Washington Senators. In 1945 he was 20-10 with a 2.12 ERA.

Ted Williams homered in his final at bat...three different times. When he went back to war in 1952, nearing 34 years old, many thought he wouldn't come back and this would be his last at bat. He homered. All through 1954, he told people this was his last season, and he didn't play the first couple of months of 1955 because he was going through a nasty divorce and didn't want his wife getting alimony. He homered in his last at bat of 1954. And then, of course, he homered in his last at bat of 1960.

Tony Gwynn had more four hit games (45)
Than Games with more than one strike out (34)
33 Were 2 strike out games .. he struck out three times only once

What a shame that Teddy Z is no longer with us. I am sure he could have added many nuggets to this post.

The Minnesota Twins have been in three World Series. Each time they won Games 1 and 2 (at home,) lost Games 3, 4, and 5 (on the road,) and won Game 6 (at home.)

Hughie Jennings was hit by a pitch a record 272 times over 5,648 Plate Appearances. This included a stretch of 5 seasons, where he was hit a total of 202 times.

Ruben Sierra closed out his career with 15 straight years without being hit by a pitch over 5,769 Plate Appearances.

He would have posted something like this:

What a great thread. Ted Williams's 3 last at bat home runs. How amazing is that? Each one could easily have been the last one. Let me add that if Johnny Vander Meer and Don Larsen never did another thing, throwing back-to-back no hitters and a perfect game in the World Series is more than enough. Can't see anyone topping those anytime soon. Or Joltin' Joe's 56 game hit streak, either.

Three players hit a homer in their only PA for a franchise

* Les "Buster" Narum (BAL) May 3, 1963
* Jamie Quirk (CLE) Sept 27, 1984
* Gustavo Chacin (HOU) May 31, 2010

In 1903, Joe McGinnity started and completed both games of a double-header three times in one month, winning all 6 games.

As a pitcher, A.G. Spalding won over 250 games.

In a six year stretch.

By the time he was barely 26 years old.


He also has the highest all-time career win/loss percentage in baseball history.

On August 17, 1957 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia, Alice Roth was struck in the face by a foul ball off the bat of Richie Ashburn, resulting in a broken nose. After a brief delay for medical staff to attend to Ms. Roth, on the very next pitch, Ashburn lined another foul and hit the woman as she was being carried off on a stretcher. That ball broke a bone in her leg.

Brian

And of course in 2019, the Washington Nationals won the first two (on the road), lost the next three (at home), and won the sixth (on the road).

Bizzarro world stuff.

It happened with the Veteran's Committee in 1999. He received the 75% needed, but two other players received more. At the time, only two were to be elected, so Mel was out even though he was "in".

Both Harder and Travis seem like such ideal Veteran's Committee picks, too. With the caliber of baseball surrounding them in the 1930's-40's AL, it's no surprise that they'd be lost to time and thought for an extended period. What bothers me, though, is that Mel received enough votes, was subsequently locked out on a technicality, and apparently just never thought of again for the next quarter century?!

I suppose that it shouldn't bother me so much, because I doubt it bothered Mel. He was so incredibly kind and humble and would have done Cooperstown proud in a similar way to his teammate Joe Sewell. He had also been in poor health those last few years of his life, and maybe it was a blessing in its own way. He would have zapped whatever strength he had replying to the additional boatload of autograph requests, including a handwritten letter in each envelope.

Another great Harder fact that fits in to the theme of this thread: Mel actually threw the first and the last pitches at Municipal Stadium. Going by memory from my visit to his place, regarding that final pitch, he said, "I barely got it over the plate." Well, Mel, you were 83 years old...

[This inspired me to check YouTube to watch that moment for the first time. Thankfully, somebody with a HandyCam was filming it and has uploaded their shaky footage. It was a ridiculously high pitch, but Mel did much more than "barely get it over the plate". His statement just speaks more to his incredibly humble nature.]

"On August 17, 1957 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia, Alice Roth was struck in the face by a foul ball off the bat of Richie Ashburn, resulting in a broken nose. After a brief delay for medical staff to attend to Ms. Roth, on the very next pitch, Ashburn lined another foul and hit the woman as she was being carried off on a stretcher. That ball broke a bone in her leg."

Winner, winner; chicken, dinner!

Makes you wonder how much Ms. Roth bore a resemblance to Ruth Ann Steinhagen and he was out for retribution!

Fun Facts
 

Going into the final 10 days of his remarkable career, no one had ever pinch hit for Ted Williams, arguably baseball’s greatest all-time hitter. Then, on September 20, 1960 in the first inning against the Baltimore Orioles, Ted fouled a ball off his instep, painfully limping into the dugout….he could not return. Carol Hardy was called off the bench to pinch hit for “The Kid” and promptly lined into a double play. A truly historic moment for Hardy who will forever be dubbed as the only man to ever pinch hit for the iconic Ted Williams!

Interestingly enough, right-fielder Sammy Vick is “allegedly” the only player to ever pinch hit for baseball’s other premier slugger, Babe Ruth. The Babe and Vick played together on the 1920 Yankees, Ruth replacing Vick as the Yankees right fielder. Vick insisted for years that Miller Huggins selected him to pinch hit for Ruth in a 1920 game due to the Bambino straining his wrist. Unfortunately, Vick never applied an actual date to his story, and based on baseball reference, there is no official account of this occurrence.

Hitting for the Natural cycle (14) is more rare then throwing a perfect game (24)

Masaichi Kaneda became a regular starter for the Koketsu Swallows at 16. From 1951 (age 17) to 1964 (age 30) he threw between 300 and 400 innings, won between 20 and 31 games and struck out between 229 and 350 batters every single year. By the end of his age 30 season he had won 353 games and struck out 4065 batters. Over the next five seasons, from 1965 to the end of his career, he won 47 games and struck out 425 batters.

What’s a natural cycle if I may ask?

A natural cycle is hitting a single, double, triple, and home run in that order.

I once got one in Strat-O-Matic.

Thanks.

Thank you. I was not aware of this and it's always good to learn something new.

I'm not familiar with the careers of either Cecil Travis or Mel Harder. Looking at their stats, it looks like Travis may have had a chance to be in the Hall of Fame until he missed 3 years for military service. When he came back after WWII, he was clearly no longer the same player and was out of the majors at age 33. I can see an argument being made for him being inducted, but he probably needed a few more good years that he likely would have had if not for being in the military.

As for Harder, his stats show 4 or 5 very good seasons but overall it looks to me that he had a solid career but not one that makes me think he definitely belongs in the Hall of Fame. Regarding him getting 75% of the vote from the Veterans Committee but not getting in because 2 others were higher, does anyone have a link to the actual voting results showing that? I found a few places that mention it happened but couldn't find the actual results anywhere. If it was in 1999, then it looks like the Veterans Committee elected 4 people that year not 2.

https://baseballhall.org/discover/in...ss%20of%201999.

What you say about Travis has always been the biggest strike against him.

With Mel, it's the old, "Well, if he played in New York, he'd have been a shoe-in!" argument. Alas, Mel was with the lowly Indians for his entire career, retiring the season before he'd perhaps have had a chance to win a WS ring as a player. I supposed the same could be said for Travis, as he played in Washington, but I think the argument is stronger in this regard for a 20-year career, single team man.

I agree with your assessments as to why they're not in, and most certainly why they weren't good candidates immediately following their careers, but the "why not's" are also there and they always looked like solid picks as VC selections. Lots of worse and more embarrassing selections, to be certain. I would not be embarrassed to see these two guys voted in.

I saw that four were elected that year, but apparently they could elect two "regular" veterans, plus (in two separate ballots) one from the 19th century and one Negro Leaguer. At least if I am understanding the rules correctly. As for the actual voting, I can't find the totals.

I just got a 1973 Topps Willie Mays a few weeks back. He was pretty much done by the time he came to Queens but seeing the greatest player ever in a Mets uniform warms my heart. Happy they retired his number finally.

I grew up watching and listening to Phillies games. Richie Ashburn was a broadcaster during those years. This story came up from time to time. Richie apparently kept in touch with her throughout the years.

Neither would be the worst picks made by the Veterans Committee that's for sure.

Without seeing the actual voting results, I find it hard to believe Harder really got 75% of the vote but didn't get inducted. Given how much discussion there is about Hall of Fame voting every year, I would think something like that happening would be more documented and written about than just a few claims that it happened without any real evidence provided. I could be wrong because the Veterans Committee voting was not always well reported, but it seems like something like that happening would be well known.

John,

Ted and I often spoke over email about how underappreciated Johnny Mize was as a ballplayer. To channel the spirit of Ted, and give an interesting Johnny Mize fact:

Mize played for the Great Lakes Naval Station baseball team, during the war where he hit .475, and smacked 17 homers in 51 games. He played with other notable major leaguers including Dom DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, Sam Chapman, Johnny Lipon, and Pee Wee Reese. It's considered to be one of the best World War II teams ever assembled.

Ted and I also spoke a lot about Joe Page, former relief pitcher for the New York Yankees, who held the record for most victories as a reliever, until it was broken by Luis Arroyo. Page was very versatile and was a bit ahead of his time. One of the first "closers" out there!

- James

Speaking of Johnny Mize, in 1947 he hit 51 home runs and struck out 42 times. I don't know if that is a record ("most home runs in a season where you had fewer strikeouts than home runs") but I was not able to find anyone who beat 51.

Reminds me of a piece I once owned. The original collector had found a way to combine two hobbies into one: baseball autographs, and writing to postmasters in obscure towns for hand cancellations featuring names related to the autograph collection. I still have one or two from this assemblage, but the page is long gone.