Category: MLB

Gushing SI article about El Hombre

An on-line exhibit at the Library of Congress

Baseball Research Journal article about the 1887 Binghamton Bingos.

A search led me to a picture of the Bingos, including Hall of Famer Wee Willie Keeler (“Hit ’em where they ain’t.”) Keeler looks to be in the middle row, second from right. Seems he played only part of the 1892 season with Binghamton before being snapped up by the New York Giants.

This was one of my favorite lunchboxes when I was a kid. This is probably around 1971, fourth grade. It came with a diamond on the back, magnetic baserunner markers, and a spinner, a la All-Star Baseball. Probably the first baseball simulation I ever played, with friends after a PBJ and two-cent milk in the school cafeteria in Titusville.

Just noticed that the positioning of the infielders on the diamond is dumb. They’ve got a shift on for a righty, but the batter bats lefty. Must’ve slipped past their fact checkers!

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Baseball Digest is now archived at Google! Issues range from 1945 through 2007. Some issues missing from the early years.

Interesting article about Robison Field, home to the St. Louis Browns/Perfectos/Cardinals from 1893 to 1920. The field had some funky dimensions, as can be seen from the illustration: 470 in left, 500 center, 290 in right.

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Things I learned:

1. The Cardinals were originally named for the color of their stockings, not the bird.
2. The first woman owner in major league baseball was Helene Hathaway Robison Britton, who owned the Cardinals from 1912 to 1916.

Via Fungoes, a tip about Paper of Record, a site that archives newspapers, including The Sporting News. Registration is required, but free.

An old document from the archives revealed the date of the game I saw at Jarry Park in 1976, the Expos hosting the Mets. Tied at one going into the bottom of the ninth, Ellis Valentine led off with a double. After Bombo Rivera grounded out, moving Valentine to third, the Mets intentionally walked Larry Parrish and Jose Morales to load the bases. Mets starter Jerry Koosman was still hurling, and he faced Andre Thornton, looking for the DP to send the game into extra innings. Thornton stroked one to center for the win.

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Signs of how long ago this was: both starting pitchers went the distance, the attendance was 13,102 on a Sunday afternoon, and the game was completed in 2:07.

  

Ramirez is having a great post-season (even though his Dodgers are close to going down at this moment), but what’s that funky colored thing in his mouth? Looks like a mouthpiece, but why would a baseball player need a mouthpiece? Turns out it’s a “Pure Power Mouthpiece,” which claims to improve athletic performance. Riiiight. Cost? $2000. Fitted by “certified” dentists, not just boiled up in a pot like we did back in the day. It’s a Breathe Right for your mouth!

Here are a couple of tilt-shift fakes I made in Photoshop. Click to enlarge.

Lil Yankee Stadium:

Lil Shea:

SABR has put back issues of the Baseball Research Journal on line. The website archives the 1972 thru 1984 editions plus the 1986 and 1989 editions.

Favorite articles:

• A Bizarre Game of Baseball
• Is Pitching 75% of Baseball? Expert Opinions 50 pros say: 60% pitching, 22% hitting, 15% fielding, 4% other. Hmmmm
• The Worst Season Ever The 1899 Cleveland Spiders, victims of the St. Louis Perfectos
• Three Dimensional Baseball The Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants play each other in one game!
• The Batter’s Run Average (B.R.A.) What came first—this or Bill James’ Runs Created?
• Chris Von der Ahe: Baseball’s Pioneering Huckster St. Louis Browns owner
• The 1887 Binghamton Bingos

The countdown search provided an opportunity to identify all the instances of pitchers not batting ninth in the starting lineup. (Standard Retrosheet caveats apply: data runs from 1954-2007, and some games prior to 1974 are missing.)

There are a few periods during which it was used as a consistent strategy.

• Bobby Bragan batted his Pirate pitchers in the 7 spot for the last couple weeks of the 1956 season.
• Lou Boudreau hit the pitcher eighth during the first half of Kansas City’s 1957 season. He was fired soon after.
• Tony La Russa revived the idea in the second half of the 1998 Cardinal campaign.
• TLR took it up again in the last month of 2007. Of course, Tony has been using the pitcher in the 8 slot all season this year. Ned Yost was doing the same thing in Milwaukee, but gave it up in late May.

Some individual pitchers have occasionally batted earlier in the lineup due to their hitting prowess: Don Larsen (.242 career BA), Bob Lemon (.232), and Dontrelle Willis (.234).

The big drought was 1958-1997, during which I find only six occurances.

Cesar Tovar was the only pitcher to lead off the game. Of course, that was his nine-position game in 1968.

Ken Brett batted eighth for the White Sox in front of 3,278 at Comisky late in the 1976 season. That’s the only example I can find of an AL team not using the DH at the start of the game.

The complete list appears after the jump.

Continue reading Pitchers Not Batting Ninth

I use numeric indicators when writing a lineup: 1 for pitcher, 2 for catcher, 3 for firstbaseman, etc. Looking at a lineup the other day I wondered how often there had been a perfect “countdown” lineup in MLB, that is, rightfielder (9) leading off, followed by centerfielder (8), all the way down to pitcher (1) batting ninth.

It gave me an opportunity to work with the Retrosheet game logs, as oppposed to the event files, which I’ve used before. I was a bit disappointed to find that the lineup data in the game logs is pretty much limited to the years for which there are event files, basically 1954-2007. No biggie.

Well, I found not one single instance of a 987654321 lineup! I found two examples of 987653421, but that was about the closest. Strange that it’s never happened in the last 50-odd years.

The most common lineup in the period is 847395261, which looks about right.

A couple of pix taken on 2008-08-30. Click on the thumbnails to view.

The interior of current Yankee Stadium:

The exterior of new Yankee Stadium:

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