Baseball: The Quirkiest Sport

Since I’m the coauthor of a recent book revolving around baseball’s quirky side, I was delighted to read last month that a minor league pitcher struck out five batters in one inning.  Believe it or not, it wasn’t the first time this had happened.  The trick had been performed in the very same league – the single A South Atlantic League – in 1997.  (On the latter occasion, the pitcher was on the Hickory Crawdads, the best named team this side of the Macon Whoopee.)

While the five strikeouts are impressive, anyone with even a minor acquaintance with baseball will guess how it happened – the catcher missed strike three on two of the five strikeouts, allowing the batter to reach base.  But few people know that a team can record four outs in an inning.  How can that possibly happen?  Let’s call that Question One on today’s Quirky Baseball Quiz, and I’ll give you a hint: the four outs have to occur on the same play.  Here’s the rest of the quiz, with answers and explanations to follow:

2) What was Bob Feller’s present for his mother on Mother’s Day in 1939?

3) What happened on the infamous “potato play”?

4) Can a pinch runner ever be inserted in the middle of a play?

5) How can a pitcher be the winning and losing pitcher in the same game?

ANSWERS

1)      You can indeed get four outs on a play.  Bases loaded, no outs, fly-ball to the outfield.  All three runners tag up.  The outfielder makes the catch and throws to second, where the runner from first has tried to advance.  He’s tagged out.  The second baseman now throws to third, where the runner who started on second successfully tagged up but rounded the base too far.  He dives back to third too late, and is tagged out.  Triple play, three outs, inning over?  Not so fast.  The runner on third crossed home plate before the third out was recorded.  So we’ve just answered a cool trivia question -- how can a run score on a triple play? – but not the one I asked.  The twist is that the defensive team believes that the runner on third left before the catch was made.  They appeal, and the umpire agrees that the runner left too soon.  Out number 4, which is needed to prevent the run from scoring.

2)      Mrs. Feller traveled a few hundred miles to see her son pitch.  Unfortunately, a foul ball hit off Feller sailed into the stands and struck her in the head.  She spent the afternoon in the hospital.  Some 18 years later, another fan was equally unlucky.  In Philadelphia, in 1957, a woman named Alice Roth was struck by a foul ball off the bat of Tim McCarver.  The ball broke her nose, and the game was halted while a stretcher was summoned.  When play resumed, on the very next pitch McCarver hit another foul ball that struck poor Ms. Roth (lying on the stretcher) on the hip.

3)      In a single A game in 1987, an enterprising catcher named Dave Bresnahan tried to pick a runner off third but his throw sailed into left-field.  When the runner scampered home, however, he was astonished to see Bresnahan waiting at home plate with the ball to tag him out.  It turned out the white circular object that had sailed into left-field was a potato, not a baseball.  The reward for Bresnahan’s creativity was expulsion from the league.

4)      The rulebook explicitly permits a pinch-runner for a player who cannot complete his trip around the bases on a home run.  Amazingly, this rule has been invoked twice in the last decade.  When Gabe Kapler ruptured his Achilles rounding second on a ball that cleared the fences, the Red Sox had to send in a runner to complete the trot and score the run.  While an injury was surely the scenario envisioned by the rulebook, an entirely different situation arose a few years later.  Bengie Molina singled off the top of the wall, then left the game for a pinch-runner, Omar Vizquel.  However, after replay review, the umpires determined that the ball was actually a home run.  Molina could not return to the game to enjoy his home run trot – a player removed cannot return under any circumstances. Vizquel could and did finish the trot.

5)      Imagine a game at Yankee Stadium, a pitcher’s duel between the Red Sox’ John Doe and the Yankees’ Joe Blow.  The game is tied zero-zero going into the bottom of the ninth.  If the Yanks score, Blow is the winning pitcher.  But the rains come before the Yankees bat, causing a suspension.  The next day, Blow is traded to the Sox.  When the game is resumed days later, the Sox put him in to pitch the ninth and the Yanks score against him – he is the winning pitcher (for the Yanks) and loser (for the Sox).