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Jul-09-11
 | | Phony Benoni: <playground player> No idea. I was looking into Jim Tabor, whose only rookie home run was a grand slam and hit two in a game his second year, but he had a couple of small ones in between. Tabor was an interesting player. Five-tool third baseman, though he couldn't always speak for the accuracy of his arm. Hard-nosed guy nicknamed "Rawhide", he once slid into Detroit's Joe Hoover so hard that the unfortunate shortstop passed a kidney stone on the spot. Alas, he was also played far too hard off the field. Out of baseball by age 36, and died soon after from a heart attack. <keypusher> I'll have to check and see if Jon Spoelstra is any relation to long-time Detroit sportswriter Watson Spoelstra. And impressive as Dayton's record is, the Redskins selling out every game since 1966 seems even more astounding. |
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Jul-09-11
 | | OhioChessFan: For some reason <Harmon Killebrew> popped in my head per the 2 grand slams. |
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Jul-09-11
| | Phony Benoni: No, Jeter is not the first to hit a home run for #3000; Wade Boggs did it too. Do you remember the only player to make it with a triple? |
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| Jul-09-11 | | Jim Bartle: No Yasztremski-like wait this time. First time up with 2999, home run. One of the youngest ever to reach 3000. |
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Jul-09-11
| | Phony Benoni: <OCF> Killebrew sounded interesting until I looked up his stats. He hit his first 4 home runs in 1955--and drove in a total of 7 runs the entire season. http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/...
Not much math needed. Limited playing time, of course. <Playgroundplayer> has got a bit of a stumper here. |
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Jul-09-11
| | OhioChessFan: I tried to cheat and do a search for the answer. That didn't work, but I did find this interesting tidbit: Who hit 6 grand slams in one season but never had another? |
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Jul-09-11
| | Phony Benoni: <OCF> You have to remember that this is a librarian's forum, not a bar. Looking things up is never cheating around here. I knew Don Mattingly hit six in one year, but he never hit another? That's remarkable. |
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| Jul-09-11 | | crawfb5: Bill Duggleby hit a grand slam in his first ML at bat in 1898, but I have no idea if his second HR was a grand slam. |
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| Jul-10-11 | | playground player: <crawfb5> I don't think you have to go back as far as 1898. Of course, the difficulty with answering this particular trivia question is that nobody keeps records of such things. But I do know the answer to the question, to be revealed as soon as <Phony Benoni> gives up. BTW, I think Derek Jeter might be the only shortstop with 3,000 hits. He's also the first Yankee to do it. |
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Jul-10-11
| | Phony Benoni: <playground player> Honus Wagner also had 3000+ hits primarily as a shortstop, though he played some at every position except catcher. Cal Ripken should probably count as a shortstop, and Robin Yount spent about half his career there before moving to the outfield. I was surprised to learn that Carl Yastrzemski played 35 games at third base. Of course, at Fenway Park playing third base is almost the same as playing left field. As for the grand slam question, I officially give up. My usual sources haven't helped, I've run out of ideas, and I need to get back to real life. |
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| Jul-10-11 | | suenteus po 147: Hey, guys. How does one follow baseball regularly if one doesn't possess a satellite or cable sports channel package? Are there any good websites with online commentary or play-by-play reviews? |
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Jul-10-11
| | Phony Benoni: <suenteus po 147> There are probably better sites, but I've been using the baseball section at CBS Sports, http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/scoreb.... That's just the general scoreboard, but each game can be followed in detail using their GameTracker, which also allows for discussion of games in progress. There are also pages for each team, with message boards for discussion. It's free, and it generally has the information I'm looking for, but the ads can be irritating. The message boards contain the usual mix of erudition and illiteracy found on the Internet, but the game discussions in particular generally start south of ridiculous and go downhill fast.
I don't find it a friendly place for discussion.
Probably the most used is the Major League Baseball site itself at http://www.mlb.com. You can get more detail and features, but it's so big that it can be irritatingly slow. And self-promotion wears on me in a hurry. |
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Jul-10-11
 | | perfidious: <Phony Benoni: <OCF> Killebrew sounded interesting until I looked up his stats. He hit his first 4 home runs in 1955--and drove in a total of 7 runs the entire season. Not much math needed. Limited playing time, of course.> Yes, because he was a bonus baby: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_... Tabor was the second player in history to hit two GS in a game, after Tony Lazzeri-it's curious that both of them died so young. Should we expect Fernando Tatis and/or Bill Mueller to also go at an early age? |
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Jul-10-11
| | Phony Benoni: <perfidious> Jim Northrup died earlier this year, but Tony Cloninger still survives. The oldest, at 77, appears to be Jim Gentile. |
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| Jul-10-11 | | Jim Bartle: Roger Angell in The New Yorker: "...he motored on past the number yesterday like a smiling viscount in a Ferrari, on his way to someplace else." http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo... |
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| Jul-11-11 | | playground player: <Phony Benoni> Now that I feel like a right dicky-doo-dah for not even thinking of Honus Wagner as a SS with 3,000 hits, for thinking of Robin Yount as a centerfielder, and for not thinking of Ripken at all (!), I will reveal the answer to my trivia question. The first, and possibly the only, player whose first two major league home runs were grand slams was (drum roll, please)... Horace Clarke! the much-booed NY Yankees second baseman of the "rebuilding era" of the late 1960s and early 70s. Source of information: Yankee broadcasters Phil Rizzuto, Bill White, and Frank Messer, who used to mention Horace's unusual achievement from time to time. I don't think you'll find it in any record book--but Bill White would have made it his business to find out whether it was true. My friends and I, as college kids, used to visit with Horace at Yankee Stadium. We were "the International Horace Clarke Fan Club, and he always seemed mighty glad to see us--probably because everybody else in the New York area probably wanted his head on a pole. |
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Jul-11-11
| | Phony Benoni: Easy enough to verify, once you know. Here's #1:
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... And #2:
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... And, for all those who can't get enough of Horace Clarke or just want to read an interesting story: http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm... I would never had even thought of guessing him. |
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| Jul-11-11 | | playground player: <Phony>, my hat is off to you as the greatest research librarian in these parts! Thanks for that wonderful article on the Hoss--brings back fond memories of a time when fans could actually hobnob with the players after the game. |
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Jul-11-11
| | OhioChessFan: <pp: brings back fond memories of a time when fans could actually hobnob with the players after the game.> Things were way different in the 60's. I was at a Reds game in Crosley Field an hour before the game, and a bunch of players were throwing baseballs into the stands. Two players in particular caught my attention that day. One was Pete Rose. I am angry I can't remember who the other was for sure, though I think Johnny Bench. Anyway, the two of them got into a contest to see who could throw a ball the highest. Pete happened to throw one all the way out of the park, laughed hilariously and threw the rest of the balls he had out of the park. If a player of that caliber today, making 20 million a year, took a chance on hurting his arm like that, the owner would have a stroke. Back then, it was good public relations. |
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| Jul-11-11 | | Jim Bartle: OCF: Did Pete bet the other guy he could throw it out first? Is it true that the Crosley Field outfield sloped upward as it neared the fences? |
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Jul-11-11
| | perfidious: <OhioChessFan: ...One was Pete Rose. ....Pete happened to throw one all the way out of the park, laughed hilariously and threw the rest of the balls he had out of the park. If a player of that caliber today, making 20 million a year, took a chance on hurting his arm like that, the owner would have a stroke.> Ain't that the truth. |
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Jul-11-11
| | OhioChessFan: <JB> Pete always loved his gambling. My dad often saw him at the horse races. Left field did slope upward, though I don't remember that. |
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Jul-11-11
| | OhioChessFan: A couple pictures of the inclined outfield, usually called the left field terrace. In reading up on it, I found the incline was over almost the whole field, though the only references I've ever heard were to left field. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ShlV8Y5pY...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nwaEao5Y6... |
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Jul-11-11
| | OhioChessFan: The 6 grand slams in a year and never again was indeed Don Mattingly. |
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Jul-11-11
| | Phony Benoni: <OCF> Upon seeing the first picture, I had to figure out what game it came from. I'm not completely sold on Bill James and His Wacky Sabermathematicians. Some of their stats seem simply otherworldly. But the best thing they have done is stimulate an interest in preserving baseball's statistics, and thus its history. I could hang around places like Retrosheet all day just browsing the scores and the stats, and looking up all sorts of absurd things. At first, I was thought it would be from the 1950s after looking at the Mountain Dew Ad. However, I then saw Houston on the scoreboard and knew it had to be 1962-1971, when Crosley Field closed. We know the approximate date from seeing that Chicago is coming in for a series on June 21-23.
A little trial and error located it quickly enough.
The picture is from the first game of a doubleheader played on Sunday, June 9, 1968. It's the top of the 5th, with Cincinnati leading 8-0. The Cards have one out with a runner on second and Lou Brock at the plate. That's Alex Johnson slanting in left field. Brock flew out to center for the second out. After that, the deluge. And I don't mean a rain delay: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... |
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