Baseball Trivia and Fun Facts!

For the Baseball Fans out there - some trivia and fun facts!

• In April of 1961 Maris hit only one home run, but had 50 before September 1st. The only player to reach that mark before September until Sosa and McGwire did it in '98. Maris had no stolen bases that year.
• Ted Williams won the AL batting titles when he was 39 and again at 40. The last At Bat of Ted's career was a homerun on the last day of the 1960 season.
• The first "Babe" in baseball was Babe Adams who pitched from 1906 to 1926.
• Joe DiMaggio is the only person to play on four World Championship teams in his first four years in the big leagues, the 1936-39 Yankees.
• Mickey Lolich, who pitched for 16 years, hit his only home run in his first World Series game (1968).
• Reggie Jackson had four consecutive home runs spanning Games Five and Six of the 1977 World Series.
• Hank Bauer of the Yankees had hits in 17 consecutive World Series games spanning 1956 to 1958.

These are some of the players that went straight to the majors having never played in the minor leagues:
Catfish Hunter, Al Kaline, Mel Ott, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, Ernie Banks, George Sisler, Dave Winfield, and Robin Yount. Apparently Kaline didn't need time in the Minors because at age 20 he became the youngest player ever to win a batting title by hitting .340 in 1955. Kaline went on to appear in 16 All Star games and win 10 Gold Gloves. He was the first person to win a Gold Glove at two different positions. He played the entire 1971 season without committing an error.  In 1980 Al was only the tenth player elected to the Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility.

Cy Young Award facts:

• First reliever to win was Mike Marshall in 1974. The youngest player to win was Dwight Gooden in 1984.
• Rookie of the Year award fact: Johnny Bench was the first catcher to get the award, 1968.
• Pete Rose: Pete has now admitted to gambling, but will he be forgiven, and get into the Hall of Fame? Pete's lifetime achievements are: 1st in number of games played, 1st in at bats, 1st in hits, 2nd in doubles, 6th in total bases, 4th in runs scored, 7th in fielding pct. among outfielders, etc.

Did You Know...

• Johnny Plessey batted .331 for the Cleveland Spiders in 1891, even though he spent the entire season batting with a rolled-up, lacquered copy of the Toledo Post-Dispatch! 
• Owner of the Chicago Cubs, Bill Veeck, used to have midgets as food vendors at the clubs home ground, because he said that it meant that the paying public didn't have to have their view of the game spoiled! 
• The baseball tradition of spring training came about because in 1885 the Chicago White Stockings went to Hot Springs in Arkansas to prepare for the new season. 
• The world's longest baseball bat is only 120 feet long weighing in at 68,000 pounds.  It resembles the 34 inch wood bat that the Bambino, Babe Ruth Swung, made by Louisville Slugger.  It is located at : 800 West Main Street, Louisville, Kentucky at the Louisville Slugger Museum. 
• The shortest major league baseball player was Edward Carl "Eddie" Gaedel , born in Chicago, Illinois, June 8, 1925. He was an American dwarf who became famous for participating in a MLB game who secretly signed by the St. Louis Browns. He was only 3 feet 7 inches (109 cm) tall and weighing 65 pounds (29.5 kg), his uniform number was 1/8.  He had just one at bat for the Brown's in the second game of a doubleheader on Sunday, August 19, 1951. Gaedel's strike zone measured just an inch and a half. He reached base on four consecutive balls that were all high!Gaedel's autograph now sells for more than Babe Ruth's, he latered passed on June 18, 1961.
• The Longest Baseball Throw on record was in 1957 by Glen Edward Gorbous. Born on July 8 1930 in Drumheller, Alberta,  Canada.  The man with the canon was 6 foot 2 inches tall and weighted in at a modest 175lbs. So weight had nothing to do with it. He threw right and batted left. After a running start, the ball left his arm at an estimated 120 MPH. He was a Canadian minor leaguer, who had a three year stint in the Majors from 1955 - 1957 and still holds the record. The baseball covered a total of 445 feet 10 inches before hitting the ground and breaking the old record of 445 feet 1 inches set in 1956 by Don Grate.  He broke into the show just before the 1950 season in an unknown transaction with the Brooklyn Dodgers later to be traded, November 22, 1954 and drafted by the Cincinnati Redlegs in the 1954 rule V draft. 
• Prior to the 1930 American League season, and prior to the 1931 National League season, fly balls that bounced over or through the outfield fence were home runs! All batted balls that cleared or went through the fence on the fly or that were hit more than 250 feet in the air and cleared or went through the fence after a bounce in fair territory were counted as home runs. After the rule change the batter was awarded second base and these were called "automatic doubles" (ground-rule doubles are ballpark-specific rules) and are covered by rule 6.09(d)-(h) in the MLB Rule Book.
• Babe Ruth reportedly had no "bounce" home runs; Lou Gehrig had a few, so did Rogers Hornsby and many, many other players of that era.
• The longest baseball game, based on time was between the visiting Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago White Sox.  It happened in May 09, 1984, the game went 25 innings and lasted 8 hours and 6 minutes (not sure on the seconds!)  The game began on May 08 but according to MLB rules an inning cannot begin after 12:59 AM so the players and fans had to come back the next day to watch the Chicago White Sox win 7- 6 on a Harold Baines' home run in the 25th inning.
• The curveball was invented by William Cummings, also known as "the Father of the Curveball". It's said he invented the curveball after seeing a spinning clamshell curve across the water after being skipped on a Brooklyn beach. Some historians debate this but he did master the curve ball well before a lot pitchers. He stood 5 foot 9 inches tall and weighed a colossal 120lbs. Candy, as he was also called, was born in Ware, Massachusetts on Nov 18, 1848. 27 years later on April 22, 1875, his journey took him to professional baseball where he broke into the Big Leagues with the Hartford Dark Blues. He lasted 2 years in baseball.

You might be a baseball nut if…

• You subscribe to Baseball Weekly during the off-season.
• You go to amateur ballgames (Little League, softball, etc.) even though you don’t know anyone on the teams.
• Many of your summertime meals seem to consist of $6 hotdogs, $5 nachos and $4 cokes.
• You’re still looking for that Todd van Poppel rookie card.
• The last time you flew across country you planned a stop in Chicago so you could go to Wrigley Field.
• You own a copy of the Official Baseball Rulebook. And you understand the Infield Fly and Balk rules.
• You’ve ever scored a game.
• You’re still carrying on a feud with your neighbor over whether Ichiro should have been eligible for Rookie of the Year.
• You know who pitched the seventh game of the ’68 World Series.
• You have Spring Training season tickets.
• Your spouse asks where you’d like to go on vacation this year and you say, "Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland and Detroit."
• You search out the Internet for web sites about baseball.

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