Baseball Daily Miscellany

Baseball Hall of Fame members who were inducted wearing an Minnesota Twins cap:

The Washington Senators relocated to Minnesota in 1960 after 59 years in the Capital. Although based in Minneapolis, the franchise re-branded by assuming the name of the State, with the “Twins” representation intended so as not to discriminate between the twin cities of Minneapolis and St.Paul. Since 1961, the Twins have won two World Series titles (1987 & 1991) and took the American League Pennant in 1965.

Cal Ripken Jr, the “Iron Man” was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility on 9 January 2007, just 8 votes short of a unanimous selection. He played his entire career with the Baltimore Orioles and starred in a record 2,632 consecutive games from 30 May 1982 to 19 September 1998.

In 1968, the pendulum had swung hugely to favour the pitcher over major league batsmen. In that year, Carl Yastzremski won the American League batting title with an all-time low batting average of just .301. In addition, Denny McLain of the Detroit Tigers won 31 games, making him the last player to win 30 games in a season, and St Louis starting pitcher Bob Gibson completed the season with an astronomically low ERA of just 1.12. As a result, from 1969 the pitching mound was lowered and the strike zone reduced.

Bob Gibson

 American League

National League

The Shot Heard Around The World

In 1951, both the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants finished the regular season with identical 96-58 records in the race for the National League pennant which meant a three-game playoff. That the play-off had been forced at all was a minor miracle as the Giants, under tough talking former Dodgers manager Leo “The Lip” Durocher won 37 of their final 44 games to claw back a deficit that had been a massive 13 ½ games in mid-August.

Brooklyn won the toss for home advantage and opted to play the Game 1 at Ebbets Field which meant the remaining two games would be fought out at the Giant’s Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan. The Dodgers’ plan backfired as the Giants took the first game 3-1 with a two run home run by Glasgow born Bobby Thompson off Brooklyn starting pitcher Ralph Branca. But the Dodgers avenged this defeat when the tie moved north to the Polo Grounds with a 10-0 complete game shutout by former World War II paratrooper Clem Labine, thus setting up the decisive game at the Polo Grounds on 3 October 1951.

 The decider was touted as a pitching battle between the Dodgers 20 game winner Don Newcombe and Sal Maglie who had won 23 games for the Giants. It was a tight contest, with the Dodgers taking the lead in the first inning and the Giants unable to draw level until the bottom of the seventh inning. The game then exploded into life. In the eighth, Maglie conceded 3 runs and the Dodgers moved into the bottom of the ninth inning with what looked like an unassailable 4-1 lead. Newcombe, like his opposite number Maglie was feeling the affects of a long, hard season and attempted to retire from the game only to be persuaded to stay on the mound by the influential Jackie Robinson. However, his tired arm then proceeded to give up two singles and a double, allowing the Giants to score, making it 4-2. With Mueller and Lockman of the Giants on base, Dodgers manager Charlie Dressen decided to relieve Newcombe with Ralph Branca. It was a puzzling move as Bobby Thomson was next up to bat for the Giants and had scored several home runs off Branca that year, including the winning home run in Game 1, just two days earlier. What followed is possibly the most famous play in baseball’s illustrious history. Branca’s first pitch was a fastball and a strike for 0-1. His second was also a tactical fastball straight at Thomson’s body, but the batsman shifted back and pulled a line drive into the left field stands. With two players on base, the three run home run had won the game for the Giants and was described famously and ecstatically by the normally calm and collected Giant’s radio commentator Russ Hodges:

 Branca throws…there’s a long drive, it’s gonna be, I believe…THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left-field stands! The Giants win the pennant and they’re going crazy, they’re going crazy! Ohhhhh-oh!!!”

 The most famous home-run in history was immortalised as the “Shot Heard around the World” after an article in the New York Daily News described it as such in a report on the game the following day. Unfortunately for the Giants, the momentum didn’t carry and they lost the World Series to Joe DiMaggio and the New York Yankees in six games. 

Thomson's famous line drive

Burleigh Grimes began his major league baseball career in September 1916 as a pitcher. He never shaved on the days he pitched which led to his nickname, Ol’ Stubblebeard.

He was renowned for throwing the spitball, a ball whose trajectory was averted most commonly by the application of saliva. Such ball tampering was outlawed in 1920 but Grimes was one of 17 spitballers who were permitted at the time to continue using such tactics until their retirement. Grimes was the last surviving member of this unique club, retiring in 1934, his spitters having helped him appear in four World Series.

In 1911 and 1912, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson of the Cleveland Naps achieved batting averages of .408 and .395 respectively. Incredibly, neither average was enough to gain him the American League batting title as he was beaten in both years by the great Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers who posted stats of .420 and .410.

Jackson was banned from the game in 1920 after his association with the “Black Sox Scandal” in which team members of the Chicago White Sox participated in a conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series.

The Braves franchise has played in Atlanta, Georgia since 1966. They have played in two other cities under five different franchise names: 

The Braves won 14 consecutive National League Division Titles between 1991 and 2005. The total included 11 Eastern Division Titles from 1995 to 2005, preceded by 3 Western Division Titles from 1991 to 1993 prior to the 1994 players strike. Despite this, the Braves won only a single the World Series Championship during this period, beating the Cleveland Indians over 6 games (4-2) in 1995.

They also won the World Series as the Boston Braves in 1914 and the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 (becoming the first team to win the Series after relocating). Their 1995 win saw them become the only franchise to have won the World Series in three different home cities.