Rarest of Baseball Observances?

[DrungoHazewood]

You do realize that no one knew what "OPS" meant back then. It's easy to sneer at people who didn't know what we know now, I suppose. There wasn't even a solid understanding of the value of on-base percentage.

The prior year Tovar had more walks than Ks, sixteen doubles, and three homers. Hunter had 2 PAs in the last four years, and the last year he regularly batted he had no walks and no XBHs in 116 PAs.

[duffaphonic]

I saw Chubby Checker sing at the All Star game in Philly in 1976. When will the ASG be played in Camden Yards again?

[DrungoHazewood]

I saw Chubby Checker sing at the All Star game in Philly in 1976. When will the ASG be played in Camden Yards again?

After Angelos dies and the new ownership group begs for forgiveness for the MASN situation. 2027?

[evenparthrough9]

Mark Whiten's 4 HR 12 RBI game.

[DrungoHazewood]

Mark Whiten's 4 HR 12 RBI game.

On June 15, 1902 Nig Clarke of Corsicana went 8-for-8 with eight homers in a 51-3 win. This was a middling minor league, in a ramshackle park with a short porch being used to avoid the Blue Laws (can't play on Sunday), against a Texarkana team that would fold shortly after the game. But eight homers.

[DrungoHazewood]

On both June 1st and July 4th, 1932 Buzz Arlett hit four homers in a game for the International League Orioles. A switch hitter, three of his HRs were right-handed, the other five lefty. Arlett was almost certainly a very good major league player, probably comparable to a Mark Trumbo or a Nelson Cruz. But he was a poor fielder and his 1931 season with the Phillies where he OPS'd .925 in 121 games is one of the all-time great one-year MLB careers.

[InsideCoroner]

He did indeed: Sept. 4, 1978. Stanhouse came in with two on and two outs in the 9th and picked off Carlton Fisk at first base to end the game.

Even stranger was the fact that there was also a runner at second at the time. So how did Fisk get caught off of first?

I had to look this up. Weird game. Scott McGregor gave up three runs before getting an out, then retired 23 in a row and shut the Sox down for the next 8-2/3 innings. Larry Harlow hit starter Dennis Eckersley's first pitch in the bottom of the first for a home run. Harlow got thrown out at the plate in the 7th, and in the process crashed into Fisk, who had been playing for weeks on end with at least one broken rib. Eckersley took umbrage to that, and plowed his forearm into Harlow, knocking him down and emptying the benches before Singleton pulled Eckersley away. Eckersley would have to leave the game with a bruised elbow. (Said Eckersley later, "It was a very weak move on my part."). 8-time Gold Glover Dwight Evans made two errors in the game, saying he was still dizzy after being rushed back to the line-up after being knocked unconscious by a pitch the previous week. And when Stanhouse came in, with Yaz on second and Fisk on first, he looked back to second and then wheeled and fired to first, picking off Fisk.

If the Sox had won that game, there would have been no one-game playoff between the Yanks and Sox at the end of the '78 season, and no Bucky Dent heroics.