Baseball: BaseBall Trivia..

that was one that i had looked at when i was deleting posts, i decided to give the benefit of the doubt to several that i considered borderline, it was a judgement call on my part to leave that post on the board, if i had deleted all that were questionable many more posts would be gone

last night the Mariners tied a major league record....what is this record?

Originally posted by aegis fang

Originally posted by ProudAmerican


What player holds the record for most at-bats in a single season? With what team? How many? What year?
Bonus- What side of the plate did the player hit from?

Willie Wilson with KC, he had 705 at bats in 1980, and he was a switch hitter.

Pardon my discursion, but this stat shows what a largely wasted career Wilson had, and why. Wilson was a man whose job was to get on base any way he could. Yet, although he played in 19 major league seasons, and was a pretty much full-time player for 16 of those seasons, he never once drew even 40 walks. For a leadoff hitter with no home run power, that statistic is pathetic.

Wilson had a .285 lifetime batting average, but a measly .376 lifetime slugging average (despite all his triples in KC), and an unforgivable on-base percentage of .326.

Just think of what it cost his team. I have never seen a list of the all-time leaders in stolen base percentage, given a minimum career total of, say, 200 stolen bases. But Wilson could fly and succeeded in a staggering 83% (!!!) of his stolen base attempts, which puts him ahead of everyone I know of, except Tim Raines. And with guys like Brett and McRae in his lineup, those steals turned into a lot of runs, enabling Wilson to score 1,169 runs in his career, despite his pitiful on-base percentage.

So think about this:

If Wilson had NOT been busy racking up negative stats like 705 AB's in a season, and if he'd instead accepted his hitting limitations and taken every walk he could get, how many more runs would his team have gotten? LOTS. And how many more divisions, pennants and World Series might they have won? Who knows, but they'd surely have done better in the post-season.

There's really no excuse for Wilson's obstinacy, nor for the way Herzog, Howser et al. let him go on hacking at anything near the plate. As Bill James once said in evaluating Ernie Lombardi's notorious lead feet and their many liabilities to his team, the cost to [Wilson's] team was enormous. And for a leadoff hitter without home run power, it was all so inexcusable.

I'd like to hear a real good sabermetrician estimate how many times on base--and, much more important, how many runs created--Wilson cost his team with his lack of walks.

You are supposed to walk something like 10 or 11% of the time, simply by letting the opposition do so when they're missing the strike zone. Wilson walked 5.11% of the time in his career. And remember, this is a guy who should have been actively working for walks, like Rickey.

God knows what kind of nightmares A.L. pitchers would have had, if Wilson had learned to walk even 70% as well as Rickey did. I've no reason to believe he coudn't have done so, and every reason to believe he could have done so.

But no manager ever took the time to tell him how much his love affair with hacking was costing the team, and he continue to do it. No manager ever sat him down for a day or two for hacking at pitches well out of the strike zone--a huge problem with today's players. Hell, no Little League coach told him what mine told me: "Don't swing at pitches unless they are strikes, dammit!!!"

I think this flaw will keep Wilson out of the Hall, and in my opinion, it should. No aspersion on his integrity, what he did or didn't put in his body, or anything else. I just don't think the guy's stats are worthy of the Hall. But by taking another 600-800 walks, and scoring all the runs he would have scored, he sure could have had Hall-worthy stats.

B.H.N.

Ok it's time for some more baseball trivia. Today's topic will focus on stolen bases.

1. a. Who is the only player in MLB history to have been caught stealing 4 times in 1 game?

b. Which team did he play for?

c. When was the game, and how many innings did it last?

2. a. Who holds the record for most consecutive games without being caught stealing a base?

b. How many games was it?


Good luck, they should be pretty easy.

I only know these because when I did a little SF Giants website last year, I actually included this stat in part of a "Did You Know" section.

1. a. Who is the only player in MLB history to have been caught stealing 4 times in 1 game?

Robby Thompson

b. Which team did he play for?

San Francsico Giants

c. When was the game, and how many innings did it last?

Played on June 27, 1986 and lasted 12 innings.

I don't remember the guys name, but the record is 1,206 games. I think it wqas during the 50's.

Originally posted by GiantsFan
I only know these because when I did a little SF Giants website last year, I actually included this stat in part of a "Did You Know" section.

1. a. Who is the only player in MLB history to have been caught stealing 4 times in 1 game?

Robby Thompson

b. Which team did he play for?

San Francsico Giants

c. When was the game, and how many innings did it last?

Played on June 27, 1986 and lasted 12 innings.

I don't remember the guys name, but the record is 1,206 games. I think it wqas during the 50's.

those are the answers i got also, oh the guy with the record of 1206 games was Gus Triandos and it was during the 50's. Excellent work Giants Fan.

Here's some ball park trivia.

1. What is the only team in MLB history to play home games at two different stadiums during the same season?

2. Which Stadiums were they?

3. When did they play there and why did they do it that way?

1. Montreal Expos? I'll have to find the stadiums later.

Jarry Park and Expo Stadium?

Actually, there is another answer, too. If I am not mistaken, Babe Ruth's 1915 Red Sox (coulda been 1916 or 1918) played their regular season games in Fenway (of course), but their World Series games in mammoth Braves Field, where the dimensions were (I am not making these up):

-----LF line: 402 ft.

-----RF line: 402 ft.

-----Dead Center (and I DO mean dead): 550 feet

The Braves played with those dimensions for quite a few years, with lots of inside-the-park HR's, and NO outside-the-park HR's for about 10 years. The park was basically shaped like a huge box. Can you imgaine? I have two books on ballparks, and the overhead photo I have of Braves Field from that era defies description.

B.H.N.

Originally posted by BaseballHistoryNut

-----LF line: 402 ft.

-----RF line: 402 ft.

-----Dead Center (and I DO mean dead): 550 feet

In a word, wow.

overhead view of Braves field




from ballparks .com

Toejam,

That's after they'd put the bleachers in. WITHOUT the bleachers, it looked like a box, and the distance to dead center was 550. It's not 550 on the picture you're showing. Sorry I don't have a scanner or know how to get up the pic I have.

BHN

In other words, the distance from home to dead center was the distance from home to that 90-degree angle on the bottom of the screen.

BHN

Your overhead photo, however, captures the famous "jury box" in right field very well, and shows why Eddie Mathews fared so well when he first broke into the league. (Remember, he was a left-handed hitter, unlike Aaron, and he came up in time for a couple of years in that park, unlike Aaron.)

OK, I've got it all out of my system.

BHN

you are right on the bleacher adition, i can't find any pics without the bleachers, here is the best i could do




the diagram shows the final dimensions of the field that were used in the late 1940's to early 50's....original configuration is also shown

[Edited on 1/19/2006 by toejam]

This is one from 1937










These 2 are from 1915










This one is from 1932





[Edited on 19/1/06 by TRD]

I may not have phrased the question properly. it should have said what is the only major league team to have scheduled on purpose home games at two different stadiums during the same season. anyway the answer i got was the Cleveland Indians who played weekday games at League Park and weekend and holiday games at Cleveland Municipal Stadium from 1932-1946. Of course my information may be incomplete (which actually wouldn't suprise me), i'll be doing some checking of the other answers you all gave, and if you're all right i'll feel really stupid too boot.

Well, shame on me for not getting that one. Yes, they split their time in those two ballparks for quite number of years, before finally abandoning League Park circa 1947. League Park, for the vast majority who have never seen it, was basically Fenway in reverse. It was about 375 down the LF line, 420 to the clubhouse in center, and 290 to the RF line, with a 40-foot high (roughly) fence that ran straight from the RF line to dead center.

Tris Speaker is one of the greatest players who ever lived, Top 10 in my book, and there are LOTS of reasons why that is so, but the reason he is the all-time doubles champ is that after he learned to inside-out the ball to take advantage of the LF fence in Fenway, he played a bunch of years at League Stadium and hit loads of easy (for him) doubles off that RF wall. It was like Ruth's playing in the Polo Grounds... which he did from 1920-1922, with arguably the two greatest seasons ever, in 1920 and 1921.

And indeed, once the live ball came in, even infamously large Griffith Stadium in Washington (where Speaker also played) was a good source of doubles for a LH hitter who could pull the ball, with that very high RF fence and 334 down the line.

B.H.N.

I could be wrong about Montreal, and was just parroting an earlier answer. I'm not wrong about Jarry Park, however, a tiny park which a LOT of Canadians missed when its sterile replacement came along, just as San Francsicans missed Seals Stadium when the execrable Candlestick Park came along in 1960. What a HORRIBLE park that was, and I say that as one who was blown about that park many, many, many times.

My best Candlestick memories:

(1) In 1960. I am 7 years old. Juan Marichal made his ML debut a few games earlier, and threw a one-hitter... aided enormously by a ridiculously great catch Mays made to end the game. I get my dad, a professor, to get the afternoon off and we go to Candlestick. My memory says Marichal gave up 1 run and 3 hits, but that's from the mind of a 7-year-old, transposed across nearly 46 years. I DO know he pitched well and won.

(2) In 1984. Dwight Gooden's spectacular rookie year. I am right behind home plate, at field level, because the Giants are in last and the only reasons their notoriously fairweather fans (about 5,000 of them) come is to get drunk in the wind and fight. Happily, I am 6'2" and about 260 at the time, so I keep my mouth shut and they look elsewhere for pugilists. I've got a hellacious right cross, and if someone's not a skilled fighter, it's gonna send him night-night in a heartbeat. If he's a trained fighter, I'm going night-night, but how many drunks fall into that category?

Gooden and Mike Krukow pitch 9 SHUTOUT innings apiece. Gooden strikes out 16, including the Giants' supposed best hitter (Jeff Leonard) FOUR times, the last of which is with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th. The strikeout pitch is a curveball I couldn't have hit with a shovel--if you told me it was coming. Neither could Leonard. Mets 2, Giants 0, in ten innings. The next year, Gooden goes 24-4, leads the league in almost every positive stat, with the lowest ERA since Gibson in 1968, and a Dodger scout--whom nobody laughs at--says that for the only time in his career, he feels Cy Young's career record of 511 wins is in danger.

And then there were Daryl Strawberry and coc aine. With Strawberry's sullen personality from the get-go, I would not speculate any real greatness on his part, but I will always wonder what Gooden would have done. His stats, on paper, are already Hall of Fame stats--especially his terrific W-L%, but when he reached 100 wins, he had the best W-L % in baseball history; yes, better than Whitey Ford or Lefty Grove.

Now THERE was a real waste. And he didn't totally fry his brain, so he must live with that knowledge for the rest of his life.

B.H.N.