Chris Davis vs Khris Davis

Interesting comparison from this season so far:

First Perfect Game

The first perfect game ever was thrown on June 12, 1880 by Lee Richmond, a left-handed pitcher for the Worcester Ruby Legs.

Bumgarner

At only 25 years of age, Madison Bumgarner has already appeared in three World Series. His performance in those series is even more impressive: 4 wins, 0 losses, 1 save, 31 strikeouts, 0.53 WHIP, .121 BAA, and most outstanding is a 0.25 ERA, the lowest ever. He could never appear in another World Series, and still be talked about as being one of the best World Series pitchers of all time!

San Francisco Giants Dynasty

For the third time in five years, the San Francisco Giants are World Series champions!

Wild Card World Series

This year's American League and National League representatives in the World Series feature the last two teams to qualify for the postseason: The Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants. These two wild card teams both posted sub 90 win seasons, marking the first time that both teams in the World Series won less than 90 games.

Grand Slam

San Francisco Giants' Brandon Crawford became the first shortstop to hit a postseason Grand Slam during their Wild Card game against the Pittsburgh Pirates at the beginning of this month.

Identical Records

This year, three different "cross-town" rivals finished with identical records. The Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals both went 96-66, the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's went 88-74, and the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox went 73-89.

California Love

For the first time ever, four teams from California have made the Major League Baseball Playoffs.

Sorry San Diego.

Three Wins

Jerome Williams beat the Oakland Athletics for the third time this weekend. While not uncommon for a pitcher to beat a team three times in a season, the manner in which he did it was unique.

Williams pitched for three teams this season: Houston Astros, Texas Rangers, and Philadelphia Phillies. His wins against the A's came while on a different team, thus becoming the first pitcher to beat a team three time in a season while being on a different team each time.

The Finger

We often see baseball players (and the general public) use the middle finger as an obscene hand gesture, but have you ever thought to yourself where "the bird" first appeared? While it's not clear how it originated in America,  we do know that the first documented appearance of the finger in the United States was in 1886 when Old Hoss Radbourn, a baseball pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters, was photographed giving it to a member of the rival New York Giants. That's another first brought to you by baseball!

Check out the finger, back row, far left.

Interesting Matchup

Today marks the anniversary of the following article, published in the September 1, 1926 edition of The Washington Post:

More information on this game can be found in Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic article.

Television

Tomorrow will be the 75th anniversary of the first time a Major League Baseball game was televised.

Prior to August 26, 1939, the only way you could watch Major League Baseball was by actually going to the ballpark. Radio had been around since 1921, but to actually see a game required admission to a ballpark.

The first game televised was a doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. Red Barber opened up by saying  "This is Red Barber speaking. Let me say hello to you all."

The Reds won the first game, 5-2, while the Dodgers took the second, 6-1.


Here's Dodgers announcer Vin Scully with some thoughts:

Take What You Need

In 1990, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Don Carman came up with a creative way to deal with the trough of reporters who would continually ask the same repetitive questions.

He came up with a list of responses, which he posted on his locker. “You saw the game,” he told reporters. “Take what you need.”

• I’m just glad to be here. I just want to help the club any way I can.
• Baseball’s a funny game.
• I’d rather be lucky than good.
• We’re going to take the season one game at a time.
• You’re only as good as your last game (last at-bat).
• This game has really changed.
• If we stay healthy we should be right there.
• It takes 24 (25) players.
• We need two more players to take us over the top: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
• We have a different hero every day.
• We’ll get ‘em tomorrow.
• This team seems ready to gel.
• With a couple breaks, we win that game.
• That All-Star voting is a joke.
• The catcher and I were on the same wavelength.
• I just went right at ‘em.
• I did my best, and that’s all I can do.
• You just can’t pitch behind.
• That’s the name of the game.
• We’ve got to have fun.
• I didn’t have my good stuff, but I battled ‘em.
• Give the guy some credit; he hit a good pitch.
• Hey, we were due to catch a break or two.
• Yes.
• No.
• That’s why they pay him _____ million dollars.
• Even I could have hit that pitch.
• I know you are, but what am I?
• I was getting my off-speed stuff over so they couldn’t sit on the fastball.
• I had my at ‘em ball going today.
• I had some great plays made behind me tonight.
• I couldn’t have done it without my teammates.
• You saw it … write it.
• I just wanted to go as hard as I could as long as I could.
• I’m seeing the ball real good.
• I hit that ball good.
• I don’t get paid to hit.

Haiku

Masaoka Shiki is an esteemed member of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. A baseball field in Ueno, Japan bears his name in his honor; however, he wasn't inducted to the hall based on the talent he showed on the field.

Shiki was introduced to baseball at his preparatory school in 1884, just 12 years after American teacher Horace Wilson first introduced it to his students at Tokyo University. Shiki was a writer, and he composed nine baseball haiku, beginning in 1890, making him the first Japanese writer to use the game as a literary subject:

spring breeze
this grassy field makes me
want to play catch

--- 

the trick
to ball catching
the willow in a breeze 

---

under a faraway sky
the people of America
began baseball
I can watch it
forever

Throughout his career Shiki wrote many different literary works about baseball, and he made translations of baseball terms that are still in use today.

Origins

History tells us that baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday in 1839. It is now generally accepted that this is more of a myth, than a fact. So then, when and where was baseball invented? Is it really the great American pastime, or do we owe the origin of the sport to Mother England?

Well, in April 2004, Pittsfield, Massachusetts received national publicity for a 1791 bylaw, which is believed to be the earliest written reference to baseball in North America. The transcription goes:

At a legal Meeting of the Inhabitants of the Town of Pittsfield qualified to vote in Town Meetings, holden on Monday the fifth day of Sept. 1791 Voted 

The following ByeLaw, for the Preservation of the Windows in the New Meeting House in said Town ______ viz, 

Be it ordained by the said Inhabitants that no Person, an Inhabitant of said Town, shall be permitted to play at any Game called Wicket, Cricket, Baseball, Batball, Football, Cat, Fives or any other Game or Games with Balls within the Distance of Eighty Yards from said Meeting House __ and every such Person who shall play at any of the said Games or other Games with Balls within the Distance aforesaid, shall for any Instance thereof, forfeit the Sum of five schillings to be recovered by Action of Debt brought before any Justice of the Peace to the Use of the Person who shall sue and prosecute therefor _____ 

And be it further ordained that in every Instance where any Minor shall be guilty of a Breach of this Law, his Parent, Master, Mistress or Guardian shall forfeit the like Sum to be recovered in Manner and to the Use aforesaid ____

So does mean American wins? Not quite! The Oxford English Dictionary now has an example of baseball being used in written form dating from 1748: “Now, in the winter, in a large room, they divert themselves at base-ball, a play all who are, or have been, schoolboys, are well acquainted with.” This entry was written by an English person, giving more validity to the notion that “America’s game” evolved in England and was imported to the New World in the 18th century.

2,000,000 strikeouts

During yesterday's Kansas City Royals at Cleveland Indians Major League game, Indians pitcher Danny Salazar struck out Royals' Norichika Aoki swinging with a 98-mph fastball in the bottom of the 7th inning, his 7th, and last, strikeout of the game. This was the last pitch of a quality outing for Salazar, but he did something much more important than help the Tribe win. With that strikeout, he helped accomplish a historic feat: the 2 millionth strikeout in Major League history!

Danny Salazar

It took until 1976 (beginning in 1876) for 1,000,000 strikeouts to happen, but the pace has picked up since then. You can thank strikeout king, Nolan Ryan, for 5,714 of those Ks. That works out to about one in every 350 of those 2,000,000 belonging to the Ryan Express.

Stadium Dimensions

The following image was taken from visual.ly, and it shows you the variance in different ball park dimensions. As the site explains, unlike other professional sports, baseball games are played on fields that vary in size from park to park, since the only rules on size of field regulate only the location and height of the pitchers mound and the distance between bases. Thus, no two baseball stadiums are alike!

Baseball And Disney

We ran across a short YouTube video describing Disney's love affair with America's pastime. It's worth a view.

World's Highest Catch

In 1939, San Francisco Seals catcher Joe Sprinz attempted to set a Guinness World Record at that year's World's Fair by catching a baseball which would be dropped from a Goodyear blimp, a good 800 feet above ground. It seems that everyone forgot about a little thing we like to call physics, involving gravity and terminal velocity.

Sprinz missed the first four balls dropped. The got a good angle on the fifth one, and seemed destined to make the catch. It's estimated that by the time the ball hit Sprinz glove, it was traveling around 150 miles an hour. The force of the ball caused his glove to slam into his face, fracturing his jaw and knocking out five teeth in the process.

World Series Champions

I found a neat infographic from Scott J. Haselwood regarding past World Series champions on his website. In it, each team is represented by a circle and the size of each circle represents the total number of World Series wins for each team. It is neat that he was able to incorporate that fact that some teams have World Series from different cities.