California Love

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

Sorry San Diego.

Masanori Murakami

Masahiro Tanaka has been on a tear this spring training season, giving New York Yankees fans hope that their newly signed Japanese star will help their team get back into the playoffs. While it has become commonplace for Major League Baseball to sign Japanese players from the Nippon Professional Baseball league, things were not always this way.

In 1964, three Japanese baseball players from the Osaka Nankai Hawks arrived in Arizona at the San Francisco Giants' Spring Training camp in Casa Grande, Arizona. These three pitchers were all headed to Single-A Fresno in what was termed an "exchange-student" type of event. It was expected the the Giants would eventually send over three players as well. On September 1st, one of those three, Masanori Murakami, was called up to pitch in the bigs (pitching a scoreless inning against the New York Mets), thus becoming the first Japanese pitcher in Major League history. In that final month of the season, the southpaw had nine relief appearances, a 1.80 ERA and a save. He came back the following year, where he appeared in 45 games, starting one of them, and going 4-1 with eight saves and a 3.75 ERA.

Alas, he would not return to MLB after 1965 and that ended what could have been a potentially good Major League career. There were still fresh wounds from World War II and resentment towards Japan, with Giants manager Herman Franks receiving death threats for pitching Murakami. In fact, Franks ended up needing FBI protection for a period of time. It took another 31 years for Hideo Nomo to become the second Japanese player to play for a Major League team, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

1963 MVP

In 1963, Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers was the National League MVP, while Elston Howard was the American League MVP while playing for the New York Yankees. That same year, Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns in the National Football League won the MVP. What was remarkable about all of this? All three players wore the number 32!

Sandy Koufax 

Elston Howard

Jim Brown

Trading franchises

The year was 1957. The Brooklyn Dodgers were getting ready to move to the west coast the following year, along with their rivals, the New York Giants. Before that happened though, they were a part of one of the oddest trades in the sports history.

On February 21, 1957 the Brooklyn Dodgers trade the Chicago Cubs their minor league team in Forth Worth, TX for the Cubs' minor league team in Los Angeles. Not a player or two, but the entire 25-man roster. This was convenient for the Dodgers, with their impending move to Los Angeles, and the Cubs must have just felt a need for new blood in their system.

Not the strangest trade in baseball history, but probably the largest!

115,300

The Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers played a game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 2008. In that game, Boston beat Los Angeles 2-1. If the crowd in the picture looks insanely big, you are correct. The attendance for that game was 115,300, which is a Major League Baseball record for attendance. In fact, no larger crowd in the world has been assembled for a baseball game.

Gotta love it

Days like these are why I love September Baseball so much. 4 of the 5 teams in the National League West are playing against each other. The San Francisco Giants have the lead, but the Los Angeles Dodgers are just 4.5 games behind. And then you get scores like these:

They're both in extra inning and the games are tied. Every game is that much more magnified this time of year, it's great!

Pantone colors

I wanted to share another great infographic from Craig Robinson over at Flip Flop Fly Ball. He compiled this great visual of different team Pantone colors, and which teams use the same color. As he said, it's interesting to note that if you bleed Dodger blue, you are also bleeding the exact same blue as Cubs fans.