Brilliant Reader Questions!
Time for some Brilliant Reader questions!
When I was in Dayton, Brilliant Reader Renate asked me to find her first game at Yankee Stadium—she remembered it because there was a triple play in the game. I took it from her description that it was the Yankees who hit into the triple play, because she seemed fairly certain that Billy Martin was involved and maybe also Yogi Berra, and she thought the third Yankee might have been Joe DiMaggio.
My best guess is that this would have been at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 22, 1952. The Yanks were playing Cleveland, and in the fifth inning, Billy Martin and Allie Reynolds reached base. Up stepped Hank Bauer, and he lined the ball to Cleveland second baseman Bobby Avila, who caught the ball, stepped on second base for out number two, and then threw to Luke Easter to complete the triple play.
That was one of four triple plays the Yankees hit into in the 1950s, but it’s the only one they hit into at home.
The Yankees’ defense did turn four triple plays in the 1950s, three at Yankee Stadium, so if I misunderstood the question, it could have been one of those. But I believe it was the one Hank Bauer hit into almost 72 years ago. What a wonderful first game to attend. I have no memory of my first game, other than Gaylord Perry pitched (and even that I only know because my Dad says it’s so).
BR Forrest: Justin Verlander is the last person in the world who still cares about wins. Why not make him a reliever, have him pitch the 5th inning every time the Astros have a lead, and let him vulture his way to 300 wins by 2025?
I love the creativity here, and I’m all for doing anything that makes a mockery of the silly win rule. This surely wouldn’t work… nobody would stand for Verlander getting all the cheap victories, and, anyway, his arm is probably not built for such a thing.
But even more than that, I’d say that if Verlander ever got to 300 victories on a gimmick like this, nobody would take the number seriously, and it would stand for exactly the opposite of what 300 victories usually stands for. This is something that I feel gets overlooked a lot—yes, we love baseball statistics, but only when we accept them as authentic. You can ask Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire about that. I’ve long thought it funny that we accept Cy Young’s 511 victories as authentic since the game was entirely different back then.
For baseball posterity, it would be so much infinitely better for Verlander to finish with his current 257 authentic wins than get to 300 in a less-than-admiral way.
BR Robert: Thank you for all of the words you wrote and the support you gave in the quest to have Cedric Tallis inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame. It will finally occur on June 28.
This is good to hear. Cedric Tallis was hired by Ewing Kauffman in 1968 to build a new team that would be called the Kansas City Royals. Tallis quickly built a remarkable front office of young executives that included John Schuerholz, Lou Gorman, Syd Thrift, Jack McKeon and Herk Robinson. I mean, that’s like a baseball version of the Avengers.*
*I’ll let you decide which of the five is Iron Man and which is Hawkeye.
Tallis did not love the Royals Academy—Ewing Kauffman’s innovative pet project—but he ran it, and over time it yielded several useful players and one great one, Frank White.
Tallis’ drafts were absurdly great—in a six-year span, the Royals drafted (among others): Paul Splittorff, Al Cowens, John Wathan, George Brett, Steve Busby and Willie Wilson.
His trades were even better—he dealt for Amos Otis, Freddie Patek, John Mayberry and Hal McRae, among others.
Those players would form the nucleus of a team that would reach the American League Championship Series four out of five years, culminating in a World Series appearance in 1980. Unfortunately, Tallis was gone by then, seemingly because of irreconcilable differences with Kauffman, but in so many ways, the entire Royals ethos was started by Cedric Tallis, and it’s good see him get his due.
BR Len: What pitcher with 200-plus wins did not have a complete game till his seventh year?