With all the talk about today's pitchers rarely throwing a complete game, the hurculean feats of a pitcher from a bygone era need to be recalled and given their due as one of the game's most impressive accomplishments. Over parts of six seasons, National League pitcher John "Jack" Taylor threw a string of 187 consecutive complete games for the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals. From midway thru the 1901 season to the middle of the 1906 season, Taylor completed every one of his starting assignments.
With apologies to Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken, and decades before the second Black Sabbath album or even the modern day three-sport endurance test that bills itself as the "iron man" triathalon, a major league pitcher in the first few years of the past century was the sport's original "Iron Man". For more than 100 years have passed since right-hander Joe McGinnity established a record for pitching endurance that stands to this day.
If I was to ask my readers to name the player holding the all-time mark for most hits in a single month, I'm guessing there'd be a wide variety of answers. Even more difficult would be assigning a number to the record. So, I'll save you all some trouble by declaring that Tyrus Raymond Cobb(in July 1912) holds the all-time M.L. record for most hits in a single month with 68. In fact, Cobb also ranks #2 on the list(tied with Tris Speaker) for notching 67 hits in a single month in July 1922.
Today, May 15, marks the anniversary of one of the greatest pitching duels of all time. 91 years ago, early in the 1918 season, the Washington Nationals' ace, and future Hall of Famer, Walter Johnson and the Chicago White Sox' Claud "Lefty" Williams squared off in Washington and posted zeros for almost 18 complete innings. For when the game finally ended in the bottom of the 18th inning and Johnson and the Nats had posted a 1-0 victory, it established a new mark for the longest shutout by a single pitcher in major league history.
Isn't it about time the forces running baseball found someone new to put together the MLB schedule? Every year, the travel and scheduling gets more bizarre. While it is certainly true that the use of an unbalanced schedule(where a team plays as many as 18 games against each of their divisional rivals) and "inter-league play" clearly limits the schedule maker's flexibilty, there has got to be a more common-sense way to put together each team's travel schedule. As I see it, there seem to be three major problems with the system the way it's currently configured.
If the results of the 2009 seaon's first three weeks tell us anything(and I know it's still REALLY early to draw any conclusions), it might be that the gap between the traditional "haves and the have nots" is finally narrowing. For instance, the Pirates three-game sweep of the front-running Marlins is early evidence that after 16 straight losing seasons, Pittsburgh might finally be close to putting a respectable product on the field. That 2 of their 3 wins came via the shutout(of what had been the major's most torrid team) offers a glimpse of better days.
In 1916, Phillies ace Grover Cleveland Alexander, known as "Ol' Pete" to his teammates, dominated National League opponents as no one has since. By season's end, he led all major league hurlers in almost every significant pitching category. His 33 wins were tops in either league as no other pitcher had more than 25. He made 45 starts and went the distance in 38 of them, both of them the highwater mark in the majors. His ERA of 1.55 and his 388 innnigs of work were tops in either league and his 167 strikeouts led the National League.
In the final week of the 1928 season, a young minor league catcher named Alfonso Lopez arrived at Ebbets Field to join the Brooklyn Dodgers. Fresh off the train from Macon, Georgia where he had just finished up a full season in the Sally League, Lopez's .326 batting average that year had earned him a late season call-up. The 20 year-old rookie joined a Brooklyn club that was struggling thru a .500 season and an eventual sixth-place finish in the National League. In joining a veteran ballclub with four established catchers already on the roster, Lopez expected his playing time to be minimal.
During the 1923 season, Phillies outfielder Fred "Cy " Williams put together a stretch of run production that established a franchise mark that endures to this day. Playing a total of 30 games as the Phillies everyday centerfielder, Williams drove in a total of 44 runs. Keeping in mind that the Quakers franchise of the early 1920's was the perennial doormat of the National League makes Williams' feat all the more remarkable. In fact, during the entire decade of the 1920's, the Phillies had only one season(1929) where they finished higher than seventh.
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