Sunday, August 23, 2009

Since 1927

Baseball gets slagged these days as too slow or uninteresting for our contemporary ADD nation. But which there are oddities of interesting achievement in all sports, there's nothing like baseball, with a history going back well over a century, and the rather Nineteenth Century rules which lead to moments like this:

NEW YORK (Associated Press) - It happened so fast, Eric Bruntlett needed a few moments before he realized he had just ended a game with an unassisted triple play.

Bruntlett became the second player in major league history to get the final three outs on his own, accomplishing the feat Sunday to preserve the Philadelphia Phillies' 9-7 victory over the New York Mets...

...Bruntlett turned the 15th unassisted triple play in big league history -- the second that ended a game. Detroit Tigers first baseman Johnny Neun also turned the trick on May 31, 1927, completing a 1-0 victory over Cleveland, according to STATS LLC.

The awesome moment:



It's been statistically determined that the hardest single thing to do in sports is to hit a major league baseball pitch, i.e. a 90-mile an hour fastball.

An unassisted triple play is harder. And a game-ending one only seems to come around once every 82 years.

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