Turkey Time Trivia
Take a break from football
Tired of watching football and eating turkey? I’m not yet, but I’m getting there. While were waiting for the hot stove to heat up, here is another round of obscure baseball trivia.
General Baseball Trivia
There are only three players since 1900 who have hit a home run, stolen a base and thrown a scoreless inning in the same game: Christy Mathewson, Shohei Ohtani and…Pablo Sandoval. I can understand Mathewson and Ohtani, but Kung Fu Panda? Baseball.
Ed Porray, a right-handed pitcher who played for the Buffalo Buffeds of the Federal League in 1914 is the only player in baseball history to not have a country. He was born on December 5, 1888, on a ship traveling across the Atlantic Ocean. His birth certificate lists his place of birth as “at sea, on the Atlantic Ocean”.
In 1927, Lou Gehrig had 173 RBI. He batted 60 times after Babe Ruth had cleared the bases. Gehrig was an RBI machine. In the 13 seasons between 1926 and 1931, Gehrig averaged 147 RBI per year with a high of 185 in 1931.
In the strange but true category, Hall of Famer Rube Waddell would sometimes leave mid game to go fishing. He was also easily distracted by shiny objects, puppies (who he would leave the field to play with) and fire trucks, which he would often chase. In the off-season, Waddell would disappear for months at a time. It was discovered that he had joined the circus and was wrestling alligators. Waddell most likely suffered from attention deficit disorder or Autism, neither of which were remotely understood in his day. He died in 1914 after contracting tuberculosis and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946.
Ted Williams played from 1939 to 1960. During that span he had the highest batting average, the most home runs and the most RBI of all major league players. It was a career triple crown.
The odds of catching a foul ball at a major league game are something like 1 in 835. Don’t tell that to Alice Roth. In a 1957 game at Connie Mack Stadium, the Phillies Richie Ashburn hit a foul ball that struck Mrs. Roth, a diehard and dedicated Phillies fan, breaking her nose. While attendants carried Mrs. Roth away on a stretcher, Ashburn hit another foul ball, on the very next pitch no less, which also struck Mrs. Roth, breaking a bone in her knee. Alice Roth was the wife of Earl Roth, sports editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin. After the incident, Roth and Ashburn, known as one of baseball’s good guys, struck up a long-term friendship and exchanged birthday and Christmas cards until Mrs. Roth’s passing in 1987. If that weren’t enough, one of Roth’s sons eventually became a Phillies batboy.
Jim Palmer is the only Hall of Fame pitcher to never give up a grand slam home run or back-to-back home runs. Amazingly, the Royals had a chance to select Palmer in the 1969 expansion draft but passed on him. The Orioles immediately pulled his name off the eligible list. Palmer missed the 1968 season to injury, which probably explains why the Royals (and Pilots) took a pass. Palmer went on to a 19-year Hall of Fame career in which he went 268 – 152 with a 2.86 career ERA. He also won three Cy Young awards.
The all-animal team
C – John Buck
1B – Jimmy Foxx
2b – Nellie Fox
SS – Rabbit Maranville
3B – Jake Lamb
LF – Chicken Hawks
CF – Mike Trout
RF – Tim Salmon
SP – Bob Moose
DH - Turkey Stearnes
Kansas City Athletics Trivia
April 25, 1961, the Kansas City Athletics set a scoring record by destroying the Minnesota Twins by the score of 20 to 2. Haywood Sullivan went 4 for 4 with 5 RBI while Bill Tuttle went 3 for 5 with 5 RBI. Every position player had at least one hit. Norm Bass made his major league debut for the Athletics that evening and despite giving up nine walks, he only allowed two runs. Only 4,664 people attended the game. The franchise mark for runs scored in a game is 24, set by the Philadelphia A’s in 1912 and again in 1929.
On July 17th, 1963, the Kansas City Athletics played the Boston Red Sox in a game at Municipal Stadium. What was notable about the game was that the Athletics wore jerseys with their nicknames on the back. The Athletics jumped off to a 4-0 lead in the first behind a three-run home run by Charlie Lau. George Alusik, known as Turk, put the game away in the 8th when he hit a pinch hit, grand slam home run. Final score, KC 8, Boston 1.
Royals Trivia
In days past, the Royals would sponsor an annual halter top day, which was wildly popular. The event was eventually cancelled as some fans began changing into their tops in the stands. Back on September 13, 1971, the Royals sponsored a Hots Pants contest. I know how sexist that sounds in 2024, but in 1971, hot pants were the thing. Ask your grandmother. About 200 women participated, much to the approval of the Royals and their opponent, the Oakland A’s who had front row seats for the spectacle. If you lived through the ‘70’s, you understand.
August 26, 1973, the Baltimore Orioles won their 13th consecutive game, a 10 to 1 romp over the Royals highlighted by Paul Blairs inside the park grand slam, which occurred when Amos Otis and Steve Hovley collided in the outfield trying to catch the ball.
June 9, 1979, Willie Wilson hit a walk-off, inside the park home run to give the Royals a 9 to 8 win over the Yankees. On September 16th, he hit his 5th inside the park home run of the season in a 6-3 loss to Seattle. Wilson led the league in triples five times and hit 13 inside the park home runs in his career. No one was faster than Willie.
May 27, 1981 – in the 6th inning of a game at Seattle, Lenny Randle of the Mariners got down on the carpet and tried to blow an Amos Otis ground ball into foul territory. The Royals prevailed by the score of 8 to 5.
Lonnie Smith, known as Skates, is the only player in baseball history to play in four different World Series with four different teams (Philadelphia, St. Louis, Kansas City and Atlanta). Only ten players in history have won rings with three different teams and Smith is the only one of the ten to do it in the same decade, winning in 1980, 1982 and 1985.
On May 15, 1993, George Brett hit his 300th career home run. The ball is retrieved by a gentleman named Ralph Gay, a US Army veteran, who happened to be blind. In appreciation for returning the ball, Brett gave Gay a ball, bat and one of his jerseys.
George Brett has been the only player in the integration era (since 1947) to end his career with 1,000 extra base hits while striking out less than 1,000 times.
More on Brett. In 43 postseason games, he batted .337 with 56 hits, 10 home runs and 23 RBI. Clutch? You bet your life.
During a game on July 21, 1990, Bo Jackson takes an obvious strike and begins to argue with the home plate umpire, with the sole purpose of getting ejected. It works. Bo then goes to a local hospital to spend the day with his wife and newborn daughter. He calls this his favorite moment as a Royal.
As of 2024, Royals radio announcer Denny Matthews was the second longest tenured announcer in baseball, having been on the job since 1974. Only Bob Uecker of the Milwaukee Brewers (1971) has had a longer stint. In fact, those two are the only survivors from the 1970’s. There are no tenured announcers from the 1980’s and only five from the 1990’s.
Happy Thanksgiving and best wishes to all of our loyal readers of Royals Review.