Random Baseball

Footage of the greatest player ever banned.

• One more time, Randy Johnson won 300 games. He's only the 24th pitcher in the history of the game to accomplish the feat and only the 6th southpaw. He may be the last to accomplish it. The next closest active player is 46 year old Jamie Moyer with 250 wins. After that, 37 year old Andy Pettite with 220. With 5 pitcher rotations being today's norm and pitchers being pulled at the first sign of trouble it just doesn't seem likely. The way the game is played will have to change to see many more.
  
  
• Review of a book that catalogs 850 baseball related deaths.
  

  Lightning is another improbably frequent killer (though perhaps it's less improbable when you consider that baseball is played in summer, typically on flat fields surrounded by metal bleachers and fences). During a 1949 amateur game in Florida, the third baseman, shortstop, and second baseman were all killed by a single lightning bolt, which struck the backstop, then shot around the infield as though completing a double play.

  
  Later
  

  In Morristown, Ohio, in 1902, one man asks another if he can borrow his penknife so he can sharpen the pencil he's using to keep score. The second man hands his penknife to the guy seated between them, named Stanton Walker, and asks Walker to pass it on. At that exact moment, a foul ball whaps Walker on the wrist, and he stabs himself.

  
  
  
• 06/11: The Yankees have an ambidextrous pitcher in their minor league system.
  
  
• 06/13: An umpire in an Iowa high school game ejected the crowd. Yes, the entire crowd.
  
  
• 06/13: Continuing the theme of WTF scheduling by MLB, the first of the Cubs/White Sox series is this week, Tuesday - Thursday, with 2 day games. And Ozzie is still and ass.