Saturday, June 22, 2019

This is why you have backup pitchers

On this day in 1917, Red Sox pitcher Ernie Shore retired 26 Washington Senators batters in a row to win the game.  He replaced the starting pitcher, who had retired one batter.  The starting pitcher?  Babe Ruth.

Image via Wikipedia
The reason that the Bambino only retired one batter?  He was thrown out of the game for punching an Umpire.  Different time, different game.

5 comments:

Old NFO said...

Interesting piece of history!

jerseygirlangie said...

In Ruth's defense , he probably shouldn't be held responsible for his actions, because there is a real possibility that he was drunk at the time .

Definitely a different time , and game , back then !

;-)

Borepatch said...

jerseygirlangie, LOL. The Babe cast a big shadow

Ken said...

Not all that different.... ;-)

Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter for the Pirates while tripping on acid, and (I should check the stats to see if memory is playing me false) I remember Steve Howe of the Dodgers going into June 1981 with something like 18 saves and a 0.00 ERA*, and within a couple of weeks of that he went into rehab for his coke habit.

*Howe may not have made it all the way to June without giving up an earned run, but I'm pretty sure it was at least into May.

Aesop said...

Let us not overlook the obvious:
Ruth made his point, and it's entirely possible the strike zone for Shore got a whole lot bigger, not leastly because the umpire only had one good eye left to call balls and strikes.