Iron Joe Volunteers

Iron Joe Volunteers (1903)

In Boston, Joe McGinnity walked up to John McGraw and asked to pitch both ends of the doubleheader. He won them both, 4 to 1 and 5 to 2, six hits allowed in each. Then he did it again on August 8, and again on August 31. Three doubleheader sweeps in one month has never been matched. He threw underhand, so low his fingers nearly scraped the dirt, and he swore the motion was easy on his arm.

Rogan Beats the Champions (1920)

Wilber Rogan was 26, just out of the Army, and pitching in the first season of the Negro National League. Rube Foster's Chicago American Giants came to Kansas City in first place on a 13-game winning streak. Rogan went all 12 innings and struck out 13. Then, with the game tied in the bottom of the 12th, he came to the plate himself and doubled home the winning run. Fans who had spilled onto the field carried him off on their shoulders. Nobody called him Bullet until the next year.

The Throw (1957)

Glen Gorbous was a Canadian outfielder whose big league days were behind him, playing out the summer for Omaha. Before a home game he took a running start and threw from one outfield corner toward the other. His fourth try went 445 feet, 10 inches, nine inches past the old mark. Roughly a football field, both end zones, and 25 rows of seats. Seventy years later nobody has beaten it, and no one is documented as having tried.

The Boy in the Stands (1972)

In 1954, an eight-year-old from north St. Louis watched Stan Musial hit five home runs in a doubleheader. Eighteen years later that boy woke up in Atlanta hurting so badly he told Don Zimmer he could not play. Zimmer asked him to take batting practice first. Nate Colbert hit two homers in the opener and three in the nightcap, five off five different pitchers, and drove in 13 runs, a record for a single day. The five homers tied the man he had watched as a child. Nobody has passed either of them since.