Old Fergy Changes His Mind

Old Fergy Changes His Mind (1875)

Bob Ferguson batted for Hartford with two outs in the ninth, a run down and a man on third. He fouled off pitch after pitch left-handed against Mutuals righty Bobby Mathews, then walked to the other box. From the right side he poked a hit over the third baseman's head and tied it. Rain ended the game 1-1. Ferguson is generally credited as the first switch hitter in professional baseball, and he treated it less like a strategy than a mood.

The Biggest Crowd Nobody Came For (1936)

Baseball was a demonstration sport at the Berlin Olympics, and Japan's withdrawal left the Americans with nobody to play. So they played themselves. Two US amateur squads met for seven innings inside the Olympic Stadium in front of an estimated 90,000 to 125,000 people, the largest crowd the sport had ever drawn. The Associated Press reported that hardly anyone in that crowd knew who was playing or cared who won. The track events were next.

Nineteen Clubs Said No (1968)

Satchel Paige was 62 and 158 days short of the service time needed for a major league pension, a gap that existed entirely because the color line kept him out until he was 42. He called all 20 clubs. Nineteen turned him down. Braves president Bill Bartholomay signed him as a part-time pitcher and adviser. The New York Times noted there was still no gray in his hair. He never threw a regular-season inning for Atlanta. In February 1969 the pension threshold dropped to four years and he qualified anyway. Two years later, Cooperstown finally called.

Nineteen K's in Anaheim (1974)

Nolan Ryan struck out 19 Red Sox and won 4-2, breaking Bob Feller's 1938 AL record of 18 and matching the major league mark. A Quincy, Massachusetts paper ran the game under a headline that spelled the letter K nineteen times. Ryan later said his no-hitters were the greater achievement, but that the strikeouts meant more over the long haul.