Casey Comes to the Stage

Casey Comes to the Stage (1888)

Tim Keefe took the Polo Grounds mound with nineteen straight wins behind him, a single-season mark since tied once and never beaten. Chicago ended it that afternoon, 4 to 2. Both clubs were already booked into Wallack's Theatre that evening, so the players dressed up and went anyway. Partway through the show, an actor named DeWolf Hopper stepped forward and recited a newspaper poem almost nobody had heard, about a slugger from Mudville. He would perform it more than 10,000 times over the next four decades.

The Queen of Baseball (1922)

Lizzie Murphy made her living at first base for barnstorming men's clubs, wearing a uniform with her own name stitched where the team name belonged. On this day she took the field at Fenway for a squad of American League all-stars against the Red Sox, in a benefit for Tommy McCarthy's family. Her side won, 3 to 2. She remains the only woman known to have played with major leaguers in a big-league park, and in 1928 she suited up for a National League all-star team, becoming the first person of either sex to do both.

Vic Power Runs Out of Patience (1958)

Power stole three bases in all of 1958. Two came in the same game, and both were steals of home. He broke from third in the eighth as Cleveland climbed back against Detroit, then did it again in the tenth to end it, 10 to 9. His manager credited instinct over speed, which was the polite way of saying Power was not fast. He was the first to do it since 1927. Nobody has done it since.

One Game Out of the Whole Schedule (2003)

Just after four in the afternoon the grid failed across the Midwest and Northeast, and tens of millions lost power at once. Shea went dark during batting practice and was cleared before the gates opened. The Mets and Giants were called about an hour before first pitch. Out of every game in the majors that night, that was the only one lost.