Sherry Magee's One-Punch Knockout

Sherry Magee's One-Punch Knockout (1911)

Phillies star Sherry Magee was in a pennant race when rookie umpire Bill Finneran rang him up on a high third strike in St. Louis. Magee flung his bat, got tossed, then wheeled around and dropped Finneran with a single left to the jaw, out cold. League president Tom Lynch banned him for the rest of the season, later cut to 36 games on appeal. The Phillies faded without him. Fittingly, Magee spent the last year of his life working as a big-league umpire.

Chuck Klein's Four-Homer Afternoon (1936)

At spacious Forbes Field, Chuck Klein homered in the first, the fifth, and the seventh, then led off the tenth with rain falling and drove Bill Swift's first pitch over the right-field wall for number four. He nearly had a fifth, robbed by Paul Waner in the second. Klein was the first National Leaguer of the modern era to hit four in a game, and the Phillies won 9-6. Only 1,149 fans saw it.

Hideki Irabu's Bronx Coronation (1997)

Billed as the Japanese Nolan Ryan, Hideki Irabu arrived to a circus. Some 51,901 fans, nearly double a normal weeknight crowd, turned out to see a pitcher no one in America had faced. He delivered: nine strikeouts over 6 2/3 innings, K signs going up in Japanese script across the upper decks, a curtain call as Joe Torre pulled him. The Yankees won 10-3. The career never quite matched it, but Irabu won two World Series rings in pinstripes.

Robbie Grossman's Perfect Streak Ends (2022)

Detroit's Robbie Grossman had gone 440 straight games and 821 chances without an error, the longest such run by any position player in history. Then a two-out popup off the bat of Luis Robert drifted into the sun in left field. Grossman lost it. The ball glanced off his glove, the White Sox rallied for two runs, and Detroit lost 4-2. "I missed a popup," he said, refusing to blame the sun. Four flawless years, undone by the most ordinary fly ball in the world.