The Team That Ran Out of Baseballs

The Team That Ran Out of Baseballs (1890)

The Brooklyn Gladiators were a first-year American Association club and a total shambles. At the Long Island Grounds they were actually winning, up 13 to 8 in the eighth, when the game was forfeited because the club had no more baseballs. The Brooklyn Eagle called the ruling ludicrous in the extreme. They were 26 and 73 and gone by late August.

Fifty Years Old and Nobody Would Pitch to Him (1947)

Biz Mackey was the finest defensive catcher the Negro Leagues ever produced, the man who taught Roy Campanella to block a low pitch. He managed the East squad in the 1947 East-West Classic, and the game fell on his 50th birthday. So in the eighth inning he wrote his own name on the lineup card. Gentry Jessup walked him. Mackey took first, sent Vic Harris in to run, and went back to managing. He is still the oldest man ever to appear in that game.

Alvin Dark Empties the Bullpen (1961)

Before the first pitch, Giants manager Alvin Dark announced that Juan Marichal was going the distance, then kept every reliever in the dugout all night to prove it. The bullpen sat empty. Marichal gave up five hits and shut out Pittsburgh 2 to 0. Dark said afterward he was tired of watching starters go five innings and then look for Stu Miller to bail them out. The Chronicle's Bob Stevens wrote that nobody in the press box could recall a big league bullpen being left unattended before.

One Inning, Two Homers, Ten Runs (1989)

Dale Murphy had six home runs in 93 games. People had begun writing that the two-time MVP was done. Then Atlanta batted in the sixth. Murphy hit a three-run homer. The Braves kept hitting. Murphy came up again that same inning and hit another three-run homer. Ten runs scored in that frame, all of Atlanta's runs in a 10 to 1 win. Six RBI in one inning tied a major league record, and nobody in the franchise had homered twice in an inning since Bobby Lowe in 1894.