Daniel J. Brush - Major League Baseball: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports: Sports by the Numbers

O ur research for this book began when we were kids, outside sitting on a porch swing with a ballgame on the radio in the background, listening to either our dad or our grandpa tell us baseball stories. Once Little League began, our interest in numbers firmly took hold because we definitely kept score, we knew who won and by how much, and we knew what it meant for our average if we went 2 for 4 at the plate. Our math teachers never had to teach us about fractions or percentages, baseball took care of that for us much, much earlier in our lives.

Our first entries for Major League Baseball really did originate in our youth. We took stories told to us by dad and grandpa, stories we remembered from all those old Baseball Digest magazines, stories we were lucky enough to witness first hand, or experience through the medium of TV or radio, and we used them to start our book. The chapter one introduction is a good example, as the story used there came out of a childhood memory involving three brothers rummaging through a box of old baseball cards bought at a yard sale. One of the cards they found just happened to be a guy named Gates Brown, and the inspiration for the first chapter introduction in the SBTN Major League Baseball edition came from reading the back of that Topps baseball card.

Of course, we also used more conventional means of research, and we feel obliged to recognize those invaluable sources so that our readers can also make use of them in their quest to learn more about the ball players who make baseball such a great game.

Old, dusty copies of Sports Illustrated and Baseball Digest were used extensively, and we finally know why we saved them all these years. One copy in particular, the April 14, 1986, edition of Sports Illustrated , is worth finding for any baseball fan. It is dedicated solely to baseball, and The SBTN Guys are lucky enough to have a copy autographed by Wade Boggs, who happens to be on the cover. In the magazine itself, there is an interview with Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs, and Ted Williams on the art of batting, among other great finds such as an article written by Peter Gammons.

Our personal libraries are filled with books on baseball. The Team by Team Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball , written by Dennis Purdy, is one of the best. It proved to be a valuable resource. We also used The 2005 ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia , edited by Pete Palmer and Gary Gillette; 100 Years of the World Series , by Eric Enders; and Baseball, An Illustrated History , by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns.

We also made use of some valuable websites. Major League Baseball at www.mlb.com has done an amazing job of making statistics available to fans. The individual team sites offer detailed franchise histories, and a virtual clearinghouse of player information from past and present. We also used www.espn.com and www.baseball-reference.com extensively, but we verified all statistics through the MLB site, and when discrepancies arose we always defaulted to the numbers put out by Major League Baseball.

Of course, any mistakes found in these pages are our own.

We also would like to recommend baseball fans who have not previously read Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball , by George Will, to do so just as soon as you are finished reading all of the available SBTN titles. Our recommended reading list also includes Faithful , by Steven King and Stewart ONan, and Playing with the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War, and a Field of Broken Dreams , by Gary W. Moore. And finally, if you do not own a copy of The Sandlot DVD, add it to your list.

In high school I took a little English, some science, some hubcaps, and some wheel covers.

Gates Brown (Detroit Tigers outfielder)

O n October 2, 1968, Busch Stadium in St. Louis hosted game one of the World Series between the Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers. The game would last one minute short of two and a half hours, and more than 54,000 fans were in attendance. The fans took little note of the pinch-hitter for Tigers pitcher Pat Dobson in the top of the eighth inning, but why should they? The pinch-hitter was certain to become, the fans must have presumed, a numberfor the strikeouts were piling up, and the man the fans cared about was Bob Gibson and he was on the mound for the Cardinals doing the piling, 17 strikeouts in all on his way to a post-season record, a complete game shutout, and a one game series lead for the Cardinals.

The pinch-hitter did not strikeout, and so history took little note of him.

He did not get a hit either. He hit a lazy fly to left. One must wonder how he would have felt that moment if he had known that lone at bat would be the first and last of his World Series career. The pinch-hitter watched from the bench as his team lost. He watched from the bench as his Tigers lost games three and four, trailing in the series three games to oneand he watched from the bench as the Tigers roared back, becoming only the third team in major league history to recover from that kind of deficit and win the World Series.

Gates Brown, the pinch-hitter, played little more than a decade in the majors.

He finished with 650 fewer homeruns and counting than will Barry Bonds. He did not achieve any statistical records, any fame or fortune, but Gates Brown celebrated on the field with his teammates at Busch Stadium on October 10, 1968, and in that moment he was a part of the best there was. He probably thought there would be more great moments to come, perhaps some significant individual accomplishments of his own.

They did not come, but it doesnt matter.

He got one, hisand it only takes one.

The number of World Series titles (1) it takes to make your childhood dreams come true.

The number of times (2) HOF players Ted Williams and Hank Aaron made the final out of a no-hitter. Ted Williams did so on September 28, 1951 and again on July 20, 1958. Hank Aaron struck out on June 16, 1967 and grounded out on August 19, 1969 to end no-hitters.

The number of future HOF players (3) to debut in the same game as teammates. Al Spalding, George Wright, and Harry Wright debuted on May 5, 1871 for the Boston Red Stockings. Harry made the HOF on the strength of his managerial record, and his brother George once batted .412 in a season. Spalding won 253 games as a pitcher in seven seasons.

The record number of double plays (4) grounded into by one player in a single game. Joe Torre did it for the Mets against the Astros on July 21, 1975. The number of World Series titles won by Joe Torre as manager of the Yankeesalso four.