If you’re not a baseball fan, you might not have noticed that pitchers and catchers have reported. In fact, entire teams have now reported and are already playing games. It’s awesome. I listened to part of a game on the radio last Friday. Even though the games don’t count, the rhythm of well-announced baseball is exquisitely soothing.
Moreover, spring has sprung early in Ohio. I attended a baseball game[1] between ODU (Ohio Dominican University) and OWU last Saturday.[2] The weather was beautiful, the players were not wearing turtlenecks, etc. It was the earliest I have ever seen a baseball game live north of Florida. It was so much fun, with such warm and baseball-friendly weather, that the coaches decided to play another 18-inning game on Sunday. I went to that too.
Over the winter I collected a few trivia questions (and answers). I don’t like true trivia, as in trivial details. I like bigger questions, questions you can think about, instead of either knowing or not knowing. An example of the latter is: who is the last player to steal home twice in a single game. It’s an absurd question. Who could possibly know that it was Vic Power, a first baseman not exactly notorious for his speed. He totaled 45 steals in a 12-year, 1627-game career.
A better question, to my way of thinking, is: name the players who had 10 or more seasons with the same team in which they hit at least 30 home runs and had at least 100 RBIs.[3] This is a question that can be played with even if you don’t know the answer. You would think about great hitters, hitters that played for the same team for a long time, hitters who likely are among the best the game has ever seen. If you tried, you might come up with: Babe Ruth (12 seasons), Lou Gehrig, Henry Aaron, Albert Pujols, and David Ortiz (all with 10). That’s a pretty impressive list, spanning three generations of baseball greats.
More trivial trivia: did you know that four players have hit for the cycle three times in their careers. First, a player hits for the “cycle” when he has a single, double, triple, and home run in the same game. It has happened almost 300 times, roughly twice a year since professional baseball began in 1870s. John Reilly (in the 1880s), Bob Meusel (in the 1920s), Babe Herman (in the 1930s), and Adrian Beltre, who is still active, are the only players to hit for the cycle three times.
I’ll end with one last question: name the three pitchers who have 100 wins, 100 saves, and 50 complete games. Two of them are in the Hall of Fame and are well known for converting from starting pitchers to relief pitching. You could figure them out, given a little time. The third is impossible to guess and you might not have heard of him, though his last season pitching was relatively recent, 1984. The first two are Dennis Eckersley and John Smoltz. The third pitcher is somewhat similar, in that he began starter before moving to the bullpen. But he hadn’t nearly the star power and he wasn’t nearly as good.
Eck and Smoltzie cleared most of the hurdles rather easily, our third pitcher eked his way over. Eck has 197 wins, Smoltz had 213, RR had 146. Eck has 390 saves, Smolt had 154 (all in just four seasons), RR had 103. Eck had 100 complete games, Smolt had 53, and RR had 55. The cut-offs make it appear that RR is in the same league with Eckersley and Smoltz. And he was (literally), they all played in both the American and National Leagues. But figuratively, there is a large gap between the two hall of famers and Ron Reed.
Similarly, there is a very large gap between an ODU vs. OWU baseball game and the major league baseball games that I will be watching all summer. But baseball is baseball and this time of year, you take what you can get. Expect me to write much more about baseball in the months to come.
[1] The game was 18 innings long, that way it only counts as one game for each team. Division II baseball teams can play a limited number of scrimmages. By the way, the teams did not keep score, making it a little bit like a tee ball game.
[2] The Dominicans are Catholic and the Wesleyans are Protestants, continuing a religious rivalry that goes back centuries.
[3] Please never say “RsBI.” It’s stupid. It’s beyond stupid. It’s way over the outfield fence on stupid. One of the talking heads on ESPN started doing it years ago because he figured out that it’s “runs batted in,” apparently assuming he was the first person to make that wondrous discovery. “RBI” is an initialism, which is pluralized by adding an “s.” The same applies to POWs. Nobody would ever say “PsOW,” even though we all know that when there is more than one, the term is “prisoners of war,” not “prisoner of wars” (which would be exceedingly unfortunate). Initialisms are words and they are pronounced by stating each letter, making them quite distinct from acronymns (think FBI vs. NATO).
The only way to pronounce RsBI should be “Ars-bee” which doesn’t make any sense. It’s not an acronym. Thank you for pointing that out.
And an ‘s’ at the end shouldn’t be needed either. Instead, it is the pluralization of the nouns used when talking about the initialism.
For example, ‘The team’s accumulated RBI over the season …” Or, “Finding POW service members is a top priority.”
One only needs to imagine referring to a recently recognized group as LsGsBsTsQs to get the idea about how redundant adding a clarifying ‘s’ begins to sound. The plural is already implied.
Pitchers and catchers reporting…a time-honored annual event for those who worship at the alter of “America’s pastime” – letting everyone know to “prepare the way” for the upcoming season – one in which hope springs eternal for fans of EVERY team (at least until the first game is played) – I think of it as akin to Lent for those who worship at the Catholic alter!
Like you, I believe baseball games are best heard over the radio. I often have them playing in the background when I am working – whether indoors or outdoors. It reminds me of my childhood when my Dad would listen to Cleveland Indian’s games on the radio. Of course, where we lived in Northwest PA, there was enough distance to lend a crackling of static to the AM broadcasts that gave it even more of an “old-time” feel.
When I moved to Columbus to start graduate school at Ohio State, I met a friend who was a Reds fan. Since he couldn’t make Opening Day due to his studies, we started an opening day tradition of getting a radio, a washtub of beer, cigars and our armchairs – pulled out to the patio or backyard (weather permitting).
Again – some of my fondest memories.
Thanks for the post.
Why initialism instead of acronym?
Because of the pronunciation. FBI is pronounced F-B-I. NATO is Nay-toe, not N-A-T-O. It’s as simple as that. Acronyms are invented words, think radar and scuba, which often are created based on the first letter of a series of words, like self-contained underwater breathing apparatus = scuba. But not always. For instance, “chunnel” is an acronym comprised of channel and tunnel.