Speaking of freak injuries, a report of a death in an amateur game from the Washington Times, August 6, 1912:

By being struck in the head with a baseball while stealing second base, John James was so seriously injured that he died several hours later at the Women's Homeopathic Hospital...His skull was fractured and he died before an operation could be performed.

...and Victory Faust still won't leave John McGraw alone. Back in July, someone told Faust to go home to Kansas and wait to be sent for. He's still waiting, getting agitated, and has sent a letter asking McGraw why that summons hasn't come.

I guess you could call today's Birthday Team the Ken Phelps All-Stars. Not a terrible team - they've got a solid offense, a pretty good ace starter, and a deep (if unspectacular) bullpen.

C: Cam Carreon
1B: Ken Phelps
2B: Sam Mertes
3B: Bob Horner
SS: Bobby Sturgeon
LF: Sherry Magee
CF: Leon Culberson
RF/Manager: Ray Blades

SP: Andy Messersmith
SP: Ray Culp
SP: Milkman Jim Turner
SP: Jim Hardin
SP: Victor Zambrano
RP: Clem Labine
RP: Stan Belinda
RP: Ron Davis
RP: Luis Vizcaino

Fun Names: Brownie Foreman, Blackie Schwamb, Buck Thrasher

There seem to be no more Pujols articles after we were deluged by them on a Francoeur-ian rate at the start of the season.

But to note, he has brought his numbers upto his 2011 levels ( both rate and counting stats-wise ). While 2011 was still a drop from his established high levels, thats pretty impressive.

Ofcourse, there is about 2 more months of baseball left..

Mr. Messersmith was born the day Hiroshima was bombed.

Baseball history item at THT notes that today is 15,000 days since Reggie Jackson's All-Star game homer.

It's also the anniversary of one Hall of Famer getting his 2,000th and 3,000th hit. Yup, he got #3,000 exactly six years after #2,000. Can you guess who it is before clicking on the link above? (The 3,000 hit item is in bold, but not the 2,000 hit item).

There seem to be no more Pujols articles after we were deluged by them on a Francoeur-ian rate at the start of the season.

But to note, he has brought his numbers upto his 2011 levels ( both rate and counting stats-wise ). While 2011 was still a drop from his established high levels, thats pretty impressive.

Ofcourse, there is about 2 more months of baseball left..

Pujols had six weeks of pretty-badness, but on approximately May 15 stepped into a phone booth and re-emerged as the Albert Pujols we are familiar with.
All is right in the world, etc.

Last June, the Indians drafted an afterthought pitcher named Cody Allen in the 23rd round. He started this season in A ball, dominated there, then did the same thing to hitters in the Eastern and International Leagues before getting called to The Show a couple weeks ago. He's started his MLB career with eight scoreless innings, allowing one hit and whiffing seven. Major League opponents are hitting .043 off of Cody Allen.

He's really a great story in an otherwise dismal summer for the Indians, but every time I watch him pitch, I see that damn Inverted W and cringe.

One of the things I love most about baseball is that it allows for such fine analysis. There's an amazing level of easily accessible knowledge and understanding out there to be had that dwarfs most other sports combined. That's so cool.

But sometimes I wish I didn't know some of this stuff. I'd like to sit back and watch an underdog kid come out of nowhere and dominate without thinking about the inevitable scragging of his shoulder.

Josh Rutledge seems to be having a great rokie season, under the radar.

Also he has the hair of a player from 25 years ago. I look at the guy and all I think is "Brett Butler".

It's also the anniversary of one Hall of Famer getting his 2,000th and 3,000th hit. Yup, he got #3,000 exactly six years after #2,000. Can you guess who it is before clicking on the link above?

Of course I can.

Last weekend, I went with my parents to the place where they buy carpet -- they're getting new carpets in the house. The owner started to look up when they'd last purchased carpet there. "August 1999," I said rather confidently. I remember watching Gwynn's 3000th hit from the backyard, because we were getting carpet installed inside.

I noticed the insane number of rookies taking part in the A's-Blue Jays game on Saturday and thought it might be interesting to look at each team's starting 9 in terms of how many career hits they have. We're not quite in September yet but there have been a lot of callups. Do the Yankees have twice as many career hits as any other team? Three times? How many total novices are out there?

Notes: Prince Fielder only has 1119 career hits. That seems like a low number. Delmon Young has 900. Billy Butler has 884. Elvis Andrus is at 571 already!

The Yankees played the Mariners. Every Mariner except Brendan Ryan had less than 250 hits. Every Yankee except Russell Martin had more than 1000.

Also, Nate McLouth is on the Orioles. Who knew?

Here are the totals for Saturday's starting lineups, in the AL:

14835 Yankees
8944 White Sox
8432 Rangers
7185 Angels
7052 Tigers
6396 Red Sox
5485 Orioles
5218 Twins
4463 Rays
4234 Indians
3010 Blue Jays
2940 Royals
2488 Athletics
1708 Mariners

This means the Yankees starting lineup averaged 1648 hits. Which would be more than anyone in the Twins, Red Sox, Indians, Royals, Mariners, Blue Jays, Athletics, Orioles or Rays lineups has.

Least experience players (fewest career hits):
0 TOR Hechavarria
2 TEX Olt
6 TOR Sierra
9 OAK Taylor
11 TOR Gomes
11 TOR Gose
26 MIN Mastroianni
39 OAK Carter
40 TOR Cooper
56 BOS Kalish
56 CLE Carrera
62 DET Berry
70 MIN Dozier
80 KCR Cain
86 KCR Perez
86 KCR Dyson
112 SEA Montero
114 OAK Kottaras (and 85 walks of course)
117 TBR Fuld
129 SEA Wells
130 SEA Carp
134 SEA Thames
136 OAK Rosales
142 SEA Seager
142 TBR Jennings
143 BAL Quintanilla
144 CWS Viciedo
144 CLE Kipnis
148 LAA Trout
182 SEA Ackley
187 KCR Moustakas
196 SEA Jaso
205 SEA Saunders
210 OAK Weeks
217 CWS De Aza

Mr. Messersmith was born the day Hiroshima was bombed.

Isao Harimoto, the only player to get 3,000 hits in NPB, was in Hiroshima the day it was bombed. He was five years old. According to wiki,

Harimoto would survive the release of an atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and has been identified as the only survivor of that incident to play professional baseball in Japan. He survived without injuries because the family home was located in the shadow of a mountain and shielded from the blast, but lost a sister who was in the blast zone.[2] Later in life, he would become a member of the Japanese Hibakusha Movement, a project dedicated to outlawing global nuclear weaponry, and gaining compensation for victims of their use.

The German aircraft company was spelled "Messerschmitt", BTW.

Game of the day (yesterday): Tigers 10, Indians 8 (10). This game... this game had rallies.

Max Scherzer started for Detroit, and got into trouble almost immediately. Asdrubal Cabrera doubled with one out, and Carlos Santana walked with two. Michael Brantley and Travis Hafner followed with an RBI single apiece, giving Cleveland an early lead. Facing Chris Seddon, the Tigers put together three singles in the bottom of the first, courtesy of Austin Jackson, Omar Infante, and Prince Fielder. That produced one run and put runners on the corners with one out, but Delmon Young hit into a double play to prevent the tying run from scoring from third.

Scherzer and Seddon worked fairly tame second innings. In the third, Shin-Soo Choo homered with one out, doubling the Indians' advantage; the Tigers cut it back to one when Jackson tripled and Miguel Cabrera brought him home with a groundout, then evened the score in the fourth when Jhonny Peralta walked, moved to second on a groundout, and scored on a hit by Alex Avila.

Cleveland maintained its one inning on, one off scoring pattern in the fifth when Cabrera (Asdrubal) singled, stole second and third, and scored on Santana's hit. Detroit quickly retied the game when Infante led off the bottom of the inning with a homer, and chased Seddon from the game later in the inning. Cody Allen prevented the Tigers from scoring further, and Scherzer joined Seddon by exiting the game at the beginning of the sixth. Bryan Villarreal allowed a single and steal to Ezequiel Carrera, but recorded two outs, and Phil Coke entered to induce the third. Cleveland's Tony Sipp hit Brennan Boesch with his first pitch, but Boesch was caught stealing and Avila struck out; Joe Smith then entered, allowed Danny Worth to reach on an error, and struck out Jackson to keep the tie intact.

Coke recorded two quick outs in the seventh. Santana then singled, Brantley walked, and Hafner knocked in the go-ahead run. Smith, however, allowed a double to Infante and a single to Cabrera (Miguel) to put runners on the corners with nobody out; Vinnie Pestano entered to relieve him and retired the next three Tiger hitters, but the first of them was on a flyout that brought Infante home to tie the game... again.

With the game now evened at 5, Octavio Dotel and Pestano kept it that way with 1-2-3 eighth innings. Joaquin Benoit did the same in the ninth, but Josh Tomlin's efforts in the bottom of the inning were rather more eventful. Jackson started things off with his second triple of the game. Tomlin fanned Infante, then intentionally walked both Cabrera (Miguel) and Fielder to load the bases. Cleveland then inserted Jose Lopez as an extra infielder, pulling Choo from the game. Quintin Berry grounded sharply to first; Santana fielded the ball, threw home, and took the return throw at first for a game-extending 3-2-3 double play.

Benoit retired Brantley to open the tenth, but then served up Hafner's 200th career homer to put the Indians ahead yet again. Carrera followed with a homer of his own to drive Benoit from the mound; Darin Downs allowed a Jack Hannahan single and a Lou Marson double that scored a third run before finally retiring two more Clevelanders and ending the inning. Chris Perez got Peralta to pop up and Boesch to ground out, putting Detroit's win expectancy at less than 1%.

Alex Avila drew a walk. So did Andy Dirks. Jackson doubled, scoring one run and putting the tying runs in scoring position. Infante singled, bringing the tying runs home. And Cabrera (Miguel) homered, ending the game.

Five hitters. Five runs. Quite a nifty little turnaround there. Cabrera's homer also gave Detroit its first lead of the game - they'd rallied to tie it at 3, 4, 5, and 8, but never pulled ahead until that point, despite the bases loaded, one out situation in the ninth.

All things considered, it's the #19 game of 2012 so far, and the best to date of 10 innings or fewer. The Tigers also have the best 11-inning game of the year, their 13-12 comeback over the Red Sox way back on April 8.

To put it gently, this was a rather hitting-heavy game. Four separate hitters - Hafner, Jackson, Infante, and Cabrera (Miguel) - had WPAs of .4 or higher. Hafner had go-ahead hits in the 7th and 10th innings. Jackson had four hits and scored three times, including the tying run in the 10th; the only time he didn't score was after his leadoff triple in the ninth. Infante also had four hits and scored three times, but he also drove in three. The runs he was involved in were: game-tying homer in the fifth, doubled in the seventh and scored the tying run, singled in the two tying runs in the tenth and scored the winner on Cabrera's homer. Not bad. Cabrera didn't have four hits or score three times, but he did have the slightly higher WPA (.615 to .604), becase his outs were less harmful (one RBI groundout, one that advanced two runners, whereas Infante struck out with Jackson and third and nobody out in the ninth). Oh, and because of his walkoff homer; that helped too.

Meant to mention in that post that yesterday's games put us at 1620 played on the year so far, which is precisely 2/3 of the way through a standard regular season.

Radiolab had a recent podcast that included a story of a guy who was near ground zero in Hiroshima and managed to get home to Nagasaki ...

Two players simply let go off waivers:

Cesar Izturis from Milwaukee to Washington
Jose Mijares from Kansas City to San Francisco

Game of the day (last year): Rangers 8, Indians 7 (11). This one didn't start out exactly like your typical victory for the home team. Texas's Derek Holland got one out in the first, but then gave up back-to-back singles by Jason Kipnis and Asdrubal Cabrera, followed by a 3-run Carlos Santana homer. In the bottom of the first, Ian Kinsler demonstrated the self-produced run; he doubled off of Ubaldo Jimenez, stole third, and scored when ball 4 to Elvis Andrus was a wild pitch. Texas would later put runners on the corners with one out, but failed to score again.

Cleveland extended its lead in the second. Austin Kearns led off with a walk, and took second on a hit by Jason Donald. Kearns took third on a flyout, then scored on a groundout that moved Donald to second. Cabrera hit a grounder to short that should have ended the inning if Andrus had made the play; he didn't, putting runners on the corners, and Santana doubled both of them home, giving him the substantial total of 5 RBI through 2 innings. Texas picked away again in the bottom of the inning, when Yorvit Torrealba doubled, Kinsler drew a walk, and Andrus singled Torrealba home; still, that only made it 6-2, and Josh Hamilton grounded out to leave two runners in scoring position.

Having replaced Holland after Santana's double, Scott Feldman recorded two routine outs in the third. Shelley Duncan followed with a pile-on homer, however, restoring the Indians' 5-run lead. Mike Napoli and Mitch Moreland singled and doubled, respectively, in the home half of the inning to close the Rangers to within 7-3. And the scoring pretty much stopped for a while, with Feldman and Jimenez only allowing a walk between them in the next two innings. Yoshinori Tateyama came in for the top of the sixth and allowed a leadoff single to Duncan; he was later caught stealing, and no other Clevelanders reached base in the inning. Mike Napoli led off the bottom of the inning with a solo homer, and Moreland worked an 8-pitch walk to drive Jimenez from the mound. Reliever Chad Durbin didn't fare too much better, allowing a hit to Torrealba and a sac fly to Endy Chavez before settling down and retiring the side.

Tateyama worked a scoreless seventh, and Joe Smith set Texas's hitters down in order in the home half of the inning. Mark Lowe put two runners on in the eighth before a K/CS double play ended the inning, while Moreland drew a walk from Vinnie Pestano that put the tying run at the plate, but said run never reached base in the Ranger eighth. Mike Adams pitched a fairly routine ninth, allowing a walk and steal to Kipnis but nothing further. Chris Perez retired Kinsler and Andrus to start the bottom of the inning, but Josh Hamilton singled, and Michael Young followed with a line drive that scraped over the center field fence onto the green backdrop for a game-tying homer.

Adams recorded one out in the tenth, but then allowed singles to Matt LaPorta and Kosuke Fukudome. Neftali Feliz replaced him and coaxed a double play ball from Shelley Duncan. Rafael Perez replaced Chris and worked a perfect tenth for the Indians; Feliz allowed a hit in the eleventh, but then erased his own runner on another DP.

Chavez and Kinsler each made a two-pitch out to open the bottom of the eleventh. Andrus then reached on a bunt single, and moved to second on a wild pitch. Hamilton followed with a bouncer into the shortstop hole. Cabrera threw to first, but Hamilton's headfirst dive into the base beat the throw; meanwhile, Andrus never stopped at third, sliding into the plate well ahead of LaPorta's throw.

This is kind of the quintessential game from the recent Rangers: Occasionally shaky starting pitching, but excellent work out of the bullpen, and an offense that has both the power to score large numbers of runs, and the speed to score one when that's all they need.

time warner has purchased bleacher-report for somewhere around $200 million.

The German aircraft company was spelled "Messerschmitt", BTW.

I distinctly recall hearing during a broadcast (can't find it on the net) that the family name was changed at some point for that reason.

Punchline of one of my favorite jokes:

"Ja, but these Fokkers were flying Messerschmitts."