Phillies lefthander Cole Hamels pitched a career game.  No, make that a Hall of Fame career game as the Phils beat the Cincinnati Reds by a 4-1 score thanks to offensive support from 2nd baseman Chase Utley and centerfielder Aaron Rowand and a defensive gem by the infield — a third-to-second-to-first triple play as Hamels recorded his first major league complete game and the Phillies first complete game of the season, striking out 15 Reds hitters in the process.  In the very first inning, he set the tone for the game by striking out the side.  Hamels’ record stands at 2-0 for the season.

MLB.com’s Brian Connors Manke noted these comments from catcher Rod Barajas;

“He had it all working tonight, This is one of the best games I’ve ever caught.”

With slugging 1st baseman Ryan Howard still nursing the sprained ligament just below his left knee, manager Charlie Manuel shook up his starting lineup putting rightfielder Shane Victorino in the leadoff spot, moving Rowand to 2nd spot, with shortstop Jimmy Rollins batting 3rd and Utley in the cleanup spot followed by leftfielder Pat Burrell.  Victorino went 2 for 4, Utley was 2 for 4 with 3 RBIs while Rollins and Burrell went hitless for the game.

Utley got the Phils of to a 2-0 in the first inning with a one out, 2 run double.  In the 2nd inning, 1st baseman and former Phillie Jeff Conine led off with a solo homer to leftfield on what was Hamels’ only mistake of the game.

The Phils got that run back in the 6th inning as Utley belted a one out solo blast to rightfield for a 3-1 Phillies lead, all runs being scored off of Cincinnati starter lefthander Eric Milton who pitched well but was far out-shone  by Hamels.  Milton was charged with the loss, his record is now 0-3.

Reliever Victor Santos relieved Milton in the 7th and pitched 2 innings.  In the 8th, Aaron Rowand put the Phils’ 4th run on the board with a solo homer off of Santos.  Reliever Kirk Saarloos mopped up in the 9th setting the Phils down in order.

But it was Hamels’ performance which dominated the game as he was every bit as devastatingly brilliant in the late innings as he was at the game’s start, striking out the side in the 8th inning with runners on and going 3 up, 3 down in the 9th.  

Leftfielder Adam Dunn, who had 40 homer years in 2005 and 2006, struck out 3 times as did 2nd baseman Brandon Phillips with Conine and shortstop Alex Gonzalez striking out twice.

Hamels got at least one strikeout in every inning except the 5th.  In the 5th, rightfielder Josh Hamilton led off with a walk, one of two walks given up by Hamels for the game.  3rd baseman Edwin Encarnacion followed with a single to center with Hamilton going to 2nd base.  This brought up catcher  David Ross with 2 on and none out.  Yahoo sports’ AP recap describes what happened next;

David Ross hit a grounder to Phillies third baseman Abraham Nunez, who stepped on third to force Hamilton and threw to second baseman Chase Utley to force Encarnacion for the second out.

Utley’s relay to first baseman Wes Helms caught Ross by a step. The Reds hadn’t hit into a triple play since catcher Eddie Taubensee lined into one against San Diego on May 19, 1997.

“(Ross) was the perfect guy to do it,” Nunez said. “I said to myself, ‘If I get the ball close to the bag, I’m going to try for it.”‘

The triple play helped the Phillies preserve a 2-1 lead.

“I’m sure it saved me 10 or 15 pitches,” Hamels said.

“The triple play was pretty exciting,” Utley said. “It’s the first one I’ve ever been a part of. It happened so quickly.”

There were five triple plays turned in the majors last season, the last by the Chicago White Sox on Sept. 18, against the Detroit Tigers.

MLB.com’s Brian Connors Manke added these comments from other Phillies;

“It was just what the doctor ordered,” Manuel said.

“It was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever had happen,” Hamels began.

For all of the boxscores and recaps on all Saturday’s games, click here.

On Sunday, Freddy Garcia duels Matt Belisle in the get-away game as the Phillies hope to take the series and improve their record to 6-11.   

For all of the scores, boxscores and recaps on these and all Sunday games, click here.

Add to:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. | del.icio.us | digg | Furl | Reddit | YahooMyWeb |

February 25th and 26th mark two baseball events of some moment.

Thirty-five years ago, on February 25, 1972 the Phillies and the St. Louis Cardinals consumated the momentus trade which brought Lefty Steve Carlton to the Phillies in exchange for righthander Rick Wise.

Carlton went on to amass 241 wins, including a 27-10, 1.97 ERA 1972 record for a team which won a mere 59 games, 4 subsequent 20 win seasons and 4 Cy Young awards in leading the Phillies to contention between 1974 and 1983 including 5 division championships, 2 NL pennants, 2 world series appearances in 1980 and in 1983 and a World Championship (in 1980).

Wise, on the other hand, went 16-12 in 1973 leading the Cards to a tight 2nd place finish, 1 1/2 games behind the Mets who went on to lose the  world series to the Oakland Athletics 4 games to 3.  In 1975, after going to the Boston Red Sox, he led the pitching staff with a 19-12 mark joining  Luis Tiant and Bill Lee in leading the Red Sox to the world series which they lost by 4 games to 3 to the Cincinnati Reds.

On February 26, 2004, the infamous ball interfered with by Cubs’ fan Steve Bartmen in Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS with the Florida Marlins was exploded “an attempt to exorcise the curse that has kept the Cubs from reaching the  World Series since 1945.“

Baseball reference writes on that series and the incident;

 2003 Postseason

• NL Division Series (3-2) Cubs (NLC) over Braves (NLE)
• NL Division Series (3-1) Marlins (WC) over Giants (NLW)
• NL Championship Series (4-3) Marlins over Cubs
• World Series (4-2) Marlins over Yankees

Steve Bartman is the Chicago Cubs fan who interfered with a foul fly ball that Moises Alou was attempting to catch with one out in the 8th inning of Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS on October 14, 2003 (Boxscore). The Cubs ended up losing the game and the series to the Florida Marlins. The Cubs were ahead 3-0 at the time, but proceeded to squander the lead following this play, thanks mostly to an error by shortstop Alex Gonzalez. While Alou would have had a chance to make the catch, it would have been a stellar play by him and by no means a sure thing; in any case, Bartman’s intervention prevented Alou from having any shot at the ball. The Marlins went on to score 8 runs during the inning to put the game away, while FOX repeatedly showed Bartman during the broadcast. He was forced to leave the game early out of fear for his safety. He has not returned to Wrigley Field since despite being an avid Cubs fan all of his life.

                

Florida Governor Jeb Bush offered Bartman asylum in Florida following the series.

Add to:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. | del.icio.us | digg | Furl | Reddit | YahooMyWeb |

It’s been a tough off-season this year with major league baseball losing both a current player and a number of aging former stars and Hall of Famers.  

Add another aged star to the list as former Yanks colorful outfielder, 3 time All Star and former Baltimore Orioles manager Hank Bauer passed away on Saturday of cancer according to a statement issued by the Orioles.  Bauer was 84.

Saturday’s report in the New York Times on Bauer’s passing provides a background on Bauer’s major league baseball career which spanned 14 seasons as a player, the first 12 seasons with the Yankees before being traded to the Kansas City Athletics for the final 2 seasons of his career, having been traded in the deal for which the Yanks acquired Roger Maris.  It also reports on Bauer’s 4 1/2 year managerial career with the Baltimore Orioles, including the Orioles 1966 World Series victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers and a final managerial season in 1969 with the Athletics.  The report also outlines his earlier life including his army service during World War 2.

Bauer joined the Yankees in the closing weeks of the 1948 season, hitting singles in his first three at bats. He then barreled through the next 11 seasons as the Yankees dynasty moved from the Joe DiMaggio era into the Mickey Mantle era. The Yankees won nine American League pennants and seven World Series during his seasons with them. In all, he played 14 years in the major leagues.

Bauer, who had a powerful throwing arm, was named to the American League All-Star team three times, from 1952 to 1954, and compiled a career batting average of .277 with 164 home runs, 57 triples, 229 doubles and 703 runs batted in.

                        

He is remembered for his World Series performances, including a record 17-game hitting streak (1956-58) and a game-saving catch. But one of his finest baseball moments came seven years after the Yankees had traded him so they could acquire Roger Maris.

                            

It was in 1966, when Bauer, now a manager, led the Orioles to their first World Series title, a four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in a contest loaded with future Hall of Famers like Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer of the Orioles and Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale of the Dodgers.

Bauer acknowledged that he was not a natural fielder or hitter, but at a muscular 6 feet and 202 pounds, he played baseball with a fullback’s ferocity. “When Hank came down the base path, the whole earth trembled,” said Johnny Pesky, the shortstop for the Boston Red Sox.

Bauer said: “It’s no fun playing if you don’t make somebody else unhappy. I do everything hard.”

Henry Albert Bauer was born July 31, 1922, in East St. Louis, Ill., where he admired the aggressive style of the St. Louis Cardinals, renowned in the 1930s as the Gashouse Gang. He was the youngest of nine children of an Austrian immigrant who had lost a leg working in an aluminum mill and later made a living as a bartender. A brother described Bauer as “a real dead-end kid who always was going around with a bloody nose.”

As a youngster, he played high school and American Legion baseball. After graduating from high school, he joined a pipe fitters’ union and repaired furnaces in a beer-bottling plant. But in 1941, his brother Herman, who was playing in the Chicago White Sox farm system, arranged a tryout for Hank, who batted and threw right-handed. Hank won an assignment to the Oshkosh team in the Class D Wisconsin State League.

Bauer’s baseball future seemed to recede in January 1942, when he joined the Marines soon after Pearl Harbor. He spent nearly three years of World War II in the South Pacific as a combat platoon leader, sustaining 24 attacks of malaria, receiving shrapnel wounds in his back on Guam and in a thigh on Okinawa, and winning 11 campaign ribbons, 2 Bronze Stars and 2 Purple Hearts.

After the war, he returned to pipe fitting, but a Yankees scout remembered him and signed him to the Yankees’ farm team in Quincy, Ill. Two years later, he was called up to New York at 26.

In the 1951 World Series, which the Yankees took from the New York Giants, 4 games to 2, Bauer almost single-handedly won the sixth and deciding game, hitting a bases-loaded triple and making a diving catch of a line drive for the game’s final out with the tying run on base.

The four home runs Bauer hit in his last Series, in 1958, when the Yankees beat the Milwaukee Braves, 4 games to 3, is the second-highest total in a Series after Reggie Jackson’s five in 1977. (The other players to hit four: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig,  Duke Snider and Gene Tenace.)

With his talents in decline, the Yankees traded Bauer to the Kansas City Athletics in 1959 as part of the Maris deal. In June 1961, he replaced Joe Gordon as manager of the A’s, but after two years of ninth-place finishes in the 10-team league, he quit and moved to the Orioles in 1963 as a coach. He became the manager in 1964. When the Orioles finished third behind the Yankees, he was named A.L. manager of the year.

He earned that honor again in 1966, when he managed the Orioles to a 97-63 record and a World Series sweep of the Dodgers. A pitcher on that Baltimore team, Steve Barber, died Sunday at 67.

Bauer remained with the Orioles until 1968 and spent a final season managing the Athletics in 1969.

Bauer — of whom Mantle once said, “He taught me how to dress, how to talk and how to drink” — also had a role in some Yankees history off the field. In one incident, in 1957, a group of Yankees players, accompanied by their wives, became involved in a confrontation with another group of patrons at the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan. One, a Bronx delicatessen owner, sued Bauer, accusing him of punching him. The man lost the lawsuit after catcher Yogi Berra testified, “Nobody never hit nobody.”

Bauer could be unforgiving, though, if he felt his teammates’ off-the-field activities were hurting the Yankees’ on-the-field performance. Pitcher Whitey Ford remembered how Bauer reacted when he thought players like Ford and Mantle were overindulging themselves after hours: “He pinned me to the wall of the dugout one day and said, ‘Don’t mess with my money.’ ”

Hank Bauer, 07-31-1922 to 02-09-2007

Add to:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. | del.icio.us | digg | Furl | Reddit | YahooMyWeb |

What a difference 46 years make.  Today, players sign multi-year contracts for mega-mega millions of dollars. 

On February 9, 1961 all-time great Willie Mays, then a super-star in major league baseball for 9 years signed a contract with the San Francisco Giants for $85‚000‚ then the largest contract in ML baseball. 

Mays had put together a phenomenal first nine seasons in baseball with the Giants; hitting over .300 in 6 of those first 9 seasons, including .345 in 1954 along with 41 HRs and 110 RBIs, 51 HRs, 127 RBIs and .319 BA in 1955, 35 HRs with a .333 BA in 1956 and .347 BA in 1957.

Mays, played on 3 Giant teams which went to the world series; in his rookie year in 1951, the Giants won a best of 3 playoff series over the Brooklyn Dodgers on Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard ’round the world” winning homerun before losing the world series to the Yankees by 4-2 in games, the 1954 world series which the Giants swept from the Cleveland Indians (who had a regular season record of 11-43) and the 1962 world series which the Giants lost in 7 games to the Yankees after winning the NL pennant in another best of 3 games playoff with the LA Dodgers.

Mays was both a speedy base runner and was phenomenal defensively patenting his famous basket catches in centerfield.

Upon signing for $85‚000, Mays continued racking up great hitting years through 1970, although not at the earlier level of his first 9 seasons.

Baseball Library records May’s fielding prowess;

Mays’s preeminence as a centerfielder is supported statistically by his career total of 7,095 putouts, the most in major league history. He used his patented basket catch on routine fly balls, and he regularly dumbfounded onlookers by making seemingly impossible plays. After a particularly astonishing display in which Mays raced to his left, speared a fly ball, spun 360 degrees counterclockwise, and threw the ball on a 325-foot line to nail a tagging Dodger baserunner at the plate, Brooklyn manager Charlie Dressen commented, “I won’t believe that play until I see him do it again.”

On March 1, 1971, Mays signed a 2-year contract with the Giants for $165‚000 per year.  The Giants went on to win the NL West but not the NL pennant.  But his hitting skills and playing time diminished with age and in 1972, “Say Hey” was traded to the New York Mets. Mays made his final world series appearance in 1973 with the Mets team which lost by 4-3 in games to the Oakland A’s (who went on to win 3 consecutive world championships in 1972-74) after finishing with a narrow 82-79 record in winning the NL East and NL pennant.

Willie Mays, the “Say Hey Kid” retired from major league baseball after the 1973 world series, having played baseball for 22 seasons.

Add to:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. | del.icio.us | digg | Furl | Reddit | YahooMyWeb |

MLB reports on it’s “History of the Game” page that on January 28, 1958, Brooklyn Dodgers catching star Roy Campanella suffered a broken neck and a damaged spinal chord in an early morning car accident.  Baseball Library shows a one day descrepancy, reporting that the accident occured on January 29th.

Campanella played 10 years for the Brooklyn Dodgers, having made the team after 2 years in the minors.  Campy’s debut with the Dodgers was on April 20, 1948.  He went on to play 83 games for the Dodgers in 1948 before becoming the Dodgers starting catcher in 1949 where he starred for the next 9 years, being an important cog in 4 Dodger pennants and Brooklyn’s lone World Championship in 1955, until the paralyzing injuries he sustained in the accident ended his baseball career.

Baseball Library writes this about Campanella;

For the next nine years, he caught for outstanding Brooklyn teams whose members have been lionized as “The Boys of Summer.” They won National League pennants in 1949,  1952, 1953, 1955, and 1956, narrowly missed two others, and climaxed Brooklyn’s baseball history with its only World Series triumph in 1955. Campanella’s contributions to the Dodgers were remarkable. He won the MVP award three times in five years. In 1953, his best season, he batted .312, and scored 103 runs. Also, his 142 RBI (which led the league) and 41 HR set ML records for catchers (plus one HR as a pinch-hitter). He fielded with grace that belied his physique and handled with distinction a predominantly white pitching staff.

Like those of many catchers, Campanella’s career was punctuated by injuries. In spring training of 1954, he chipped a bone in the heel of his left hand and damaged a nerve. It affected his hitting and limited him to 111 games. Surgery helped in 1955, but the problem returned the next year.

                          

In January 1958, Campanella was permanently disabled in an automobile accident. Returning home from his liquor store, which he ran in the off-season, he lost control of his car on an icy street. The car slammed into a telephone pole and flipped over, pinning him behind the steering wheel. The crash fractured his fifth cervical vertebra and damaged his spinal cord. He survived and endured years of therapy, living far beyond the normal span for quadriplegics, but his career was over. He committed himself to decades of work in community relations for the Dodgers.  (SG)

Highlights of Roy Campanella’s career can be viewed here.

Add to:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. | del.icio.us | digg | Furl | Reddit | YahooMyWeb |

One of the rarest of rare feats in Major League Baseball is the unassisted triple play.  Only 12 Major League players have accomplished the feat.

One of them was 2nd baseman Mickey Morandini who accomplished the feat for the Philadelphia Phillies near the end of the 1992 baseball season, on  September 20 against the NL East Division winning Pittsburgh Pirates.

It was in the 6th inning of a 13 inning game with runners on 1st and 2nd base that Morandini speared a line drive off of the bat of 3rd baseman Jeff King.  Morandini then stepped on 2nd base doubling up centerfielder Andy Van Slyke and tagged out leftfielder Barry Bonds who was running from 1st base.  The Pirates won the extra-inning game by a 3-2 score but Morandini’s feat was a highlight in an otherwise disastrous 1992 last place finish by the Phillies.

John Thorn records in his book, “Treasures of The Baseball Hall of Fame” that Morandini donated his uniform of the game to the Hall of Fame.  However, noone knows the whereabouts of the ball with which the triple play was recorded.  Morandini tossed the ball to the mound after the play which ended the inning.  In the next inning, a Phils hitter fouled it off. 

Perhaps, someday the elusive ball will turn up with a price tag.

Add to:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. | del.icio.us | digg | Furl | Reddit | YahooMyWeb |