BrokenCowboy: Sports Views with a West Coast Bias

World Series, Game 1

The first game of the 2005 World Series is in the books, and Ozzie Guillen's scrappy little White Sox drew first blood with a 5-3 win over the Houston Astros on Saturday night. The game was notable for several reasons, including the success of Chicago's supposedly rusty bullpen as Neil Cotts and Bobby Jenks brushed off eleven days of dust and struck out five of the final six Houston hitters in the eighth and ninth innings to seal the win.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this opening game was the brief outing of Roger Clemens. As he gingerly walked down the steps to the clubhouse following his second inning of work, I wondered if any Hall of Fame pitcher had ever had a shorter World Series start. I don't have any friends working for the Elias Sports Bureau, so I had to do the grunt work myself. Thanks to the good folks at Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet, I was able to get an answer to my question.

If we can all agree that Clemens will one day end up in the Hall of Fame -- and I think we can -- he became part of a rather exclusive club on Saturday night. Currently there are thirty-six pitchers in the Hall of Fame who started at least one World Series game (including Babe Ruth), and only three of those guys fared worse than Clemens's two-inning stint. Here's the list of the Hall of Famers who weren't able to make it through three innings:

1.0 IP: Lefty Gomez, Game 3, 1939
1.0 IP: Whitey Ford, Game 4, 1953
1.1 IP: Whitey Ford, Game 6, 1958
1.2 IP: Mordecai Brown, Game 6, 1906
2.0 IP: Don Drysdale, Game 1, 1966
2.1 IP: Pete Alexander, Game 2, 1928
2.1 IP: Catfish Hunter, Game 2, 1977
2.2 IP: Hal Newhouser, Game 1, 1945
2.2 IP: Early Wynn, Game 4, 1959
2.2 IP: Don Drysdale, Game 1, 1965

An impressive list of unimpressive starts. It should be noted, however, of the four guys who would be above Clemens on that list (or below, depending upon how you look at it), only "Three Fingers" Mordecai Brown's Chicago Cubs weren't able to rally and win the Series.

Also of interest is the performance of Hal Newhouser in 1945. Having just won his second consecutive MVP for the Detroit Tigers (the only pitcher to turn that trick, by the way), Newhouser was hammered by the Cubs in the opening game of the '45 World Series. Just a fluke, obviously. Prince Hal atoned for the loss by earning a complete game win in game five, then coming back on two days' rest to go the distance again as the Tigers won the decisive seventh game.

One last thing. As I was walking through World Series history, I came across two pitchers who are on the other end of the spectrum: Christy Mathewson and Bob Gibson. If you're looking for a sure thing in the Fall Classic, you could send the rest of your pitching staff home and just bring these two guys. (Bring Mariano Rivera along for insurance, and you're gold.)

But back to Mathewson and Gibson. Take a look at their career numbers in the World Series:
Mathewson: 11 starts, 11 CG, 101.2 IP, 0.97 ERA
Gibson: 9 starts, 8 CG, 81.0 IP, 1.89 ERA

That, my friends, is dominant starting pitching.

May Day

Wondering whether or not your favorite baseball team has a shot to make the playoffs? Did they dig such a deep of a hole in April that they'll never be able to climb back out? Have they been so dominant that the playoffs are a sure thing? Wonder no longer -- I've done the legwork for you. Check out the results.

Homerun Geography

At long last, the Cowboy is back. The holiday hiatus was nice, though.

But even as we were communing with sea turtles on the Big Island's black sand beaches, hanging out on the North Shore of O'ahu, eating shave ice and Zippy's chili, the sporting world was never far from my mind. Sure, there were the big stories that I could've been writing about, like Shaq and Kobe on Christmas Day, baseball's flurry of free agent signings and trades, the reduction of Jermaine O'Neal's suspension, or the home stretch of the NFL's regular season, but there was one thing that I just couldn't get out of my head, even in paradise.

At some point as we were driving across miles of lava fields, I began thinking about how Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Willie McCovey all grew up in Mobile, Alabama. Three Hall of Famers from the same town. I've always found that quite amazing. Willie McCovey had a fairly nice career, but his 521 homeruns only put him third best on his hometown list.

From there I started to wonder about other states and which players might lead their states in homeruns. A few of them came easily: Maryland (Babe Ruth) and California (Barry Bonds), for example. I guessed that Lou Gehrig probably topped the New York list and was fairly certain that Mickey Mantle led all Oklahoma natives. After that?

And what about smaller states? Benny Agbiyani came to mind quickly for Hawai'i (I'd later find he was only #2 from the Aloha state), but what about Alaska? Rhode Island? And if I researched all the states, would I come up with any leaders that I didn't recognize? (Yes, two.) What would be the smallest total?

Clearly, I had no choice but to make the list. After spending an hour or so with the good folks at ESPN.com and Baseball Reference, I had all my answers; here's the list. It's alphabetical by state, the statistics are current through the 2004 season, and the numbers in parentheses indicate the career rankings of those players in the top 100 all time. Who's leading your home state? (Oh, by the way, I also included the leaders from each of several other countries that have produced major leaguers.) Enjoy.

State	Player	Total (Rank)
Alabama	Hank Aaron	755 (1)
Alaska	Josh Phelps	52
Arizona	Jack Howell	108
Arkansas	Brooks Robinson	268
California	Barry Bonds	703 (3)
Colorado	Johnny Frederick	85
Connecticut	Mo Vaughn	328 (82)
Delaware	Randy Bush/Dave May	96
D.C.	Don Money	176
Florida	Fred McGriff	493 (T21)
Georgia	Frank Thomas	436 (31)
Hawai'i	Mike Lum	90
Idaho	Harmon Killebrew	573 (8)
Illinois	Jim Thome	423 (35)
Indiana	Gil Hodges	370 (59)
Iowa	Hal Trosky	228
Kansas	Bob Horner	218
Kentucky	Jay Buhner	310 (T93)
Louisiana	Mel Ott	511 ( 18)
Maine	Del Bissonette	66
Maryland	Babe Ruth	714 (2)
Massachusetts	Jeff Bagwell	446 (28)
Michigan	Kirk Gibson/John Mayberry	255
Minnesota	Dave Winfield	465 (25)
Mississippi	Ellis Burks	352 (68)
Missouri	Yogi Berra	358 (65)
Montana	John Lowenstein	116
Nebraska	Wade Boggs	118
Nevada	Marty Cordova	122
New Hampshire	Phil Plantier	91
New Jersey	Eric Karros	284
New Mexico	Ralph Kiner	369 (60)
New York	Lou Gehrig	493 (T21)
North Carolina	Mark Grace	173
North Dakota	Darin Erstad	107
Ohio	Mike Schmidt	548 (11)
Oklahoma	Mickey Mantle	536 (12)
Oregon	Dave Kingman	442 (29)
Pennsylvania	Reggie Jackson	563 (9)
Rhode Island	Gabby Hartnett	236
South Carolina	Jim Rice	382 (T48)
South Dakota	Dave Collins	32
Tennessee	Vada Pinson	256
Texas	Frank Robinson	586 (5)
Utah	Chad Hermansen	13
Vermont	Carlton Fisk	376 (57)
Virginia	Willie Horton	325 (83)
Washington	Ron Santo	342 (72)
West Virginia	George Brett	317 (90)
Wisconsin	Al Simmons	307 (T96)
Wyoming	Mike Devereaux	105
Canada	Larry Walker	368 (61)
Colombia	Edgar Renteria	83
Cuba	Rafael Palmeiro	551 (10)
Curaçao	Andruw Jones	250
Domin. Rep.	Sammy Sosa	574 (7)
Ireland	Jack Doyle	26
Jamaica	Chili Davis	350 (70)
Japan	Hideki Matsui	47
Mexico	Vinny Castilla	303 (100)
Panama	Ben Oglivie	235
Puerto Rico	Juan Gonzaléz	434 (32)
Scotland	Bobby Thomson	264
Venezuela	Andres Galarraga	399 (T39)

By the way, if you liked that list, check out this one -- homerun leaders by letter of the alphabet.

Who Wants to be a Trillionaire?

There were two trillionaires in the NBA last night, Bo Outlaw of the Phoenix Suns and Aaron McKie of the Philadelphia 76ers, and that has nothing to do with their salaries.

Allow me to explain. A few years ago I read an article somewhere about how some NBA players had come up with a new (and fun) statistic -- the Trillion.

Here's how it works. If you look at a standard NBA box score, the column headings look like this: Minutes, FGM, FGA, FTM, FTA, O-Reb, T-Reb, Assists, Steals, Blocks, Turnovers, Personal Fouls, and Points. Thirteen total categories. So let's imagine a player who gets into the last minute of a ballgame. His line in the box score might just be a 1 followed by twelve zeroes. Add a few commas, and you get one trillion: 1,000,000,000,000.

So if a player earns some type of trillion, it means he's been in the game, but there is no real statistical evidence that he's contributed in any way.

And now back to Outlaw and McKie:

Outlaw (PHX): 5,000,000,000,000
McKie (PHIL): 2,000,000,000,000

As you can see it's a fun little stat to track. I'll keep track of it here on the site for a while, but it isn't likely that we'll have many people top Outlaw's effort. He's clearly set the bar pretty high!

Look, Ma! I'm Famous!

Regular readers will recall that after Game 1 of the World Series I posted something about the rarity of winning a Series game in which a team's error total exceeds the number of innings pitched by the starting pitcher. (Click here if you missed it.) I passed this nugget on to ESPN's Jayson Stark, and he included it in his column today. It's an interesting piece, but if you're not into the numbers as much as I am, scroll down to the last item to find my name in lights.

If you've arrived here after reading Stark's blurb (I suppose that's possible...), thanks for stopping by. Take a look around, and don't worry -- everything's free!

World Series, Game 1

Including last night's game, the first game of the 2004 Fall Classic, there have been 585 World Series games played since the Boston Pilgrims and Pittsburgh Pirates took the field for the first ever Series in 1903. There were a lot of interesting things that happened, including Larry Walker's huge game, the continuation of David Ortíz's hot streak, and Manny Ramírez's freestyle dance performance in left field, but this game was notable for something else.

Boston starter Tim Wakefield lasted only 3 2/3 innings, his teammates committed four errors, and the Red Sox still managed to win the game. It occurred to me that it might not be very common for a winning team's error total to exceed the number of innings pitched by its starting pitcher, so I did the legwork and checked it out. Thanks to the enormous resources at Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org, I was able to discover that this has only happened eight other times in World Series history:

Year, Game	Score	Errors	IP
1981, Game 4	Dodgers 8, Yankees 7	2	0.0
1970, Game 4	Reds 6, Orioles 5	3	2.2
1964, Game 4	Cardinals 4, Yankees 3	1	0.1
1947, Game 4	Dodgers 3, Yankees 2	3	0.0
1932, Game 4	Yankees 13, Cubs 6	4	0.2
1925, Game 7	Pirates 9, Senators 7	3	0.1
1924, Game 7	Senators 4, Giants 3	4	0.1
1917, Game 5	White Sox 8, Giants 5	6	0.0

Incidentally, only 1970 Orioles and 1947 Yankees were able to overcome such quirky defeats and rebound to win the Series, so the Cardinals would seem to have their work cut out for them.

One other interesting observation. I read somewhere recently (Bill Simmons, I think) that if this series stretches out to a seventh game, it would be played on October 31st, meaning that we could have Mike Myers pitching on Halloween with Stephen King in the stands. While that would seem to be enough to send tingles down anyone's spine, did you get a look at Julian Tavarez last night? Is it just me, or is he a dead ringer for Freddy Kreuger?

Now I Know My HR ABC's

When I was a kid, consumed by all things baseball, I once came across a delicious trivia question: Who leads the major leagues in career homeruns hit by someone whose last name starts with the letter Z? I think the answer was Richie Zisk. That trivia question popped into my head again last week for some reason, and it got me to wondering. Who are the leaders for each letter of the alphabet? Certain letters are easy -- A, B, M, R, J -- but what about the rest? I've spent a good chunk of time over the past few days trying to compile a mental list, the ABC's of homerun hitters, and it's time to let my mind move on to other things. After an hour or so of cheating (research) I've got the list. The statistics are accurate as of June 20, 2004. Enjoy.

Aaron, Hank (755)
Bonds, Barry (676)
Canseco, José (462)
Dawson, Andre (438)
Evans, Darrell (414)
Foxx, Jimmie (534)
Griffey, Ken Jr. (500)
Howard, Frank (382)
Incaviglia, Pete (206)
Jackson, Reggie (563)
Killebrew, Harmon (573)
Luzinski, Greg (307)
Mays, Willie (660)
Nettles, Graig (390)
Ott, Mel (511)
Palmeiro, Rafael (538)
Quinn, Mark (45)
Ruth, Babe (714)
Sosa, Sammy (549)
Thomas, Frank (435)
Upshaw, Willie (123)
Vaughn, Greg (355)
Williams, Ted (521)
X -- None
Yastrzemski, Carl (452)
Zeile, Todd (250)