Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Asdrubal!

Last night Asdrubal Cabrera turned an unassisted triple play, the 14th in (modern) baseball history. The list of all 14 can be found here. I know almost nothing about unassisted triple plays, except that my friend Mike was at Fenway when John Valentin turned his...but missed it (he was getting beer). A couple notes:

- 13 of them are the same - caught line drive, tagged runner from 1st, and touched 2nd (with the last two in either order). But in 1920 George Burns (a 1B) tagged the runner just of 1st, and then ran to second base for the third out. I guess the runner fell, or didn't realize the ball was caught?

- Six UTPs were turned in the 1920's...and then there was a 55-year span in which only one was turned (1968). But then two were turned in the 90's, and so far there have been four in the current decade. Any idea what caused this? Are double steals getting more popular? Are players getting worse at baserunning/hit-and-running?

- the previous Indian to turn a UTP was someone named Bill Wambsganss. That's a lot of consonants.

1 comment:

  1. Even better....Cabrera tossed the ball to a fan in the crowd as he ran to the dugout...hahahahaha...dumbass

    ReplyDelete