Explorations in Policing, Faith and Life (With a hint of humor, product reviews, news and whatever catches my attention)
Showing posts with label records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label records. Show all posts

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Unassisted Triple Play


I was watching ESPN Sports Center when I heard about the unassisted triple play that
Asdrubal Cabrera of the Cleveland Indians turned.

The description from The Cleveland Indians Official site (http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080512&content_id=2686835&vkey=news_cle&fext=.jsp&c_id=cle)

The play came about with the game locked in a scoreless tie, Cliff Lee on the mound, Kevin Mench on second, Marco Scutaro on first and Lyle Overbay at the plate. The Jays attempted a hit-and-run with both runners going, and Overbay smacked a sinking liner up the middle. Cabrera, manning second base, made a diving catch of the ball near the bag, stood up, stepped on second to retire Mench and tagged Scutaro for the third out.


I thought that was cool and unusual but then I found out that there have been only 14 UTP's since 1936. To put that into prospective a perfect game has been pitched 17 times. So the UTP is a very rare animal.

That got me to thinking what is the rarest record in baseball? The answer: 2 no-hitters in back-to-back starts Number of occurrences: 1 Johnny Vander Meer June 11, 1938 (Boston Bees) and June 15, 1938 (Brooklyn Dodgers) for pitching and 2 grand slams in an inning Fernando Tatis, April 23, 1999 for hitting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUG6e3xyH_0