June 18th and June 29th, 2012

Baseball loves its records. We, the fans, are always exposed to a new record from Elias Sports Bureau (all those records in one desk!), or Stats Inc., or the local TV stats guy with google and a bunch of spare time on his hands. Records, were, at one time, pure things. For example, most home runs hit in one season. Ever. Period. When Babe Ruth hit 60 homers, that was a simple, pure record.

Not a lot of games had been played, so it was relatively easy to do something for the first time ever. Most hits in a season, most errors. First pitcher to throw 2 no-hitters, first hitter to get 6 hits in a game. As time has gone on, a whole lot of games have been played. It has become harder to set the definitive record. For example, Jose Bautista was having a very good month in June. He set a record for home runs in a month. He hit fourteen. Fourteen is a lot of home runs in one month. It is more home runs than any Blue Jay has ever hit in a month, and that makes it a record. It is not, however, the most home runs hit in the American League in one month. That record would be fifteen, held jointly by Babe Ruth, Bob Johnson and Roger Maris. It is also nowhere near the Major League record for homers in a month. Sammy Sosa had the discourtesy to hit twenty home runs in June of 1998, which means you will hear a lot about Ruth, Johnson, and Maris, and then a whole lot about Sosa, before you ever hear about anybody setting the record for homers in the month of June. In a way, I feel bad for Bautista, but it should be hard to have the best home run hitting month in history, and it is.

Which is why it's totally worth talking about this guy and what he did in the past week an a half.

Lying down on the job? Not exactly.

For those of you not familiar with the face, that's Aaron Hill, current Arizona Diamondbacks (and former Blue Jays) second baseman. He made himself a piece of baseball lore on June 29th 2012. He had a four hit game, and did something that is very unusual for a hitter. By collecting a single, double, triple, and home run, he did what is called 'hitting for the cycle'.

It isn't easy to hit for the cycle. It certainly doesn't represent the best night a batter can have, as I'm sure all of the players who have hit four home runs in one night will tell you. The funny thing about the cycle is that nobody is trying to do it. A hitter who has a homer and a triple in his first 2 at-bats can't stop at second base if he hits another homer. Hitters aren't really able to stretch a hard single into a double, even if they have the other three elements of the cycle already covered. So, the cycle is a curiosity, but stll requires the tools to hit the ball hard, and have good speed on the bases. Even the best hitters are at the mercy of Lady Luck when it comes to the cycle. Still, it is significant for its rarity.

As an example of the rarity of the cycle, I present the following: my favourite franchise is the Toronto Blue Jays. They have a 35 year history. They have played 5,267 games. Blue Jay players have hit for the cycle twice. That's once very 2633.5 games. Quite the wait if you wanted to see both. In all of MLB, the fraternity of cycle hitters has 246 members. Which, considering the number of plate appearances in baseball history, is a select group indeed.

Aaron Hill has hit for the cycle twice in his career, which represents some very intense negotiations with Lady Luck. Several players have hit for the cycle multiple times. This smaller brotherhood contains only 19 names, including Mr. Hill. He stands alone in one regard, however. He took only an 11 day pause between his two hit-for-the-cycle games. Since modern baseball began in 1901, with the American and National Leagues playing parrellel seasons, nobody has ever put their first and second cycle so close together.

When he retires, Hill can tell his kids that, yes, he does hold an all-time baseball record. He is the player who hit for the cycle twice, and took the shortest ever break between the two times he did it.

I think, in a watered down game, where we get told a team hasn't hit back to back homers "since 2010" ,(wow, 2 years, that's soooo rare), it's good to have a little of the wonder put back into things by a player doing something that has never been done before.

Baseball, you never know what you might see next.

First pitch of the 8th

On April 18th, 2012, Yan Gomes made his major league debut for the Toronto Blue Jays, of the American league. He played third base, and recorded two hits. As Darren Oliver entered the game to start the top of the 8th, he threw his first pitch of the game. Courtesy of The Blue Jay Hunter, you can see what happened below.

Nice play. Great reaction time! I've led you a little astray, though, because that's not Yan Gomes, 24 year old rookie. That's the very adept glove handling skill of Omar Vizquel.

Vizquel, for the uninitiated, is a very, very, veteran defensive replacement. He is 45 years old.

That's the magic of baseball for you. In a game with no clock, every so often, a player comes along and holds off father time in surprising ways. Vizquel came into the game to replace a 24 year old rookie, because he's believed to be the better glove man. And he showed it on the very first pitch thrown while he was in the game.This season Vizquel is not the only man testing his ability to turn back the clock.

Our even more unlikely candidate is below.




The hit pictured above is from Jamie Moyer. Moyer is just returning from a year off to have Tommy John surgery. Which means he is a pitcher. A pitcher who recently celebrated his 49th birthday. He is now the oldest player in MLB history to get a hit, and also the oldest to drive in a run. Moyer is the oldest player in MLB history to do anything that he does. He is the punchline to every 'this guy is older than something really old' joke made in the last 6 months.

Every day, though, Jamie Moyer is the one laughing. He gets up in the morning and can put on the uniform of a real big league team. He makes a real contribution to the Colorado Rockies. He's almost 50 years old, and he's still living the life of a baseball player, a life many former players who washed out in their 30s would still trade him for. Jamie Moyer is some kind of wizard.

If there is one player who best captured the impossible spirit of playing beyond any expectation, though, it is not Jamie Moyer, or Omar Vizquel, or Jesse Orosco, or Julio Franco. It is a man most associated with one number and one letter. The number is 5714. The letter, is K.

Nolan Ryan.

Nolan Ryan was a Time Lord. He debut in 1966. He led the league in strikeouts from 1987 to 1990. Those were his age 40 through 44 seasons. He continued to throw in the mid 90s, and even no-hit my beloved Toronto Blue Jays in 1991. Again, when he was 45. He struck out 5714 batters in his career. Is that good? Well, here's the all time list.

As a comparision, Moyer hasn't got a pitch that he can throw 80mph. Omar Vizquel had to come to camp and compete for a job this year. Ryan was heaving it up there like a champion, until his elbow ligament popped in his last start. Like at the end of every series of Doctor Who, when they finally change actors, time had defeated Nolan Ryan, but he had held it back in an unbelievable way.


Baseball is played on a field that is, in theory, infinite in dimensions. Take the fences away, and the outfield rolls on forever. The game has no limits, tie games are played on and on, without concern for the clock. Sometimes that timeless magic gets into a player's blood, and he looks like he could go on forever.