You love baseball. Tim Kurkjian loves baseball. So while we await its return, every day we'll provide you with a story or two tied to this date in baseball history.
ON THIS DATE IN 1913, Walter Johnson set the record for consecutive scoreless innings: 55⅔.
In the daily research for this project, Walter Johnson's name comes up virtually every day, perhaps more than any other baseball player. For instance, on this date in 1920, Johnson won his 300th game. His scoreless innings streak, which broke Jack Coombs' record of 53, remains the longest in American League history and third longest in major league history.
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Johnson is the greatest pitcher of all time, and he has one of the best nicknames ever: the Big Train. Johnson won 417 games, second-most ever, and had a 2.17 ERA. He threw a record 110 shutouts, 38 by 1-0, which means he had more 1-0 shutouts than Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling combined had shutouts by any score (Johnson also holds the record with the most 1-0 losses in a career with 26, 11 more than anyone else). Johnson threw 300 innings for a record nine years in a row. That 1913 season, he went 36-7 with a 1.14 ERA.
He was also a good hitting pitcher. He had 10 straight seasons in which his batting average was higher than his ERA. He hit 41 triples, 18 more than any other pitcher.
Johnson was the all-time strikeout leader for 56 years; he was passed by Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton and Gaylord Perry in the same season (1983). Johnson's 3,509 total is the ninth most of all time. Every other pitcher in the top 20 pitched in the 1970s; Johnson retired in 1927. Johnson was a very big man (6-foot-1, 200 pounds), huge for his day. He threw hard.
"I saw [Nolan] Ryan, I saw [Bob] Feller, I saw all of the best ones,'' Shirley Povich, who was a legendary sportswriter, once told me. "The fastest pitcher I ever saw was Walter Johnson.''
I attended Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland. Johnson wasn't just a great pitcher, he was active in the community. He mostly lived in Germantown, Maryland, which is one town away from where I live. He is buried in Rockville, Maryland, which also is one town away. He died on Dec. 10, 1946. I was born on Dec. 10, 1956. I wore a baseball and basketball uniform in high school with his name on it. I wrote for the school paper, it was called The Pitch. I did some work for the yearbook, called The Windup.
I have covered baseball for 41 years. I love the game. I went to Walter Johnson High School.
Other baseball notes from May 14
In 2017, the Yankees retired Derek Jeter's uniform No. 2. The equipment guy wanted to know what number to give Jeter, the rookie. Something in the 60's? Seventies? Manager Buck Showalter told them to give him a single-digit number because "he's going to be special.''
In 1967, Mickey Mantle hit his 500th home run. When he debuted in 1951, there were eight switch-hitters in the game, or 2.5% of all players. By 1992, there were 99 switch-hitters, or 17.2%. That increase was mostly because of Mickey Mantle.
In 1954, Dennis Martinez was born. In 1992, he became the first pitcher born outside the United States to throw a perfect game.
In 2003, Dave DeBusschere died at age 62. He is a Hall of Fame basketball player. "And he was size-wise, the biggest pitcher in baseball at one point,'' said Hawk Harrelson. On Aug. 13, 1963, DeBusschere threw a shutout against the Indians. The game took 1 hour, 55 minutes.
In 1942, Tony Perez was born. He loves his son, ESPN's Eduardo Perez. But when Eduardo called his dad that day in 1993 to tell him that he was going to the big leagues, Tony said, "Why? You are not ready.''