« more Jayson Stark - lots of good things »

for those without insider access…

25 August 2007
Written by: Aneel Posted under baseball oddities

I’ll repost a portion of Stark’s article here:

Top 10 Useless ‘30-3′ Info
So there I was the other day, taking my daughter off to start her freshman year at Syracuse, when a frigging 30-3 game broke out.

How does that happen? I spend my whole life waiting for a game like that, and it erupts on a day I can’t possibly take the time to write about it? That’s not right.

In fact, the Useless Information Department would like to propose the following rule change: No team shall be permitted to score 30 runs in a game if that game occurs on a day when the Useless Info Department is closed for business. Thank you.

OK, so I know I’m the last ESPN employee alive to write about this game (with the possible exception of Mike Ditka). And Tim Kurkjian and the ingenious folks over in the Research Department have done spectacular work digging up those factoids.

But judging by the thousand e-mails in my inbox, you folks think I’m required to interrupt regular Useless Info programming for games like this. So in order to make the insatiable Useless Info Nation happy, I’m obliging. Here they come, my 10 Favorite Useless Info Tidbits (That Haven’t Already Been Reported) on the 30-3 Game:

1. The Rangers scored 30 runs in this game. They hadn’t even scored 30 runs in a whole series since Aug. 10-13, 2006. That was 54 series ago.

2 - 8 –

9. Loyal reader Scott Williams was duly amazed that the Orioles pitchers threw 120 more pitches in this game than the Rangers (252-132). But another loyal reader, the always-resourceful Aneel Trivedi, reports that that’s somehow happened two other times in the last 20 years. The A’s delivered 263 more than the Tigers in a 20-4 loss to Detroit on April 13, 1993. And the White Sox fired up 120 more than the Indians in a 13-0 loss to Cleveland on May 18, 1999. Who knew?


Leave a reply