This past September, on one of the local news programs, one of the commentators made a passing remark during the sports segment. The date was 9/11 and the Mets scored 9 runs on 11 hits that evening.
I wondered…did anyone besides me, find this usual? Or did everyone else slough it off as an ad hoc remark by a newscaster trying to be clever?
With over 375,000 games played in the 145+ years since professional baseball started, you might expect some strange occurrences, including the 1919 Work Series, which you may have read about in the last edition of Random Connections.
Philip Bump, a political reporter for the Washington Post was inspired by his father, a sports columnist, to do a little digging. According to Bump, “On June 28, 1871, the Philadelphia Athletics traveled to Troy, N.Y., to play the Troy Haymakers in a game of baseball. It was the first season in which a professional league existed in the United States and, on that day in Upstate New York, something happened that, as far as I can tell, never happened again. In that game both teams scored one or more runs in all 9 innings.”
Read more “Random Connections” here: https://theconnectionsnj.com/category/random-connections/
My sentimental sports story is that of my father’s childhood hero, Johnny Vander Meer, a Cincinnati Reds pitcher, born in Prospect Park, New Jersey in 1914. On June 11, 1938, Vander Meer pitched a no hitter against the Boston Bees. Four days later, against the Brooklyn Dodgers, in what was the first night game ever held at Ebbets Field, he threw another no hitter, becoming the only player in major league history to throw two consecutive no-hitters.
Back to the Mets performance on September 11th this year. I felt compelled to do some research. Early in the season, I found a few scores where runs and hits synchronized with the calendar date, such as 4 runs on 7 hits occurring on April 7th. However, in the second half of the season, not a single home team matched their runs and hits to the calendar date.
With the caveat that I am not a statistician, I estimate that there is a 1 in 20,000 chance that a New York professional baseball team scores 9 runs on 11 hits in New York City on what has become a significant day in history and particularly meaningful to our region.
Does it make your wonder too?