More from the useless information dept.:
Barry Bonds trivia: Hitting home runs in four consecutive at-bats over more than one day must be a pretty quirky feat. Of the five previous men to do it over the last 10 years, three of them are Tuffy Rhodes (last at-bat of the '93 season, first three in '94), Jeff Manto (1995) and Benito Santiago ('96).
Bonds' teammate, Alan Embree, also made home-run history Sunday. Elias' Kevin Hines reports he became the first relief pitcher to serve up four homers in one inning since Paul Foytack of the old Los Angeles Angels did it on July 31, 1963 (to Woodie Held, Pedro Ramos, Tito Francona and Larry Brown).
How 'bout those Padres? They got no-hit by A.J. Burnett and Desi Relaford in a span of five days. All right, so Relaford pitched one inning, not nine. It's still the first time in the last 10 seasons a team got no hits against a position player and a real pitcher in the same season.
You can call the Yankees many things, but orthodox isn't one of them. Even with their stirring comeback against the Mariners on Saturday, the Newark Star Ledger's Dan Graziano reports they're now 2-4 this year in games in which the other team blows a save.
The Yankees have used their fifth starter eight times this year. And the three rookies they've used -- Ted Lilly, Christian Parker and Randy Keisler -- haven't gotten through the fifth inning in six of the eight starts. Amazingly, they're 6-2 in games those three have started, but only 11-15 in games Andy Pettitte, Mike Mussina and Orlando Hernandez have started.
What a year. Luis Gonzalez got to 20 home runs Thursday, in fewer games (40) than anyone in history -- but Barry Bonds then zipped by him to become the fastest ever to 22 homers (43 games) three days later.
Name Game Feat of the Week: The Brewers gave up a pinch home run to Brian Hunter in Philadelphia last week for the second straight season -- but they were two different Brian Hunters (Brian R. last year, Brian L. this year).
Everybody's a specialist these days, but Tigers reliever C.J. Nitkowski is now a Palmeiro specialist. Three straight days this month, he came into a game to face a Palmeiro. Rafael homered off him May 9 and 10. But at least the Angels then came to town, and Orlando Palmeiro struck out against him the next day.
Then again, those Tigers are creative like that. Booth Newspapers' Danny Knobler reports that they went 5-1 on their last homestand -- and somehow got outscored, 32-27. Hard to do (but the loss was 14-2).
The flying Cabrera brothers -- Orlando and Jolbert -- tripled on the same day last Tuesday. And any time two brothers triple, you know the Expos have to be involved. The only other times it has happened since 1990, the Guerreros (Vladimir and Wilton) did it -- on Sept. 5, 1998 and June 23, 1997.
Time for our regularly scheduled Byung-Hyun Kim update, from the East Valley Tribune's Ed Price. Of the 442 pitches the unhittable Kim has thrown this year, 227 were swung at -- and only 50 were hit fair. Amazing.
The Indians had their 11-game road winning streak stopped Thursday. Randy Robles reports that since the '83-84 Tigers set the all-time record by winning 21 straight on the road, only two teams have had a longer road streak than Cleveland's: 12-gamers by the White Sox last June and July, and by the Braves, stretched out over the end of the '93 season and the start of the '94 season.
ESPN.com's astute triple threat, Geoff Reiss, noticed that the two men with
the most triples in baseball have exactly as many walks as triples --
Christian Guzman (eight of each) and Ichiro Suzuki (five of each).
The good news for Florida's Lyle Mouton is that he finally got a hit last
Tuesday, meaning he qualified as the official winner of the much-coveted Last
Guy to Get a Hit award. (He was 0-for-14 when he got the hit -- an RBI single
off Livan Hernandez.) The bad news was, the Marlins then designated him for
assignment, meaning he got that hit just in time.
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com.
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