Unfair
Though I don’t watch as much baseball these days as I should, I still try to follow the game as closely as I can. And so I was pretty interested the other day when Bryce Harper hit for the cycle and Kyle Schwarber managed to hit three home runs.
It’s happened before in history, though you have to go back nearly 100 years. And, as Not Gaetti tells us in this tweet, the last time this happened was pretty significant:
That 1932 game took place in Philadelphia on June 3rd.
Now, it’s easy to forget that the New York Yankees weren’t necessarily all that dominant int he early 1930s. In fact, the Philadelphia Athletics had won three straight American League pennants (1929-1931) and had managed to win the World Series twice during that stretch. In 1931, the Athletics won a whopping 107 games, but managed to lose the World Series in 7 games to the Cardinals.
In other words, this wasn’t one of those second division Athletics teams.
However, Philadelphia was struggling a bit in the standings in early June:
And, yeah, the Red Sox were pretty bad in the 1930s.
The other thing to note is that the newspapers really only highlighted Gehrig’s four home runs in a single game. Not even Babe Ruth had done that; in fact, that feat hadn’t happened since 1894:
The Philadelphia press also didn’t have much to say about Lazzeri hitting for the cycle:
The other somewhat bizarre feature of that game is that the Athletics were ahead as late as the top of the 6th inning. The Yankees did most of their scoring late, taking advantage of some really poor Philadelphia relief pitching:
And, of course, the real headline that day had nothing to do with Gehrig hitting four home runs or Lazzeri hitting for the cycle. Instead, everybody’s attention was paid to the other New York team:
Sometimes the story around the game is bigger than the game itself.
My favorite part about the game this past Saturday is Schwarber hitting two of his home runs in the same inning. That's been done a few times by a Phillies player, but it reminded me of when Von Hayes did it in the first inning of the infamous 26 - 7 rout of the Mets on June 11, 1985. I'll also remember Saturday's game since my buddies and I were following it at a minor-league game. State College is affiliated with the Pirates, but there were several Phillies fans there (including my buddy) wearing their gear, and a woman sitting in front of us watching the game on her phone.
It’s scary that this is the first I’ve heard about this rare occurrence that apparently happened on Saturday. I have lost almost complete interest in today’s brand of baseball.