I was just playing around with Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index new All-Star Game Pitching Event Finder, looking at which pitchers fanned the most batters at an All-Star played at Yankee Stadium.  Why?  Hey, I admit...when it comes to looking at old baseball stats, sometimes I find myself wondering the strangest things.

Anywho, when looking at the results, the 1939 All-Star Game caught my eye.  There were 62,892 fans there that day.  Stan Hack was the lead-off batter for the National League in the game. 

When you look at Stan's career stats, you see that he usually whiffed around 40 times a year.  Today, that would make him out to be a great contact hitter.  But, back in Hack's day, he was probably one of the top twenty in the league - in terms of swinging and missing.

Getting back to that game in 1939, Stan Hack struck out to start the game - and he was caught looking to end the game. 

Some All-Star moment in the Big Apple, huh?  Book-ending the game with K's.

The only other All-Star Game to start and end with a strikeout was 1979.  But, that was different batters in each situation.

So, Stan Hack stands alone with this one.  It's a good little trivia question to hit your friends with at this time of the year.  I doubt that many would be able to guess it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 7:52 am and is filed under Game Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.