I was just using Baseball-Reference.com's Player Index Batting Game Finder - and had it set for "From 1957 to 2007, Playing for NYY, Team Won, (requiring H=0, BB=0, SH=0, and SF=0), sorted by greatest PA in a single game" (Hey, sometimes I find myself looking at the strangest things when it comes to baseball stats). 

And, I came across the Game of June 2, 1982 - where the New York Yankees were visiting the Toronto Blue Jays.

In this contest, New York won 12-6.  However, the Yankees fourth and fifth batters in the line-up (John Mayberry and Graig Nettles) went a combined 0 for 14 in this game - with no walks, HBP, sac hits, sac flies, or reaching on an error. (The hitting stars in this game for the Yankees were Dave Collins, Bobby Murcer, Andre Robertson and Butch Wynegar.)

Without having the stats to back it up, I would suggest that having your team win a game, and where it scores 12 runs (or more) and where you have two players, batting back-to-back in the heart of the line-up, each going 0 for 7 with no productivity whatsoever from their PAs, is a rare situation.

Well, let's put it this way - it hasn't happened for the Yankees in the last 19 years.  So, if you're a fan of the Bronx Bombers, and you're 18 years or younger, you've never seen it happen for your favorite team.

That's the beauty of baseball.  Sometimes, even what appears to be just a vanilla game in the month of June, almost two decades ago, has something in it that's interesting and very rare - if you just manage to figure out what it is...

This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 7:00 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.