Stuff!

Items of Note:

Cleveland won 22 straight games a little while ago. We know that the 1916 Giants had a string in which they did not lose for 26 games. But there was another 26-game streak - by the 1875 Boston Red Stockings of the National Association. That team won its first 22 games, played a tie, then won four more times. However, whether the National Association was a "major league" is a matter of debate.

Tom Ruane, who has done a ton of work with Retrosheet, noticed that on September 13, Cody Bellinger tripled and homered in the same game for the third time this year. He wondered who had the most 3B/HR games in a season. According to the available data (since 1908): George Altman, six times for the 1961 Cubs (he did it three times over a span of only seven games and all six times happened before July 14).

A number of players have done in five times: Babe Ruth (1928), Chick Hafey (1929), Jimmie Foxx (1933), Joe DiMaggio (1937), Hank Greenburg (1937), Ted Williams (1939), Johnny Mize (1940), Joe DiMaggio ((again) 1942), and Lou Clinton (1962). Ruth hit only eight triples in 1928, so more than half of them came in games in which he also went deep.

Albert Pujols is having the worst season in baseball history for a 37-year-old - and the Angels still owe him $114,000,000 over the next four seasons.

Although Aaron Judge struck out at least once in 37 straight games and he's Cesar Crespo when he faces the Red Sox (.151/.295/.260; seriously, he is), he has had a very good rookie season. He smashed Ted Williams' record of 107 walks (1939); he has 118 so far. He is one of three rookies with 100 runs scored, 100 RBI, and 100 walks, joining Williams (1939) and Al Rosen (1950). And he is one of four Yankees with 35+ home runs and 100+ walks in his age-25 season or younger. The others are Babe Ruth (1920), Lou Gehrig (1927), and Mickey Mantle (1955, 1956). ... There have been seven home runs in MLB this year with an exit velocity of 117+ mph - Judge has hit six of them.

Fangraphs' Travis Sawchik has an interesting idea to "fix" the wild-card round of the postseason. "The solution already exists in the real world, in practice, in the Korea Baseball Organization. In South Korea, the Wild Card round is a best-of-two affair. The lower seed, the road team in both potential games, must beat the No. 1 seed twice. The top seed must win just once to advance."

SI's Jay Jaffe has more analysis of Chris Sale's 300 strikeouts (which also includes a good amount of Pedro stuff).

When was the last time the Red Sox failed to hit a grand slam in a season? ... 1953.

Mary Craig, Beyond The Box Score:

Since the sport became popularized in the 1830s, women have played it, but with the creation of organized teams and the professionalization of the game, men began asserting it as something masculine, far too difficult for women to play. ...

In 1867, a team popped up at Miss Porter's School in Connecticut ... but was ultimately shut down after the school received a number of letters from parents calling for a stop to this "strenuous exercise." ... It was already controversial enough to have women's college of any sort, and allowing them to play baseball was a step too far, a play for more independence than society was willing to grant. Once news of these teams circulated, they each faced a swift backlash from parents and then newspapers.

The papers first assumed an informative tone that gave way to incredulous. ... [A]mongst these reports were ones that commented on the absurdity of women playing baseball. The Utica Morning Herald and Daily Gazette wrote in 1867 that while women technically had the right to play, doing so was laughable: "Imagine a fair creature arrayed in all the paraphernalia of dress, hoop skirts, and sun bonnet making a home run!... Who would wish to see his sweetheart's eye done in mourning for a week or her fair hand battered and bruised and soiled by a 'foul' ball, or her fair hair all pulled out or her ankle swathed in bandages." Other newspapers wrote much the same thing, equating the idea of women playing baseball to the equally fanciful notion of them practicing law or medicine. ...

[A]s it became clear that women would not give up the sport, the sentiment dramatically shifted. Newspapers quickly attributed playing baseball to the feminist agenda, politicizing the game and radicalizing its participants. The more professionalized the men's teams became, the less acceptable the women's teams grew. ...

In 1873, renowned doctor David H. Clarke published Sex in Education; or a Fair Chance for The Girls, in which he posited that physical exertion, like playing baseball, caused uterine damage and hysteria. ... The more embedded the sport became in American society, the less acceptable it was for girls and women to undertake it.

More subtle means of demeaning women baseball players also entered the fray. If newspapers did not outright condemn the act, they sought to undercut its significance by focusing on the women's appearance. ... Since women could not be prevented from playing baseball, society was determined to prevent them from becoming legitimate, reducing teams to spectacles and games to places when men could pick out their future wives.

The Unbelievable Story Of Larry Corcoran, The First Pitcher With Three No-Hitters
Chris Cwik, Big League Stew

Larry Corcoran's obituary in the Chicago Daily Tribune was just 46 words.

"New York, Sept. 20. — Larry Corcoran, the once famous pitcher of the Chicago Baseball club and for two seasons a member of the New York club, died at his home in Newark, N.J., last night of typhoid fever. He leaves a wife and two children."

None of it was true. Corcoran died of Bright's disease. He had four children. Oh, and he wasn't dead yet.

Bob Klapisch, The National Pastime Museum (writing about Game 6 of the 1986 World Series):

Buckner was a pariah throughout New England, all the way from Yawkey Way to the outer shores of Maine. It would be decades before Red Sox Nation could forgive Buckner ...

Klapisch is wrong. The truth is that Red Sox fans gave Buckner a loud, standing ovation at City Hall in Boston four days after his historic error and two days after the team had lost Game 7 of the World Series. ... Klapisch has been writing about baseball since (at least) the early 1980s. He should make a greater effort to learn the sport's history.