Things are slow on the baseball front as we approach the winter meetings in early December.  For us baseball junkies who need something to feed our addiction here are some more records and rarities from the 2009 season.

One of the most bizarre occurrences took place on July 9.  Pirates’ relief pitcher Joel Hanrahan was enjoying a day off in Philadelphia when he was credited with a legitimate win.  Impossible?  Not so.  Back on May 5 Hanrahan was pitching in the eleventh inning for the Nationals against Houston.  With Washington batting in the bottom of the frame, one out and a runner on first, the game was suspended.  In the two-month interim between its interruption and resumption, Hanrahan was shipped to Pittsburgh.  So on July 9, when the game was resumed, the Pirate reliever was still the Nats pitcher of record.  Washington scored in the bottom of the eleventh on a Miguel Tejada error.  Credit Hanrahan with a win while sitting in a hotel room as the member of another team.  To add to the odd nature of the occurrence, Nyger Morgan scored the winning run for the Nats.  He was the player exchanged for Hanrahan and not on the Washington roster back in May.

In an interesting bit of statistical timing, Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko homered back-to-back on April 13.  That’s nothing out of the ordinary for those power hitters, except that, for both players, it was his 300^th career round-tripper.  They became the first teammates to reach century home run milestones of at least 300 in the same game.  That’s an excellent sense of timing.

A rare managerial mistake on May 17 put Marlins pitcher Andy Sonnanstine in the third spot in the Florida line-up against the Indians.  Marlins manager Joe Madden inadvertently listed two third-baseman, Ben Zobrist and Evan Longoria, on his lineup card, but no DH.  Zobrist went to third in the top of the first as Longoria was intended to be the DH.  The error was discovered when the Rays came to bat and resulted in the loss of the DH.  Longoria had to be dropped from the lineup and Sonnanstine inserted in the crucial three-hole.  In spite of Madden’s gaffe the Marlins managed a win.  By the way, Sonnanstine took his responsibility quite seriously and doubled in a run in a five-run fifth.

On June 14, pitchers Mark Buerhle and Josh Beckett blasted homers.  That had not occurred since the implementation of the DH at the start of the 1972 season.  The last pitchers to muscle up on the same day before Buerhle and Beckett were Les Cain and Dave McNally in 1971.

Mark Buerhle got into the history-making act again when he tossed a perfect game against the Rays on July 23, the 18^th such feat in MLB history.  He followed that up with 5 2/3 perfect innings in his next start for a total of 45 consecutive outs. That’s some memorable perfection!

Some significant personal achievements also highlighted 2009.  Mariano Rivera nailed down save 500 to join Trevor Hoffman as the only pitchers to reach that milestone.  In the same game, he drew a bases-loaded walk to get his first career RBI.  How about that for a memorable day.

On September 11, Derek Jeter collected hit number 2,722 moving him to number one on the Yankees’ all-time hit list ahead of Lou Gehrig.  Fans marked the milestone by giving Jeter a three-minute standing ovation, well deserved for a player of his caliber and character.

When Ichiro Suzuki got hit 200 on September 13 it was his ninth consecutive season to reach that milestone.  That hit broke Hall of Fame outfielder Willie Keeler’s 108-year-old record of successive 200-hit seasons.  Impressive!

The animal world even got into the act this baseball season.  On April 11, gulls from Lake Erie decided to attend the Indians/Royals game and chose the Jacobs Field outfield as their viewing site.  In the bottom of the tenth inning with the Indians batting, Shin-Soo Choo lined a ball to center.  As Royals’ outfielder Coco Crisp charged the ball in hopes of cutting down Mark DeRosa who was trying to score from second, it deflected off a bird and bounced past the bewildered Crisp.  DeRosa scored, the Indians won, and the Royals joined the SPCA in protest.  Then on July 2, a swarm of bees invaded Petco Field during the ninth inning of a Padres/Astros game.  Attracted to a ball girl’s jacket hanging on her chair, the bees set up shop at her post and delayed the game for 52 minutes while a beekeeper was called in to handle the problem.  There hadn’t been that much buzz around a Padres’ game all season.

There you have it, more 2009 baseball moments to lend evidence to the fact that baseball truly is an amazing game.

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