The Futility Infielder

The Persistence of Memory and the Wonders of Data

One of my favorite things about the Internet when it comes to baseball is the ability to track down box scores and writeups of ballgames I remember seeing or hearing several years ago. Several months ago, I tracked down a page of past baseball action which enabled me to link to handful of Yankees-Mariners games I'd attended with my brother over the past five years. Sorting through the barrage of homers and shellings (these were all slugfests), I managed to document and preserve a unique little slice of our shared history.

Today I was alerted to another means of tracking down old ballgames. Retrosheet, an organization that has computerized play-by-play accounts of pre-1984 games, has a variety of means for tracking down old games, providing not only box scores, but play-by-plays and individual player game logs.

Thus I was able to connect with one of my oldest and fondest baseball memories. In the summer of 1979, my family was driving from Utah to somewhere in California. Night fell as we were driving, and as I lay in the way-back of our wood-panelled station wagon, my father tuned into a ballgame between the Dodgers and the Giants. It was the first time I'd ever heard the inimitable voice of Vin Scully, the Dodger broadcaster, and I listened with rapt attention as Scully called the game with a vividness that made me feel as if I were at the ballpark. In retrospect, I think it may have even been the first game I listened to on the radio.

The two details about the game that I remember to this day were that Don Sutton pitched his 50th career shutout, and that Mickey Hatcher hit his first major-league home run. Finding this game via Retrosheet was an amazingly simple task. By clicking on the link for Boxscores, Narratives, and Other Goodies I was given a page with links to dates organized by year, and players organized by the first two letters of last name. Clicking on "HA" took me to Mickey Hatcher, and the Game Log link next to his 1979 line took me to his game-by-game performance. From there it was only a matter of clicking on the date in which he hit his first homer. Voilà, Instant box score, complete with play-by-play!

The game took place on August 10, 1979. The Dodgers, playing in San Francisco, won 9-0 in front of 31,350 fans. Hatcher, batting 7th and playing right field, went 3-for-3 with a solo homer off of Tom Griffin in the fifth inning. Ron Cey, Derrell Thomas, and Davey Lopes roughed up Bob Knepper with three homers in the second inning, scoring 6 runs; Thomas's shot was a grand slam. Sutton scattered five hits and three walks, striking out seven, including Willie McCovey and Johnnie LeMaster in the ninth inning, in winning his 10th game of the season.

(Aside: what self-respecting manager lets Johnnie LeMaster, a career .222-hitting shortstop, make the last out of a ballgame, even in a blowout? Joe Altobelli was the manager. I'm not sure about his level of self-respect.)

If nothing else, this new toy has provided confirmation of a few other ballgames I remember from that long-gone summer of '79, including an incredible string of near no-hitters I watched at my late grandfather's knee in Walla Walla, Washington. June 18: the Angels' Nolan Ryan holds the Rangers hitless through 7.1 innings before Oscar Gamble singles. June 23: the Expos' Steve Rogers tosses a one-hitter at the Phillies, allowing only Dave Rader's single with two outs in the eighth. June 27: the Cardinals' Silvio Martinez one-hits the Expos, allowing only Duffy Dyer's single with two outs in the eighth. You could, as they say, look it up.

Man, am I going to have fun with this new toy...