We would like to draw your attention to the last part of the “Odd Baseball Facts” series!
21. Joel Zumaya once missed three games in 2006 after injuring himself playing Guitar Hero.
22. Rickey Henderson walked 796 times in his career when he was leading off an inning. That’s more times just leading off in an inning than Lou Brock, Roberto Clemente, Luis Aparicio, Ernie Banks, Kirby Puckett, or Ryne Sandberg walked in their entire careers.
23. In 1904, James E. Bennett patented a new proposal for catcher’s apparatus that would replace the glove and helmet altogether with big wire cage through which the pitched ball would pass through, hitting a padded mattress on the chest. It didn’t catch on.
24. Rollie Fingers first grew his iconic handlebar mustache because A’s owner Charlie Finley offered his players cash for growing a mustache by Father’s Day as part of a stunt. Fingers got a $300 bonus for growing the mustache, as well as $100 for a jar of mustache wax.
25. The first baseball uniforms were worn by the Knickerbockers in 1849 and included straw hats.
26. Minor league baseball pitcher John C. Odom was traded by the Calgary Vipers of the Golden Baseball League to the Laredo Broncos, in exchange for 10 Prarie Sticks maple bats.
27. The commissioner who negotiated the agreement that banned Pete Rose from baseball was A. Bartlett Giamatti, who is the father of actor Paul Giamatti.
28. Cal Ripken Jr. played in 2,632 consecutive games from 1982 to 1998.
29. In addition to being the first to break the color barrier in baseball, Jackie Robinson was also the first African-American vice president of a major American corporation — he served as vice president of personnel for Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee from 1957–1964.
30. A curveball thrown on Mars would become a screwball, and hitters would have the advantage since balls would also travel almost three times as far.
Read also the previous “Odd Baseball Facts” publications:
