Five Years of JoeBlogs

A thank you, some updates and another wild Kyle Schwarber stat.

Hi everybody! I’m back from Hawaii — or at least I’m mostly back; I’m pretty sure I left a part of my soul in the Hawaii-Aleutian time zone — and I’m going to hit you with a big thought about 1-0 games. But let’s start with a few announcements:

Today marks the five-year anniversary of JoeBlogs. Thank you all. I’ve noticed that lately I’ve spent a lot more time (a LOT more time) talking about my career and my life — in interviews like this one, with young people hoping to become storytellers, with new friends and acquaintances who wonder how any of this happened. I’ve never loved talking about myself, certainly not in a positive way, but I’ve sensed that telling my story has helped people forge their own paths. I hope that’s right.

Five years ago, I took a leap of faith that there is a community of people eager to feel good about sports and life. It had never been in my nature to take leaps of faith; I got into this racket hoping to make a living writing about sports, having benefits, raising a family, and maybe doing it all long and well enough to get, I don’t know, a press box named after me or something. Then newspapers collapsed. Magazines collapsed. Internet advertising collapsed. So many of my friends checked out of writing and went into radio, television, marketing, public relations, sports leagues, gambling, and so on.

One of those friends told me more than a decade ago that the only thing to do is find a boat with the fewest holes.

The problem is that even boats with a single small hole eventually sink.

Five years ago, I bet on you. I didn’t know how many of you there were, but I believed there would be enough to make it work. You have blown me away, and I can’t thank you enough. I hope it has been a blast for you too.

If you’d like to become a bigger part of our community, be part of our comment section, and get all the thoughts, essays, and nonsense, I’m offering a free 14-day trial to celebrate five years of JoeBlogs.

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Today, I deliver the final edit of FIFTY SEASONS, which is coming out on February 2. I’m so excited about this book — more excited now that I’ve corrected about 4 million little mistakes — that we’re offering TWO really cool preorder offers.

One, if you preorder from Rainy Day Books, you can get a signed edition where I will inscribe the book however you like. I just got the sweetest note from Brilliant Reader Etan, who says that his 13-year-old nephew, a gigantic Cubs fan, mentioned me in his Bar Mitzvah speech. I mean, it doesn’t get better than that. Point is: If you want me to wish your 13-year-old nephew a happy Bar Mitzvah, I’ll happily do that.

Two, no matter where you preorder from — save your receipt. Next week (I hope) we will be creating a sign-up sheet where anyone who preorders will get a special FIFTY SEASONS package that will include the full table of contents (so you can see what fifty seasons are included plus all the bonus stories) and one chapter that was cut from the book. Fun stuff!

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Molly Knight and I are having the time of our lives (times of our lives? time of our lives?) doing the Joy of Baseball podcast. Last week, we had Ken Burns as our guest, and it was a thrill. Today, we’ll have comedian Alex Edelman — that should go up this afternoon. We’ve got some amazing guests coming, including one that we’re recording today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you feel like giving us a good review, hey, I hear that helps a lot.

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All right, let’s talk a little ball.

And we start by saying that Sarah Langs is such a treasure.

I love this stat so, so, so much. People ask me all the time why I’m so obsessed with baseball history, and this one fact explains it so well.

First, think about the magic of 1-0 (or a Blyleven as we lovingly call it). There have been forty 1-0 games this season out of more than 2,100 — less than 2% of games. That’s more or less the average over the last few years. You go back to, say, 1996, when offense was exploding, only about 1% of the games ended 1-0. In 1968, more than 5% of games ended that way.

In any case, I think these games have a very specific impact on the soul. There are plenty of fans — even hardcore fans — who find such games very boring. They’re not wrong. You can’t love baseball wrong.

But for many intense baseball fans — and I do think you have to be a certain sort of intense baseball fan for this to be true — there is nothing more perfect than 1-0. It is the game at its purest. You might be witnessing pitching dominance. You might be watching a game with amazing team defense. You might be seeing one team (or sometimes even both teams) repeatedly escaping from jams. All the while, the game is always on the line, threat after threat, out after out, inning after inning. No matter which team you want to win, you are constantly holding your breath.

It’s beautiful that way.

Now, think of 1-0 games when the only run scored is a home run. It’s a glorious thing, isn’t it? On August 13, 1932, the New York Yankees Red Ruffing matched up against Washington’s Tommy Thomas. The two threw shutout inning after shutout inning. Ruffing shut down Hall of Famers Sam Rice, Heine Manush, and Joe Cronin. Thomas rolled through Murderer’s Row, holding both Ruth and Gehrig scoreless.

And in the 10th inning, the Yankees won on a home run.

Red Ruffing hit it.

I specifically looked up that game because I wanted to see how many times Babe Ruth hit the game-winning home run in a 1-0 game. The answer, I found by going through the schedule year by year, is ZERO. Same with Lou Gehrig.

This year, Kyle Manzardo hit a 1-0 homer.

That puts him ahead of both Gehrig and Ruth on the list.

Of course, there are a lot more 1-0 games decided by home runs these days simply because the home run has become so much bigger a part of baseball — Monday’s game between Philadelphia and Atlanta was the 22nd such game just this year. When you go back in baseball history, you will find plenty of seasons where there were none. We’re talking rare air.

In Barry Bonds’ 73-homer season, none of those home runs were the decider in a 1-0 game.

In Mark McGwire’s 70-homer season, none of those homers were the decider in a 1-0 game.

But, and this is so cool, one of Roger Maris’ home runs in 1961 did decide a game. Which one? The last one, No. 61, the one he hit off Tracy Stallard in the 4th inning with nobody on. The Yankees beat the Red Sox 1-0.

Everything has to work out just right for the 1-0 home run, and so it’s poetic that Ted Williams hit the most. Think about Ted’s career, think about how he spent the first half of his career playing for good but doomed Red Sox teams destined to finish behind DiMaggio’s Yankees, and the second half playing for mediocre Red Sox teams that flailed in the middle of the pack and left New England baseball fans hopelessly waiting for next years. Five times in the Splendid Splinter’s career, his team was being shut down, shut out, left for dead, and he smacked the home run that won it.

The first was in Detroit in 1942. Virgil Trucks was pitching for the Tigers, and Ted Williams hit a long fly ball that, according to the papers, “would have been just another fly at Fenway, but out here it was the real thing.” The Yankees’ Rudy York hit a much longer blast that seemed sure to tie the game, but Dom DiMaggio leaped at the wall and brought the homer back in, and Boston won 1-0.

The second was in Cleveland in 1946, just after the war. Red Embree was pitching for the Tribe, and he was sensational; he allowed just two hits. But one was a Ted Williams home run. Crazily, this one was an inside-the-parker — his first in professional baseball.

And it’s one of the most famous home runs of Williams’ career. Why? Two reasons.

One, Williams deliberately hit the ball into left field to beat Lou Boudreau’s famous Williams shift — “I’ve been planning for weeks to beat the crazy defense Cleveland used against me,” Williams said. “When I stepped up in the batter’s circle waiting my turn to bat, I noticed Red Embree had a terrific breaking curve. I knew the best place for me to hit the ball would be in left field.”

When asked if that would be his strategy going forward against Cleveland, he smiled and said: “I’m still not even with the Indians. They’ve taken a lot more hits from me than what I’ve made.”

The second reason is that it clinched the 1946 pennant, the only pennant of Ted Williams’ career.

The third came in 1949 — this one was at Fenway Park, and he hit it off future Hall of Famer Hal Newhouser, who felt sure he had struck out Williams on a ball two pitches earlier. “Sure, I thought I had him on that strike,” Newhouser said. You imagine that these days, the Red Sox would have challenged the call. Back then, Newhouser had no choice but to keep throwing fastballs, and Williams popped the last one up to left where it floated over the Green Monster.

The fourth happened in 1956 against the Kansas City A’s Tom Gorman. That one was the 400th home run of Williams’ career; he smashed it 18 rows deep into the right field stands. He then, infamously, made a spitting gesture toward the Boston press box.

And his fifth and final 1-0 home run came the next year, 1957, at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. He hit this one off the great Jim Bunning, who had been overpowering the Red Sox. I still think of that as Ted Williams’ most remarkable season — he was 39 years old, his body was utterly wrecked, and he hit .388 with 38 home runs in 132 games. That was the master at work.

And the reason we get to go back through these extraordinary moments — and only baseball can take us back this way — is because on Monday, the Phillies and Braves played a huge game in Philadelphia, and Jesús Luzardo was masterful. The Lizard King has become so preposterously good.

He went all the way, the rare nine-inning shutout — Luzardo is now tied with his teammate Cris Sánchez and four other games for the league lead in shutouts with one — and he allowed just two hits and struck out 12. His 94 Game Score is tied for the second-highest in baseball this year, behind only Jacob Misiorowski’s bananas 15-strikeout, 0-walk one-hitter against Philadelphia back in June.

But the game was still scoreless going into the bottom of the eighth — and with two outs, Kyle Schwarber stepped up to face Atlanta’s Didier Fuentes, a modern phenomenon. Fuentes is just 21 years old, and he doesn’t really know how to pitch, not in a way that would be familiar to Ted Williams and players of his time. But he can throw a fastball 100 mph, and he can throw a slider that breaks so hard to the left that (insert political joke), and for an inning he can be utterly unhittable. He struck out the first two batters of the inning on six pitches.

And up stepped Kyle Schwarber. It would be hard to find two hitters more different than Ted Williams and Kyle Schwarber. Ted was 6-3 and rail thin. Schwarbs looks like me. Ted almost never struck out. Schwarbs always strikes out. Ted was a batting scientist. Schwarbs hits with his heart.

But four times, Kyle Schwarber had hit the lone home run in 1-0 games.

Schwarber took the first pitch, a curveball, for a strike. The next pitch rode in low and inside, and he watched it for a ball.

Fuentes then threw a 99-mph fastball by Schwarber for strike two.

The next pitch was a nasty slider that looked like it would be a strike when it left Fuentes’ hand, but then it broke hard out of the zone. Schwarber checked his swing (something much harder to do these days than in Ted Williams’ time). I say that Schwarbs and Ted have little in common, but they both knew the zone inside and out. Schwarbs walks 100 times a year.

Then, with a 2-2 count, Fuentes threw a 100-mph fastball. If you have ever been close to a 100-mph fastball, then you know that it’s impossible to hit. Only it isn’t. Fuentes’ 100-mph fastball was right over the heart of the plate, and for Schwarber, that’s like chum in the water. He crunched a 108-mph exit velocity blast into the right-field second deck at Citizens Bank Park.

That was his fifth 1-0 homer.

That tied him with Ted Williams for the most ever.

Isn’t baseball history the best?