Game four of the World Series will feature a match-up of Ryan Vogelsong and Jason Vargas. It will mark the 39th World Series game with starting pitchers with matching first letters in their last names. This will be the first World Series contest where both starters have last names beginning with the letter “V”. The … Read moreV is for Victory (for One Team)
Last Monday night, HighHeatStats tweeted the following:
High Heat Stats
@HighHeatStatsBoxscore Trivia (difficulty 4 out of 5): what happened most recently in this 1995 game? http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/HOU/HOU199507250.shtml …
In attempting to answer the question, I misread the boxscore and this conversation ensued:
intentionally walking the pitcher?
” data-mentions=”dianagram”>Hmm
@dianagram wow did that happen? Not what I was looking for.
scratch that ?
But it got me wondering if there had ever been an intentional walk of a pitcher. With the Baseball Reference Play Index Event Finder fired up, I found these nine occurrences since 1945 (as far back as the Event Finder goes, with the caveat that IBBs were not an officially-tracked statistic until 1955):
| Date | Batter | Tm | Opp | Pitcher | Score | Inn | RoB | Out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1946-04-21 (1) | Schoolboy Rowe | PHI | BSN | Johnny Sain | tied 2-2 | b9 | -2- | 2 |
| 1947-08-15 | Schoolboy Rowe | PHI | BRO | Joe Hatten | tied 1-1 | b2 | -2- | 2 |
| 1947-08-15 | Schoolboy Rowe | PHI | BRO | Joe Hatten | tied 1-1 | b4 | -2- | 2 |
| 1947-09-20 (1) | Fred Hutchinson | DET | CLE | Bob Feller | tied 2-2 | b10 | -2- | 1 |
| 1957-05-12 (1) | Mickey McDermott | KCA | @CLE | Early Wynn | ahead 0-2 | t4 | -23 | 1 |
| 1957-07-14 (2) | Lou Sleater | DET | BAL | George Zuverink | tied 6-6 | b9 | -2- | 1 |
| 1958-07-25 (2) | Juan Pizarro | MLN | CHC | Don Elston | ahead 1-3 | b6 | -2- | 2 |
| 1970-09-01 (2) | Jim Kaat | MIN | @MIL | Bobby Bolin | ahead 1-2 | t11 | -23 | 1 |
| 2004-05-05 | Brooks Kieschnick | MIL | @CIN | Danny Graves | tied 4-4 | t9 | -2- | 1 |
Schoolboy Rowe could really handle himself at the plate. As a 22-year-old in A-ball in 1932, he hit .295 and smacked ten homers in 112 at-bats, while also going 19-7 on the mound with a 1.094 WHIP. In 1943, at the age of 33, he hit .294/.390/.510 in 59 plate appearances as a pinch-hitter, to go along with a .304/.385/.420 rate in games he actually started at pitcher.