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Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Jackie Robinson Day



Monday: watched some of the Mets/Phillies on ESPN. In LA the Dodgers wore Brooklyn unis on Jackie Robinson Day for the first time.

the Braves won the NL East championship. 

 
The ESPN crew had the commissioner of baseball in the booth. He said there was no one like Jackie Robinson, so after retirement was an activist for social change like MLK and others. I have no problem with every team retiring number 42 but wish the Braves could all wear 44 instead. The Dodgers wore throwback Brooklyn caps and jerseys with thick numbers like Jackie wore. I had forgotten Pee Wee Reese’s comment after Jackie had been threatened: “Maybe tomorrow we’ll all wear 42, so nobody can tell us apart.”

 
Then the talk turned to sacrifice flies. Tim Kurkjian said that Greg Maddux had the MLB record for going the longest time before hitting a sacrifice fly, over 1700 plate appearances. Maddux hit more home runs than Chicks Dig the Long Ball co-star Tom Glavine or teammate John Smoltz, who thought of himself as a better hitter. I was trying to look up the stat but found another: Maddux pitched 726 games before hitting a batter, throwing a wild pitch, and making a fielding error in the same game. His 18 Gold Glove Awards are the most in history. Maddux had more sacrifice bunts than any right-handed pitcher in history. Glavine has a few more, giving him the most sac bunts by any pitcher in history. And with the sacrifice becoming more rare, their records probably won’t be broken.
 
This is a picture of Ronald Acuna hitting a home run.

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