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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

EGOT

An EGOT is a winner of an Emmy Award, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. There are fifteen EGOTs, including Helen Hayes, Rita Moreno, John Gielgud, Audrey Hepburn, Marvin Hamlisch, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, John Legend, Andrew Lloyd Weber, and Tim Rice. Six more have won three of the four, then received the fourth as an honorary award: Liza Minnelli, James Earl Jones, Harry Belafonte, Quincy Jones, and Barbra Streisand.
 
Ninety-six people have won three of the four, including Steve Martin, Ron Howard, Julie Andrews, George Burns, Cher, Randy Newman, Kate Winslet, Jack Albertson, Anne Bancroft, Ingrid Bergman, Shirley Booth, Ellen Burstyn, Jessica Lange, Helen Mirren, Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards, Geoffrey Rush, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Henry Fonda, Elton John, Leonard Bernstein, Hugh Jackman, Cyndi Lauper, Bette Midler, Cynthia Nixon, and Dick Van Dyke.
 

EDDIE GAEDEL [SABR Bio] was made famous partly because he never saw a strike in his debut at-bat in the majors. He was walked (not intentionally) 19-Aug-1951. He was promised additional at-bats, but none ever came. “I still got my contract and Bill Veeck told me they would use me again.” The day after his debut, he hurled a challenge at Bob Feller, saying, “I don’t think he can pitch to me.” The Browns next faced Feller 07-Sep and got shut out by the future Hall of Famer righty. Gaedel, however, was not in the lineup that day…or ever again. His team’s owner called him “a corker”. Bill Veeck meant that Gaedel was a gamer. The dictionary definition of corker is “an excellent or astonishing person or thing”. Gaedel struck out looking in his final public at-bat. In a game 2-1/2 years later between two Sycamore, Illinois amateur teams, Gaedel was brought to bat. Umpire Paul Lund called him out on two pitches delivered by the opponents’ Gene Davis.
 
CHASE UTLEY [BR Bio] - after Tommy Holmes in 1945, Utley was the next left-handed batter to compile a 35 game hitting streak - 35 G streak in 2006. He attended a high school whose alumni include 19 major leaguers and a combine 31 All-Star Game selections - Long Beach Polytechnic in California (dirt-bag adjacent?). In one game where he didn’t think his team’s pitcher was getting a fair strike zone, he disguised himself as the ball boy, took some new balls out to the home plate ump and pled the case for his pitcher. It was as a Dodger that Utley asked Blue to give a more just strike zone to his teammate Clayton Kershaw. Utley has participated in seven no-hitters. He was on the winning side in four of them.
 
29-May-2010 Roy Halladay’s perfect game vs FLA  
06-Oct-2010 Roy Halladay’s postseason no-hitter vs CIN
25-May 2014 Josh Beckett no hitter vs PHI  
01-Sep-2014 PHI combined no hitter vs ATL (I was there!)
25-Jul-2015 Cole Hamels no hitter vs CHC (on DL w/ ankle injury but in dugout)
21-Aug-2015 Mike Fiers no hitter vs LAD
30-Aug-2015 Jake Arrieta no hitter vs LAD. Utley was the last out in the Beckett no hitter against LAD (K), and then the last out with the LAD in the Arrieta no hitter (K again)

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