Baseball Urban Legends History

Here are quick descriptions of each of the previous editions of Baseball Legends Revealed.

To see if they are true or false, you have to click on the link!

1. The New York Yankees were the first Major League Baseball team to regularly use uniform numbers.

2. Charlie Kerfeld sought to commemorate his uniform number when it came time to renegotiate his contract after the 1986 baseball season.

3. Roger Bresnahan invented the shin guard..

4. Wally Joyner was hit by a bowie knife thrown at him by a fan in Yankee Stadium.

5. Tony Horton had an amusing response to being retired by Steve Hamilton on a trick pitch.

6. When Rickey Henderson was introduced to his new Seattle Mariner teammate John Olerud, he told Olerud that he reminded him of a player Henderson had played with before. That player was John Olerud.

7. A baseball player who went missing for a couple of days claimed to have been kidnapped by gangsters.

8. Bill Lange broke through the outfield fence to make a brilliant catch.

9. Lou Piniella was the first major league baseball player to be thrown out at every base/plate in a single game!

10. Ron Wright had an extremely memorable (not in a good way) performance in his first, and only, major league game.

11. Major League Baseball used to allow injured players to have another player run for them and still allow the injured player to return later.

12. Dock Ellis was banned from wearing hair curlers on the field.

13. Joel Youngblood got a hit for two different baseball teams in two different cities all in a single day!

14. Rob Ducey was traded for himself.

15. The baseball that Barry Bonds hit to pass Babe Ruth’s career home run total ended up in the hands of a fan who was at the concession stand at the time!

16. Tommy Davis’ former Dodger teammate Johnny Roseboro helped him bat over .300 in 1967.

17. Ferguson Jenkins lost five games 1-0 in 1968.

18. The New York Post had an editorial up the day after the Yankees defeated the Red Sox in Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series bemoaning a Yankee loss in the series.

19. Wade Boggs once drank 64 cans of Miller Light on a cross-country flight (in the alternative, Wade Boggs drank over 50 cans of Miller Light).

20. The Atlanta Braves had a night celebrating a gay group.

21. A Cubs outfielder misplayed a ball in the outfield due to falling into an exposed manhole!

22. Tommy John once made three errors on a single play.

23. Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher Joel Hanrahan won a game on July 9, 2009…for the Washington Nationals!

24. In Back to the Future II, a bat “autographed” by “Ken Griffey III” is used in a scene set in 2015.

25. Major League Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick vetoed the fans on voting for two All-Stars in 1957.

26. The White Sox once accidentally traded for the wrong player!

27. An organist was once ejected from a game by an umpire.

28. Los Angeles Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda has a rather…interesting response to a reporter’s question about the performance of Mets outfielder Dave Kingman.

29. Shea Stadium congratulated the Boston Red Sox on winning the 1986 World Series before Game 6 of the 1986 World Series ended.

30. Frank Thomas’ agents dropped him for skipping team workouts.

31. Due to a scorer’s error, Tris Speaker went unrecognized for an RBI record for seventy-nine years!

32. Tris Speaker predicted that the New York Yankees were making a mistake by turning Babe Ruth into a full-time outfielder instead of a pitcher.

33. A baseball pitcher missed almost a month due to his fingers getting caught in a rocking chair while he was sleeping.

34. A Twins pitcher was once knocked out during a bar brawl…by his own manager!!

35. The White Sox offered Joe Jackson and $60,000 for Babe Ruth before the Red Sox sold him to the Yankees.

36. Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees to (among other things) finance a musical called No No, Nanette that proceeded to flop!

37. Bo Belinsky intentionally hit Hank Aaron after Aaron hit his 400th home run off of Belinsky, with Belinsky tipping his hat to the slugger both times.

38. After a tragic stadium collapse, the owners of the Philadelphia Phillies were forced to sell the team.

39. Yankee outfielder Brett Gardner didn’t even make the College of Charleston’s baseball team as a walk-on!

40. Ted Williams had an infamously cocky response as a rookie when told how he could learn from watching the great Jimmie Foxx hit.

41. Ray Chapman was the first player killed during a baseball game.

42. For a few seasons, the Philadelphia Phillies were known as the Philadelphia Blue Jays.

43. Garry Maddox’s hair style was due to an accident during his time fighting in the Vietnam War.

44. As an adolescent, Mark Teixeira had an interesting way of expressing his appreciation for the band, Nirvana.

45. Pedro Martinez lost the 1999 American League Most Valuable Player Award due to being left off the ballot of two voters completely, one of whom who had made some rather interesting votes the previous season.

46. The Red Sox began playing “Sweet Caroline” in honor of a Red Sox employee who named her newborn daughter “Caroline” in 1998.

Ta da!

One Response to “Baseball Urban Legends History”

  1. […] also hosts the Sports Legends Revelaed blog, which examined these baseball items. Share and […]

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