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CARTOON 10-29-2015
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Unbelievable World Series Oddities You Probably Didn’t Know
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Champs & Chumps
Frank Cosetti played and coached with the Yankees for 37 consecutive seasons, participated in 23 World Series and earned 17 championship rings.
Yogi Berra has appeared in the most World Series (21) either as a player, coach, or manager. He’s also played the most series (14) and won the most (10)!
Don Larsen is the only person to pitch a perfect game in the World Series! Not a single Brooklyn Dodger reached a base in game 5 in the 1956 World Series.
Watch the final pitch (that’s Yogi Berra jumping into Larsen’s arms):
Marv Owen set the World Series record with 31 consecutive hitless times at bat.
New York Mets
- Darryl Strawberry of the New York Mets was immortalized at the 1986 New York State Fair in a 600-lb sculpture made of butter!
- In 1993, the New York Mets baseball team used over 21,600 baseballs!
Kansas City Royals
- The Kansas City Royals made it to to the World Series! Believe It or Not!
- Up until the 2014, The Kansas City Royals had not lost a post-season game since 1985.
- The Royals are the first team to win the Wild Card game to go to the World Series.
That Baseball Superstition
Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling was fresh from foot surgery when he pitched the 2004 World Series – his foot bleeding almost the whole time. Schilling helped the Sox win their first championship in 86 years.
His bloody sock was auctioned off for $92,613 and now resides in the baseball Hall of Fame.
John Sturm is a man of firsts:
- First baseman for the Yankees
- First up in the first inning of the first game of his first World Series
- Made the first hit of the game on the first of October
- Made the first out, first put-out, and was the first man hit by pitched ball
In the 1944 World Series all games were played at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis because both the Browns and Cardinals called the same field home.
Sportsman’s park 1946
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Source: Unbelievable World Series Oddities You Probably Didn’t Know
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CARTOON 11-12-2015
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Modern Samurai Isao Machii Slices 100-MPH Baseball
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
A Modern Day Samurai
Isao Machii is a Japanese martial artist known for his mastery of the sword drawing art of iaido, many call him a modern samurai.
In his latest stunt, he slices a baseball in mid-air as it flies at him from 30 feet away at 100 mph, giving him just two-tenths of a second to draw his sword and cut the speeding ball.
Dubbed by many as a modern day samurai, he has performed a variety of related quick-draw feats.
Sword Feats
- Vegetables as thin as pea pods, laterally
- Shrimp at speeds of 80 mph
- A BB pellet 200 mph
- A tennis ball at 400+ mph
- A steel pipe (with just this slender katana)
Man VS Machine
In one stunt, he tested his skills against an industrial manufacturing arm—comparing his own precision and speed to a literal machine:
Never Miss An Unbelievable Story!
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CARTOON 11-18-2015
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CARTOON 11-19-2015
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CARTOON 11-25-2015
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CARTOON 12-27-2015
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CARTOON 01-23-2016
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Did You Know…Unbelievable Baseball Facts
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ripley’s Oddball at the Louisville Slugger Museum
Ripley’s and the Louisville Slugger Museum have opened a brand new exhibition! It’s called Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Oddball, and it’s full of never before seen Ripley’s art, baseball oddities, bizarre ballpark food, and more!
In honor of this unique event, we’re sliding into home with months of baseball themed blog posts!
First up to bat: little-known baseball facts!
Foul balls and home runs are a natural part of the game. While home run balls generally go over the back fence instead of into the stands, foul balls are likely to find their way towards spectators. But as often as a foul ball might head towards you, did you know the odds of a fan being hit by a ball while at a major league game are 300,000 to one?
If you happen to be at a game where a ball comes flying towards your head, hope you’re sitting near Zack Hample, who has caught more than 5300 home run and foul baseballs from major league games in 48 different stadiums.
The umpire in baseball is the person charged with officiating the game and enforcing all the rules. It’s a hard, grueling, and ultimately thankless job. But did you know that before 1859, umpires sat behind home plate in rocking chairs? Considering how much they get yelled at and called names, it only makes sense that they’d be offered some comfort.
Because he played in both the Super Bowl and the world series, Dion Sanders is considered, by some, to be one of the better athletes in history. But is he when compared to Dave Winfield?
Baseball Hall of Famer, Winfield was drafted by the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, and the MLB’s San Diego Padres in 1973!
He joined the Padres of course, and went on to have a hall of fame caliber career, so you can only imagine how great he could have been at each of those sports.
Check back with us for more Ripley’s inspired baseball coverage as the Oddball exhibit continues!
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Blind Baseball and the NBBA
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Sports Love Disclaimer
I’m a huge sports fan. I’m the guy who throws big Super Bowl parties, can be found yelling at the TV when the umpire makes a bad call, and watches through his fingers when the station decides to replay an injury over and over again.
But as much as I love the competition and the adrenaline rush of a great play, one of my favorite aspects of all sports is the uplifting stories that can come out of competition. I’m a sucker for every story about an athlete beating the odds and making a miraculous recovery, or a team doing something charitable and giving a fan the time of their life.
As such, the story of the National Beep Baseball Association is like my greatest weakness.
Blind Baseball
Organizations like the Special Olympics have gone a long way towards disrupting the idea that competition is unique to able-bodied individuals. And the NBBA is joining in that fight.
The NBBA is a baseball league for the blind and visually impaired.
The game is played with the use of specialized equipment. First, there are the blindfolds. Every player is blindfolded because the degrees of their blindness varies. The blindfolds are used to even the playing field.
Then there’s the ball. Bigger and lighter than a standard baseball, the beep baseball emits a steady beeping noise when a pin is pulled. At which point, the pitcher throws the ball towards the batter who listens for the moment when the ball is within range and takes a swing.
One thing that sets Beep Baseball apart from the major leagues is the level of partnership between the pitcher and the batter. Because the pitcher is one of the only sighted individuals on the field (joined by the catcher and a few spotters who work to avoid serious collisions), his main job isn’t actually to get the batter to strike out. He’s actually working in tandem with the batter, within reason, to try and ensure he gets a hit.
Once the hit is scored, the batter runs towards one of two four-feet tall foam-padded bases. The bases also beep but in a different tone than the ball, and they are placed roughly where first and third base are located on a standard baseball diamond.
The outfielders listen for the beeping ball coming towards them. Their job is to collect the ball from where it’s landed or rolled before the batter makes it to his designated base. If they succeed in their tasks, an out is scored, but if the batter makes it to the base first, a run is scored.
National Attention
Blind Baseball is gaining attention. The 2014 World Series featured teams from Canada and Taiwan in addition to the US. And the end of that series also had items being placed in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The more attention paid to the sport, the better. The NBBA gives people who may have lost hope of ever pursuing their dream of playing baseball the opportunity to do just that.
I think it’s kind of neat to see the sport get some recognition at this level and I hope it raises awareness […] It is about showing the ability in a disability. -Rob Weissman, coach of the Association for Blind Citizens Boston Renegades team
Follow the NBBA on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date about developments, games, teams, and tournaments in your area.
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Source: Blind Baseball and the NBBA
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Rare Ty Cobb Baseball Cards Worth Millions
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
One Man’s Trash
Imagine you’re going through you great-grandparent’s possessions deciding what to keep and what to throw away. You come across an old, crumpled, brown paper bag. Do you open it and examine its contents, or do you assume it’s trash and throw it out?
Luckily for one family in a small Southern town, they decided to rifle through the bag and see what they could find. And what did they find? Seven identical baseball cards featuring Detroit Tigers player Ty Cobb.
At this point, you might be wondering what’s so special about seven identical baseball cards? Maybe if they were all different, it would be rarer and more interesting. But that’s only because I forgot to mention that there were only 15 of this particular card ever printed.
After sifting through what they thought was old trash, one family owns seven of the most valuable baseball cards ever.
Ty Cobb
So what’s so special about the outfielder? For one thing, he holds, or held, roughly 90 MLB records:
- Highest career batting average
- Most career batting titles
- Most career stolen bases
- Most career hits
- Most career runs
He was voted into the first class of the MLB Hall of Fame with an amazing 222 out of 226 possible votes. But all that greatness came at a price; he also committed the most errors by any American League outfielder with 271.
The Cards
The cards are from a bygone era when tobacco companies would include baseball cards with a pack of cigarettes.
They feature an image of Cobb on the front and the inscription “TY COBB — KING OF THE SMOKING TOBACCO WORLD” on the reverse.
A similar find to this one took place in 1997 when five of the cards were found being used as bookmarks in an old family book.
Cards from this series have sold at auction for totals from $17,000 to $60,000 in the past. Adjusting for inflation, these cards could be worth seven figures!
And to think, they were nearly thrown away.
AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus
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The Louisville Butter Churn?
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
In Case You Hadn’t Heard…
Ripley’s has a special Oddball exhibit at the Louisville Slugger Museum this year.
We LOVE baseball and to help our friends and Louisville, we have been writing baseball-themed stories. For all of the interesting stories we’ve brought you, we still haven’t talked about the fascinating origins of the Louisville Slugger Baseball bat.
J. Frederick Hillerich
Butter Churn patented by J.F. Hillerich
Did you know the company behind the Louisville Slugger didn’t always make baseball bats?
J. Frederick Hillerich moved his family to Louisville in 1842 and opened a woodworking shop.
The business was very popular in 1875. They were known for making bed posts, wooden bowling balls, and a very popular swinging butter churn.
The churn was the first of its kind. It used the momentum of the cream inside it to swing constantly, and the cream colliding with the sides turned it into butter.
As you can imagine, Hillerich was happy with his product and wasn’t interested in changing it. So what happened to get them into the bat business?
Bud Hillerich
Pete Browning
In 1880, Fredrick’s son Bud became an apprentice at the family shop.
Bud was an amateur baseball player and a big fan of the Louisville Eclipse outfielder Pete Browning.
Bud made his own bats and bats for his teammates when needed, but there wasn’t a plan to make the bats commercially.
As legend has it, Bud slipped away from work one afternoon in 1884 to watch an Eclipse game. Browning had been in a hitting slump for a few games, and when his luck didn’t change in that game, he broke his bat in frustration.
Bud approached him after the game and offered to make Browning a new bat to his specifications.
In his next game with the bat, Browning broke his hitting slump with three hits. Browning, of course, told his teammates about the turn in his fortunes, and with athletes being highly superstitious, there was a surge of players to the Hillerich woodworking shop.
The Louisville Slugger
Fredrick Hillerich wasn’t interested in selling bats. He wanted the company to stick with the products that had put them on the map. Demand got so bad at times he would turn baseball players away instead of making bats for them.
But eventually, Bud convinced him of the potential upside in the business venture.
Initially, the bat was called the “Falls City Slugger.” When Bud took over the family business in 1894, he changed the name to the Louisville Slugger and registered it with the U.S. Patent Office.
Since then, baseball greats like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig all famously used sluggers as their bats of choice.
And to think, if it hadn’t been for a random afternoon spent watching a baseball game instead of working, we might be talking about the Louisville Butter Churn instead of the Slugger.
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Source: The Louisville Butter Churn?
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CARTOON 04-21-2016
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CARTOON 05-06-2016
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Ray Caldwell was an Electrifying Pitcher
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ray Caldwell
Born in 1888, Ray Caldwell was a major league pitcher from 1910 – 1921. During his eleven year career, Caldwell played for the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, and the Cleveland Indians. He even led the Indians to a World Series victory in 1920.
Caldwell’s fame on the diamond could only be challenged by his infamy off of it. He struggled with alcoholism and marital problems for most of his career. He was suspended multiple times by the Yankees for failing to show up for duty for months at a time.
He left the Yankees in 1918 to join a shipbuilding firm in order to avoid being drafted into the war. The only problem was that the Yankees hadn’t given him permission to leave, so they traded him to the Red Sox.
The Red Sox cut him in 1919, and he landed with the Cleveland Indians. And it’s here that the most amazing aspect of Caldwell’s story takes place.
One Fateful Day in August
The date was August 24, 1919. Caldwell was pitching his first game for the Indians against the Philadelphia Athletics. It had started to rain lightly around the fourth inning, but Caldwell was doing well. By the ninth, the Indians had a 2-1 lead, and then the unthinkable happened.
Lightning struck Ray Caldwell and knocked him off his feet.
Accounts differ on exactly what happened. The most common explanation is that lightning struck the iron rail in front of the press box, traveled down the posts and across the infield before settling at the pitcher’s mound. Others say the bolt struck the mound directly inches from where Caldwell was standing. Still others claimed the lightning struck the metal button on top of Caldwell’s cap and traveled through his cleats.
Whatever happened, one thing is for sure–lightning struck the stadium and knocked Caldwell out for 5 minutes.
Players and coaches rushed the field to his side. Fans were worried about him. When he came to, Caldwell stood up, shook his head, and insisted on finished the game.
He struck out the next player up at bat, and the Indians won.
Anyone who follows sports for long finds stories of players playing through impossible injury. But how many players get struck by lightning in the middle of a game and keep playing?
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CARTOON 05-26-2016
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CARTOON 06-20-2016
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CARTOON 07-05-2016
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CARTOON 08-16-2016
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