This has definitely happened. Wikipedia says it once took place during a perfect game. The general pattern is ‘Batter hits a one-hop line drive right at the right fielder, who’s playing shallow, and gets thrown out at first.’ I doubt it’s even happened with a centerfielder or left fielder, but I don’t know.
Has any batter been so slow or stumbled so badly out of the box that they’ve been thrown out at first base by an outfielder?
Ty Cobb used to be able to throw runners out at first. It can be done with a hard hit line drive that bounces in front of the right fielder, even if the runner doesn’t stumble – though it is rare these days.
Consider it confirmed. I just did a search on baseball-reference.com for any game in which one team scored at least 27 runs, there were only four others, and in none of them was the margin of victory that wide.
Not surprisingly, Ty Cobb stole home the most times- he had 54 career steals of home.
Most of the leaders in this category are from way back, since hardly anybody even TRIES to steal home any more.
Among relatively modern players, Paul Molitor did it 10 times, Rod Carew did it 17 times, and Jackie Robinson did it 19 times.
And wouldja believe Babe Ruth stole home 10 times? And Lou Gehrig did it 15 times!
I’ve never seen anyone steal home, or even try. It’s hard to believe stealing home is ever the smartest move. Even if the man on 3rd is fast, I’d think there’d be a much better chance of driving him in.
The 1995 Cleveland Indians, despite playing a strike-shortened season, won their division by 30 games and clinched on September 8. I’m pretty sure both are records.
(Of course, it was easier to win by a big margin after the splits into four and then six divisions.)
Regarding margin of victory, note that baseball records are often restricted to the post-1900 era. If we ignore that restriction, the Chicago Colts beat the Louisville Colonels by 29 runs (36-7) on June 29, 1897.
In olden times pitchers would pitch from a full windup with men on third, and a fast runner could sometimes steal with a higher success rate than the batter could bat.
Nowadays most steals of home occur on delayed double steals, plus a small number that occur when the pitcher pitches wildly on a suicide squeeze and scoring rules give the runner a steal of home.
I don’t know about Winfield, but Andre Dawson did it for the Cubs. And Rusty Staub was thrown out at 2nd on a line drive to left which the LF neatly nabbed on one hop and threw a strike to 2nd. Staub in his later years was the slowest major-league player, by quite a margin.
In 1982 St Louis Cardinals 3rd string catcher Glenn Brummer stole home. IIRC, it was in the bottom of the 9th inning to win the game. A walk off theft of home.
Yes, but the record for post-1900 is 40-120 by the 1962 Mets (who ended up 60 games out of first place). Mets fans were rooting for the Tigers not to break the record.
No, it’s more likely now. Consider the 1995 Indians. They won their division by 30 games, but they were only about 14 games better than the second best team in the league, which played in another division. A good team in a weak division can run further away than when there are eight teams playing against each other and no one else. Mash all the teams in a league into one division and things tighten up.