Watched the end of the Detroit/Houston baseball game yesterday, and it was a rout, 9-0 for the Tigers.
Which got me to wondering: what are the most lopsided victories in the various professional sports, i.e. the greatest differential in score between the winning team and the losing team/individual, regardless of the loser’s score?
Similarly, what are the greatest shutouts, i.e. the most lopsided victories in which the loser did not score any points at all?
NFL: The 1940 championship game. Chicago Bears 73, Washington Redskins 0.
Well you said professional sports, but I still feel compelled to mention the most lopsided college football game ever. 1916 Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech football game. 222-0.
Wikipedia’s page on sports blowouts has quite a few.
Three different golfers have won a PGA tour event by 16 strokes: J.D. Edgar at the 1919 Canadian Open; Joe Kirkwood, Sr., at the 1924 Corpus Christi Open; and Bobby Locke at the 1948 Chicago Victory National Championship. Tiger Woods won the 2000 U.S. Open by “only” 15 strokes.
International cricket: England vs Australia, The Oval, 1938. England batted first and made the small matter of 903 runs (400-odd is usually a respectable score), then declared their first innings with only seven men out despite there being no time limit for this game. They made this decision because it was confirmed that Bradman and another Australian batsman were too badly injured after fielding to be able to bat in their turn (otherwise England might have carried on in pursuit of a thousand or more). When Australia batted, two men short, they were all out for 201, seven hundred and two short, and were made to bat again (England keeping their second innings in reserve; you can do this in cricket if you are leading by enough after one innings each). They scored just 123 second time around, leaving England the winners by an innings and 579 runs.
First-class cricket: The Australian state side Victoria twice in the 1920s posted scores of over a thousand (best effort: 1107 all out), winning by an innings and 600+ both times; but their winning margin is surpassed comfortably by Pakistan Railways, who though scoring “only” 910 declared then bowled their hapless opponents Dera Ismail Khan out for the minuscule scores of 32 and 27, so they won by an innings and 851 runs.
Also: Lancashire once beat Leicestershire with no men out in the entire match. They declared their first innings with a small but useful lead and the first two batsmen still in, then knocked off the 60-odd runs to win in their second innings, again with no men out.
One more bizarre record which is not quite on topic: England once nearly managed to make 696 runs in the last innings to win an international against South Africa. With only 40-odd wanted, and half the side still to bat, in a match supposedly with no time limit, two complete days were lost to rain and the match had to be given up so the touring side could catch the connecting train to get the ship home to England…!
A soccer game that ended with a score or 3-0.
Hardly. Barring a strange match in which the losing side deliberately scored 149 goals against themselves to register a protest of some kind, Arbroath beat Bon Accord 36 - 0 in the Scottish Cup of 1885. (This is easier to understand when you realize that Bon Accord were not in fact a football club and were invited to enter the Cup by mistake.)
Not professional as such but Bob Beamon’s Long Jump victory in the 1968 Olympics was by almost 28 inches in an event that is often decided by fractions of an inch.
You have to admit it’s generally a low scoring game. If a team playing a non-team can only win with a score of 36-0 that pretty much tells the story. It’s okay, I simply jest in the spirit of cross sports fan competition.
On August 22, 2007, the Texas Rangers defeated Baltimore 30-3, which is the worst blowout in modern major league history (1901-present) and also the only time a team has ever scored 30 runs in a game.
The Rangers his six home runs, and two players, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Ramon Vasquez, each had two homers and seven RBI. Every Ranger starter got at least two hits, and the only Ranger replacement, Travis Metcalf, who came in for Michael Young, hit a grand slam.
Whereas of course baseball sides regularly score four or five hundred runs like they do in cricket. In nine innings, yet. 
reference the OP: 9 - 0 is a “rout” in baseball. What, a side actually averaged one run per inning? :eek:
9-0 is sort of an official rout in baseball, in that a team that forfeits a game is recorded as losing by this score. So in a sense the more lopsided baseball scores are worse than refusing to take the field at all.
NHL Hockey
1944-01-23 Detroit Red Wings over New York Rangers 15-0
According to their media guide, Ga Tech’s baseball team defeated Earlham college 41-0 in 1975.
I had read (but I have no citation) that it was biggest blowout in NCAA Baseball History.
But that 222-0 college football score is really about the equivalent of 32-0 when you account for touchdowns.
Wow both those stories are pretty amazing. What game featured all those own goals, and why didn’t Bon Accord just turn down the game?
I understand part of the reason was the kickoff rule at the time - the team that just scored received. That about doubled GT’s possessions right there, vs. the modern game. Halve the 222 score and you’d have something a modern team in a mismatch could repeat if they wanted to, even if the current practice weren’t to quietly let the clock run when it shouldn’t during the second half of a blowout.
Plus, if the other team got tired and discouraged, they’d stop trying to prevent the blowout, even if the superior team started to take it easy.
For the NBA, it appears the largest margin of victory was 68:
Cleveland Cavaliers 148, Miami Heat 80
December 17, 1991
Not according to what I’ve read. Cumberland just couldn’t move the ball at all (and also fumbled several times) and could barely stop GA Tech, so it just kept going.
The Cumberland/Tech game was actually cut short - I think the third quarter was only 12 1/2 minutes and the fourth quarter was only ten, by mutual consent of the two coaches.
Also: Secretariat, Belmont Stakes.
I’ll freely admit baseball is low scoring, and sometimes just plain boring. There is more intermediate action than scoring, getting on base can be just as exciting as an actual run, but a pitcher’s duel is often a big waste of time. I’d like to see the mound lowered and the strike zone narrowed to get the game more exciting.