How All the Games Ended

Today, Mat Kovach presented some fantastic research over at the Hardball Times: using Retrosheet data. he found just how every single game in the Retrosheet database ended. Check out the link for the whole results, but there were a few shockers in the data set.

Kovach highlights perhaps the most ridiculous: a catcher’s interference play which ended the Reds-Dodgers tilt on August 1st, 1971, in which Johnny Bench stepped in front of the plate to attempt to tag a stealing Manny Mota, interfering with the hitter.

Other interesting ones: 22 walk-off stolen bases (and one game ending for the losing team on a stolen base), 13 walk-off balks, 427 walk-off walks, 50 walk-off hit-by-pitches, and 64 game-ending pickoffs (including 16 which ended up winning it for the batting team!).

Pretty wild stuff. Make sure you read through the comments section, as the numbers in the original article include some games that were called due to rain, and the comments section cleans some of that out.