The baseball All-Star game is tonight (well, Tuesday night in America), and in keeping with that spirit. I have a trivia question, the answer of which will probably surprise a lot of people.
Who holds the American League record for most shutouts in a season by a left-handed pitcher (9)? (This man also led the league in ERA in 1916 and for pitching the longest shutout, 14 innings, in World Series history.)
The answer?..........Well, I'll give it to you in Chinese first, and then tomorrow I will give it to you in English: 贝比鲁斯
If you can't wait till tomorrow to know the answer, copy and paste that Chinese into an online translator.
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The answer to the trivia question is........Babe Ruth. A lot of people forget that, before he became perhaps the greatest hitter in the history of baseball, he was one of the greatest pitchers, including holding the records mentioned above (he won almost 100 games as a pitcher before he became a regular player and had a lifetime ERA of 2.28, which is also one of the lowest in the history of the game). He was almost exclusively a pitcher his first five years in the baseball (1914-18). Over his entire career, he averaged 46 homeruns per 162 games. Given that ratio, if he had been exclusively a hitter from 1914-18, he would have ended up with over 900 homeruns in his career (eat that Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron). He had a CAREER slugging percentage of .690 (total bases divided by at bats), a figure that Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, and Joe Dimaggio never reached even one time in their careers. Babe also had a lifetime OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) of 1.164--that's for his entire career. Again, Aaron, Mays, and Dimaggio never got that high in any single season.
Incidentally, the Babe's debut in baseball was on July 11, 1914, 98 years ago today. Mom, that was....a few years...before you were born....
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The National League won the All-Star Game, 8-0, which means they will get home field advantage again in the World Series this year. Bud Selig, in all his idiotic glory, may have cost the Rangers another championship...