Baseball 101: The best 101 numbers in baseball history
WILLIE MAYS
1955, New York Giants: 51 home runs
1965, San Francisco Giants: 52 home runs
Credit: AP
This installment of Baseball 101 is a seminar in baseball past, present and future, told through a series of numbers that, for 101 reasons, matter more than most. Numbers tell the story of baseball. In fact, they are the story of baseball.
Whether they represent statistics, records, dates, years, positions, players or dollars, you can count on numbers to tell you something.
Of all the magic numbers in baseball, "4" ranks as No. 1. It is the ultimate number, the one that represents completeness and achievement. A player needs to touch four bases to score a run. A team needs to win four games to win the World Series, after having had to win four in the league championship series to get there.
Four balls gets a runner to first base . . . A manager generally signals for an intentional walk by holding up four fingers.
A grand slam counts for four runs, the most that can score on any one play . . . Hitting for the cycle, one of the rarest batting accomplishments, requires four distinct hits: single, double, triple and home run . . . The record for one batter's home runs in a game is four . . . The No. 4 position in any team's batting order is considered an honored and responsible spot, There are four umpires on the field in regular season games.
An unusual and notable performance by a pitcher is to strike out four batters in an inning (after one of them reaches first on a dropped third strike). The website baseball-almanac.com says it's only happened 65 times in history, but eight times last season, including once by the Yankees' Phil Hughes . . . And these days, starting pitchers usually rest four days between assignments.
No. 4 was the first number ever retired, beginning a popular and wide ranging tradition. It was done in honor of Lou Gehrig, who knew the fate his disease had in store for him and still said, on the field at Yankee Stadium, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth." It was on July 4, 1939.
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