AARON AND THE QUEST FOR A NEW CAREER HITTING RECORD

I’m sure you already know about Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron’s career home run record.  But did you know that with little or no publicity, two active players are taking a run at an obscure but fascinating baseball record.  Dean Chance has long stood as the worst hitter in baseball history with a minimum of 300 at bats.  In 662 career at bats, Chance whiffed 420 times and managed only 42 singles and 2 doubles.  To put that in perspective One Arm Daily had twice as many hits and more than seven times as many extra-base hits in fewer at bats (and with half as many arms).  But now two active players are taking a run at Chance’s seemingly unapproachable career OPS (on base plus slugging) of .182.  Ryan Dempster has recorded 314 career at bats and a woeful .193 OPS.  Because he is in the bullpen, however, it’s going to take him some time to catch Chance.  The man who is in much better position to supplant Chance is Aaron Harang, a first-rate pitcher and a historically weak hitter.  Harang’s career OPS stands at .161 as of July 3 and with 259 career at bats he needs only 41 more at bats to pass Chance.  I’ll keep posting updates on his progress.

Update: as of July 20, Harang has 270 at bats but his OPS has soared to .165 thanks to a double on July 18, only the second extra-base hit of his career! It’s as if he's not even trying to set the record.

Update, as of August 16, Harang continues hit batting tear and his career OPS is now up to .175!  Chance’s record may be safe after all.

Update: Since my last update, Harang went 0-22 to end the 2007 season with a .165 career OPS in exactly 300 at bats.  So he has now surpassed Dean Chance’s seemingly unbreakable record!  But the nature of this record means that it could still be lost if Harang got hot.  So check back next season and I’ll keep everyone up to date.

Update, start of the 2008 season: Added to the drama of whether Harang will get hot and erase his name from the record books, Ryan Dempster is now a starter again (but as bad a hitter as ever), so he could overtake both of them!

I LOVE A GOOD MYSTERY

Meet John Roach, who pitched one game for the New York Giants on May 14, 1887, losing 17-2.  Not surprisingly he was released shortly thereafter and his dismal performance was quickly forgotten.  Not by me, however.  I’m a member of the Biographical Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research, the small group of people who worry about what ever happened to obscure players like Roach.  A few years ago, we found that Roach died in Peoria in 1934 and that answered the most pressing question.  But since then, we keep finding intriguing new details about this enigmatic player.  Roach, for example, had a brother Mike who also played in the major leagues.  Five years before his birth, his parents were getting their mail at a Pennsylvania post office called “Youngwomanstown.”  Unfortunately it changed its name before John was born -- wouldn’t that have been a cool place of birth?

But the most intriguing question was what hand Roach used to pitch.  On August 8, 1936, the New York Times published a letter by a man who claimed to have witnessed John Roach pitching with both hands for the Giants in his only major league game.  And the writer correctly recollected that the Giants lost the game by the score of 17-2.  There is no contemporary documentation of Roach using both hands during that game, and thus no way to be certain, which means that another unsolved mystery swirls around John Roach.  Judging from his tantalizing pose on this baseball card, perhaps he liked it that way.

Admittedly, it’s not exactly CSI.  But if you enjoy reading about the efforts to solve real-life mysteries like these, check out some of my other research.