This day in baseball: Birth of the Cy Young Award

On February 4, 1956, Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick introduced the Cy Young Memorial Award in memory of the Hall of Fame pitcher, who died the previous year. The award was established as a way of honoring the outstanding major league pitcher of the year. The first recipient would be Don Newcombe, who posted a 27-7 record and a 3.06 ERA for the Dodgers during the 1956 season.

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Don Newcombe, 1955 (public domain)

This day in baseball: The Big Unit’s perfect game

On May 18, 2004, Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Randy Johnson threw a perfect game, beating the Atlanta Braves 2-0 at Turner Field in Atlanta before a crowd of 23,381. Johnson, at 40 years old, was the oldest pitcher in MLB history to throw a perfect game, surpassing Cy Young who was 37 when he threw his perfect game in 1904. The game was also Johnson’s second career no-hitter, the first taking place on June 2, 1990 against the Detroit Tigers when Johnson was pitching for the Seattle Mariners.

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Randy Johnson in 2008 (Flickr/Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0))

Quote of the day

All us Youngs could throw. I used to kill squirrels with a stone when I was a kid, and my granddad once killed a turkey buzzard on the fly with a rock.

~Cy Young

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Opening of the Baseball Hall of Fame clips

This short video from the Baseball Hall of Fame is a few years old, but I love the fact that it includes brief snippets from the opening ceremony in June 1939.  In the video, you’ll hear a few words from1939 inductee Eddie Collins as well as from Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, 1937 inductee Cy Young, and 1936 inductee Babe Ruth.  Videos of many induction speeches from those early years have proven hard to find, so coming across this video feels like a positive step in the right direction.

This day in baseball: Cy Young’s final win

Cy Young pitched and recorded his 511th and final career victory on September 22, 1911, when he defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Young kept the Pirates scoreless at Forbes Field, winning 1-0.   With a season record of 35-101, the Boston Rustlers won only three contests in 22 attempts against Pittsburgh during the 1911 season, with two of the victories coming as a result of shutouts thrown by the 44 year-old Cy Young.

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This day in baseball: First perfect game

Cy Young threw the first perfect game in American League history on May 5, 1904.  In the game, Young led the Red Sox to a 3-0 victory over Rube Waddell and the Philadelphia A’s.  It also marked the first perfect game in the majors since 1893, when the distance from the mound to the plate was changed from 45 feet to 60 feet, 6 inches.

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“Cy Young” by Bain News Service