Baseball

I found an interesting baseball game where Nolan Ryan pitched 8 innings without giving up an earned run, struck out 11 and still lost the game 1-0. Interesting as that is by itself, the run was scored in the fourth inning when, after walking the first batter, Ryan managed to pick him off but an error by the first-baseman allowed the runner not only to be safe but to get around to third. Then, after Ryan struck out the second batter to get the first out of the inning and got Lou Piniella to ground out, (yes, that Lou Piniella) the man on third stole home! That’s pretty impressive anytime, but against Nolan Ryan, that’s amazing. The man regularly threw over 100 mph. To beat the ball to the plate is no mean feat. The man who did it was Amos Otis and doesn’t seem to have been particularly speedy. He never had more than 12 stolen bases in any given season, so perhaps there was some other circumstance that’s not adequately expressed in the play-by-play data.