Editor’s note: This is the first story of a three-part series about some unusual happenings during a baseball game.
As a young baseball fan, the most important thing each day was checking the box scores.
There was always so much information inside the small print. Who won? Who was the winning pitcher? Did anyone hit a homer?
It didn’t take long to learn how to understand the boxes in the newspaper and follow all of my favorite players.
The world is different today. Box scores and play-by-play is available and the result of every pitch is known a few seconds after it happens.
Thanks to the Internet, Baseball Reference changed the daily box score. The depth is amazing, which leads to four-time American League All-Star Toby Harrah and one of the most unusual stat lines in the history of baseball.
One of the things no one really likes to see in a box score from a favorite player is … E – Harrah (37). For the box score novice, that means Harrah made his 37th error of the season. That’s not just made up for this story. It really happened in 1976 as Harrah led AL shortstops in miscues with 36. His other error was at third.
In Harrah’s defense (pun intended), he also led the AL in putouts with 290 and was fifth in assists with 473. That tells me while he makes mistakes, he gets to a lot of ground balls that others might not reach. A stat that no one was really aware of back in the 1970s is Range Factor per Game, which combines putouts, assists and contests played. Harrah topped the AL in that category, which can be found on Baseball Reference.
A 17-year veteran in the major leagues with the Washington Senators, Texas Rangers, Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees, Harrah had a great and strange night in a doubleheader against the Chicago White Sox in Arlington Stadium on June 25, 1976.
The Rangers won the opener of the twinbill 8-4 thanks to Harrah, who hit a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the ninth. He had two other hits, a stolen base and knocked in five total runs.
Game two wasn’t great for the Rangers as they fell 14-9. However, Harrah had three hits with three RBI as he hit a two-run homer.
Harrah’s offense was the great part, but when he was in the field that’s when everything became strange.
In the 18 innings of the doubleheader, Harrah had a pair of identical zeroes in each box score … putouts and assists. Think about that. There are 54 outs in 18 innings and the shortstop didn’t participate in any of them. The man played an entire doubleheader and never touched a live ball that counted statistically.
Meanwhile just a few feet away, Texas second baseman Lenny Randle had 11 assists and three putouts in the two contests. Jim Fregosi and Mike Hargrove played first base and combined for 21 putouts without any help from Harrah.
I’ve always wondered if Harrah asked his teammates for a day off in the field.