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All In A Day’s Sports

Nuts And Bolts

October 13, 2012
By Jim Riggs - Sports Editor , The Post-Journal

Quick Answers - The Jamestown football team has been very exciting to watch this season and one of the most exciting aspects is how quickly the Red Raiders have bounced back from opponents' touchdowns.

In their opening win over Kenmore West, the Red Raiders scored a touchdown 25 seconds after the Blue Devils had scored.

At Lancaster, Jamestown scored a touchdown only 12 seconds after the Redskins had been in the end zone.

Then it happened again at Frontier. After the host Falcons tied the game at 14-14, Jamestown came back and took the lead with a touchdown only 21 seconds later.

I was in the pressbox at that time and made a comment to the PA announcer and spotter that the Red Raiders have a habit of doing that.

Then we experienced a case of ''Whatever you can do, I can do better.''

I had just finished telling them about Jamestown's quick answers when Frontier came right back and scored a touchdown in only 19 seconds.

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Special Triple Crown - There was quite a lot of hype about Detroit's Miguel Cabrera winning the triple crown this season because it was first since 1967 when Carl Yastrzemski led the American League in home runs, RBIs and batting average.

Frank Robinson won the triple crown the previous season and that one was very special.

Just before the 1966 season, Robinson was traded from the Cincinnati Reds to the Baltimore Orioles, 10 years after he was named the National League Rookie of the Year. Robinson was only 30 in 1966, but Cincinnati general manager Bill DeWitt justified the trade as saying Robinson was ''an old 30.''

Robinson went out and proved DeWitt wrong by hitting .312 with 49 home runs and 122 RBIs to the win the triple crown. It was the first in 10 years since Mickey Mantle did it for the Yankees.

Robinson added to his message to DeWitt by also winning the AL and World Series most valuable player awards.

There have been only 17 triple-crown seasons and Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams are the only players to do it twice. However, there almost was an 18th triple crown.

In 1948, Stan Musial led the NL in batting with a .376 average and in RBIs with 131. He could have tied for the home run lead of 40 with Ralph Kiner and Johnny Mize. However, a home run that would have given Musial 40 was erased because it was hit in the game that ended up being rained out.

What is more amazing is if Musial would have had that 40th homer, he would have been the only player in the century to lead the league in runs, hits, doubles, triple, home runs, RBIs and slugging percentage.

Not a bad season.

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Homers Off Father, Son - Speaking of Ted Williams, he holds many records, but here is an unusual one.

In his rookie season of 1939, Williams hit 31 home runs and the 28th was off Thornton Lee of the Chicago White Sox.

Williams' final season was 1960 and on Sept. 2 he hit his 517th career home run and 25th of the season off Don Lee of the Washington Senators.

Don Lee was Thornton Lee's son and Williams remains the only player to hit home runs off a father and his son.

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Prince Would Have Loved It - On Wednesday I was watching the Cincinnati Reds play the San Francisco Giants in the National League Divisional Playoffs and reliever J.J. Hoover came in to pitch in the seventh inning for the Reds against Hunter Pence of the Giants with one out and a runner at first base.

The dream scenario for the Reds was for Hoover to get Pence to ground into an inning-ending double play and that's exactly what happened.

All I could think was that the late Bob Prince must have been smiling. Hoover was one of the long-time Pittsburgh Pirates broadcaster's many sayings, known as ''Gunnerisms.'' When the Pirates needed a double play to get out of an inning, he'd say they needed a Hoover because it would clean off the bases.

Imagine how excited Prince would have been to see a pitcher named Hoover getting a Hoover!

And if the play was close at first he could have used another ''Gunnerism'' - ''That was as close as the fuzz on a tick's ear.''

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Get Me To The Tee On Time - If the European team hadn't staged a huge comeback to win the Ryder Cup last month, the major story from the final day of action might have been Rory McIlroy almost missing his tee time for the third singles match.

McIlroy was supposed to tee off at 11:25 a.m. at Medinah Country Club near Chicago, which is in the Central Time Zone. But McIlroy was watching television coverage that listed the tee times Eastern Time Zone timed, so he thought he was teeing off at 12:25 p.m.

As his tee time neared, McIlroy was still at his hotel. After receiving a text message from one of his teammates, McIlroy was fortunate to find a law enforcement officer in his hotel lobby who got him to Medinah 11 minutes before his tee time.

Then amazingly, McIlory halved his first two holes against Keegan Bradley and then went on to win the match, 2 and 1.

Picture yourself running late and rushing to the golf course and to the first tee. How many holes would it take you to get settled down, if you get settled down at all?

His performance was amazing, but if anyone could pull it of it was the laid-back McIlroy.

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Brackets And Seedings? - It's has been very unusual this major league baseball postseason to see brackets shown for the playoffs.

Then one morning before the regular season ended I heard an analyst talking about the postseason and he kept mentioning if a certain team was seeded first or second.

I never thought would I hear about seedings in major league baseball.

There's no argument that the expanded playoffs have been a success, but I'm still too old school and with apologies to Tom Hanks, all I can say is, ''There's no seedings in baseball!''

 
 

 

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