on the South Side of Chicago (unless Thome hits career HR number 500):
In a game against the Kansas City Royals a couple of weeks ago (August 21, 2007), Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen "accomplished" something that appears to have never been done before. Starting with the last batter in the seventh inning and ending with the first batter in the ninth, six different White Sox pitchers faced six consecutive Royals batters. Here's the sequence:
7th inning
Logan pitches to DeJesus
8th inning
Wassermann pitches to Butler
Myers pitches to Gload
Bukvich pitches to Brown
Thornton pitches to Gordon
9th inning
Jenks pitches to German
Using the Baseball Info Solutions and Retrosheet databases, we researched the last 33 years, all the way back to 1974. We found quite a few times (60) when five different pitchers faced five consecutive hitters. But never six pitchers and six batters. Combine that with the fact that relief pitchers were far less frequently used prior to 1974 than they are today, it's probably safe to say that Ozzie's feat is the only time it's ever happened in the history of Major League Baseball.
Oh, and by the way, it worked. The White Sox won the game.
- from John Dewan
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