It was a long ride home from Kansas City today. My kids hadn't seen the park before. What a great place.
On the ride home we were talking about strikeouts and my son looked up some records. He found a phrase that he'd never heard of before - the golden sombrero. He was surprised that I had heard of it. More on that some other day.
He went from there to reading about dubious strikeout records by batters. He eventually found that one player struck out in 36 consecutive games. That pitcher was Montreal Expo Bill Stoneman. Somehow the N.L. allowed him to bat in an All-Star game even with a career average of .086.
Nellie Fox has the best At-Bat-to-Strikeout ratio since World War II. He struck out once every 42+ at-bats. Stoneman struck out 212 times in 338 ABs. That's 1.6 At-Bats per strikeout. Ouch. I'll need to check out career worsts in a future post. Not only that, if I ever run into my little league coach maybe he can let me know if I was worse than Stoneman.
Stoneman is better known for throwing two no-hitters for the Expos including one in the ninth game in franchise history. Due to arm injuries he only played eight seasons. Maybe the 20 complete games one year contributed to his injury?
Stoneman had a long career in the front office including being GM for the Angels when they won a World Series.
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