Other Crap

The Dodgers make it 12-0 at home. No team has ever done better.

It has been done one other time, by the 1911 Tigers. You may have heard of their center fielder. Speedy guy, name o' Ty Cobb, who hit .420 that year. The Tigers started the season 21-2 overall.

To tell the truth, those old Tigers weren't really that good. They had Cobb and Sam Crawford, two of the three best hitters in the league (the other was Shoeless Joe Jackson), but they had the second-worst ERA in the league, and just didn't have enough pitching to compete with a great overall team fielded by the As. After all the fireworks died down, the Tigers could do no better than second place, and it was a distant second, 13 games back. In fact, embarrassingly enough, the As even managed to finish the season with a better home record, even though they started 1-4 to the Tigers' 12-0! Pitching ultimately won the day. The A's had a solid offense led by two Hall of Famers of their own (Home Run Baker and Eddie Collins), and they had three brilliant pitchers to the Tigers none. That trio would be Jack Coombs, the great Eddie Plank and Chief Bender, who went a combined 68-25. Jack Combs is the only one of the three not in the Hall of Fame, but he had quite a year in 1911. Not only did he win 28 games, but he hit .319, was used as a pinch-hitter, and had a better OPS than three of the eight fielders behind him!

Coombs and Plank were both college boys, real rarities in those roughneck days, and were nicknamed after the colleges they played for. Jack Coombs was Colby Jack. Eddie Plank was Gettysburg Eddie, reflecting the town where he was born, went to college, and eventually died. He also spent most of his career pitching for the Philadelphia team, so he didn't leave Pennsylvania much.

Anyway ... moral of the story: don't pencil in the Dodgers for the brass ring just yet.