Baseball Quiz: Detroit’s Justin Verlander is only the tenth hurler since 1980 to win 24 games (24-5) and he can become the first since 1990 to win 25 should he win his last start coming up this weekend. Name the nine others (none more than once) to win 24 or more the last 31 years. Answer below.
Who’s Next? Or is it Four Corners’ Time?
The plot thickened further on the college conference realignment front as the Pac-12’s school presidents and chancellors voted to block the league from expanding further, a blow to the hopes of Oklahoma and Texas after their respective boards gave them permission to seek new conference affiliations. Previously, it was thought the Pac-12 would go to Pac-16 with the addition of these two, plus Oklahoma State and Texas Tech. I really wonder if the Pac-12 has second thoughts about adding Utah and Colorado as they did last year. At the same time it seems quite apparent these two were scared that the potential additions of the four Big 12 schools would have severely diluted their exposure on the West Coast, which was a prime attraction for Utah and Colorado in joining the Pac-12 in the first place. The New York Times’ Pete Thamel also adds that “Arizona and Arizona State are concerned about losing a toehold in Los Angeles by potentially playing fewer games against UCLA and USC,” a reason why their school presidents would have been against expanding further.
So now Texas and Oklahoma vow to pursue “conference stability” in the Big 12, though this won’t be easy. Plus Oklahoma keeps bitching about Texas and the Longhorns’ new television riches. I love the state of Oklahoma and its people, but time for the Sooners to freakin’ suck it up. Texas is bigger! Deal with it!
As for the Big East, after a meeting involving the athletic directors and presidents of the league’s seven remaining football-playing schools (including 2012 newcomer TCU), Commissioner Joe Marinatto* said his league is committed to actively pursuing “top-level, BCS-caliber institutions,” to compensate for the loss of Pitt and Syracuse. Marinatto added the seven basketball-only schools (not counting Notre Dame) “unanimously supported their football brethren to do whatever it is they need to do” as the league tries to rebuild. But there was no uniform language from all the schools in the end, meaning the likes of UConn and Rutgers are still no doubt pursuing their own agendas, while West Virginia desperately wants to be part of the ACC or SEC, but both of those leagues turned them down. Academics, or lack thereof, don’t help the Mountaineers’ case.
[Note from your editor. Looking back I should have gone to WVU. I would have studied just as hard, meaning little, but gotten a 3.50!]
And just thinking out loud, the other thing holding back West Virginia is the television market situation. Now you’ve heard how WVU has as small a market as you can find, so it brings nothing to the table in this respect, but I’ll take it one step further. Anyone who can afford a television in West Virginia is already at the game! [You won’t find this kind of serious analysis in the New York Times or Washington Post, I guarantee ya!]
*Commissioner Marinatto, by the way, tired of being the whipping boy for being blindsided by Pitt and Syracuse, said on Tuesday night that he would enforce the Big East’s 27-month notice agreement in its bylaws and not allow the two schools to formally bolt until the 2014-15 academic year. We’ll see if he sticks to this. The two can’t be thrilled, expecting the commissioner to release them early.
Meanwhile, in these parts, my home state of New Jersey, it’s all about Rutgers.
Rutgers would desperately like to be in the ACC, joining UConn as the 15th and 16th teams after Pitt and Syracuse bolted, which would lead to an ACC North of Rutgers, UConn, Pitt, Syracuse, Boston College, Maryland, Virginia and Virginia Tech. And a South of Wake Forest, North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Florida State and Miami.
In terms of football, Rutgers would be more than competitive in its division.
When it comes to basketball, assuming UConn and Rutgers bolt, you still have Georgetown, Villanova, St. John’s, Marquette, Seton Hall, DePaul and Providence in the Big East, and as the Star-Ledger’s Steve Politi noted, add Butler, Xavier, Dayton and a few others and that’s a helluva conference, and one still capable of packing the Garden in March for four days. [Thoughts of the ACC playing in the Garden for its tourney are freakin’ stupid, in my book.]
But nationwide, it’s still about Texas…and Oklahoma. And then there’s Notre Dame. And TCU, with the Horned Frogs these days feeling like frogs in a blender. Who the hell knows what they’ll do? They really belong in the Big 12, when you think about it. That’s one way of reassuring Texas and Oklahoma. Notre Dame? What a bunch of arrogant a-holes. Hopefully they shoot themselves in the foot and get left high and dry. [Sorry, Mark R.]
What’s absurd about all this realignment is the impact on the minor sports. For example, men’s and women’s soccer traveling all over the place for a mid-week game. Memo to the NCAA: So much for “student-athletes”…they’ll be missing tons of classroom time.
Or, of course, more minor sports will fall victim to budget cuts, and Title IX, assuming football, and to a lesser extent, basketball, don’t carry the load for the others. Support from the big sports always looks good on paper until reality hits.
This is what is maddening about these conference moves. Baseball, tennis, soccer…these will suffer. Others, such as swimming, track and field and golf, less so, hypothetically, because their schedules are mostly comprised of regional type meets and tournaments.
Princeton’s athletic director, Gary Walters, told the New York Times:
“What is lost in all of this is that the presidents – the very people tasked with enforcing the NCAA’s and the Knight Commission’s principle of ‘presidential control’ of college athletics – have proven to all that they are incapable of fulfilling their mandate,” referring to a watchdog group for college athletics. “The hypocrisy is almost tangible.”
[But one minor sport benefits, at least in the ACC. Think lacrosse. As the Star-Ledger pointed out, you already have lacrosse powers Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Duke. Now throw in Syracuse. Between these five, at least two will reach the Final Four virtually every spring.]
A few final notes to tie this all together, as of 3:00 p.m., Wednesday, that is.
Missouri has a standing invite to join the SEC as the 14th school in that conference, but the SEC isn’t pressing the Tigers because the league doesn’t want to be seen as aggressively poaching the Big 12 after taking Texas A&M. The Aggies might not be playing for awhile in their new league, anyway, what with all the legal wrangling now taking place with dissatisfied Big 12 schools like Baylor.
As part of the Big East’s aggressive bid to maintain a high-profile football league, they could try to add the likes of Navy, Air Force and East Carolina; the latter having already submitted an application for conference membership. Or the league could look to Temple and Houston. I’ve seen Memphis also included in this part of the conversation, but why? By some measurements they are the worst program in the country.
And Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim expressed the sentiment of many fans, including yours truly. Speaking at a fan gathering on Monday, Boeheim reacted to the moves by Pitt and Syracuse.
“If conference commissioners were the founding fathers of this country, we would have Guatemala, Uruguay and Argentina in the United States. This audience knows why we are doing this. There’s two reasons: Money and football.”
Boeheim implied the extra few million dollars earned by some schools make little sense considering the budgets are many times this. He also lamented the loss of long-time rivalries, which is my big problem with it all.
“We’re going to end up with mega conferences and 10 years from now either I’m going to be dead wrong – and I’ll be the first to admit it – or everybody is going to be like, why did we do this again? Why is Alabama playing Texas A&M this week and going to Texas Tech next weekend? And why is Syracuse going to Miami in basketball this week and next week they’re going to play Florida State?”
And Boeheim commented on the possibility of the ACC tournament being played in Madison Square Garden.
“It’s a great place for a tournament. Where would you want to go to a tournament for five days? Let’s see: Greensboro, North Carolina, or New York City? Jeez. Let me think about that one and get back to you.”
On this one I disagree from the standpoint that the ACC tournament, even with Pitt and Syracuse’s fan base, needs to be where it traditionally is…down South.
–I was watching the Pats-Chargers game on Sunday and the announcers rightfully focused on quarterback Tom Brady’s penchant for going to his tight ends, but the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Salfino points out just how much of a focus. As in:
“Since 2010, (Brady) has found Patriots’ tight ends 23 times for touchdowns – the most-ever in an 18-game stretch, topping the 22 scoring connections by Sonny Jurgensen to tight ends Jerry Smith and Pat Richter for the 1967-68 Redskins.” [Brady’s targets have been Aaron Hernandez and Rob Gronkowski, though Hernandez may be out at least for this week with a knee injury.]
–I have to admit I turned off the Eagles-Falcons game right before Michael Vick got hurt, but there isn’t one football fan who isn’t thinking, how long can this guy last? And why would Philly give him such a huge contract knowing how he is one or two hits away from being lost for a season? As Don Banks writes on SI.com:
“It was bound to happen, and did, before he even had two full games under his belt this season. His style of wide-open play obviously lends itself to plenty of contact, but the Eagles offensive line has also done him no favors this season. Even in the preseason, Vick took a pounding, and that trend continued once the games started counting, despite the hits not always showing up on the stat sheet in the form of sacks.
“Ironically, Vick was hurt Sunday night when he banged his helmet into the upper torso of Eagles right offensive tackle Todd Herremans, one of his paid protectors.”
“Now, I understand that ESPN broadcasts around the clock and there is a big family of ESPN networks and all of those ESPNs cover the NFL 24-7-365. What I don’t understand, I guess, is why ESPN needs to employ 26 – 26! – ex-NFL players and coaches to chatter, babble, jabber, yammer, blather, prattle and rattle on during its never-ending NFL gab fests.
“If it were up to me, I’d just bring in Artie Donovan and call it a day.
“Best I can tell, ESPN is just about the only place in America hiring right now. The U.S. economy is bust, the ESPN economy is Boomtown. Heck, if Suzy Kolber were the First Lady, maybe there’d be no federal deficit.
“(How much money does ESPN have? It just extended its ‘Monday Night Football’ deal at the cost of $1.9 billion a year. This means two things – Hank Williams Jr. doesn’t have to look for work until 2021 and your cable bill is about to go up again.)….
“Ex-jocks used to open car dealerships. Now they just drive to ESPN and go to wardrobe….
“Here is the unofficial list of ESPN ex-NFL talking heads:
“ Eric Allen, Lomas Brown, Tedy Bruschi, Cris Carter, Trent Dilfer, Mike Ditka, Hugh Douglas, Herm Edwards, Mike Golic, Jon Gruden, Tim Hasselbeck, Merril Hoge, Tom Jackson, Ron Jaworski, Keyshawn Johnson, Eric Mangini, Bill Parcells, Antonio Pierce, Jerry Rice, Jon Ritchie, Mark Schlereth, Kordell Stewart, Marcellus Wiley, Darren Woodson, Damien Woody and Steve Young….
“To be honest, I didn’t even know Eric Mangini had ever spoken publicly….
“Trust me, if ESPN were around when we put a man on the moon, there would’ve been three studios full of ex-NASA scientists and spacewalkers analyzing Apollo 11’s every move, with John Glenn debating Keyshawn Johnson on why Neil Armstrong took his first step with his left foot.
“I also would’ve gotten a kick out of listening to, say, Matt Millen break down ESPN’s Total Astronaut Rating.”
–I meant to include a blurb from a book review by Fred Barnes in the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 10-11, concerning early football.
“In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt took an unusual step for a president. He tried to reform the way college football was played, and he succeeded. The game became more civilized, less bonecrushingly violent, and much more open, thanks to new rules that included allowing the forward pass.
“The future of the game had been thrown in doubt the previous season when 18 players died from injuries on the field. It was a brutal sport back then: Players showed little concern for their own safety, even less for their opponents’. They threw punches, jammed their fingers into rivals’ eyes, drove their knees into players on the ground. They ignored calls for a fair catch. As Harvard players were urged before a game against Yale in 1894: ‘Tackle them anyway and take the penalty.’ For years, the flying wedge was used to steamroll over defenders, causing injuries. ‘Every day one hears of broken heads, fractured skulls, broken necks, wrenched legs, disclosed (sic) shoulders, broken noses, and many other accidents,’ the New York Times wrote after the 1893 season.”
Well, as detailed in “The Big Scrum,” by John J. Miller, Teddy Roosevelt had a lot to do with saving the sport.
“He didn’t browbeat, he led. He didn’t demand instant changes. He allowed a new set of rules to emerge and gradually be put into practice, rules that mostly remain in force today.” [Fred Barnes]
Some of the rules implemented: Ten yards for a first down, not five. Number of running backs was limited, penalties for personal fouls were tightened. “And, most important, the forward pass was legalized, spreading players across the field and reducing scrum-like throngs that the sport had inherited from rugby.” [Barnes]
Bottom line, the rules would have been changed without the help of T.R., but he sped them along.
–As Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal points out, Duke is an 11-point favorite over Tulane at sports books in Las Vegas, the first time since 2003 the Blue Devils are a double-digit favorite against a Football Bowl Subdivision team. According to OddsShark.com, the country’s longest such drought belongs to Eastern Michigan. The Eagles were last a double-digit favorite in 2000 vs. UConn when the Huskies were in transition to Div. I-A.
–When Mariano Rivera got save No. 602 on Monday to become the all-time leader in the category, picture manager Joe Girardi, who said how honored he was “to have the privilege to catch him and coach him.” You know, when you think about it, that’s pretty darn cool.
–When I heard they were making a movie out of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, I thought no way will it work. I’m still doubtful it’s a commercial hit but I’ve been kind of startled by some of the reviews I’m reading as the film opens Friday. Just a sample, from Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers:
“For me, the only thing duller than watching baseball is listening to fantasy-baseball freaks drone on about stats. So I yawned at the idea of Hollywood taking on Moneyball…(the) exhaustive 2003 bestseller about how the Oakland Athletics learned to stop worrying about star salaries and love the bottom line.
“My bad. Moneyball is one of the best and most viscerally exciting films of the year….
“Moneyball left me ready to cheer. Here’s a major-studio movie fired up with rebel spirit.”
–Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson was on with the team’s broadcasters Tuesday night and basically said the dimensions of Citi Field will be changed during the off-season.
If they do something, it’s about two players…David Wright and Jason Bay, both of whom have flopped when it comes to hitting home runs at Citi, and it’s not like the Mets can trade Bay (and his contract) or get anywhere near what they once could for Wright.
Alderson said that 1.9% of the balls put in play in Citi Field were home runs, compared with the league average of 2.5%. At Yankee Stadium, the little bandbox, the percentage is 3.6%.
In the three years Citi has been around, Alderson also added only eight home runs were hit to left field by left-handed batters, when the league average is around 29.
As to the notion that his players are being penalized more than visiting players by the stadium’s dimensions, Alderson said:
“We’re not looking necessarily to gain an advantage with respect to home runs versus visitor’s home runs. But at the same time, I think there is some sense that the park is a little more overwhelming to a team that spends half its time there, as opposed to a team that comes in for three games, doesn’t really have to alter its approach or think about it too much and leaves.”
“The hard-core baseball fan, I think, enjoys the 2-1, the 3-2. We’re appealing to a little broader segment. I think offense is appealing. Offense sells.” [Andrew Key / New York Times]
I think this is a bad move. Again, it’s being done for two players, and at the expense of Jose Reyes, who is a triples machine at Citi when healthy (emphasis on healthy). So, to me, it almost makes it less likely the Mets would re-sign free agent-to-be Reyes, unless he’s willing to accept a reasonable deal. And that’s a memo. Bernie Goldberg is here…Bernie, what say you?
–Weeks ago, Red Sox fan Pete M. was discussing with me the hideous season pitcher John Lackey is having for Boston and after starting 27 games, Lackey has a 6.49 ERA, having given up 198 hits in 154 innings. Yet somehow he is still 12-12.
So I just decided to go to Baseballreference.com and look at years where the league pitched poorly and turned to 1930 and the 52-102 Philadelphia Phillies. They had a team ERA of 6.71! Good gawd!
Les Sweetland started 25 times for the Phils, went 7-15, and gave up 271 hits in 167 innings, which helped lead to a 7.71 ERA. Claude Willoughby started 24 games, threw 153 innings, gave up 241 hits, and had an ERA of 7.59 in going 4-17.
[Willoughby was 38-58, 5.84 for his career; Sweetland was 33-58, 6.10. Baseballreference doesn’t say if either of their mothers’ still loved them because if I was their mother, I’d find it hard to do so. It goes without saying the fathers were none too pleased. “Hey, Jack, I hear your boy Claude threw another clunker!” “Don’t know who you’re talking about, Bill. You got the wrong guy.”]
–Speaking of Baseballreference.com, the other week I received a nice note from Glenn G., talking about Ken Williams, whom I brought up in relation to the year Curtis Granderson is having. Williams, in 1922 for the St. Louis Browns, had 34 doubles, 11 triples, 39 homers, 155 RBI, 20 steals, 128 runs, and a .332 average, one of the great all-around years in the history of the sport. Williams was a late bloomer, not appearing on a full-time basis until he was 30, but he went on to slug 196 homers, drive in 913 and bat .319 in his career.
Glenn G. then had to put in a plug for two other old-timers; Doc Cramer and Indian Bob Johnson, the latter our own Dr. Bortrum’s favorite player, along with Ralph Kiner and Bob Feller.
Kind of funny Glenn picked these two because both, like Ken Williams, got off to late starts in their major league careers, and both hit exactly the same, .296.
Cramer, who played for numerous teams from 1929-48, didn’t become a regular until he was 27 but still amassed 2705 hits, while Indian Bob also didn’t become a regular until he was 27, but then went on to have eight, 100-RBI seasons in a career spanning 1933-45. [Johnson finished with 288 HR, 1283 RBI.]
–Lastly, way back when I was in Iowa, I was exchanging notes with Chuck E. on Rico Carty after I brought up the great hitter from the 1960s and 70s, having mentioned Carty’s awful knee injury one year, but I forgot to note he lost another full year due to tuberculosis!
So the following blurbs are from Carty’s bio in “The Biographical Encyclopedia of Baseball,” put out by the editors of “Total Baseball.”
“Rico Carty once homered twice in the same at bat, with Toronto of the International League in 1963. The first four-bagger was disallowed because time had been called. Carty returned to the batter’s box and promptly hit another ball into the seats. That incident prefigured the rest of Rico Carty’s career. If something bad could happen to him, it would – but after it did, Carty, a lifetime .299 hitter, would usually go right on hitting as if nothing had ever happened….
“In 1965, Carty suffered chronic back problems and missed half the season. A specially designed shoe helped to correct the situation, and he hit .326 the following year as a regular player. In 1967, however, Carty missed 18 games with an injured shoulder after a baseline collision with Ron Hunt. He hit only .255….
“Once, during spring training in 1968, Carty jokingly pretended that he didn’t feel well. The team physician, taking Carty seriously, found that the ballplayer had a slight fever and that his appetite was abnormal. As it turned out, Carty was in the early stages of tuberculosis and missed the entire season. He came back as strong as ever in 1969 – except for his shoulder, which he dislocated seven times. Atlanta won the National League West in the first year of division play, and Carty hit .342 in 104 games, driving in 58 runs in only 304 at bats.
“Carty avoided mishap in 1970 and won the NL batting crown with a whopping .366 average, 25 homers, and 101 RBIs in only 478 at bats. That winter while playing in the Dominican Winter League, Carty collided with Matty Alou and fractured his kneecap. He missed all of 1971. To compound matters, his newly opened Atlanta restaurant, the ‘Rico Carty Open Pit Barbecue,’ burned down, and the better part of Carty’s losses were not covered by fire insurance.
“As if Carty hadn’t endured enough misfortune, he was stopped and attacked by Atlanta police officers in August 1971 while driving his Dominican brother-in-law home. The officers kept beating and kicking him until they realized who he was. Fortunately, fears that Carty’s vision might be damaged were unfounded.”
Well, Carty came back again, hit .277, was traded to Texas, sold to the Cubs, then shipped off to Oakland, all in 1973, with the A’s releasing him in the off-season. But near the end of 1974 he resurfaced with Cleveland, resurrected his career once again, and banged out one .300 season after another as a DH.
Said Carty when he finally retired in 1979 at age 39, “I never gave up when things were bad. Not one moment. I think that’s what helped me. My positive thinking.”
[And thanks Chuck E. and Glenn for your input. Sorry I was so late in my response.]
–Pretty remarkable that Bob Hope lived to be 100 (the comedian having died in July 2003) and his wife, Dolores, just passed away at 102. The two were together for 69 years as she gave up a singing career to support her husband. But as an obituary in the New York Times noted, “In 1997, a few days short of her 88th birthday, (Dolores) was a special guest performer at her friend Rosemary Clooney’s engagement at the New York nightclub Rainbow and Stars, singing three numbers, including ‘It’s Only a Paper Moon,’ which she had sung the night she met Hope.
“ ‘Her timbre was clear and strong, her intonation pitch-perfect,’ Stephen Holden wrote in a review in the Times.”
Dolores DeFina was born in Harlem and grew up in the Bronx, after which she changed her last name to Reade and began a career as a nightclub singer, which is how she met Bob Hope. The actor George Murphy took Hope to see Dolores’ act at the Vogue Club in Manhattan.
There’s the great story when one time Dolores accompanied Bob on one of his tours entertaining the troops overseas. In Vietnam, she sang “Silent Night,” bringing many of the soldiers to tears.
As the Times’ Anita Gates noted: “Mr. Hope promptly sent his wife back to the United States.
“ ‘The last thing those guys needed was sentiment,’ he was quoted as saying in an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail that appeared shortly after his death. ‘Dolores became their mother. What they needed was Raquel Welch.’”
Of course there were many temptations in being Bob Hope and as Ms. Gates writes, he had a wandering eye. “Mrs. Hope, well aware of it, responded publicly with aplomb. She told John Lahr in a 1998 profile of Bob Hope in The New Yorker, ‘It never bothered me, because I thought I was better-looking than anybody else.’”
–A college golf tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, was called off due to bees. As reported by the AP:
“Texas-Arlington UTA/Waterchase Invitational was canceled Tuesday after a limb from a tree holding an estimated 70,000 bees fell and exposed a beehive at Waterchase Golf Club in Fort Worth.
“UTA spokesman Gregg Elkin said bees were swarming the area within minutes and several people were stung, though none seriously.”
A beekeeper was called in and recommended the course be closed for a number of hours. Wichita State was declared the winner.
–I had heard rumors of this, but didn’t believe it until I was at the grocery store on Tuesday and saw the cover of the “Star.” Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries hate each other…already!
The marriage isn’t even a month old! The current issue of “Us Weekly” reports that Kim’s sisters “hate” Humphries, but the New York Daily News has a source that says this isn’t the case. “They don’t hate him,” says the family insider. “They are happy he makes Kim happy.”
But in just looking at the “Star” cover, I gleaned that Kris is tired of faking everything on the reality show, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”
Of course I always felt Kris Humphries, while a heckuva rebounder, is lacking on the intelligence front for marrying ‘The Butt that Came from Outer Space.’
–I was watching the Sunday Night football game, until falling asleep, and thus didn’t catch a minute of the Emmys. Seeing as I currently don’t watch any network comedies or dramas these days, I frankly didn’t give a damn except I was glad to see “Mad Men” win for best Drama Series. Can’t wait for the return of that one next year.
–From “Ask the Slouch,” the Washington Post’s Norman Chad.
Q: Can you identify the “.1% of germs” that cannot be killed by most hand sanitizers? (Keith Szafran; Wheeling, Ill.)
Q: Now that Tiger Woods appears to be a non-entity on the weekends of majors, do you think he’ll start wearing his signature power-red shirts on Fridays next year in an effort to make the cut? (Don Dellinger; Vienna)
–Speaking of Piers Morgan, McAfee, the computer security firm, released its annual study of famous names used by cyber criminals to lure people to websites laced with viruses and other malicious content.
No. 1? Model Heidi Klum! Ding ding ding!
No. 3? Piers Morgan! Goodness gracious….or as my grandfather would have said, “Gee willickers!” [My brother and I never quite figured this one out, never having heard it from another human, ever.]
Top 3 songs for the week 9/21/63: #1 “Blue Velvet” (Bobby Vinton) #2 “My Boyfriend’s Back” (The Angels) #3 “If I Had A Hammer” (Trini Lopez)…and…#4 “Heat Wave” (Martha & The Vandellas) #5 “Sally, Go ‘Round The Roses” (The Jaynetts) #6 “Then He Kissed Me” (The Crystals) #7 “Surfer Girl” (The Beach Boys…one of their best) #8 “Mickey’s Monkey” (The Miracles) #9 “Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter From Camp)” (Allan Sherman) #10 “Cry Baby” (Garnet Mimms & The Enchanters…America doesn’t know what’s about to hit them…THE BRITISH INVASION IS COMING!)
Baseball Quiz Answer: 24 or more wins since 1980.
1980…Steve Carlton, 24 (Phil.); Steve Stone, 25 (Balt.)
1983…LaMarr Hoyt, 24 (CHW)
1985…Dwight Gooden, 24 (NYM)
1986…Roger Clemens, 24 (Bos.)
1988…Frank Viola, 24 (Minn.)
1990…Bob Welch, 27 (Oak.)
1996…John Smoltz, 24 (Atl.)
2002…Randy Johnson, 24 (Ariz.)
2011…Justin Verlander, 24 (Det.)
