The King of Baseball
September 17, 2013 by Matt Nadel · 1 Comment
Hey baseball fans!
As some of you know, Masahiro Tanaka won his 25th consecutive game pitched a couple days ago for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of the Japanese professional baseball league, breaking the 75-year-old record that was held by Carl Hubbell , the Hall of Fame pitcher for the New York Giants. Some of you might be asking yourselves, “Why is this record so important?” Simple, Carl Hubbell is one of the greatest pitchers of all time and a pitcher would have to have as great an arm as Hubbell to break his record, something that is very hard to come by.
Carl “The Meal Ticket” Hubbell played for the Giants from 1928-1943. During his career, King Carl won 253 games and lost just 154 with a career ERA of 2.98. From 1933-1937, the nine-time All Star averaged 23 wins a year and won the MVP Award twice (1933 &1936), while leading his team to three pennants and a title in ’33. Hubbell was able to throw the screwball beautifully, which helped him compile a streak of 46 1/3 scoreless innings in his first MVP winning season and won 16 consecutive decisions in 1936 (and a record 24 over two seasons, which I mentioned before). One of the King’s greatest achievements was in the 1934 All-Star Game, in which he struck out Babe Ruth , Lou Gehrig , Jimmie Foxx , Al Simmons and Joe Cronin in successive at-bats during the first two innings. The great pitcher became a Hall of Famer in 1947.
In short, the Meal Ticket was one of the greatest pitchers of all time and even though someone just broke his record for the most wins in succession, we will always remember Carl as the man to set the record first. Anyway, thanks for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it and check back in a couple of days for more of “all the buzz on what wuzz.”
Tanaka didn’t break Hubbell’s record, since Hubbell didn’t pitch in the “Japanese professional baseball league” (sic). Hubbell holds the Major League Baseball record.