These drawings are visual translations of the traditional pitching line statistics. The first row of dots tracks the number of innings the pitcher completed, followed by hits, runs, earned runs, walks, and strikeouts. This project was inspired by a couple of Sam Miller’s Pebble Hunting columns at Baseball Prospectus.
In the first and only perfect game thrown in the World Series (or even the playoffs) Larsen and his batterymate, Yogi Berra, surgically worked their way through an all-time great Dodgers team.
A flight across an ocean threw this game’s starters out of whack. Sometimes pitchers don’t have it out of the gate and they return to the dugout before the first inning ends. But these matching 6-run, strikeoutless nightmares felt cosmic. The Yankees eventually outlasted Boston 17-13. Somehow no runs were scored by either team in the final two innings.
A typical 2020 fan-free matchup, Mitch Keller managed to fight through control issues with timely groundball outs, allowing no hits over 5 innings. But Carlos Carrasco beat him with a run of the mill ‘ace’ sort of line.
The longest of Gibson’s outings during his legendary ’68 season, this game simply could not happen today. No manager would let a pitcher throw 12 innings. But no manager was interested in trying to take the ball from the surliest ace in baseball. So the Cardinals rode him, in this case to an extra-inning victory.
A no-hitter is one of the most impressive, exciting achievements in the sport. However, unlike its perfect cousin, a no-no can cover some warts. A walk counts the same as a single on the basepaths, but not in the box score, and Edwin Jackson managed to fight off eight walks on this day by allowing no other player to reach base.
Yu Darvish and Masahiro Tanaka spun opposite gems in their first matchup outside of their native Japan. Neither team could scratch a run off the starters, so this game was left to the bullpens.
Alex Wells Shapiro (he/him) is a poet and artist from the Hudson Valley, living in Chicago. He reads submissions for Another Chicago Magazine and Frontier Poetry, and is a co-founder of Exhibit B: A Reading Series presented by The Guild Literary Complex. His work is recently published or forthcoming in Blood Tree Literature, Boudin, Pangyrus, and Digging Through the Fat. More of his work may be found at www.alexwellsshapiro.com.
