Scoreboards

• Walter Perry Johnson went from a telephone company employee to Major League pitcher in 1907
• His extraordinary fastball had the most prolific hitters of the day swinging at air
• The Walter Johnson Baseball League promotes family values for aspiring athletes

• The most exciting wild card playoffs took place in the shadow of the 1998 home run race
• This expansion wild card team captured the World Series twice in its short existence
• Four teams have progressed from the wild card tournament to the championship

Each year the Baseball Hall of Fame list grows by a few deserving players, umpires and office executives. The 2008 Baseball Hall of Fame added just one player to Cooperstown, despite a deep pool of nominees. The Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) votes each year to choose which players make it to the hallowed hall.

For Yankee Stadium announcer Bob Sheppard 2008 may have been his last time up in the press box. After 57 years announcing for the New York Yankees, Sheppard supposedly told the New York Times on April 1 that he is retiring at the age of 98, ending an era that was almost uninterrupted in Yankee lore.

The Tampa Bay Rays uniforms and name changed before the 2008 season so that they could sever ties to their losing past. It seems to have worked. The Tampa Bay Rays shrugged off a decade of losing along with their blue and white jerseys and made it all the way to the World Series. Now, the Rays are the envy of the league--a full blown phenomenon that has yet again redefined the model of success in baseball.

• Christy Mathewson’s aggressive baseball style led him to attain the most career wins by a pitcher in the National League
• He became a role model due to his intense pitching style on the field as well as his clean living off the field
• His hometown of Factoryville established the Christy Mathewson Little League in 1957

• Ever since a businessman by the name of Ban Johnson established the Western (American) League” in 1893 to challenge for baseball supremacy, there has been an ongoing rivalry between the National League vs. American League
• To make matters worse for the National League, the upstart American League Boston Americans won the first World Series in 1903
• The first 50 years of the Fall Classic saw the American League win the crown an overwhelming 33 times
• Even measuring All-Star Game wins to determine NL vs. AL supremacy gives us few answers as it is nearly a dead heat

• Bobby Thompson wins the pennant for the Giants with a three-run shot heard ‘round the world.
• Joe Carter does one better and hits a three-run home to win the 1993 World Series.

• The International Baseball Federation is the sanctioning body for international baseball tournaments
• Cuba dominates international baseball organization rankings for two world baseball tournaments
• Baseball has never taken off as an Olympic Sport even though its worldwide popularity is on the upswing

• The complete baseball record book would take eons for an individual to work their way through. It seems that every imaginable statistic gets recorded, tabulated, and recorded into the records of baseball
• There is a popular saying that “records are made to be broken” and in most cases this is true in baseball. Most recently, the baseball record “most career homeruns” was broken by Barry Bonds after 33 years
• There are other records of baseball that have stood the test of time and may never be broken