30-3: Rangers And Orioles Players From MLB's Biggest Blowout Recall History-Making Game
I will never forget this game.
I will never forget this game.
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It was only the ninth time a team had reached 30 runs, and the first time since the Chicago Colts beat the Louisville Colonels 36-7 in 1897. Among the other oddities:
- All 10 players Texas sent to the plate had at least one hit and one run scored.
- Five different Rangers had at least three hits. As a team they hit .509.
- Vazquez and catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia each homered twice and drove in seven runs apiece.
- Three Orioles relievers gave up 25 runs in the span of four innings
- Texas's lone reliever of the day was credited with a save with a 27-run lead.
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As such, his lineup was Catalanotto (1B), Kinsler (2B), Young (SS), Byrd (CF), Botts (DH), Cruz (RF), Murphy (LF), Saltalamacchia (C) and Vazquez (3B). It was far from fearsome.
"I told Ron it was a good lineup to get fired with," jokes then-hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo.
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The highest-scoring MLB game anyone alive has ever seen was, through five innings of play, not especially high schoring at all. Baltimore led 3-0 before Texas got on the board in the fourth with five runs, including Vazquez's first home run of the day, a three-run shot off of Cabrera.
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Littleton soon realized that, by pitching the final three innings of the win, he had qualified for a save under one of the game's more unusual rules. Littleton was now the owner of the most lopsided save in MLB historyand the butt of plenty of jokes from his teammates.
"I got a lot of crap the next day," he says. "'Nice save, Wes.' '"
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Today, the 303 game survives as one of MLB's standout curiosities. In the 10 years since it happened, only 21 teams have even scored 20 runs in a game, and the most runs belong to the Nationals, who beat the Mets, 235, back on April 30. It's quite possible that no one alive right now will ever see it or anything like it happen again. "Hopefully that record never gets broken," says Gabbard.
For the Rangers players, the game isn't just history; for most of them, it's the single best day they ever had in the major leagues. "It's special for those guys more than anybody," Wakamatsu says.
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It helps that the Orioles never felt like the Rangers ran up the score or tried to embarrass them. "It was a professional display on their end," Trembley says. "Everybody's been on the other side."
There's a common understanding among the players who took part in that game that 30 was a fluke, not a goal. And while the hits and runs kept piling up, that was only because no one was going to sacrifice a run-scoring hit or a chance at a career day.
"There's no sympathy," Kinsler says. "You don't feel bad for another team that's getting its butt kicked because there's a lot of times where you're on the other side and they don't feel sorry for you."