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Neyer on Beasticon I making history

Rob Neyer talks about last night's intentional walk to Hamilton:

Gee, I thought this would have been bigger news. It's not every day -- or for that matter every decade -- that a batter is intentionally walked with the bases loaded. By my count, it's now happened five times: Nap Lajoie in 1901, Mel Ott in 1929, Bill "Swish" Nicholson in 1944, Barry Bonds in 1998, and now Josh Hamilton in 2008. Seems like sort of a big deal to me.

David Pinto says Jim Rice was also walked intentionally, although I haven't seen that before.

One of the things Rob Neyer addresses in his "Baseball Legends" book (which is very good, and which I need to do a write-up of) is that going back and checking the historical records suggests that the actual instances of bases loaded intentional walks isn't as frequent as folks retrospectively suggest.