[Ads-l] Immaculate Inning

[Ben Zimmer]

A blog called "The Immaculate Inning" was created by Matt Johnson on Jan.
10, 2007:

https://immaculateinning.blogspot.com/2007/01/beginnings.html
(now at: http://www.immaculateinning.com/2007/01/so.html)

A post the next day explained the title:

https://immaculateinning.blogspot.com/2007/01/about-title.html
(now at: http://www.immaculateinning.com/2007/01/about-title.html)

---[begin quote]---
What is an immaculate inning? It is only the most dominant act that one can
do in sport. Nine pitches, 3 batters, 3 strike outs. It is completely
equivalent to the batters not even being in the batter's box. As shown by
rule 6.02(c):
(c) If the batter refuses to take his position in the batter’s box during
his time at bat, the umpire shall call a strike on the batter.
This hints at the idea of the Immaculate Game, which would be 81 pitches,
27 batters, 27 K's which is completely unthinkable, but would be
stastically identical to a team of 9 toddlers trying to bat. A list of all
pitchers who have thrown an immaculate inning can be found here.
---[end quote]---

The post links to a Wikipedia page that's currently titled "List of Major
League Baseball pitchers who have thrown an immaculate inning," but when
the page was created on Aug. 25, 2006, it evidently had a different title:
"Pitchers who struck out three batters on nine pitches." The page went
through a few name changes -- not sure when it got its current title.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_pitchers_who_have_thrown_an_immaculate_inning

--bgz


On Thu, Jun 16, 2022 at 5:30 PM Bill Mullins <amcombill at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Last night, two pitchers on the Houston Astros each threw an "immaculate
> inning" during a game, the first time it has happened twice in a Major
> League game.
>
> An immaculate inning is a half-inning of baseball in which a pitcher
> strikes out 3 opposing batters with nine pitches.  It seems to be of fairly
> recent coinage.  The earliest I find is:
>
> 2008 Fort Lauderdale FL _South Florida Sun Sentinel_ 19 Jun 3C/4
>
> Highlighting Felix Hernandez's 7-1/3-inning performance in the Mariner's
> 5-4 win over the Marlins late Tuesday night was the 42nd immaculate inning
> in baseball history.
>
>
> Note:  the most recent previous such feat was done by Rich Harden of the
> Athletics on 6/8/2008.  Concerted searching for the phrase at that date was
> not productive, but it shows up regularly since Hernandez on 6/17.  I
> suspect it was first used in this context between those two games.
>
>

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